ICANN apparently can't solve one of the most basic object oriented programming problems: Namespace organization and integrity.
There's only a couple of organizational schemes that make sense; Geographical, topical, and organizational. Of those, the third was the first used: Separating domains on the basis of their function; educational, commercial, non-commercial, and governmental. Then we tried to launch geographical, which meant that agents within the system would need to register on both basis; You'd have, for example, usairforce.gov, and airforce.us. But then ICANN botched big-time; they tried to organize based on... er, nothing. Rather than a couple hundred nodes on the root, you now have effectively an infinite number of roots.
The results were predictable: Complete and total chaos as everyone tried to register every possible permutation of trademarks, organization names, governments -- and although the cost of running a gTLD was in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (which, itself, seems rather retarded; Why does adding a name to a file containing a list cost a hundred grand?) -- there are literally hundreds of thousands of organizations and individuals with the desire and cash to do so.
And they all threw their money at the problem at the same time. Now they're stuck because there's hundreds of millions sunk into the program, and they can't go back on the process. It's a bureaucratic cluster-fuck beyond even what our most inept governmental organizations can do.
At this point, the entire DNS system should be scrapped and start over from scratch. But that won't happen for years and years. Eventually though, it'll have to happen... when it does, I hope they pick one organizational scheme and stick to it.
games, cooking challenges, information in real-time about the person you are talking to, all made possible by the contact lenses being worn. And of course there's a darkside to the equation, the potential to hack and therefore influence the actions of others. Ultimately, it's a realistic idea of the future we all face."
I'm not worried about hackers influencing the actions of others. They've had many, many other avenues for doing this, and for the most part they don't. The only thing anyone who's up to no good is regularly interested in is money: Either by browser hijacking or identity theft. What I AM worried about is businesses. Getting by in modern society increasingly requires that we surrender our personal information to faceless corporations who can do pretty much whatever they want with it. Want a job? Give us your Facebook password. Don't have a Facebook? That's a disqualifier. Want to buy anything? We only take credit cards here. Want to get on the internet? We'll be monitoring everything you do, storing that information forever, and selling it off to anyone who wants it. Cell phone? Same deal. Even your electric meter on your house is now phoning home with details of when you watch TV, cook dinner, etc.
I might as well not wear clothes anymore; Corporations already know everything about me, and for a pathetically small fee, so can you. Why the hell should I be modest about showing a little skin too? It's about the only thing you don't have pictures of. Wait... pictures from the full body scanners at the airport are being posted online? Sigh... nevermind...
Exactly, the Olympics is a story about people achieving, the rover landing is about humanity achieving
No. They're both about human achievement. I can't think of anything in modern history that was solely the work of a single person. Even these athletes, as impressive as their performances are, depend on large numbers of people to realize their potential. In this, our race around a rubberized track, and our reach for the stars stem from a universal truth: All human achievement comes from cooperation. We can achieve almost nothing, even our own survival, alone. But together, there is almost no limit to our potential, individually and collectively. This is the message of science, the message we brought with us to the moon, the message left on archaic recordings in the ships we've sent beyond the reach of our own sun.
In other words STUPID WASTE OF TIME FOR A SLASHDOT STORY. Maybe it would be better to spend time watching the Olympics and the rover landing than posting or reading junk like this.
Your time would be better spent thinking less about yourself. Our greatest failing as a people is in the value we place on individuality, to the point where many now compete for limited resources while few live in superfluous abundance. In so doing, our collective and individual potentials both are limited to far less than what we're capable of. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you (and everyone who reads this) needs to spend less time fighting each other, trying to prove themselves right, arguing, and to begin to work together. This requires that we sacrifice our individuality in order to become part of something far greater than ourselves. Of all the subcultures in western society, the scientists and engineers understand and practice this best. Learn from their example.
For many discipline (all?) we already have known for a long time the limit of the human body. We don't test for that anymore.
Yeah, because we all know that, unlike every other form of life on this planet, the human being is not subject to the theory of evolution. Or not. In fact, the Olympics is a veritable cornucopia of genetic mutations, and it is well worth our time to learn from these athletes; not just their DNA, but training regiments, diet, environment. Every Olympic event unlocks a little bit more understanding of what it means to be human, scientifically, philosophically, and spiritually.
