I don't think this is a case of 'predicting the future' as much as it is subconsciously understanding what the radio waves mean.
I've considered this possibility; is there any evidence that humans can detect the signal frequencies used by cell phones?
For example, a few people claim to be able to sense 2.4GHz wireless signals, but that has (thus far) been demonstrably false. Has anyone done comparable studies using cell phone signals?
I wouldn't claim it's repeatable on demand, only that it happens. And it's not like I get a lot of phone calls... I average maybe one per day, and I certainly don't "sense" most of the calls I get.
I'd probably call it a "not infrequent coincidence".
My theory is that my brain extrapolates more or less when certain people are going to call me, so it decides to check the phone when its predicted time arrives, and sometimes it's pretty close. At any rate, it's kind of weird when it happens.
I have had the following happen to me on several occasions:
I think someone's calling me, so I pull out my phone. Nothing is there. As I'm putting the phone away, my phone rings.
If it were merely my brain remapping what I thought was going to happen, then I couldn't already have my phone out, could I? Therefore, it's more than merely an illusion.
I'm not saying it's not sometimes an illusion, only that it's not always an illusion.
It's sad that I get marked Troll merely for expressing my opinion that cursing is pointless and stupid. "Fluffy puffy adjectives derived from ponies" are not relevant.
I also fail to see how cursing is "real [f-ing] awesome". What's so awesome about it? The fact that some people find it offensive?
If the person knows about an across-the-street webcam he can call the police because that's illegal.
Recording the view from my apartment window is not illegal, regardless of whether people get recorded sometimes. If it is, please reference the law which makes it illegal.
Yes, if I aim the device at someone else's window, and zoom in so I can see people inside, that would be illegal. But accidentally recording a neighbor nude, when he's outside in plain view? Don't be absurd, that's not illegal.
People may be visible but they have a reasonable expectation that their movements are not permanently recorded anywhere
What? People have known for decades that their movements would be permanently recorded by any nearby ATMs, convenience stores, or any other establishment with a video camera overlooking a public area.
It's absurd to say people have an expectation of privacy when they're outdoors. Quite the contrary.
We don't want the government to do automatic surveillance of us and we don't want corporations to do that either.
A one-time drive-by is hardly "automatic surveillance by a corporation". I wouldn't even call it "surveillance".
I would also argue that the demonstrable benefits of Google Street View far outweigh the theoretical problems of one-time so-called "surveillance", especially since you can have Google remove images you think violate your privacy!
You don't need to sunbathe nude to get sufficient sunlight exposure.
Point being, it's not vital to anyone's health that they go outdoors naked, so if they choose to do it anyway, they're in no position to complain about privacy when someone sees them.
I stand by my earlier statement: if you want something to remain private, you should not do it outdoors in plain view from any passing SUV.
Why must it always be the other that has to change? That would be like you knocking on my door, trying to change my religion to your religion and I don't want to because your religion offends me. Since it offends me, does that mean you should change your religion? No, it means that we just don't talk anymore or talk about religion anymore.
That's exactly the logic I would use with cursing. I don't really care to outlaw it, but I also don't think people should be forced to hear words they find offensive in public in the interest of "tolerance" or whatever.
I would merely argue that if some word or topic of conversation is offensive to a person or group of people, you should avoid that word or topic while you're around that person or group of people. Most people are ok with showing that small amount of respect and restraint.
With your example, if you find religious talk irritating or offensive or whatever, I'm going to avoid the subject whenever I'm around you. Why should it be different for swear words than for any other topic?
My earlier post did go somewhat off-topic; I started by saying "it shouldn't be ok to deliberately offend people" and then went on to say "besides, it's stupid anyway because X, Y, and Z."
Would you deny others the right to express their feelings in a manner they feel proper just because your virgin ears can't handle spoken words that are no more then a combination of sound?
If you know I'm offended by that sort of language, and you choose to use the words anyway, then I would expect you to restrain yourself out of a sense of common decency.
You know, that basic respect that society is built on.
There is a catch, though: The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become, Stephens cautions. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone's pain.
Furthermore, the study didn't examine whether merely yelling or screaming wordlessly would have a similar effect, or whether distracting yourself by e.g. singing a song would also work.
At any rate, there's certainly no reason to be using expletives as common adjectives.
By literal definition, it does; I'm pretty sure I spent that entire post describing other ways it's used, so obviously I realize it is used many other ways.
None of those other ways, however, has a particular definition. Using it to increase the "shock value" or emotional weight of a sentence does not confer some magical definition on the word.
If people are offended by swear words not directed at them, the problem lies with them and not the speaker.
