Agree 100%. In a cashless society, money will just be used as another way to surveil people's lives and profile them. It's already pretty bad, if I for instance went 100% cash transactions for everything (which is still technically possible) I'd be flagged as a potential criminal/terrorist because they can't 'see' what I'm doing with my money -- and that is completely and totally wrong.
Friend, I've said the same thing myself more than once in the past here on Slashdot, and been shouted down for it, and I've said the same thing in public before, too, and likewise been shouted down for it. Yes, it makes sense. Yes, it's logical. Yes, it's a reasonable course of action. But in spite of all that 'Yes', the answer still ends up being 'Hell, NO!' from too many people, because humans are dumb as a group, as evidenced by behaviors like gas prices going up, people dump SUVs and get small efficient cars, then when they happen to go down again for a little while, they dump the small cars and start buying gas-guzzling SUVs again, regardless of how many times gas prices have yo-yo'd in the past. Humans, as a group, are also lazy, and don't want to be bothered to conserve, or do anything that inconveniences them, and taking measures to correct global warming is very inconvenient. Humans, as a group, also tend to be greedy, and corporations see how much global warming measures will cost them in profits, so of course they'll shout the whole thing down, pay for their own 'studies' showing climate science to be wrong, and outright buy off/buy out climate scientists, to shut them up. Frankly the whole thing is very depressing to me and I don't even want to discuss it anymore right now. The only remotely saving grace for me in this is that I'll be long dead before the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to human damage to the environment, so I try to find what enjoyment I can in what years I have left to me and try not to let myself get too down on how stupid, overall, humans are being about so many more things than this -- and I'll keep telling people how things really are anyway, even if they won't listen.
Does that mean that English is their first language, and they've memorized the script they insist on them sticking to, instead of just having it in front of them at all times? Is it actual people now and not some chat-bot regurgitating pre-written responses?
..you might just not have working stereoscopic vision?
Or maybe it's better than for most people, or I just have higher standards, and not some profound defect?
Really, the 3D in movie theatres is cute, but it's not worth paying extra to see. I'd much rather go see a quality movie that doesn't need a gimmick to make it work.
I've worked with 3D TVs. It's cheesy as hell. Even the 3D in movie theatres is rather cheesy by my standards; everything is still perceived as flat. It's not as bad in movie theatres but it's really bad on a so-called '3D TV'. I would never pay for that. I also don't ever see where I'd want an entire wall taken up by a TV, or having a projector, or anything like that. I have a 39" 1080p TV now, and it's plenty big enough for me. So I guess for me there's no point in a 4K TV. I also watch OTA, don't really have any interest in streaming, and don't have (and will resist getting) Bluray. The closest I get to streaming anything is uploading transcoded video to TiVo that I downloaded from the Internet, and I don't even do that very often.
That'll teach you to buy a car that doesn't use a plain-old physical key you insert into a lock.
While I'm on the subject, any car that has any sort of wireless systems built into it needs to have a hardwired switch you use to turn OFF the transceivers completely, so the car is isolated and can't be hacked into wirelessly.
At least we see that wrecking encryption won't help matters before they managed to ram wrecking encryption down everyones' throats. It's like I said, criminals and terrorists will find other ways to do what they're going to do. Wrecking everyone elses' data security and privacy just makes crimes against non-criminals and non-terrorists easier to accomplish. Anal-retentive authoritarian power-grabbing government and law-enforcement types need to back the hell off and keep their noses out of peoples' business.
You can blame the consumer in the same vein that a judge can tell someone 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'. The average consumer is about as security-savvy with things like this as they are about their Facebook posts. It's the whole 'I have nothing to hide therefore I have nothing to fear' attitude, which of course is utter and complete nonsense. Some consumers might hear and even understand that their Nest thermostat is accessible by hackers, but they don't really care. Of course imagine their faces in those final moments when their car is careening at full throttle towards a concrete abutment or a building and they can't stop it, because some jackass thought it would be lulzy to hack some random person's car and take it for a remote joyride.
The only way out of this is Socialism and redistribution of wealth.
