I've heard this from mostly right-wingers like Pournelle: Microsoft sadly had to pour money into lobbyists because the mean social welfare state was hounding Microsoft with unfair lawsuits.
No. Microsoft had lobbyists and was pumping money into campaigns long before the big suit.
Microsoft didn't buy influence because they were under unfair attack. They bought influence because they knew their business practices were illegal, and they knew it. They just didn't like those laws. Bill is a hyper-libertarian on a Murdochian scale. He doesn't believe in regulation of business, well, his business anyway. BUT - he used the law like a sledgehammer against his competitors. Fairness, for him, is just a poker chip. He doesn't care about rules -- he just wants to WIN.
He didn't buy a hospitable White House because he wanted to protect himself from mean competitors, or commie government. He bought a President because he knew he breaking the law, and he wanted a Justice Department that would not enforce the law. And he got it.
The government should have messed with Microsoft. NOW, we have an arrogant monopolist who is phoning in an order to WIPO to kill Open Source discussions! What else will convince you that unregulated monopolist are evil? Bill ordering the slaying of all yearling babies? The assassination of Lessig?
Unregulated monopolists do not play fair. And they always, ALWAYS go too far. There's never enough money, never enough influence, never enough power.
Microsoft is a monopoly owner of OS's and office applications. In a free market, this should never have happened. MS in fact manipulated and gamed and sued until it owned the markets it played in. Now, they are using that influence to use the US government to be their own private monopoly enforcer over the world.
THAT is why the Government had to take MS down. Now, because of Bush and Ashcroft and their ideological madness, we have a monster that actually may take down Open Source and other alternative software, by suit, by cheating, and by government guns.
Bill hasn't just phoned in a "kill order" to the WIPO. He's apparently found someone or some people in the WIPO who are free market zealots, and convinced them that a pack of free-love, anti-property political liberal socialists had hijacked their organization to promote hippie values.
I could see this from several indications. First, Microsoft, and Bill himself, have made it clear that the political tack they were taking consists of painting the Open Source advocates as dangers to the present system of intellectual property -- not to mention the creeping Red Menace of SOCIALISM. No kidding here. Secondly, it was there in the remarks of Borland herself, who made it clear that she thought that the meeting was about undermining ther present system of IP. And lastly, I'm reading posts here and there which proclaim the view that the OS advocates are trying to "politicize" the WIPO by talking about such things. My god, what hypocrisy.
Well, in the last ten years, the economy exploded. The number of unemployed shrank, and kids growing up weren't staring at a hopeless life. The crime rate shrinks when prosperity grows.
The correlation between conceal-and-carry and the crime rate drop is fantasy. Think of it. When you think that the clerk and customers at the gas station are armed, you shoot them before they know what is happening. Simple self-preservation. This is born out by interviews with criminals. Also, tough sentencing laws give reason to kill the victim. Dead victims don't testify and put you away for life.
Anyway, people were packing concealed heat before, and the crime rate was still high. People have always packed weapons. C&C just made it legal. I've been in gun- and knife-happy parts of the country. You can buy weapons AT the gas station. They still get robbed.
Psychos will always want to kill, and no guns or laws will stop them. A businesslike robber will avoid killing at all costs -- unless it is likely he will be killed if he doesn't incapacitate the victims.
It's amazing how many braindead abusive posters don't read the article.
He did inform his former employer. At great length. Over a long period of time, both before and after his employment terminated. The flaw was not fixed.
The customers were mostly not scared off, because his mass-email was ERASED before the customers saw it. An amazing liberty taken with the customers' email, if you think about it. the customers never saw a message from a knowledgeable source informing them that their userids were hijackable - because it might hurt the provider's profits.
And it doesn't matter what his job was.
Business practice does not override the Constitution. Are we seeing the birth of a new class of crime: anti-commercial speech?
If he had mailed it via USPS, would they have been justified in tracking down all the pieces of mail and destroying them? How about phone conversations? Are they allowed, if technologically capable, of montitoring voice communications to their customers, in case a person is telling their customers that their system is hackable? How about verbal notification? If he had turned up at a customer's door to inform them that they had an unpatched hole, would the cops then be allowed to arrest and imprison him for anti-commercial crimes?
How about then hauling the now-informed customers into a Federal interrogation cell to sweat out the possible information the customer might have heard about their system?
