you're driving along a road during rush hour. Suddenly, your skull registers the squeal of tires and a massive crash.
Utterly soundproof cars become all the rage; convertibles become well and truly dead.
Hmmm, I wonder if this widget could be combined with anti-noise generators? On the face of it, it seems like a uniform anti-noise sphere would work much better than a point source speaker.
Well, if everyone there is being subjected to that kind of nonsense, including cops, how long would it take for them to find the transmitters and tear them apart?
I think I can assure you, it's not. _Attempted suicide_ may very well be prohibited, but if you do in fact succeed, I can safely guarantee you they won't try to prosecute you.
Since when is a list of stolen credit card numbers illegal? I mean, what is it about the mere existence of a list of other people's credit card numbers that is fundamentally wrong? The credit company themselves certainly maintain a list of previously used numbers, many of which were likely stolen at one point. Shouldn't they be prosecuted?
Or do you mean instead, the act of stealing credit card numbers is bad? Or perhaps, it's using those numbers to other people's detriment that should be illegal? It's a small but very important distinction. Otherwise the parent's scenario of pulling the wrong set of 16 numbers out of one's ass being a felony becomes a legal reality. Your average transcendental number would certainly have more than a few 'illegal numbers' tucked away somewhere.
An act or piece of information should never, in and of itself, be illegal (but man, how they do try!). The circumstances surrounding it are what matter. Fire is legal, arson is not. Killing is legal, but only if it is suicide, self-defense, or state-sponsored (i.e., executions and war). Taking pictures of naked kids is legal (how many did your parents take of you in the tub or wearing nothing but a hat?), but if intended for sexual purposes they're not. Technically, DeCSS should be legal and stealing DVD's illegal, but good luck trying to convince Valenti of that.
You may notice that the War on Drugs totally ignores this. Mere possession of what are in some cases naturally occuring substances earn you a few years as a guest of the state. Prohibition that doesn't even wait for you do actually _do_ something bad is not altogether popular and is becoming less so each passing year. And not even The Big Lie approach is succeeding in keeping it in place.
Depends. If it's merely someplace in D.C., then it's the capital and the article is correct. If it's in the white stone building with the dome, then it's the capitol and the article is wrong.
The difference here is that this is an 'official' hearing... theoretically the results will be taken into account by the government, unlike the mass of unorganized and unofficial protests that have all come before it.
Are you familiar with the UCITA? It's like the DMCA of shrink-wrap licenses. Basically, "Software can have _absolutely anything_ in the license you can't read until you've agreed to it. Software companies are absolved of any and all responsibility for damages from the software they write. Software companies are allowed to put back doors in their software and can disable it on your system if you so much as look at them funny." They try to run something like it through Congress every now and then, but fortunately it's 'only' been passed in two states.
The UCITA is so bad that even the lawyers have said that it's a terribly bad piece of legislation. And yet they were ignored in Maryland and Virginia. So don't ever buy software written by companies in those states.
Yes, they killed Napster. They managed to get rid of AudioGalaxy, too. But FreeNet, Kazaa, WinMX, and any P2P systems likely to show up in the future are comparatively unkillable. The killing off of the first few centralized sharing networks accomplished nothing except to make 'the enemy' harder to get next time around. They can't possibly affect them anymore, so instead they announce their uncopyable (and often unplayable) CDs as the solution to all copying problems. Not only is it a bad solution, it's a bad solution being applied to an entirely different problem. Similarly, a hardware/OS-level DRM-ed music file will only work until it is broken once, after which it gets shared as an ordinary unprotected file and the solution is worthless, inconveniencing only the non-sharing customers.
If the public can use the cameras and they show events in real time, then someone could place a bomb and make it detonate at the "right" moment
That's the best argument against public usage you can make? Bear in mind, the act of placing the bomb is likely to be caught and stored, even if nobody realizes it at the time.
But in the tradition of Juvenal, how about monitoring cameras and microphones on each and every person who monitors the surveillance cameras, with public access?
Excellent solution. Cameras might be on every street corner, but nowhere will they be as numerous as in the police stations and City Hall. Public servants, after all...