No, see FUCK THAT SHIT, because the 1% who have 99% of the wealth will make sure that the 99% who have 1% of the wealth are the ones who are shouldering the burden of your 'redistribution', just like the homeless problem doesn't get solved, just like people living below the poverty line problem doesn't get solved, just like all the other soical problems that require money aren't getting solved, because the rich find ways to ensure they're not paying for anything and that the poor are supporting the poorer. Don't even bother saying "we'll force them" because they have the money and therefore they have control therefore they'll make sure it DOESN'T happen, and they'll discredit and bury anyone who endangers their money and power.
Certainly. You don't buy 'IoT' devices in the first place. Most of them are solutions in search of a problem, not the other way around, just ways to get tech-enthused people to spend their money on more toys that they didn't need until someone convinced them they did.
Pretty much this. If you don't think that the intellgence community worldwide isn't going to use this as part of their surveillance network, then you need to stop taking your Happy Pills, they're affecting your judgement.
because they know the car will stop in time to prevent an accident
If you actually do that you're nuts.
I find it strange that too many of you on Slashdot don't appear to be engineers or anyone who has been a maker-of-things, which must be the case because too many of you seem to think that nothing could ever possibly go wrong which is so far from reality that I'd almost have to laugh. Maybe in 50 years there will be some sort of 'self-driving' car that you can trust, but not any sooner than that, and there won't EVER be anything with no manual controls. Ever! Human lives matter. You don't just put people in a box that a human can't control directly and hope for the best! That's about as blind and dystopian as you can get! Don't you understand? A human being must be the final fail-safe backup system to any automated system when there is human safety at stake. It just can't be any other way, and you're nuts if you believe otherwise. Seriously, would you really put your children in some car driven by a computer and send them off to grandma's 100 miles away? No, you wouldn't.
Here's what I think is really going on here with Google:
We've spent millions and millions of dollars on this 'self-driving car' project, and we need to see some ROI soon or we're screwed! The only way that's going to happen is if the tech we've half-created can be made legal for sale RIGHT NOW so we can start making some of that money back, before the shareholders/investors/whoever comes down on us like a ton of bricks!
That's what I think is going on. They think they'll fix the monumental problems 'in beta' or some such nonsense.
Go to hell, Google. Your half-baked monstrosity isn't safe and doesn't belong on public roads.
It'll be a cold day in all nine Hells before I get in some box on wheels with no controls for a human driver, and I know for a FACT that I am far from alone. Google can fuck off.
Everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this when it's just not going to happen. There is no such thing as 'AI', there are just cheesy 'expert systems' that mimick intelligence for a very limited subject. There are simply too many things that humans need to do that you can't make a machine to do, and there are too many things that humans won't accept a non-human to do. Also you want to invoke World War 3? Put hundreds of millions of people out of work worldwide. There WILL be war. But it's all good: Because it's not going to happen anyway. Everyone is spreading FUD on this subject just like they're doing with self-driving cars. None of this technology is anywhere NEAR the point where people are being led to believe it is. Rest assured that you'll all live out the rest of your lives without having to worry about some robot taking your job.
Also don't forget bicycles, motorbikes and tractors.
THIS. Some people seem to be in such a rush to get goddamned self-driving cars that they're completely ignoring people who don't want them, won't use them, or don't drive at all. You can't just outlaw bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians or whatever! The Real World is what's going to kill self-driving cars. There are too many variables, and you can't just arbitrarily exclude things!
Says 'hey there's a big rig that's self-driving!' Story has pic with driver behind the wheel
Apples and oranges, friend.
In the forseeable future any car with an autopilot feature will require a qualified driver behind the full set of manual controls at all times. Believe it.
There is currently no such thing as a 'self driving car', and there won't be for decades to come, and even if there is sooner than that, it'll still require, by law, a qualified driver behind the wheel at all times.
You get it at least. It's called 'maintaining/perpetuating the status quo/business as usual'. You want REAL change? Stop voting for the same idiots with just different names and demand someone actually different! America is rotting from the inside out and the Yakity Sax-playing-in-the-background/Keystone Cops-esque 'elections' we keep having the last few decades is just one of the outward signs of that.