Summing up: he had a right to email the customers. He had a right to speak to the customers. Whether or not it INCONVENIENCED the company is utterly, completely, insanely irrelevant.
The customers of the company involved, and all future customers of similarly nasty companies, are not even now aware that a basic security flaw was concealed from them because their provider did not want them to see it -- deleting their email before they read it. Where is the law for this? Can AOL or ATT delete mail at will from users' accounts because it might cost them their image or profits? Who the hell do they think they are?
And as for a customer being able to switch providers if they don't like the censorship -- HOW THE HELL WOULD THEY KNOW THAT INFORMATION WAS BEING CENSORED FROM THEIR EMAIL? There is no informed choice without a first amendment!!
Since when do you need "authority" in order to speak? No theater was on fire. The man had a right to speak to the customers.
What law did he break? If you read the articles, he didn't break any laws. The Justice Department created a new interpretation of antihacking laws by convincing a judge that just talking about a security hole is the same as breaking into a system.
We are now all eligible for prison if we point out a company has not secured its systems. Just indicating the flaw is a Federal offense! Because the company was inconvenienced!
"You don't reduce poverty by giving food to poor people. You reduce poverty by creating more jobs for more people."
At the risk of being slightly offtopic, the two are not mutually exclusive. I don't see why you think the two goals can't be achieved at the same time.
And as someone who grew up abysmally poor and hungry, I will say authoritatively that feeding hungry people does reduce their poverty. Without enough food, your body and your brain grows stunted. You waste a lot of time thinking about and obtaining food. You certainly don't spend a lot of time in honors courses, or indeed having access to a school system that has honors courses. You don't have access to the machinery that would raise your future status if you spend all your time scraping up pennies for loaves of bread, instead of reading or studying. Hunger is hell.
I wish food would be given away to any child in the U.S. that says they are hungry. Let them eat all they want. God. We're up to our necks in food.
Bulletproof doors would not have stopped the hijackings. The hijackers succeeded because they were threatening and killing the passengers, not because they could shoot the pilots. The pilots, pre-911, would have opened the doors if the flight crew and passengers were being threatened. Of course, today pilots would not open the doors -- but that is because of 911. The hijackers succeeded because no one had tried what they were doing: slamming the planes into targets. Pilots would cooperate before 911. Now they won't.
Um, how do I say this... aerosols, by which I assume you mean CFC-based aerosols, float to the upper atmosphere and catalyze the very thin layer of ozone that sort of floats like a skin over the whole planet. This causes sporadic thinning of the ozone layer, which is usually not a big deal, since ozone regenerates. But the CFC's float about for a while, and do persistent damage until they disappate.
Ozone depletion is a different problem than the greenhouse effect, which is caused by increased amounts of CO2 in the lower atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuels and of all things, flatulence of our herd animals.
The confusion of CFC pollution which causes ozone depletion and the global warming engendered by CO2 seems to widespread everywhere. I can't count the times I've seen intelligent people mix this up.
Statistical analysis? What has that got to do with it? SA can't predict how people have kids. All you can do is watch what they do, and perform your arithmetic accordingly.
The growth rate is slowing, not stopping. And I highly suspect the reported birth rates.
And ten billion is almost twice the number alive today. Where will they live, what will they drink, what kind of damage will they do to the biosphere? Say goodbye to the major fauna. Say helo to constant war, or failing that, tight government control will be necessary to keep everyone from each others mtaphorical throats.
It doesn't matter what the rate of growth is. Halving the growth rate only puts the problem off a couple of decades.
Let's set the doubling rate at 70 years, which is WAAAAY wrong. It's closer to 35-40 years. But, see:
Keep growing, you get the same results eventually.
CAN this growth occur, I think you're asking ultimately. No, of course. That's the point. The growth is stopped by the usual processes. Plague. War. Starvation. You're seeing it happen in Africa, on a far smaller scale than it could.
All the other good points about diamond semiconductors aside, the most important point for me would be the implied lack of pollutants created during the manufacturing process. The silicon chip manufacturing process create enormous amounts of poison that has to be disposed of in some way. Diamond seems to require methane, carbon, and electricity.
Another aspect about this: Intel says they have an enormous investment in silicon that they won't abandon soon. Excellent market opportunity! IBM, Motorola, anyone out there that wants to duck under Intel's commitment to their plant, and make a very profitable (and clean) revolution happen?
