Tech Level 9: Commercial Biometrics. Sensor technologies used to identify medical problems become affordable for general commercial use and are integrated with biometric databases to provide instant identification of targets passing through an established sensor zone.
Tech Level 10: Remote Biometrics. Continued advancements allow the economical integration of multiple sensors (infrared, optical, terahertz, ultrasound, etc) into a compact unit small enough to be carried in the field.
Tech Level 11: Biometric Panopticon. Ubiquitous sensors linked in a global network provide instant and real-time identification and monitoring of entire populations (and their goods, pets, wildlife, etcetera).
Yeah, I've seen CCD cameras. I've also seen a couple of my customers upgrade to the new HD gear as their old VGA stuff finally dies. HD surveillance has come down a lot in price, and it will come down further, so I expect more will switch in future. And in another two or three decades, the next cycle will probably see people upgrading to 4K cams as those get cheap and their old HD gear fails, so... welcome to the panopticon.
Why would you need to be a racist to point at the 13th amendment? It doesn't forbid slavery, it monopolises it. The 13th says the government can enslave anyone convicted of a crime, and it's not a coincidence that the US has a ludicrously high incarceration rate and a for-profit prison industry.
Or, as another poster mentioned, launch your rock from the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter instead of from the Moon. For bonus points, use a near-solar trajectory for a gravity slingshot to give your rock a more antagonistic vector.
Longer version: That's a "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference. In other words, as much I hope you're right, your theory assumes that what an FTL-capable civilization wants can't involve (1) us being in the way somehow and (2) them not caring about what we want.
Hmm. What about a "tragedy of the commons" argument - what if Uber is "good enough" for enough of London that the Black Cab service won't have enough income to continue operating in the areas where Uber is "hopelessly inadequate"?
Stop and _think_ for a moment, will you? Nobody here is defending the Taliban. Nobody here is saying the CIA shouldn't fight the Taliban.
The whole bloody point of having a free country is not just having the ability to criticise our government when they do the wrong thing, but also that the ability be exercised. If we don't, history is pretty bloody clear that we end up with a government similar to the Taliban in charge of us.
If the CIA has a problem with carrying out its assigned tasks under the restrictions set upon it by the People, then its responsibility is to make that problem clear to the People and abide by their response. And if in an emergency it should decide that it is truly necessary to exceed those restrictions, it is equally necessary that it declare to the People what it has done and abide by their judgement.
To kill the leader of a terrorist group, the CIA hijacked and tainted the reputation of Western medicine, putting millions of lives at risk. Literally, millions. Preventable and treatable diseases kill and maim more people every day than groups like the Taliban could ever dream of - so in addition to the fallout on innocents, the CIA actually advanced the enemy's own goals.
And it did so by breaking the rules. In your own words, "Fuck that. They are responsible. They and their leaders bear the blame."
A person lays unmoving on the sidewalk. Hundreds see and yet walk past without stopping to help, each thinking "nobody else is doing anything, they must be okay."
More accurately, replace 'clicking the Facebook "like" button' with 'having the Facebook "like" button'.
The javascript that displays the "like" button is on Facebook's servers, i.e. Facebook gets told which pages you visit on Hulu and could log that to assemble your Hulu browsing history. Do you trust Facebook not to do that?
For that matter, if I was an unscrupulous Three Letter Agency, I'd encourage "like" buttons everywhere and ensure I had a way to access Facebook's traffic. Who needs to tap the entire internet when you can tap the people doing it for you?
How many do you think would still take that 4% chance if the law was, "you get to decide, but if we later discover it was the wrong guy, you will be executed too"?
You're absolutely right. Proportional. He raped, tortured and murdered. So what is proportional to rape, tortured and murdered?
The question then becomes: do you want to be a good person with a clean conscience, or do you want to inflict a punishment proportional to rape, torture and murder?
We create governments to be for the people. We create governments to achieve what individuals cannot.
It should only be acceptable for the state to incarcerate someone if they are deemed to be a persistent threat to society and if the goal is #1, to rehabilitate them back into society or #2, to keep them away from society because they can't be rehabilitated (because we're not barbarians and we don't just murder someone if we can't get along with them, because no matter how awful they are we will not descend to their level).
Execution is the state admitting it can't achieve either goal. Execution is the state _failing_ to uphold its moral claim to existence.