Are you going to tell them why they don't deserve it?
Sure they do. How about they take it from someone WHO ACTUALLY HAS MONEY instead of taking it from me WHO HAS VERY LITTLE!? Stop stealing from the poor and giving it to the poorer!
OK I'll bite: If you're so clued-in and smarter than I am, then who do you suggest I vote for?
o Donald Trump, the racist, bigot, loudmouth, failed 'businessman', who will probably start WW3, and at any rate is alienating the leaders of other countries before he even gets into office? Who, by the way, was machoed out by a slender blue-eyed blonde woman (Megan Kelly) so badly that he refused to show up at a debate because she was moderating it? Yeah sure he'll handle World Politics so well now won't he? o Hillary Clinton, who I wouldn't trust any farther than I could throw her? o Bernie Sanders, just another old white dude, who sounds like he's going to take even more money out of my pocket to give to people who don't deserve it, and likewise tell me even more how I can live my life? o Ted Cruz, the religious nutjob, who will probably start a Holy War, and will go out of his way to destroy the rights of women to decide what is and is not done with their own bodies? o Add to this: They're all fucking liars, you can't trust a single thing any one of them says, and it'll just be some flavor of 'business as usual' regardless of which lying piece of crap gets elected?
If you haven't figured it out yet, don't like any of them, am sick and bloody well tired of voting for the 'least bad' candidate, seriously want a 'None of the Above' check-box on the ballot, and as a form of protest against the utter and complete cluster-fuck that American politics has become, I'll vote for some Libertarian nobody even heard of, so I can at least say "Hey, I didn't vote for {insert lying piece of crap's name here}, don't blame me for {whatever bullshit they're forcing on us this time}.
Now, then: Who do you think I should vote for, and why, Mister Genius???
Nobody running for president is qualified so far as I'm concerned. Throw 'em all out and get a totally different batch in here.
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Agree 100%. In a cashless society, money will just be used as another way to surveil people's lives and profile them. It's already pretty bad, if I for instance went 100% cash transactions for everything (which is still technically possible) I'd be flagged as a potential criminal/terrorist because they can't 'see' what I'm doing with my money -- and that is completely and totally wrong.
Friend, I've said the same thing myself more than once in the past here on Slashdot, and been shouted down for it, and I've said the same thing in public before, too, and likewise been shouted down for it. Yes, it makes sense. Yes, it's logical. Yes, it's a reasonable course of action. But in spite of all that 'Yes', the answer still ends up being 'Hell, NO!' from too many people, because humans are dumb as a group, as evidenced by behaviors like gas prices going up, people dump SUVs and get small efficient cars, then when they happen to go down again for a little while, they dump the small cars and start buying gas-guzzling SUVs again, regardless of how many times gas prices have yo-yo'd in the past. Humans, as a group, are also lazy, and don't want to be bothered to conserve, or do anything that inconveniences them, and taking measures to correct global warming is very inconvenient. Humans, as a group, also tend to be greedy, and corporations see how much global warming measures will cost them in profits, so of course they'll shout the whole thing down, pay for their own 'studies' showing climate science to be wrong, and outright buy off/buy out climate scientists, to shut them up. Frankly the whole thing is very depressing to me and I don't even want to discuss it anymore right now. The only remotely saving grace for me in this is that I'll be long dead before the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to human damage to the environment, so I try to find what enjoyment I can in what years I have left to me and try not to let myself get too down on how stupid, overall, humans are being about so many more things than this -- and I'll keep telling people how things really are anyway, even if they won't listen.
Does that mean that English is their first language, and they've memorized the script they insist on them sticking to, instead of just having it in front of them at all times? Is it actual people now and not some chat-bot regurgitating pre-written responses?
..you might just not have working stereoscopic vision?
Or maybe it's better than for most people, or I just have higher standards, and not some profound defect?
Really, the 3D in movie theatres is cute, but it's not worth paying extra to see. I'd much rather go see a quality movie that doesn't need a gimmick to make it work.