"Overpopulation" doesn't refer to merely land area. Tho Asimov did some simple calculations once, and showed that every square foot of the Earth would be covered in humans in less than 3000 years. The entire universe, and every atom in it, would be converted at the same present growth rate in humans in about 6000 years, if it were possible to absorb everything, everywhere.
"Overpopulation" is what happens when problems start overwhelming solutions. Problems: disease, starvation, malutrition, species elimination, overgrazing, desertification, water shortages, political panic against the have-nots, atmospheric damage, atmospheric warming, garbage accumulation (HUGE problem), education underfunding, oceanic destruction... All of these problems inevitably trigger wars as people struggle to find a way out that doesn't involve changing their habits, such as using too much oil, too much water, or worst of all, having too many babies. Men on Horseback inevitably convince people that they merely have to attack [insert enemy here] and all will be well.
Nothing expands forever. Cancers try, and they fail. There is always a limit. At the very least, there are always consequences. Best case scenario in the short term is turning the entire planet into a Trantor, just to service the people already living.
The problem is simple arithmetic. Humans hate arithmetic applied to their babies, but it is so anyway. The human race is doubling in size every 35 years or so. This simply cannot happen indefinitely. Let's break it down:
Keep running the expansion. It soon goes into the quadrillions, then quintillions. In less than 3000 years, give or take a millenium, the sum of all the mass of the human race exceeds the mas of the entire planet. In a few dozen more generation, the mass of the universe is exceeded.
No matter how much you throw tech at the problem, at some point the system will go unstable. The human race cannot keep increasing at the present rate, or even a fraction thereof, without utter breakdown.
I would think that the fundementalist belief that the world will end soon is the crux of people's indifference to the problems we face. A majority of the world believes that God will end the world soon. So why bother?
I'm not kidding. Major long term planning by political leaders, especially in the U.S. is being conducted by men and women who are banking on God ending the world.
- First of all, the birthrate would have to be chopped. Deathrate would have to be equal to the birthrate. The population growth formula cannot stand to have the death factor nulled out. A population that has large growth with little death is a cancer, a danger to the ecosystem.
- As a practical matter, turnover in people is essential to clean out the social arteries. I've grown accustomed to the idea that I should die so that someone younger and less conservative can take over and shake things up.
- A large population of old, conservative property owners will smother the young, who can never catch up with the accumulated wisdom and wealth of people decades or even centuries older than they.
- Space colonization would be essential. Not the piddly planets, but O'Neill structures that can really give the race some room to flex while the whole property/wealth problems rage on Earth.
- Wealth inequities will inevitably create a class of wealthy near-immortals in the short term. Wealth will buy better anti-aging treatments; poverty, nearly none. If you think the not-wealthy can be cranky now, wait until they see the wealthy stay alive indefinitely, while they die. As Heinlein said so long ago in Metheuselah's Children, Death is the Great Democrat, treating all alike. If class or wealth grant exemptions from the Equalizer, there will be hell to pay.
- How's memory going to work, when accumulated experience overwhelms the brains ability to cross-reference it all?
- How will an immortal make a living? They can't be retired. It's financially impossible.
- Will an immortal ever get any respect from the young? I mean, a 35 year old scientist or techie is washed up, according to conventional wisdom. Will the very young be the only people looked to for cultural stimulation, or technical breakthroughs? What will the oldsters do, watch TV for 200 years?
- You'd eventually wind up with a world full of very old people, with a small number of young being born to balance out a very low deathrate. "Conservative" isn't the word for the social atmosphere of such a world. Change would be very, very slow in coming.
- OTOH, If the oldsters can stay biologically young, how will the "really" young (in years) compete with the infinitely smarter pseudoyoung competition?
The thing about the UK is that it's pretty hard to starve. At least, harder than in the U.S. Relief is easier to obtain.
I'd like to think so, anyway.
I wonder if it's easier to be creative if you know you won't starve, come what may, or if you know you definitely will starve if you don't create.
I'm put in mind of Mike Moore's inverview of a Canadian, for the Columbine movie, I think. He asked them why they don't feel afraid walking the streets at night, (or similar) and the Canadian said, "I know that the other person I see isn't desperate". (Implying that they aren't starving or homeless because of social safety nets.)
It is? I thought it was used only recently for mass-producers of copied CD's for profit. I don't recall it ever used in the past for copyright infringement.