Running fast and bouncing a ball in a bikini is much more important
It's not more important. The Olympics is science, in the sense that we get together periodically to empirically test our understanding of the limits of the (unaltered) human body. The results have practical application. For example: A convict escaped 96 minutes ago from an overturned van. Uninjured, what is the maximum distance he could have travelled? That's science; although someone who double majored in physics is right now spitting at his computer and yelling something about it being as scientific as an etch-a-sketch is to art, but there it is.
Secondly, it's a meaningless comparison: Space exploration tests a very different human quality than the Olympics does. The Olympics tests human physical attributes. Outer space tests human intellectual attributes. In a sense, NASA is our entry into the intellectual Olympics.
But let's be honest: Most of the time, watching science is very boring. It's not a spectator sport -- it's something you do. MythBusters is one of the few examples of where science can be portrayed in a format that is entertaining. Most of the time, it's arduous, painfully slow, occasionally expensive, and often humbling. As well, people don't get excited when the game is over and the announcer says "I don't know." People get very angry when their spectator sport doesn't have a definite outcome. Scientists, on the other hand, get excited by "I don't know." In fact, it's one of the only professions where "I don't know" gets you the respect and admiration of your peers... assuming they have to admit the same.
And you know what, watching bouncing, sweaty boobies, or a beautifully sculped man moving about is okay too. It'd be like me asking you to stop watching Heroes and watch Battlestar Galactica instead. You don't want BSG, you want fucking Heroes. So okay, watch your Heroes, and I'll watch my BSG, and let us both be happy, instead of arguing over which is better.
The problem isn't that this personal information can be sniffed out... it's that there are no laws preventing its misuse...
Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that your medical insurance rates will be increasing by 7.35% effective immediately due to a undiagnosed, but now pre-existing condition. Also, your car insurance will be going up by 3%, and your doctor wants to schedule a psychiatric evaluation.
Sincerely,
Your Gaming Company
P.S. We detected that you have an addictive personality and tend to be forgetful. Your monthly renewal fee has been adjusted upwards accordingly. You won't remember this.
Oh yeah. Hide the problem instead of facing it head-on and dealing with it. Damn politicians.
That's not politicians; That's human nature. Whenever a person's ego or sense of pride is at stake, they're going to rationalize, minimize, lie, etc. It doesn't matter what their position is -- everyone does it, from janitors to presidents. That is why any organization which values objectivity in its decision-making process does its utmost to ensure that those making the decision are impartial -- that is, they have no emotional attachment to it. Police departments are famously lacking in this; They steadfastly refuse outside oversight, which is why most internal investigations are done by other police officers, many of whom are friends or colleagues of those under investigation. The results are exactly what you'd expect.
And frankly, you are at least partially responsible for this honest officer being dismissed -- you allow, through inaction, this kind of institutional injustice to perpetuate because you take no action. As a citizen, you have an ethical obligation to contact your legislators and explain to them how and why this happened, and suggest a course of action to prevent it from continuing. And you need to make it clear that you will vote in the next election with an eye to what your legislators do about it. Then you tell everyone you know to do the same thing, and to tell everyone they know, and so on.
This is the result of a failure in the democratic process as much as it is a failure of leadership. Civic responsibility: Do it.
Air resistance up to typical skydiving altitude provides sufficient drag to keep the person from accelerating to the point where deceleration would result in so much friction as to vaporize the person. If this guy's really dead-set on jumping from the actual threshold of space...
1. He'll need thermal insulation until he's in the earth atmosphere properly. I hear it's pretty cold up there.
2. I think it's safe to assume he has the oxygen problem licked, because at 12 miles, he'd have suffocated.
3. I understand objects falling from that altitude tend to encounter very little air resistance, which means they pick up a lot of speed. The kind of speed that causes brilliant fireballs to appear in place of anything falling from that height, like asteroids, satellites, and space shuttles.
... I don't see how anyone could survive those kinds of physical stresses while maintaining any level of mobility, or having a silhouette even vaguely resembling a person. The low mass of a person (even one encased in inches-thick ceramic heat shielding, would mean the bow wave shocks would turn anyone inside into goo. Perhaps someone with a better understanding of physics clear up for me why this isn't the case, since I'm pretty sure Red Bull doesn't want their energy drink to be associated with what in my eyes is essentially suicide by thermodynamics?