If people are offended by my naked body out in public, that's their problem, not mine.
Seriously, we have public decency laws for a reason - it's so we don't go around offending people.
If you object to deliberately offending people, it's not the expletive which is the problem.
Suppose I have a neighbor who is offended by the word "noodle", for some inexplicable reason. You're saying it's perfectly acceptable for me to deliberately use the word "noodle" in every way possible every time the neighbor is within earshot?
Common decency would suggest otherwise. I may think it's absurd to be offended by the word "noodle", but I'm certainly not going to deliberately offend my neighbor.
And yet you're saying it's perfectly acceptable to go around deliberately offending people. I guess you have no sense of decency.
The larger question is why you should have to ask for a take-down - rather than demanding that Google ask for your permission.
That's not a question at all. If I'm in my driveway, taking pictures of my friends, and I catch my neighbor in the background, do you think I should have to ask my neighbor's permission before posting the picture on my blog? What if I simply don't notice the neighbor in the background? Why isn't it sufficient to have them ask me to blur them out when they notice, if they even care?
Google's Street View Cars can't see much more than a person in a common SUV could see from the driver's seat.
Suppose I'm in the passenger seat of an SUV, filming the street we're driving down for whatever reason. Further suppose I post the video online, and it later become apparent that you can see a naked person over the six-foot wall between the street and their backyard in a short segment of the video. Have I violated this person's privacy?
I say no.
If you don't want to be seen naked, don't go outside naked. It doesn't matter if there's a six-foot fence or a thirty-foot fence - if you're outdoors, you should assume someone can see you.
Nobody should have to ask permission to take photos from a public place.
Ah, but the difference is, the concert is deliberately putting on a show for profit. The neighbor is merely going outside naked, heedless of who may be watching.
I think that's a significant difference.
If the person knows about the across-the-street webcam, he should stop going outside naked.
If I go outside naked, even in my own backyard, and that shows up on a satellite view of my area, I'm not going to raise a ruckus about violated privacy. If I want privacy I won't go outside naked.
I'll say it again: the guy in question should not have gone outside naked if he actually wanted privacy. The presence of a wall at the edge of his property is irrelevant.
Sticks and Stones man. If these words could kill it'd be another issue. Explicatives and slang have now become casual english.
And that makes it ok to deliberately offend people?
Expletives (not "explicatives") are completely unnecessary in the forms they are most commonly used. Specifically, they do not add meaning to the sentence; they're merely an attempt to convey emotion or add "shock value". Take, for example, the common use of the "f-word":
"That f-ing dog bit me!"
Given that the dog was not actually attempting to copulate with anything, using the expletive adds no meaning to the sentence.
In this case, it is an attempt to convey the victim's anger toward the dog, which is something already conveyed by vocal tone and physical indicators.
However, that particular use is understandable. This, however, is not:
"You're a f-ing moron."
Again assuming the moron is not attempting to copulate with anything, what meaning does the expletive convey? None. We already understand the speaker's opinion of the moron, because, well, he's being called a moron. There is presumably disdain in the speaker's voice and some equivalent expression on his face.
It's an attempt to add "shock value" - an attempt to further offend the recipient of the insult by using expletives.
What's worse, so many people have allowed their vocabulary to shrink to the point where they use few adjectives which aren't expletives; there are many people who use them in place of other more appropriate adjectives in normal conversation, or to fill a void in the flow of their conversation when they can't think of the word they mean to say (i.e. to replace "um"):
"I was going to the store to buy a... f-ing... to buy a lawnmower..."
This of course adds no value and actually distracts the listener from the topic of conversation (unless of course the listener also has this habit).
It's not helped by the fact that people with large vocabularies are nowadays viewed as pretentious merely for using the words at their command. It's sad that so many people look down on others for using real adjectives instead of adjectives derived from expletives.
Of course it's public interest. It's not just a service making one person's life easier; it's a service making everyone's life easier. That is, by definition, a public-interest service!
The fact that some people don't use it is irrelevant; not everyone uses the public transportation system, not even a majority of people, but you wouldn't argue that those aren't "public interest", would you?
If the student is made aware that turnitin would be used before the paper was written, then there's no basis for opposing it, because knowing it would be used that way and still submitting a paper is equivalent to permission to use it that way.
The anonymous intruder with his hidden camera has never received such a welcome.
Google is neither anonymous, nor does it use hidden cameras... and they'll take down or blur the photos if you ask. Not really the same as what you're implying there.