After all, the U.S. didn't recognize the copyrights of other nations until the 20th century. Americans "pirated" every work in the world for over 120 years. I don't think they referred to themselves as pirates.
It was forced into the language, by interested parties who wanted to confuse "theft" with a civil infringement.
It was a calculated manipulation, and a critical one, because people now equate copying=piracy=theft.
Sometimes you have to fight back, and this is one of thoes times. EVERY time someone says "piracy", correct them. Write articles correcting them. Shower letters on their editors.
After all, it's exactly how the interested companies "evolved" the word. Repetition. Staying on message.
"However if each RFID tag is unique, that would severly scare me. "
Take it from an old inventory system coder. To be of any use, the tag would have to have a unique identity. Otherwise, it's almost useless as an indentifier during inventory tracking.
It's not enough to know that there are boxes of Cheerios on the shelf. You need to know how many boxes.
One can understand an opinion but not respect it. You can respect the right to an opinion, but the opinion itself is up there for the judging.
For instance: people who don't understand what the Patriot act is? I don't respect their opinions. The opinions are based on grotesque ignorance, and are worthless.
And the people who hold such uninformed opinions are dangerous to people who are informed: this Wired article makes it plain. Privacy advocates were on the winning side of the issue, so the compulsive watchers made it a "Homeland Security" issue, and thus beyond the will or rights of the people. Uninformed people either have no opinion of this issue, or are so mis- or underinformed that they think it's a swell idea.
I'm not saying that after learning the truth, people can't learn. I am saying that until then, their opinions aren't worthy of respect.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard this from mostly right-wingers like Pournelle: Microsoft sadly had to pour money into lobbyists because the mean social welfare state was hounding Microsoft with unfair lawsuits.
No. Microsoft had lobbyists and was pumping money into campaigns long before the big suit.
Microsoft didn't buy influence because they were under unfair attack. They bought influence because they knew their business practices were illegal, and they knew it. They just didn't like those laws. Bill is a hyper-libertarian on a Murdochian scale. He doesn't believe in regulation of business, well, his business anyway. BUT - he used the law like a sledgehammer against his competitors. Fairness, for him, is just a poker chip. He doesn't care about rules -- he just wants to WIN.
He didn't buy a hospitable White House because he wanted to protect himself from mean competitors, or commie government. He bought a President because he knew he breaking the law, and he wanted a Justice Department that would not enforce the law. And he got it.
The government should have messed with Microsoft. NOW, we have an arrogant monopolist who is phoning in an order to WIPO to kill Open Source discussions! What else will convince you that unregulated monopolist are evil? Bill ordering the slaying of all yearling babies? The assassination of Lessig?
Unregulated monopolists do not play fair. And they always, ALWAYS go too far. There's never enough money, never enough influence, never enough power.
Microsoft is a monopoly owner of OS's and office applications. In a free market, this should never have happened. MS in fact manipulated and gamed and sued until it owned the markets it played in. Now, they are using that influence to use the US government to be their own private monopoly enforcer over the world.
THAT is why the Government had to take MS down. Now, because of Bush and Ashcroft and their ideological madness, we have a monster that actually may take down Open Source and other alternative software, by suit, by cheating, and by government guns.
It's simple really.
Bill hasn't just phoned in a "kill order" to the WIPO. He's apparently found someone or some people in the WIPO who are free market zealots, and convinced them that a pack of free-love, anti-property political liberal socialists had hijacked their organization to promote hippie values.
I could see this from several indications. First, Microsoft, and Bill himself, have made it clear that the political tack they were taking consists of painting the Open Source advocates as dangers to the present system of intellectual property -- not to mention the creeping Red Menace of SOCIALISM. No kidding here. Secondly, it was there in the remarks of Borland herself, who made it clear that she thought that the meeting was about undermining ther present system of IP. And lastly, I'm reading posts here and there which proclaim the view that the OS advocates are trying to "politicize" the WIPO by talking about such things. My god, what hypocrisy.
Well, in the last ten years, the economy exploded. The number of unemployed shrank, and kids growing up weren't staring at a hopeless life. The crime rate shrinks when prosperity grows.
The correlation between conceal-and-carry and the crime rate drop is fantasy. Think of it. When you think that the clerk and customers at the gas station are armed, you shoot them before they know what is happening. Simple self-preservation. This is born out by interviews with criminals. Also, tough sentencing laws give reason to kill the victim. Dead victims don't testify and put you away for life.