I've worked with 3D TVs. It's cheesy as hell. Even the 3D in movie theatres is rather cheesy by my standards; everything is still perceived as flat. It's not as bad in movie theatres but it's really bad on a so-called '3D TV'. I would never pay for that. I also don't ever see where I'd want an entire wall taken up by a TV, or having a projector, or anything like that. I have a 39" 1080p TV now, and it's plenty big enough for me. So I guess for me there's no point in a 4K TV. I also watch OTA, don't really have any interest in streaming, and don't have (and will resist getting) Bluray. The closest I get to streaming anything is uploading transcoded video to TiVo that I downloaded from the Internet, and I don't even do that very often.
I'm in the same boat as you are. I have a DVR (TiVo) and don't need or want the TV itself to be anything more than a monitor for that.
That'll teach you to buy a car that doesn't use a plain-old physical key you insert into a lock.
While I'm on the subject, any car that has any sort of wireless systems built into it needs to have a hardwired switch you use to turn OFF the transceivers completely, so the car is isolated and can't be hacked into wirelessly.
Is there really any actual, noticeable difference in picture quality between 1080x and 2160x? Or is this just another solution in search of a problem?
At least we see that wrecking encryption won't help matters before they managed to ram wrecking encryption down everyones' throats. It's like I said, criminals and terrorists will find other ways to do what they're going to do. Wrecking everyone elses' data security and privacy just makes crimes against non-criminals and non-terrorists easier to accomplish. Anal-retentive authoritarian power-grabbing government and law-enforcement types need to back the hell off and keep their noses out of peoples' business.
You can blame the consumer in the same vein that a judge can tell someone 'ignorance of the law is no excuse'. The average consumer is about as security-savvy with things like this as they are about their Facebook posts. It's the whole 'I have nothing to hide therefore I have nothing to fear' attitude, which of course is utter and complete nonsense. Some consumers might hear and even understand that their Nest thermostat is accessible by hackers, but they don't really care. Of course imagine their faces in those final moments when their car is careening at full throttle towards a concrete abutment or a building and they can't stop it, because some jackass thought it would be lulzy to hack some random person's car and take it for a remote joyride.
Hack the devices and write your own firmware. Good luck with that.
The only way out of this is Socialism and redistribution of wealth.
No, see FUCK THAT SHIT, because the 1% who have 99% of the wealth will make sure that the 99% who have 1% of the wealth are the ones who are shouldering the burden of your 'redistribution', just like the homeless problem doesn't get solved, just like people living below the poverty line problem doesn't get solved, just like all the other soical problems that require money aren't getting solved, because the rich find ways to ensure they're not paying for anything and that the poor are supporting the poorer. Don't even bother saying "we'll force them" because they have the money and therefore they have control therefore they'll make sure it DOESN'T happen, and they'll discredit and bury anyone who endangers their money and power.
But did they have any other options?
Certainly. You don't buy 'IoT' devices in the first place. Most of them are solutions in search of a problem, not the other way around, just ways to get tech-enthused people to spend their money on more toys that they didn't need until someone convinced them they did.
Pretty much this. If you don't think that the intellgence community worldwide isn't going to use this as part of their surveillance network, then you need to stop taking your Happy Pills, they're affecting your judgement.
because they know the car will stop in time to prevent an accident
If you actually do that you're nuts.
I find it strange that too many of you on Slashdot don't appear to be engineers or anyone who has been a maker-of-things, which must be the case because too many of you seem to think that nothing could ever possibly go wrong which is so far from reality that I'd almost have to laugh. Maybe in 50 years there will be some sort of 'self-driving' car that you can trust, but not any sooner than that, and there won't EVER be anything with no manual controls. Ever! Human lives matter. You don't just put people in a box that a human can't control directly and hope for the best! That's about as blind and dystopian as you can get! Don't you understand? A human being must be the final fail-safe backup system to any automated system when there is human safety at stake. It just can't be any other way, and you're nuts if you believe otherwise. Seriously, would you really put your children in some car driven by a computer and send them off to grandma's 100 miles away? No, you wouldn't.