When you go for a job, for example, even if the position has nothing to do with handling money, the employers do a credit check at the minimum. Bad credit or a lot of debt, say from student loans, you are denied a position. Basically you are denied employment for getting an education.
If that were true, then I would have been denied my job. Married with a child, tons of student loan debt, a fair amount of credit card debt (as a result of those medical bills), below-average credit rating...
No, my employer did not run my credit (they have to ask, you know), and if they had asked I would have said no.
If your non-financial-industry employer wants to run your credit, for a non-money-handling position, you probably don't want to work there.
So if I'm at the beach, and I take a picture of my friends, I should be required to obtain the consent of everyone in the background before posting the picture to my blog?
However, remember that the Google van has the camera a lot higher than what you could see walking on the street. If you went taking photos of someones backyard that is otherwise shield, you would be violating law.
Suppose I live in an apartment building across the street from a walled garden, and a naked person is chilling inside the garden. Further suppose I'm taking photographs of the view from my apartment window. Am I violating that naked person's privacy?
Just because something can be used inappropriately doesn't mean it should be completely banned.
In Google's case, the intent of their stuff is not to violate privacy, and they're not publicizing information that couldn't be otherwise made available - that is, if you wanted to travel to a particular street yourself, and take a 360-degree photo from the same vantage point, you could.
Suppose the guy who was photographed nude lived across the street from an apartment building. Sure, there's no line of sight from the street, but what about from the building across the street? If the across-the-street neighbors call him and ask him to stop running around naked outside (even though he's not visible from the street), should he be allowed to say "tough luck, I have an expectation of privacy"? Should he be allowed to legally force the apartment building to block their windows so they can't see him?
What if one of those across-the-street tenants is running a 24/7 video blog of the view outside his window? Should the nude neighbor be allowed to force the blogger to shut off the video feed just because he wants to go outside naked?
My opinion is, if I'm allowed to legally see something with my eyes merely by standing in a public place, then there can be no danger in photographing or filming it for public consumption.
This issue has implications far beyond Street View.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think this is a case of 'predicting the future' as much as it is subconsciously understanding what the radio waves mean.
I've considered this possibility; is there any evidence that humans can detect the signal frequencies used by cell phones?
For example, a few people claim to be able to sense 2.4GHz wireless signals, but that has (thus far) been demonstrably false. Has anyone done comparable studies using cell phone signals?
I wouldn't claim it's repeatable on demand, only that it happens. And it's not like I get a lot of phone calls... I average maybe one per day, and I certainly don't "sense" most of the calls I get.
I'd probably call it a "not infrequent coincidence".
My theory is that my brain extrapolates more or less when certain people are going to call me, so it decides to check the phone when its predicted time arrives, and sometimes it's pretty close. At any rate, it's kind of weird when it happens.
No, they can't because it's an illusion.
I have had the following happen to me on several occasions:
I think someone's calling me, so I pull out my phone. Nothing is there. As I'm putting the phone away, my phone rings.
If it were merely my brain remapping what I thought was going to happen, then I couldn't already have my phone out, could I? Therefore, it's more than merely an illusion.
I'm not saying it's not sometimes an illusion, only that it's not always an illusion.
It's sad that I get marked Troll merely for expressing my opinion that cursing is pointless and stupid. "Fluffy puffy adjectives derived from ponies" are not relevant.
I also fail to see how cursing is "real [f-ing] awesome". What's so awesome about it? The fact that some people find it offensive?
If you're in public, I would hope you'd tone it down out of a sense of respect for others, regardless of what the law says.
If the person knows about an across-the-street webcam he can call the police because that's illegal.
Recording the view from my apartment window is not illegal, regardless of whether people get recorded sometimes. If it is, please reference the law which makes it illegal.
Yes, if I aim the device at someone else's window, and zoom in so I can see people inside, that would be illegal. But accidentally recording a neighbor nude, when he's outside in plain view? Don't be absurd, that's not illegal.
People may be visible but they have a reasonable expectation that their movements are not permanently recorded anywhere
What? People have known for decades that their movements would be permanently recorded by any nearby ATMs, convenience stores, or any other establishment with a video camera overlooking a public area.
It's absurd to say people have an expectation of privacy when they're outdoors. Quite the contrary.
We don't want the government to do automatic surveillance of us and we don't want corporations to do that either.
A one-time drive-by is hardly "automatic surveillance by a corporation". I wouldn't even call it "surveillance".
I would also argue that the demonstrable benefits of Google Street View far outweigh the theoretical problems of one-time so-called "surveillance", especially since you can have Google remove images you think violate your privacy!
You don't need to sunbathe nude to get sufficient sunlight exposure.