Anyway, people were packing concealed heat before, and the crime rate was still high. People have always packed weapons. C&C just made it legal. I've been in gun- and knife-happy parts of the country. You can buy weapons AT the gas station. They still get robbed.
Psychos will always want to kill, and no guns or laws will stop them. A businesslike robber will avoid killing at all costs -- unless it is likely he will be killed if he doesn't incapacitate the victims.
There was no law. The Justice Department created one out of thin air:
talking about a vulnerability == committing a felonious hack.
Unbelievable.
It's amazing how many braindead abusive posters don't read the article.
He did inform his former employer. At great length. Over a long period of time, both before and after his employment terminated. The flaw was not fixed.
The customers were mostly not scared off, because his mass-email was ERASED before the customers saw it. An amazing liberty taken with the customers' email, if you think about it. the customers never saw a message from a knowledgeable source informing them that their userids were hijackable - because it might hurt the provider's profits.
And it doesn't matter what his job was.
Business practice does not override the Constitution. Are we seeing the birth of a new class of crime: anti-commercial speech?
If he had mailed it via USPS, would they have been justified in tracking down all the pieces of mail and destroying them? How about phone conversations? Are they allowed, if technologically capable, of montitoring voice communications to their customers, in case a person is telling their customers that their system is hackable? How about verbal notification? If he had turned up at a customer's door to inform them that they had an unpatched hole, would the cops then be allowed to arrest and imprison him for anti-commercial crimes?
How about then hauling the now-informed customers into a Federal interrogation cell to sweat out the possible information the customer might have heard about their system?
Summing up: he had a right to email the customers. He had a right to speak to the customers. Whether or not it INCONVENIENCED the company is utterly, completely, insanely irrelevant.
The customers of the company involved, and all future customers of similarly nasty companies, are not even now aware that a basic security flaw was concealed from them because their provider did not want them to see it -- deleting their email before they read it. Where is the law for this? Can AOL or ATT delete mail at will from users' accounts because it might cost them their image or profits? Who the hell do they think they are?
And as for a customer being able to switch providers if they don't like the censorship -- HOW THE HELL WOULD THEY KNOW THAT INFORMATION WAS BEING CENSORED FROM THEIR EMAIL? There is no informed choice without a first amendment!!
Since when do you need "authority" in order to speak? No theater was on fire. The man had a right to speak to the customers.
What law did he break? If you read the articles, he didn't break any laws. The Justice Department created a new interpretation of antihacking laws by convincing a judge that just talking about a security hole is the same as breaking into a system.
We are now all eligible for prison if we point out a company has not secured its systems. Just indicating the flaw is a Federal offense! Because the company was inconvenienced!
Nope. It went: "Mmmmmm. Trophy."
"You don't reduce poverty by giving food to poor people. You reduce poverty by creating more jobs for more people."
At the risk of being slightly offtopic, the two are not mutually exclusive. I don't see why you think the two goals can't be achieved at the same time.
And as someone who grew up abysmally poor and hungry, I will say authoritatively that feeding hungry people does reduce their poverty. Without enough food, your body and your brain grows stunted. You waste a lot of time thinking about and obtaining food. You certainly don't spend a lot of time in honors courses, or indeed having access to a school system that has honors courses. You don't have access to the machinery that would raise your future status if you spend all your time scraping up pennies for loaves of bread, instead of reading or studying. Hunger is hell.
I wish food would be given away to any child in the U.S. that says they are hungry. Let them eat all they want. God. We're up to our necks in food.
Bulletproof doors would not have stopped the hijackings. The hijackers succeeded because they were threatening and killing the passengers, not because they could shoot the pilots. The pilots, pre-911, would have opened the doors if the flight crew and passengers were being threatened. Of course, today pilots would not open the doors -- but that is because of 911. The hijackers succeeded because no one had tried what they were doing: slamming the planes into targets. Pilots would cooperate before 911. Now they won't.
We should use more aerosols?
Um, how do I say this... aerosols, by which I assume you mean CFC-based aerosols, float to the upper atmosphere and catalyze the very thin layer of ozone that sort of floats like a skin over the whole planet. This causes sporadic thinning of the ozone layer, which is usually not a big deal, since ozone regenerates. But the CFC's float about for a while, and do persistent damage until they disappate.
