The proposals in TFA (brain implants, rfid tags in chess pieces) are stupid beyond belief.
I have to agree. When I think of special technology for this, what first comes to mind is a variation on the "keyboard projected onto the table" idea, only it's a chessboard projected onto the table. If the software could know which squares were occupied and which weren't, it wouldn't even need to be able to distinguish one piece from another.
If the card is new from the issuer, it's traceable to the issuer, and potentially the fist purchase from the issuer. It would actually be easy enough for Walmart to anonymize them, by simply recording the transaction as "$50 Prepaid Debit Card" and not record which particular debit card number went to which customer. Also, if you anonymously acquire a prepaid debit card used for a transaction involved with some nefarious purpose, you still don't get picked up, because it may trace to that transaction, but it doesn't trace to you. The only connection is that the prepaid card used for the nefarious transaction is one of 50 prepaid debit cards used one night in a busy strip club.
Suppose there's 5 guys in different parts of town who each have 1000 un-opened pre-paid debit cards. I buy one and swap it straight across for one in a dept card anonymizer's collection, and then drive somewhere and do that again. It wouldn't be hard to make vending machines that would do this job, although some might prefer to trade with humans.
technology lets poor people receive payments from one another. I imagine pre-paid type debit cards with nfc chips. Funds can be transferred non-anonymously between people via African style cell phone transactions and moved between the cell phone and the debit card via nfc chips in both. If people can load up cards identically (or asymmetrically if a payment is involved) and swap 'em, after a few swaps the cards should seem anonymous enough for those not sufficiently motivated to barter.
You buy "stripper ribbons" using the same concept as "car wash coins" The cool feature about stripper ribbons will be closer increments than 1, 5, 10, 20.
Except, one of the two has been shown to be a liar. The NSA can refuse as they please so long as they have money from Congress and guns from other federal agencies to back them up. However, I seriously doubt that they could get an evidentially unsupported assertion to hold up in public court.
I still can't help but wonder what would happen if the Chinese government said something like "If both parents are in the top 10% for IQ, they can have all the kids they want." How much more would the per-capita GDP change after 5 generations?
For bonus points, you could add a second reed switch that shorts the battery through a resistive heating element that lays next to the micro sd card. Then when you put your MagnoGrip wrist band on the mug, it slags the memory, so long as your battery was charged.
I had an idea like that once. You could take something like a Kingston MobileLite WiFi Wireless USB Card Reader, plug a Universal QI Wireless Charging Receiver into it, cut the internal battery line and route it via a reed switch, and cast the whole assembly into a big epoxy ceramic coffee mug. It only comes on when the mug has the lid with the magnet put on it the correct way, and you set the mug on a charging pad when the battery gets low. I expect if these sorts of things became common, cops would get pretty good at recognizing ones that didn't use sophisticated miniaturized electronics, and before long, if they thought it was important, they would just x-ray all your stuff with every search. The extra trouble would make it more likely that they'd make sure they convicted you of some sort of offense so that they could charge you for the expense of the search.
Perhaps they could use this information to try an investigation of how anesthetics work with a narrower scope, giving them a chance for a better understanding of what goes on with those drugs and the ability to make future anesthesia less dangerous.
I was curious about those restroom door symbols so I looked around a little. As near as I can tell, a requirement for pictograms in USA grew out of the ADA in 1990. (OSHA requires that water closets be present, but doesn't require pictograms on that signage.) After passage of the act, the Department of Justice was supposed to come up with symbols. They got them from ANSI, who in turn got them from ISO (now ISO 7001). From this article it looks like at the time the ISO started on pictograms, those in use were signs made for travelers to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and a sign project that the International Union of Railways started in 1961.
But don't you think the ban on writing it down will strengthen the oral tradition that got those phrases into the language in the first place? It was probably all this unfettered desktop publishing that kept the phrase for "strike on the cunt with an 89mm floppy" out of the language until it was too late for it to have meaning. Now it's just pointless, and soon it will pass out of mind, like data stored on an 89mm floppy.
Or, I was lied to. Or, they changed the policy since then. Or, they apply different policies to different regions. In the legal section of the link you posted it says "service activation required" (ie, you can't just buy a sim and send it to somebody. You, the purchaser, have to set up an account as an att customer as part of receiving the sim).
I could say "You are either too stupid to think up any other explanation or you deliberately want to crate a false dichotomy." But really, who knows why you write stuff?
If you're planning ahead, some vendors on Amazon sell sim cards, including Net10 sim cards, international sim cards, and others. I believe that if you have an Amazon account anywhere, your login works in Amazon for any other country (My only experience is having an account in USA and buying stuff on Amazon.de). If you have the card before you leave, that is simplest and provides the most functionality. Then, if you want to shop for a sim card with a better rate, your phone will be working while you do so. Or, an airtime vendor like wirelessrefill.com might be able to sell you airtime at a better rate for the first card.
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The proposals in TFA (brain implants, rfid tags in chess pieces) are stupid beyond belief.
I have to agree. When I think of special technology for this, what first comes to mind is a variation on the "keyboard projected onto the table" idea, only it's a chessboard projected onto the table. If the software could know which squares were occupied and which weren't, it wouldn't even need to be able to distinguish one piece from another.