Point being, it's not vital to anyone's health that they go outdoors naked, so if they choose to do it anyway, they're in no position to complain about privacy when someone sees them.
I stand by my earlier statement: if you want something to remain private, you should not do it outdoors in plain view from any passing SUV.
Why must it always be the other that has to change? That would be like you knocking on my door, trying to change my religion to your religion and I don't want to because your religion offends me. Since it offends me, does that mean you should change your religion? No, it means that we just don't talk anymore or talk about religion anymore.
That's exactly the logic I would use with cursing. I don't really care to outlaw it, but I also don't think people should be forced to hear words they find offensive in public in the interest of "tolerance" or whatever.
I would merely argue that if some word or topic of conversation is offensive to a person or group of people, you should avoid that word or topic while you're around that person or group of people. Most people are ok with showing that small amount of respect and restraint.
With your example, if you find religious talk irritating or offensive or whatever, I'm going to avoid the subject whenever I'm around you. Why should it be different for swear words than for any other topic?
My earlier post did go somewhat off-topic; I started by saying "it shouldn't be ok to deliberately offend people" and then went on to say "besides, it's stupid anyway because X, Y, and Z."
Would you deny others the right to express their feelings in a manner they feel proper just because your virgin ears can't handle spoken words that are no more then a combination of sound?
If you know I'm offended by that sort of language, and you choose to use the words anyway, then I would expect you to restrain yourself out of a sense of common decency.
You know, that basic respect that society is built on.
From the article you linked:
There is a catch, though: The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become, Stephens cautions. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone's pain.
Furthermore, the study didn't examine whether merely yelling or screaming wordlessly would have a similar effect, or whether distracting yourself by e.g. singing a song would also work.
At any rate, there's certainly no reason to be using expletives as common adjectives.
By literal definition, it does; I'm pretty sure I spent that entire post describing other ways it's used, so obviously I realize it is used many other ways.
None of those other ways, however, has a particular definition. Using it to increase the "shock value" or emotional weight of a sentence does not confer some magical definition on the word.
Or do you have a counter-example?
If people are offended by swear words not directed at them, the problem lies with them and not the speaker.
If people are offended by my naked body out in public, that's their problem, not mine.
Seriously, we have public decency laws for a reason - it's so we don't go around offending people.
If you object to deliberately offending people, it's not the expletive which is the problem.
Suppose I have a neighbor who is offended by the word "noodle", for some inexplicable reason. You're saying it's perfectly acceptable for me to deliberately use the word "noodle" in every way possible every time the neighbor is within earshot?
Common decency would suggest otherwise. I may think it's absurd to be offended by the word "noodle", but I'm certainly not going to deliberately offend my neighbor.
And yet you're saying it's perfectly acceptable to go around deliberately offending people. I guess you have no sense of decency.
The larger question is why you should have to ask for a take-down - rather than demanding that Google ask for your permission.
That's not a question at all. If I'm in my driveway, taking pictures of my friends, and I catch my neighbor in the background, do you think I should have to ask my neighbor's permission before posting the picture on my blog? What if I simply don't notice the neighbor in the background? Why isn't it sufficient to have them ask me to blur them out when they notice, if they even care?
Google's Street View Cars can't see much more than a person in a common SUV could see from the driver's seat.
Suppose I'm in the passenger seat of an SUV, filming the street we're driving down for whatever reason. Further suppose I post the video online, and it later become apparent that you can see a naked person over the six-foot wall between the street and their backyard in a short segment of the video. Have I violated this person's privacy?
I say no.
If you don't want to be seen naked, don't go outside naked. It doesn't matter if there's a six-foot fence or a thirty-foot fence - if you're outdoors, you should assume someone can see you.
Nobody should have to ask permission to take photos from a public place.
Ah, but the difference is, the concert is deliberately putting on a show for profit. The neighbor is merely going outside naked, heedless of who may be watching.
I think that's a significant difference.
If the person knows about the across-the-street webcam, he should stop going outside naked.
If I go outside naked, even in my own backyard, and that shows up on a satellite view of my area, I'm not going to raise a ruckus about violated privacy. If I want privacy I won't go outside naked.
I'll say it again: the guy in question should not have gone outside naked if he actually wanted privacy. The presence of a wall at the edge of his property is irrelevant.
Sticks and Stones man. If these words could kill it'd be another issue. Explicatives and slang have now become casual english.
And that makes it ok to deliberately offend people?
Expletives (not "explicatives") are completely unnecessary in the forms they are most commonly used. Specifically, they do not add meaning to the sentence; they're merely an attempt to convey emotion or add "shock value". Take, for example, the common use of the "f-word":
"That f-ing dog bit me!"