Ozone depletion is a different problem than the greenhouse effect, which is caused by increased amounts of CO2 in the lower atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuels and of all things, flatulence of our herd animals.
The confusion of CFC pollution which causes ozone depletion and the global warming engendered by CO2 seems to widespread everywhere. I can't count the times I've seen intelligent people mix this up.
Statistical analysis? What has that got to do with it? SA can't predict how people have kids. All you can do is watch what they do, and perform your arithmetic accordingly.
The growth rate is slowing, not stopping. And I highly suspect the reported birth rates.
And ten billion is almost twice the number alive today. Where will they live, what will they drink, what kind of damage will they do to the biosphere? Say goodbye to the major fauna. Say helo to constant war, or failing that, tight government control will be necessary to keep everyone from each others mtaphorical throats.
It doesn't matter what the rate of growth is. Halving the growth rate only puts the problem off a couple of decades.
Let's set the doubling rate at 70 years, which is WAAAAY wrong. It's closer to 35-40 years. But, see:
2003: 6.5 billion
2073: 13 billion.
2146: 26 billion.
2216: 52 billion.
2286: 104 billion.
2356: 208 billion.
2426: 416 billion.
2496: 832 billion.
2566: 1.664 trillion.
Keep growing, you get the same results eventually.
CAN this growth occur, I think you're asking ultimately. No, of course. That's the point. The growth is stopped by the usual processes. Plague. War. Starvation. You're seeing it happen in Africa, on a far smaller scale than it could.
All the other good points about diamond semiconductors aside, the most important point for me would be the implied lack of pollutants created during the manufacturing process. The silicon chip manufacturing process create enormous amounts of poison that has to be disposed of in some way. Diamond seems to require methane, carbon, and electricity.
Another aspect about this: Intel says they have an enormous investment in silicon that they won't abandon soon. Excellent market opportunity! IBM, Motorola, anyone out there that wants to duck under Intel's commitment to their plant, and make a very profitable (and clean) revolution happen?
"Overpopulation" doesn't refer to merely land area. Tho Asimov did some simple calculations once, and showed that every square foot of the Earth would be covered in humans in less than 3000 years. The entire universe, and every atom in it, would be converted at the same present growth rate in humans in about 6000 years, if it were possible to absorb everything, everywhere.
"Overpopulation" is what happens when problems start overwhelming solutions. Problems: disease, starvation, malutrition, species elimination, overgrazing, desertification, water shortages, political panic against the have-nots, atmospheric damage, atmospheric warming, garbage accumulation (HUGE problem), education underfunding, oceanic destruction... All of these problems inevitably trigger wars as people struggle to find a way out that doesn't involve changing their habits, such as using too much oil, too much water, or worst of all, having too many babies. Men on Horseback inevitably convince people that they merely have to attack [insert enemy here] and all will be well.
Nothing expands forever. Cancers try, and they fail. There is always a limit. At the very least, there are always consequences. Best case scenario in the short term is turning the entire planet into a Trantor, just to service the people already living.
The problem is simple arithmetic. Humans hate arithmetic applied to their babies, but it is so anyway. The human race is doubling in size every 35 years or so. This simply cannot happen indefinitely. Let's break it down:
2003 : 6.5 billion.
2038 : 13 billion.
2073 : 26 billion.
2108 : 52 billion.
2143 : 104 billion.
2178 : 208 billion.
2213 : 416 billion.
2248 : 832 billion.
2283 : 1,664 TRILLION.
Keep running the expansion. It soon goes into the quadrillions, then quintillions. In less than 3000 years, give or take a millenium, the sum of all the mass of the human race exceeds the mas of the entire planet. In a few dozen more generation, the mass of the universe is exceeded.
No matter how much you throw tech at the problem, at some point the system will go unstable. The human race cannot keep increasing at the present rate, or even a fraction thereof, without utter breakdown.
I would think that the fundementalist belief that the world will end soon is the crux of people's indifference to the problems we face. A majority of the world believes that God will end the world soon. So why bother?
I'm not kidding. Major long term planning by political leaders, especially in the U.S. is being conducted by men and women who are banking on God ending the world.
- First of all, the birthrate would have to be chopped. Deathrate would have to be equal to the birthrate. The population growth formula cannot stand to have the death factor nulled out. A population that has large growth with little death is a cancer, a danger to the ecosystem.