...and the fantasy that you and the OP seem to be living in where this code enforces monitoring of all data and blocking things at will?
They cannot do that without determining what is legal content and what is not. Whether it's a computer algorithm or a person that looks at private traffic doesn't really matter: It's still the digital equivalent of opening other people's mail. Net neutrality doesn't just protect individuals, it also protects ISPs: The safe harbor provisions of the DMCA go away for any ISP that signs up for this. The moment they censor, restrict, obstruct, slow, or interfere with network traffic preferentially, they become legally liable because they had (and have used) means to prevent said traffic from causing legal harm. I can't speak to what other country's laws are, but they are probably similar.
Giving ISPs the power to declare what is legal and what is not is highly dangerous -- if only because they can simply define their EULA to say something like, for example "... and the customer shall not use NetFlix," and then throttle any traffic from the site to a drip. Remember that the EULA is the law in an increasing number of countries. Either network neutrality is for all traffic, or it might as well be for none at all.
The code requires those who sign it to give users access to all legal content...
Yes, because asking them to not block on the basis of ethics or morality would be too much. Fun fact: Everything is illegal somewhere. In Minnesota, driving a red car down Lake street is illegal. Elsewhere, wearing saggy pants is a crime. ISPs can't be expected to police for only "legal" content, because what's legal varies from city to city, state to state, country to country... and then there's interpretations of what's legal, and the fact that entire libraries -- libraries -- are filled with books listing only the laws. And that's just in this country. I suspect you could easily fill a small city's buildings with all the laws ever written. And let's not forget company policies, military, etc. The reason why we ask the police to enforce laws instead of countries is because (a) they're primarily tasked with doing what's in the public interest, and so they tend to focus on crimes that actually hurt people, and (b) the average person is poorly equipped to even know the law, much less the interpretation of the law that's politically popular right now.
Asking companies to monitor all personal communications for signs of illegal activity gives them de facto police powers, and worse, unlike the police, there's no legal recourse if their interpretation is wrong. Because if companies were liable for their enforcement actions, then they'd quickly be sued out of existance or bog down the judicial system with so many lawsuits as to do the same thing. That's why class action lawsuits were outlawed -- it wasn't because they weren't built on solid principles of justice, or that they were useful in maintaining harmony and all that... it was because it was the only real method of making a company pay a large enough penalty to change their behavior.
Companies shouldn't be looking at private communications -- period, end of discussion. That's the job of the police. And if it's inconvenient, well too fucking bad. The alternative is so toxic and dangerous to democracy that anyone who would suggest it should be put on some kind of internet 'no fly' list and barred from connecting to the network.
Can't we just let someone hold their religious beliefs without going out of our way to mock and deride them because you think you know better?
Not when their religious beliefs cause them to deny others very real, tangible benefits in society. At that point it ceases to be a religious belief and instead becomes religious oppression. While not everyone is so eloquent at delineating the difference, religious fundamentalists still deserve every ounce of shit we can fling on them on that basis alone.
That's about it. I wouldn't trust hard drives or flash drives to still work 25 years from now. I have an HD that I left sit for just 2 years, and already it's sluggish as if it doesn't want to start spinning.
SD cards are solid state. They include no capacitors (the USB interfaces on flash drives, I can't say the same for). To my knowledge, semiconductors don't degrade. They're made out of sand, more or less. As long as the container is properly sealed with an oxygen-eating packet and is airtight... problem solved.
Perhaps now would be a good time to point out that solid-state media can hold many times that of optical media for equivalent or lower costs. A 32 GB flash drive costs around $1 per GB these days. For another $30, you can buy a pico computer capable of HDMI output. The display may be a problem; You will need to bury your capsule to a depth of about 8 feet (if memory serves) to prevent it from freezing. It will then maintain a temperature of about 50 degrees.
Electricity hasn't changed at all in the last 50 years... you should be able to just plug it in and go. Total cost: Less than $150. And anyone can drop a pen drive in the box then with hours of video footage and recordings. Although, you'll have to wait longer than 25 years for it to be legal to play it back... A lot longer. -_-
We could stop paying them. Of course, that would require us to vote for some real liberal politicians, not the "liberals" who are really "not as far to the right as the other guy on a few issues."
We need police. The problem isn't the police, the problem is the law.