Given that the dog was not actually attempting to copulate with anything, using the expletive adds no meaning to the sentence.
In this case, it is an attempt to convey the victim's anger toward the dog, which is something already conveyed by vocal tone and physical indicators.
However, that particular use is understandable. This, however, is not:
"You're a f-ing moron."
Again assuming the moron is not attempting to copulate with anything, what meaning does the expletive convey? None. We already understand the speaker's opinion of the moron, because, well, he's being called a moron. There is presumably disdain in the speaker's voice and some equivalent expression on his face.
It's an attempt to add "shock value" - an attempt to further offend the recipient of the insult by using expletives.
What's worse, so many people have allowed their vocabulary to shrink to the point where they use few adjectives which aren't expletives; there are many people who use them in place of other more appropriate adjectives in normal conversation, or to fill a void in the flow of their conversation when they can't think of the word they mean to say (i.e. to replace "um"):
"I was going to the store to buy a... f-ing... to buy a lawnmower..."
This of course adds no value and actually distracts the listener from the topic of conversation (unless of course the listener also has this habit).
It's not helped by the fact that people with large vocabularies are nowadays viewed as pretentious merely for using the words at their command. It's sad that so many people look down on others for using real adjectives instead of adjectives derived from expletives.
Oh how cute, you still haven't figured out that students actually do have options beyond "play along" or "fail the course".
Of course it's public interest. It's not just a service making one person's life easier; it's a service making everyone's life easier. That is, by definition, a public-interest service!
The fact that some people don't use it is irrelevant; not everyone uses the public transportation system, not even a majority of people, but you wouldn't argue that those aren't "public interest", would you?
"Casing a joint." You know, gathering information for robbing it.
You've solved it! Google is planning a massive heist against everyone in the world!
The American version of the TV show "COPS" *does* blur faces. At least, last time it was on while I was flipping channels, faces were blurred.
If the student is made aware that turnitin would be used before the paper was written, then there's no basis for opposing it, because knowing it would be used that way and still submitting a paper is equivalent to permission to use it that way.
The anonymous intruder with his hidden camera has never received such a welcome.
Google is neither anonymous, nor does it use hidden cameras... and they'll take down or blur the photos if you ask. Not really the same as what you're implying there.
When you go for a job, for example, even if the position has nothing to do with handling money, the employers do a credit check at the minimum. Bad credit or a lot of debt, say from student loans, you are denied a position. Basically you are denied employment for getting an education.
If that were true, then I would have been denied my job. Married with a child, tons of student loan debt, a fair amount of credit card debt (as a result of those medical bills), below-average credit rating...
No, my employer did not run my credit (they have to ask, you know), and if they had asked I would have said no.
If your non-financial-industry employer wants to run your credit, for a non-money-handling position, you probably don't want to work there.
So if I'm at the beach, and I take a picture of my friends, I should be required to obtain the consent of everyone in the background before posting the picture to my blog?
However, remember that the Google van has the camera a lot higher than what you could see walking on the street. If you went taking photos of someones backyard that is otherwise shield, you would be violating law.
Suppose I live in an apartment building across the street from a walled garden, and a naked person is chilling inside the garden. Further suppose I'm taking photographs of the view from my apartment window. Am I violating that naked person's privacy?
They could.... I dunno... kick the UK out of the EU.
That's usually how clubs work. If you stop paying your dues, or if you tear up the golf course, they don't let you come back.
No, but banning them entirely would be silly.
Just because something can be used inappropriately doesn't mean it should be completely banned.
In Google's case, the intent of their stuff is not to violate privacy, and they're not publicizing information that couldn't be otherwise made available - that is, if you wanted to travel to a particular street yourself, and take a 360-degree photo from the same vantage point, you could.
Suppose the guy who was photographed nude lived across the street from an apartment building. Sure, there's no line of sight from the street, but what about from the building across the street? If the across-the-street neighbors call him and ask him to stop running around naked outside (even though he's not visible from the street), should he be allowed to say "tough luck, I have an expectation of privacy"? Should he be allowed to legally force the apartment building to block their windows so they can't see him?
What if one of those across-the-street tenants is running a 24/7 video blog of the view outside his window? Should the nude neighbor be allowed to force the blogger to shut off the video feed just because he wants to go outside naked?
My opinion is, if I'm allowed to legally see something with my eyes merely by standing in a public place, then there can be no danger in photographing or filming it for public consumption.
This issue has implications far beyond Street View.