- As a practical matter, turnover in people is essential to clean out the social arteries. I've grown accustomed to the idea that I should die so that someone younger and less conservative can take over and shake things up.
- A large population of old, conservative property owners will smother the young, who can never catch up with the accumulated wisdom and wealth of people decades or even centuries older than they.
- Space colonization would be essential. Not the piddly planets, but O'Neill structures that can really give the race some room to flex while the whole property/wealth problems rage on Earth.
- Wealth inequities will inevitably create a class of wealthy near-immortals in the short term. Wealth will buy better anti-aging treatments; poverty, nearly none. If you think the not-wealthy can be cranky now, wait until they see the wealthy stay alive indefinitely, while they die. As Heinlein said so long ago in Metheuselah's Children, Death is the Great Democrat, treating all alike. If class or wealth grant exemptions from the Equalizer, there will be hell to pay.
- How's memory going to work, when accumulated experience overwhelms the brains ability to cross-reference it all?
- How will an immortal make a living? They can't be retired. It's financially impossible.
- Will an immortal ever get any respect from the young? I mean, a 35 year old scientist or techie is washed up, according to conventional wisdom. Will the very young be the only people looked to for cultural stimulation, or technical breakthroughs? What will the oldsters do, watch TV for 200 years?
- You'd eventually wind up with a world full of very old people, with a small number of young being born to balance out a very low deathrate. "Conservative" isn't the word for the social atmosphere of such a world. Change would be very, very slow in coming.
- OTOH, If the oldsters can stay biologically young, how will the "really" young (in years) compete with the infinitely smarter pseudoyoung competition?
Just some ideas to throw around.
You don't know any poor people, do you?
The thing about the UK is that it's pretty hard to starve. At least, harder than in the U.S. Relief is easier to obtain.
I'd like to think so, anyway.
I wonder if it's easier to be creative if you know you won't starve, come what may, or if you know you definitely will starve if you don't create.
I'm put in mind of Mike Moore's inverview of a Canadian, for the Columbine movie, I think. He asked them why they don't feel afraid walking the streets at night, (or similar) and the Canadian said, "I know that the other person I see isn't desperate". (Implying that they aren't starving or homeless because of social safety nets.)
Oh, I don't think it would be workable as a long term option, either. It just would work as long as it was in the body, if course.
Those chips can be millimeters in size. Scary, hm?
Ah, Republicans. Fonts of understanding and compassion.
It was done long, long ago. Check Kazaa, keywords "ebook" and/or "harry potter".
It is? I thought it was used only recently for mass-producers of copied CD's for profit. I don't recall it ever used in the past for copyright infringement.
After all, the U.S. didn't recognize the copyrights of other nations until the 20th century. Americans "pirated" every work in the world for over 120 years. I don't think they referred to themselves as pirates.
It was forced into the language, by interested parties who wanted to confuse "theft" with a civil infringement.
It was a calculated manipulation, and a critical one, because people now equate copying=piracy=theft.
Sometimes you have to fight back, and this is one of thoes times. EVERY time someone says "piracy", correct them. Write articles correcting them. Shower letters on their editors.
After all, it's exactly how the interested companies "evolved" the word. Repetition. Staying on message.
what file format, what resolution?
"However if each RFID tag is unique, that would severly scare me. "
Take it from an old inventory system coder. To be of any use, the tag would have to have a unique identity. Otherwise, it's almost useless as an indentifier during inventory tracking.
It's not enough to know that there are boxes of Cheerios on the shelf. You need to know how many boxes.
Damn. They finally learned of us.
Summon the dinosaur calvary! It's time to invade the Warmlanders!
One can understand an opinion but not respect it. You can respect the right to an opinion, but the opinion itself is up there for the judging.
For instance: people who don't understand what the Patriot act is? I don't respect their opinions. The opinions are based on grotesque ignorance, and are worthless.
And the people who hold such uninformed opinions are dangerous to people who are informed: this Wired article makes it plain. Privacy advocates were on the winning side of the issue, so the compulsive watchers made it a "Homeland Security" issue, and thus beyond the will or rights of the people. Uninformed people either have no opinion of this issue, or are so mis- or underinformed that they think it's a swell idea.
I'm not saying that after learning the truth, people can't learn. I am saying that until then, their opinions aren't worthy of respect.