ProTip: Police forces can only do what the citizenry allows them to do.
Yeah... umm... they have assault rifles, shotguns, handguns, drones, and all manner of paramilitary gear. How do you think that's going to work out? What are you going to do, brandish a butter knife at them and... butter them to death?
Aren't they also asking you to surrender your password and access codes for phones, laptops, etc., whenever you board a plane, and have now extended that to searches of a vehicle, and in fact, they can now force you to reveal your password without charging you with any crime. So then they compel you to surrender your identity and equipment... and then use your identity and equipment to pretend to be you, in order to do the same to others.
The developer said on Steam or Apple App store, it wouldn't be an issue and those are walled gardens.
As far as Steam is concerned, I haven't seen them reject many (if any) legitimate games. They've gone the other way, in fact -- you can add games that aren't part of Steam into the Steam interface. As well, Steam doesn't take over the computer; it runs as an application within the Operating System. Even regular applications can be added to it. The Apple App store on the other hand, yes, you do need to get it approved, there sometimes are fees associated with it, and Apple has been aggressively working to make the Apple App store the only way to get applications installed on its hardware.
It's not a misconception. It's a perfectly accurate conception: If you're not going to throw tens of thousands of dollars at us, go away. Most indie devs do not have tens of thousands of dollars to throw at anything. If they did, they wouldn't be indie devs anymore. Therefore, curated platforms like the Xbox are indie-gamer averse.
The walled garden is designed specifically to make sure Microsoft makes money on every transaction, no matter how insignificant. That's why UEFI is going to kill the PC... if the platform is locked, you're screwed. But at least Microsoft will be making money... so it's all good. As long as corporations control everything, we shouldn't worry.
This requires the password to be stored in clear in the system. I think the brain is more trustworthy than that...
I suppose now is a bad time to point out that when people are recalling a password, their vocal cords show faint electrical activity due to subvocalization. In other words, you're speaking your password as you enter it, although without special equipment, it's presently not possible to detect this covertly.
Your brain is not trustworthy. It's not even fully understood.
Slashdot Mirror
Is now a bad time to point out that he said "NY" and you looked up the law for "KY"? (-_-)
ICANN apparently can't solve one of the most basic object oriented programming problems: Namespace organization and integrity.
There's only a couple of organizational schemes that make sense; Geographical, topical, and organizational. Of those, the third was the first used: Separating domains on the basis of their function; educational, commercial, non-commercial, and governmental. Then we tried to launch geographical, which meant that agents within the system would need to register on both basis; You'd have, for example, usairforce.gov, and airforce.us. But then ICANN botched big-time; they tried to organize based on... er, nothing. Rather than a couple hundred nodes on the root, you now have effectively an infinite number of roots.
The results were predictable: Complete and total chaos as everyone tried to register every possible permutation of trademarks, organization names, governments -- and although the cost of running a gTLD was in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (which, itself, seems rather retarded; Why does adding a name to a file containing a list cost a hundred grand?) -- there are literally hundreds of thousands of organizations and individuals with the desire and cash to do so.
And they all threw their money at the problem at the same time. Now they're stuck because there's hundreds of millions sunk into the program, and they can't go back on the process. It's a bureaucratic cluster-fuck beyond even what our most inept governmental organizations can do.
At this point, the entire DNS system should be scrapped and start over from scratch. But that won't happen for years and years. Eventually though, it'll have to happen... when it does, I hope they pick one organizational scheme and stick to it.
Plus, I'm sure governments have more invasive methods rather than just this.
Yes, in the sage words of Jon Stewart, "I'm sure big government feels its largest when it's in your anus."
How is this +1 informative, you little shit of a troll?
Keep modding me down, assholes... I got plenty of karma...
How is this +1 informative, you little shit of a troll?
So... how you doing?
The answer's still no.
games, cooking challenges, information in real-time about the person you are talking to, all made possible by the contact lenses being worn. And of course there's a darkside to the equation, the potential to hack and therefore influence the actions of others. Ultimately, it's a realistic idea of the future we all face."