We've spent millions and millions of dollars on this 'self-driving car' project, and we need to see some ROI soon or we're screwed! The only way that's going to happen is if the tech we've half-created can be made legal for sale RIGHT NOW so we can start making some of that money back, before the shareholders/investors/whoever comes down on us like a ton of bricks!
That's what I think is going on. They think they'll fix the monumental problems 'in beta' or some such nonsense.
Go to hell, Google. Your half-baked monstrosity isn't safe and doesn't belong on public roads.
It'll be a cold day in all nine Hells before I get in some box on wheels with no controls for a human driver, and I know for a FACT that I am far from alone. Google can fuck off.
Everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this when it's just not going to happen. There is no such thing as 'AI', there are just cheesy 'expert systems' that mimick intelligence for a very limited subject. There are simply too many things that humans need to do that you can't make a machine to do, and there are too many things that humans won't accept a non-human to do. Also you want to invoke World War 3? Put hundreds of millions of people out of work worldwide. There WILL be war. But it's all good: Because it's not going to happen anyway. Everyone is spreading FUD on this subject just like they're doing with self-driving cars. None of this technology is anywhere NEAR the point where people are being led to believe it is. Rest assured that you'll all live out the rest of your lives without having to worry about some robot taking your job.
Also don't forget bicycles, motorbikes and tractors.
THIS.
Some people seem to be in such a rush to get goddamned self-driving cars that they're completely ignoring people who don't want them, won't use them, or don't drive at all. You can't just outlaw bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians or whatever! The Real World is what's going to kill self-driving cars. There are too many variables, and you can't just arbitrarily exclude things!
Says 'hey there's a big rig that's self-driving!'
Story has pic with driver behind the wheel
Apples and oranges, friend.
In the forseeable future any car with an autopilot feature will require a qualified driver behind the full set of manual controls at all times. Believe it.
There is currently no such thing as a 'self driving car', and there won't be for decades to come, and even if there is sooner than that, it'll still require, by law, a qualified driver behind the wheel at all times.
Dump Trump!
Dump Windows!
You get it at least. It's called 'maintaining/perpetuating the status quo/business as usual'. You want REAL change? Stop voting for the same idiots with just different names and demand someone actually different! America is rotting from the inside out and the Yakity Sax -playing-in-the-background/Keystone Cops-esque 'elections' we keep having the last few decades is just one of the outward signs of that.
Are you going to tell them why they don't deserve it?
Sure they do. How about they take it from someone WHO ACTUALLY HAS MONEY instead of taking it from me WHO HAS VERY LITTLE!? Stop stealing from the poor and giving it to the poorer!
OK I'll bite: If you're so clued-in and smarter than I am, then who do you suggest I vote for?
o Donald Trump, the racist, bigot, loudmouth, failed 'businessman', who will probably start WW3, and at any rate is alienating the leaders of other countries before he even gets into office? Who, by the way, was machoed out by a slender blue-eyed blonde woman (Megan Kelly) so badly that he refused to show up at a debate because she was moderating it? Yeah sure he'll handle World Politics so well now won't he?
o Hillary Clinton, who I wouldn't trust any farther than I could throw her?
o Bernie Sanders, just another old white dude, who sounds like he's going to take even more money out of my pocket to give to people who don't deserve it, and likewise tell me even more how I can live my life?
o Ted Cruz, the religious nutjob, who will probably start a Holy War, and will go out of his way to destroy the rights of women to decide what is and is not done with their own bodies?
o Add to this: They're all fucking liars, you can't trust a single thing any one of them says, and it'll just be some flavor of 'business as usual' regardless of which lying piece of crap gets elected?
If you haven't figured it out yet, don't like any of them, am sick and bloody well tired of voting for the 'least bad' candidate, seriously want a 'None of the Above' check-box on the ballot, and as a form of protest against the utter and complete cluster-fuck that American politics has become, I'll vote for some Libertarian nobody even heard of, so I can at least say "Hey, I didn't vote for {insert lying piece of crap's name here}, don't blame me for {whatever bullshit they're forcing on us this time}.
Now, then: Who do you think I should vote for, and why, Mister Genius???
Nobody running for president is qualified so far as I'm concerned. Throw 'em all out and get a totally different batch in here.