Seems to me the problem is in your fourth paragraph, not your third: instead of a public sector accountable to the public via elected representatives, you have a bureaucratic sector accountable to the plutocracy for presenting a public facade?
On the other hand, you have to be able to afford that car in the first place, and that's an additional 8% of a median income - worse for those with incomes lower than the median - that can't be spent on anything else.
Economics, like physics, can involve some very cold equations - and the criticisms of lousy engineering and moral hazard are just as valid.
... Indeed. Although unlike converting coal into heat, it doesn't also require the conversion of carbon and oxygen into carbon dioxide and the release of various toxic and/or radioactive materials from the lithosphere into the biosphere in the form of ash, dust, smoke, tar, etcetera.
No. These people are already socially disconnected from the public they are supposed to represent. Ludicrous wealth makes that kind of problem worse, not better.
Of course the hawks of Russia and America have been fighting each other via proxy wars. A direct confrontation would risk their own precious skins rather than that of their cannon fodder. Trouble is, they repeatedly create situations where they risk that happening anyway - to the detriment of everyone.
Hmm. Serious question: how much of that revanchism fervour is Russia's populace actually wanting a war, and how much is Russia's populace saying they want it because they're (1) too naive to realise what a direct US-Russia shooting match would involve and/or (2) too worried about being seen to disagree with the direction the "official" wind is blowing?
"Russia is an enemy" is an example of what I'd call 'the lie made real', because the truth is Russia is an enemy only inasmuch as, like their American counterparts, the Russian oligarchies are playing their own version of the "selfish little power games" - even though the vast majority of both populaces just want to get on with their lives in peace and quiet.
And it's very sad that there's enough people actively engaged in making the lie real that the rest of us have to suffer the fallout. Perhaps less than 0.01% of humanity currently alive today are responsible for why we can't have world peace tomorrow (and I suspect I'm being very conservative).
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Except we do know they are engaged in mass domestic surveillance, which is NOT what our intelligence services are supposed to be doing.
There's a word for people who claim to uphold the rule of law while breaking it: "hypocrites" (preferably also "felons", but good luck with that).
Anybody remember Traveller?
Tech Level 9: Commercial Biometrics. Sensor technologies used to identify medical problems become affordable for general commercial use and are integrated with biometric databases to provide instant identification of targets passing through an established sensor zone.
Tech Level 10: Remote Biometrics. Continued advancements allow the economical integration of multiple sensors (infrared, optical, terahertz, ultrasound, etc) into a compact unit small enough to be carried in the field.
Tech Level 11: Biometric Panopticon. Ubiquitous sensors linked in a global network provide instant and real-time identification and monitoring of entire populations (and their goods, pets, wildlife, etcetera).
Yeah, I've seen CCD cameras. I've also seen a couple of my customers upgrade to the new HD gear as their old VGA stuff finally dies. HD surveillance has come down a lot in price, and it will come down further, so I expect more will switch in future. And in another two or three decades, the next cycle will probably see people upgrading to 4K cams as those get cheap and their old HD gear fails, so... welcome to the panopticon.
Why would you need to be a racist to point at the 13th amendment? It doesn't forbid slavery, it monopolises it. The 13th says the government can enslave anyone convicted of a crime, and it's not a coincidence that the US has a ludicrously high incarceration rate and a for-profit prison industry.
Or, as another poster mentioned, launch your rock from the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter instead of from the Moon. For bonus points, use a near-solar trajectory for a gravity slingshot to give your rock a more antagonistic vector.
Two words: hyperspace bypass.
Longer version: That's a "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference. In other words, as much I hope you're right, your theory assumes that what an FTL-capable civilization wants can't involve (1) us being in the way somehow and (2) them not caring about what we want.
Hmm. What about a "tragedy of the commons" argument - what if Uber is "good enough" for enough of London that the Black Cab service won't have enough income to continue operating in the areas where Uber is "hopelessly inadequate"?
Stop and _think_ for a moment, will you? Nobody here is defending the Taliban. Nobody here is saying the CIA shouldn't fight the Taliban.
The whole bloody point of having a free country is not just having the ability to criticise our government when they do the wrong thing, but also that the ability be exercised. If we don't, history is pretty bloody clear that we end up with a government similar to the Taliban in charge of us.