I'm not worried about hackers influencing the actions of others. They've had many, many other avenues for doing this, and for the most part they don't. The only thing anyone who's up to no good is regularly interested in is money: Either by browser hijacking or identity theft. What I AM worried about is businesses. Getting by in modern society increasingly requires that we surrender our personal information to faceless corporations who can do pretty much whatever they want with it. Want a job? Give us your Facebook password. Don't have a Facebook? That's a disqualifier. Want to buy anything? We only take credit cards here. Want to get on the internet? We'll be monitoring everything you do, storing that information forever, and selling it off to anyone who wants it. Cell phone? Same deal. Even your electric meter on your house is now phoning home with details of when you watch TV, cook dinner, etc.
I might as well not wear clothes anymore; Corporations already know everything about me, and for a pathetically small fee, so can you. Why the hell should I be modest about showing a little skin too? It's about the only thing you don't have pictures of. Wait... pictures from the full body scanners at the airport are being posted online? Sigh... nevermind...
Exactly, the Olympics is a story about people achieving, the rover landing is about humanity achieving
No. They're both about human achievement. I can't think of anything in modern history that was solely the work of a single person. Even these athletes, as impressive as their performances are, depend on large numbers of people to realize their potential. In this, our race around a rubberized track, and our reach for the stars stem from a universal truth: All human achievement comes from cooperation. We can achieve almost nothing, even our own survival, alone. But together, there is almost no limit to our potential, individually and collectively. This is the message of science, the message we brought with us to the moon, the message left on archaic recordings in the ships we've sent beyond the reach of our own sun.
In other words STUPID WASTE OF TIME FOR A SLASHDOT STORY. Maybe it would be better to spend time watching the Olympics and the rover landing than posting or reading junk like this.
Your time would be better spent thinking less about yourself. Our greatest failing as a people is in the value we place on individuality, to the point where many now compete for limited resources while few live in superfluous abundance. In so doing, our collective and individual potentials both are limited to far less than what we're capable of. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you (and everyone who reads this) needs to spend less time fighting each other, trying to prove themselves right, arguing, and to begin to work together. This requires that we sacrifice our individuality in order to become part of something far greater than ourselves. Of all the subcultures in western society, the scientists and engineers understand and practice this best. Learn from their example.
For many discipline (all?) we already have known for a long time the limit of the human body. We don't test for that anymore.
Yeah, because we all know that, unlike every other form of life on this planet, the human being is not subject to the theory of evolution. Or not. In fact, the Olympics is a veritable cornucopia of genetic mutations, and it is well worth our time to learn from these athletes; not just their DNA, but training regiments, diet, environment. Every Olympic event unlocks a little bit more understanding of what it means to be human, scientifically, philosophically, and spiritually.
Running fast and bouncing a ball in a bikini is much more important
It's not more important. The Olympics is science, in the sense that we get together periodically to empirically test our understanding of the limits of the (unaltered) human body. The results have practical application. For example: A convict escaped 96 minutes ago from an overturned van. Uninjured, what is the maximum distance he could have travelled? That's science; although someone who double majored in physics is right now spitting at his computer and yelling something about it being as scientific as an etch-a-sketch is to art, but there it is.
Secondly, it's a meaningless comparison: Space exploration tests a very different human quality than the Olympics does. The Olympics tests human physical attributes. Outer space tests human intellectual attributes. In a sense, NASA is our entry into the intellectual Olympics.
But let's be honest: Most of the time, watching science is very boring. It's not a spectator sport -- it's something you do. MythBusters is one of the few examples of where science can be portrayed in a format that is entertaining. Most of the time, it's arduous, painfully slow, occasionally expensive, and often humbling. As well, people don't get excited when the game is over and the announcer says "I don't know." People get very angry when their spectator sport doesn't have a definite outcome. Scientists, on the other hand, get excited by "I don't know." In fact, it's one of the only professions where "I don't know" gets you the respect and admiration of your peers... assuming they have to admit the same.
And you know what, watching bouncing, sweaty boobies, or a beautifully sculped man moving about is okay too. It'd be like me asking you to stop watching Heroes and watch Battlestar Galactica instead. You don't want BSG, you want fucking Heroes. So okay, watch your Heroes, and I'll watch my BSG, and let us both be happy, instead of arguing over which is better.
The problem isn't that this personal information can be sniffed out... it's that there are no laws preventing its misuse...
Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that your medical insurance rates will be increasing by 7.35% effective immediately due to a undiagnosed, but now pre-existing condition. Also, your car insurance will be going up by 3%, and your doctor wants to schedule a psychiatric evaluation.