If the card is new from the issuer, it's traceable to the issuer, and potentially the fist purchase from the issuer. It would actually be easy enough for Walmart to anonymize them, by simply recording the transaction as "$50 Prepaid Debit Card" and not record which particular debit card number went to which customer. Also, if you anonymously acquire a prepaid debit card used for a transaction involved with some nefarious purpose, you still don't get picked up, because it may trace to that transaction, but it doesn't trace to you. The only connection is that the prepaid card used for the nefarious transaction is one of 50 prepaid debit cards used one night in a busy strip club.
Suppose there's 5 guys in different parts of town who each have 1000 un-opened pre-paid debit cards. I buy one and swap it straight across for one in a dept card anonymizer's collection, and then drive somewhere and do that again. It wouldn't be hard to make vending machines that would do this job, although some might prefer to trade with humans.
perhaps they will also play chess on tablets.
Prepaid debit cards can be as anonymous as burner cell phones.
technology lets poor people receive payments from one another. I imagine pre-paid type debit cards with nfc chips. Funds can be transferred non-anonymously between people via African style cell phone transactions and moved between the cell phone and the debit card via nfc chips in both. If people can load up cards identically (or asymmetrically if a payment is involved) and swap 'em, after a few swaps the cards should seem anonymous enough for those not sufficiently motivated to barter.
People use video phones a lot. They just call them webcams.
Yes, but how will stupid people buy drugs?
You buy "stripper ribbons" using the same concept as "car wash coins" The cool feature about stripper ribbons will be closer increments than 1, 5, 10, 20.
Defeatable by dust or spray paint?
Except, one of the two has been shown to be a liar. The NSA can refuse as they please so long as they have money from Congress and guns from other federal agencies to back them up. However, I seriously doubt that they could get an evidentially unsupported assertion to hold up in public court.
I still can't help but wonder what would happen if the Chinese government said something like "If both parents are in the top 10% for IQ, they can have all the kids they want." How much more would the per-capita GDP change after 5 generations?
For bonus points, you could add a second reed switch that shorts the battery through a resistive heating element that lays next to the micro sd card. Then when you put your MagnoGrip wrist band on the mug, it slags the memory, so long as your battery was charged.
I had an idea like that once. You could take something like a Kingston MobileLite WiFi Wireless USB Card Reader, plug a Universal QI Wireless Charging Receiver into it, cut the internal battery line and route it via a reed switch, and cast the whole assembly into a big epoxy ceramic coffee mug. It only comes on when the mug has the lid with the magnet put on it the correct way, and you set the mug on a charging pad when the battery gets low. I expect if these sorts of things became common, cops would get pretty good at recognizing ones that didn't use sophisticated miniaturized electronics, and before long, if they thought it was important, they would just x-ray all your stuff with every search. The extra trouble would make it more likely that they'd make sure they convicted you of some sort of offense so that they could charge you for the expense of the search.
But, how can you tell which dog they're using?
Perhaps they could use this information to try an investigation of how anesthetics work with a narrower scope, giving them a chance for a better understanding of what goes on with those drugs and the ability to make future anesthesia less dangerous.
I was curious about those restroom door symbols so I looked around a little. As near as I can tell, a requirement for pictograms in USA grew out of the ADA in 1990. (OSHA requires that water closets be present, but doesn't require pictograms on that signage.) After passage of the act, the Department of Justice was supposed to come up with symbols. They got them from ANSI, who in turn got them from ISO (now ISO 7001). From this article it looks like at the time the ISO started on pictograms, those in use were signs made for travelers to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and a sign project that the International Union of Railways started in 1961.
I thought that was just the proactively homicidal NSA computer from John Varley's 1984 novella, Press Enter
But don't you think the ban on writing it down will strengthen the oral tradition that got those phrases into the language in the first place? It was probably all this unfettered desktop publishing that kept the phrase for "strike on the cunt with an 89mm floppy" out of the language until it was too late for it to have meaning. Now it's just pointless, and soon it will pass out of mind, like data stored on an 89mm floppy.
What about trains? Couldn't trains be a multicultural zone?
Well, there is Sochi.
Just call these guys with your voice commands and pipe their output back into your car's computer.
Or, I was lied to. Or, they changed the policy since then. Or, they apply different policies to different regions. In the legal section of the link you posted it says "service activation required" (ie, you can't just buy a sim and send it to somebody. You, the purchaser, have to set up an account as an att customer as part of receiving the sim).
I could say "You are either too stupid to think up any other explanation or you deliberately want to crate a false dichotomy." But really, who knows why you write stuff?
If you're planning ahead, some vendors on Amazon sell sim cards, including Net10 sim cards, international sim cards, and others. I believe that if you have an Amazon account anywhere, your login works in Amazon for any other country (My only experience is having an account in USA and buying stuff on Amazon.de). If you have the card before you leave, that is simplest and provides the most functionality. Then, if you want to shop for a sim card with a better rate, your phone will be working while you do so. Or, an airtime vendor like wirelessrefill.com might be able to sell you airtime at a better rate for the first card.
If you travel internationally and want to use your same phone, then owning a phone that's internationally capable is a prerequisite.