If the CIA has a problem with carrying out its assigned tasks under the restrictions set upon it by the People, then its responsibility is to make that problem clear to the People and abide by their response. And if in an emergency it should decide that it is truly necessary to exceed those restrictions, it is equally necessary that it declare to the People what it has done and abide by their judgement.
To kill the leader of a terrorist group, the CIA hijacked and tainted the reputation of Western medicine, putting millions of lives at risk. Literally, millions. Preventable and treatable diseases kill and maim more people every day than groups like the Taliban could ever dream of - so in addition to the fallout on innocents, the CIA actually advanced the enemy's own goals.
And it did so by breaking the rules. In your own words, "Fuck that. They are responsible. They and their leaders bear the blame."
Er, actually? Yes, the CIA deciding to flout the rules is indeed the CIA's fault.
Otherwise, what's the point of fighting the Taliban, if not to protect the innocent and uphold the rule of law?
A person lays unmoving on the sidewalk. Hundreds see and yet walk past without stopping to help, each thinking "nobody else is doing anything, they must be okay."
What does "possible obedience situation" mean?
More accurately, replace 'clicking the Facebook "like" button' with 'having the Facebook "like" button'.
The javascript that displays the "like" button is on Facebook's servers, i.e. Facebook gets told which pages you visit on Hulu and could log that to assemble your Hulu browsing history. Do you trust Facebook not to do that?
For that matter, if I was an unscrupulous Three Letter Agency, I'd encourage "like" buttons everywhere and ensure I had a way to access Facebook's traffic. Who needs to tap the entire internet when you can tap the people doing it for you?
How many do you think would still take that 4% chance if the law was, "you get to decide, but if we later discover it was the wrong guy, you will be executed too"?
The question then becomes: do you want to be a good person with a clean conscience, or do you want to inflict a punishment proportional to rape, torture and murder?
And if the state is denying them exile, then the state is not morally justified in executing them.
We create governments to be for the people. We create governments to achieve what individuals cannot.
It should only be acceptable for the state to incarcerate someone if they are deemed to be a persistent threat to society and if the goal is #1, to rehabilitate them back into society or #2, to keep them away from society because they can't be rehabilitated (because we're not barbarians and we don't just murder someone if we can't get along with them, because no matter how awful they are we will not descend to their level).
Execution is the state admitting it can't achieve either goal. Execution is the state _failing_ to uphold its moral claim to existence.
The cause does matter. If you don't fix the cause, you'll just keep getting the same results.
Seems to me the problem is in your fourth paragraph, not your third: instead of a public sector accountable to the public via elected representatives, you have a bureaucratic sector accountable to the plutocracy for presenting a public facade?
On the other hand, you have to be able to afford that car in the first place, and that's an additional 8% of a median income - worse for those with incomes lower than the median - that can't be spent on anything else.
Economics, like physics, can involve some very cold equations - and the criticisms of lousy engineering and moral hazard are just as valid.
... Indeed. Although unlike converting coal into heat, it doesn't also require the conversion of carbon and oxygen into carbon dioxide and the release of various toxic and/or radioactive materials from the lithosphere into the biosphere in the form of ash, dust, smoke, tar, etcetera.
Dear AC, there's a difference between "the Act does not apply" and "the Act is not allowed to apply".
No. These people are already socially disconnected from the public they are supposed to represent. Ludicrous wealth makes that kind of problem worse, not better.
Of course the hawks of Russia and America have been fighting each other via proxy wars. A direct confrontation would risk their own precious skins rather than that of their cannon fodder. Trouble is, they repeatedly create situations where they risk that happening anyway - to the detriment of everyone.
Hmm. Serious question: how much of that revanchism fervour is Russia's populace actually wanting a war, and how much is Russia's populace saying they want it because they're (1) too naive to realise what a direct US-Russia shooting match would involve and/or (2) too worried about being seen to disagree with the direction the "official" wind is blowing?
"Russia is an enemy" is an example of what I'd call 'the lie made real', because the truth is Russia is an enemy only inasmuch as, like their American counterparts, the Russian oligarchies are playing their own version of the "selfish little power games" - even though the vast majority of both populaces just want to get on with their lives in peace and quiet.
And it's very sad that there's enough people actively engaged in making the lie real that the rest of us have to suffer the fallout. Perhaps less than 0.01% of humanity currently alive today are responsible for why we can't have world peace tomorrow (and I suspect I'm being very conservative).