Sincerely,
Your Gaming Company
P.S. We detected that you have an addictive personality and tend to be forgetful. Your monthly renewal fee has been adjusted upwards accordingly. You won't remember this.
Oh yeah. Hide the problem instead of facing it head-on and dealing with it. Damn politicians.
That's not politicians; That's human nature. Whenever a person's ego or sense of pride is at stake, they're going to rationalize, minimize, lie, etc. It doesn't matter what their position is -- everyone does it, from janitors to presidents. That is why any organization which values objectivity in its decision-making process does its utmost to ensure that those making the decision are impartial -- that is, they have no emotional attachment to it. Police departments are famously lacking in this; They steadfastly refuse outside oversight, which is why most internal investigations are done by other police officers, many of whom are friends or colleagues of those under investigation. The results are exactly what you'd expect.
And frankly, you are at least partially responsible for this honest officer being dismissed -- you allow, through inaction, this kind of institutional injustice to perpetuate because you take no action. As a citizen, you have an ethical obligation to contact your legislators and explain to them how and why this happened, and suggest a course of action to prevent it from continuing. And you need to make it clear that you will vote in the next election with an eye to what your legislators do about it. Then you tell everyone you know to do the same thing, and to tell everyone they know, and so on.
This is the result of a failure in the democratic process as much as it is a failure of leadership. Civic responsibility: Do it.
Air resistance up to typical skydiving altitude provides sufficient drag to keep the person from accelerating to the point where deceleration would result in so much friction as to vaporize the person. If this guy's really dead-set on jumping from the actual threshold of space...
1. He'll need thermal insulation until he's in the earth atmosphere properly. I hear it's pretty cold up there.
2. I think it's safe to assume he has the oxygen problem licked, because at 12 miles, he'd have suffocated.
3. I understand objects falling from that altitude tend to encounter very little air resistance, which means they pick up a lot of speed. The kind of speed that causes brilliant fireballs to appear in place of anything falling from that height, like asteroids, satellites, and space shuttles.
... I don't see how anyone could survive those kinds of physical stresses while maintaining any level of mobility, or having a silhouette even vaguely resembling a person. The low mass of a person (even one encased in inches-thick ceramic heat shielding, would mean the bow wave shocks would turn anyone inside into goo. Perhaps someone with a better understanding of physics clear up for me why this isn't the case, since I'm pretty sure Red Bull doesn't want their energy drink to be associated with what in my eyes is essentially suicide by thermodynamics?
...and the fantasy that you and the OP seem to be living in where this code enforces monitoring of all data and blocking things at will?
They cannot do that without determining what is legal content and what is not. Whether it's a computer algorithm or a person that looks at private traffic doesn't really matter: It's still the digital equivalent of opening other people's mail. Net neutrality doesn't just protect individuals, it also protects ISPs: The safe harbor provisions of the DMCA go away for any ISP that signs up for this. The moment they censor, restrict, obstruct, slow, or interfere with network traffic preferentially, they become legally liable because they had (and have used) means to prevent said traffic from causing legal harm. I can't speak to what other country's laws are, but they are probably similar.
Giving ISPs the power to declare what is legal and what is not is highly dangerous -- if only because they can simply define their EULA to say something like, for example "... and the customer shall not use NetFlix," and then throttle any traffic from the site to a drip. Remember that the EULA is the law in an increasing number of countries. Either network neutrality is for all traffic, or it might as well be for none at all.
The code requires those who sign it to give users access to all legal content...
Yes, because asking them to not block on the basis of ethics or morality would be too much. Fun fact: Everything is illegal somewhere. In Minnesota, driving a red car down Lake street is illegal. Elsewhere, wearing saggy pants is a crime. ISPs can't be expected to police for only "legal" content, because what's legal varies from city to city, state to state, country to country... and then there's interpretations of what's legal, and the fact that entire libraries -- libraries -- are filled with books listing only the laws. And that's just in this country. I suspect you could easily fill a small city's buildings with all the laws ever written. And let's not forget company policies, military, etc. The reason why we ask the police to enforce laws instead of countries is because (a) they're primarily tasked with doing what's in the public interest, and so they tend to focus on crimes that actually hurt people, and (b) the average person is poorly equipped to even know the law, much less the interpretation of the law that's politically popular right now.
Asking companies to monitor all personal communications for signs of illegal activity gives them de facto police powers, and worse, unlike the police, there's no legal recourse if their interpretation is wrong. Because if companies were liable for their enforcement actions, then they'd quickly be sued out of existance or bog down the judicial system with so many lawsuits as to do the same thing. That's why class action lawsuits were outlawed -- it wasn't because they weren't built on solid principles of justice, or that they were useful in maintaining harmony and all that... it was because it was the only real method of making a company pay a large enough penalty to change their behavior.
Companies shouldn't be looking at private communications -- period, end of discussion. That's the job of the police. And if it's inconvenient, well too fucking bad. The alternative is so toxic and dangerous to democracy that anyone who would suggest it should be put on some kind of internet 'no fly' list and barred from connecting to the network.
Can't we just let someone hold their religious beliefs without going out of our way to mock and deride them because you think you know better?
Not when their religious beliefs cause them to deny others very real, tangible benefits in society. At that point it ceases to be a religious belief and instead becomes religious oppression. While not everyone is so eloquent at delineating the difference, religious fundamentalists still deserve every ounce of shit we can fling on them on that basis alone.
That's about it. I wouldn't trust hard drives or flash drives to still work 25 years from now. I have an HD that I left sit for just 2 years, and already it's sluggish as if it doesn't want to start spinning.
SD cards are solid state. They include no capacitors (the USB interfaces on flash drives, I can't say the same for). To my knowledge, semiconductors don't degrade. They're made out of sand, more or less. As long as the container is properly sealed with an oxygen-eating packet and is airtight... problem solved.
Perhaps now would be a good time to point out that solid-state media can hold many times that of optical media for equivalent or lower costs. A 32 GB flash drive costs around $1 per GB these days. For another $30, you can buy a pico computer capable of HDMI output. The display may be a problem; You will need to bury your capsule to a depth of about 8 feet (if memory serves) to prevent it from freezing. It will then maintain a temperature of about 50 degrees.
Electricity hasn't changed at all in the last 50 years... you should be able to just plug it in and go. Total cost: Less than $150. And anyone can drop a pen drive in the box then with hours of video footage and recordings. Although, you'll have to wait longer than 25 years for it to be legal to play it back... A lot longer. -_-
Not that very many here care, but it started yesterday.
We could stop paying them. Of course, that would require us to vote for some real liberal politicians, not the "liberals" who are really "not as far to the right as the other guy on a few issues."
We need police. The problem isn't the police, the problem is the law.
ProTip: Police forces can only do what the citizenry allows them to do.
Yeah... umm... they have assault rifles, shotguns, handguns, drones, and all manner of paramilitary gear. How do you think that's going to work out? What are you going to do, brandish a butter knife at them and... butter them to death?
Aren't they also asking you to surrender your password and access codes for phones, laptops, etc., whenever you board a plane, and have now extended that to searches of a vehicle, and in fact, they can now force you to reveal your password without charging you with any crime. So then they compel you to surrender your identity and equipment... and then use your identity and equipment to pretend to be you, in order to do the same to others.
Agent Smith, you have competition.
The developer said on Steam or Apple App store, it wouldn't be an issue and those are walled gardens.
As far as Steam is concerned, I haven't seen them reject many (if any) legitimate games. They've gone the other way, in fact -- you can add games that aren't part of Steam into the Steam interface. As well, Steam doesn't take over the computer; it runs as an application within the Operating System. Even regular applications can be added to it. The Apple App store on the other hand, yes, you do need to get it approved, there sometimes are fees associated with it, and Apple has been aggressively working to make the Apple App store the only way to get applications installed on its hardware.
The walled garden is designed specifically to make sure Microsoft makes money on every transaction, no matter how insignificant. That's why UEFI is going to kill the PC... if the platform is locked, you're screwed. But at least Microsoft will be making money... so it's all good. As long as corporations control everything, we shouldn't worry.
This requires the password to be stored in clear in the system. I think the brain is more trustworthy than that...
I suppose now is a bad time to point out that when people are recalling a password, their vocal cords show faint electrical activity due to subvocalization. In other words, you're speaking your password as you enter it, although without special equipment, it's presently not possible to detect this covertly.
Your brain is not trustworthy. It's not even fully understood.