As David Brin said, the cameras are coming whether we like it or not. The only question is who gets to use them. Would you rather all the feeds went to police HQ where we can only hope they make good use of them, or should they instead be available for everyone to see?
Better yet, sign them up with no-ip.com and just keep a list of what domain name corresponds to which family member. Then you can VNC in without having to trust that they can read an IP address correctly (not exactly a sure thing!) and the only time you need to do phone maintenance is if "the internet is broken!" I started doing that with every machine I built and it's such a aggravation-saver.
In fact, unless they were built with shoddy foundations, most modern buildings should last forever.
I seem to recall watching a video along these lines in elementary school. Something about the biodegradability (that a word?) of modern materials. They went off on a tangent about various monuments, buildings, etc in the event of the 'departure' of human intervention. The only things I really remember were the bits about NYC skyscrapers not lasting more than a few centuries (with the surrounding cities being _long_ overgrown) but items like the Hoover Dam would remain intact for at least several millennia. Know of any more indepth studies on this topic?
I just had this image of futuristic space sailors knowing the paths and intersections of the Lagrange Points like their nautical counterparts know every stream and depth marker of their respective domains. Similarly, such knowledge would only be useful until the advent of cheap high-energy propulsion, which makes all of it fairly moot.
Actually, that's the entire premise of public accountability. Rather than having one big, cruel, monolithic, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful Ministry of Truth, you turn every citizen into a little voyeur whose job it is to go around and watch for corruption. Watching the government, watching corporations, watching each other. In a world with no privacy, it's definitely the better alternative.
So, the general premise is good. How useful it'll be when applied to porn, who knows? Likely they'll give it up after its biggest proponents find their own teenage sons to be the biggest 'offenders'.
Get far enough away from a source of radiant energy and a comet becomes nothing more than a weak asteroid with a high volatile content. Conversely, get an asteroid close enough to a star and you get a very rocky (and short-lived) comet.
Slashdot Mirror
Utterly soundproof cars become all the rage; convertibles become well and truly dead.
Hmmm, I wonder if this widget could be combined with anti-noise generators? On the face of it, it seems like a uniform anti-noise sphere would work much better than a point source speaker.
Well, if everyone there is being subjected to that kind of nonsense, including cops, how long would it take for them to find the transmitters and tear them apart?
Does anyone happen to have heard this one? What's so freaky about it?
Hmmm, on second thought, some organizations are indeed stupid enough to conduct posthumous trials.
It's funny, but it's not so funny that you need to post it twice within 5 minutes.
Or do you mean instead, the act of stealing credit card numbers is bad? Or perhaps, it's using those numbers to other people's detriment that should be illegal? It's a small but very important distinction. Otherwise the parent's scenario of pulling the wrong set of 16 numbers out of one's ass being a felony becomes a legal reality. Your average transcendental number would certainly have more than a few 'illegal numbers' tucked away somewhere.
An act or piece of information should never, in and of itself, be illegal (but man, how they do try!). The circumstances surrounding it are what matter. Fire is legal, arson is not. Killing is legal, but only if it is suicide, self-defense, or state-sponsored (i.e., executions and war). Taking pictures of naked kids is legal (how many did your parents take of you in the tub or wearing nothing but a hat?), but if intended for sexual purposes they're not. Technically, DeCSS should be legal and stealing DVD's illegal, but good luck trying to convince Valenti of that.
You may notice that the War on Drugs totally ignores this. Mere possession of what are in some cases naturally occuring substances earn you a few years as a guest of the state. Prohibition that doesn't even wait for you do actually _do_ something bad is not altogether popular and is becoming less so each passing year. And not even The Big Lie approach is succeeding in keeping it in place.
Depends. If it's merely someplace in D.C., then it's the capital and the article is correct. If it's in the white stone building with the dome, then it's the capitol and the article is wrong.
Are you familiar with the UCITA? It's like the DMCA of shrink-wrap licenses. Basically, "Software can have _absolutely anything_ in the license you can't read until you've agreed to it. Software companies are absolved of any and all responsibility for damages from the software they write. Software companies are allowed to put back doors in their software and can disable it on your system if you so much as look at them funny." They try to run something like it through Congress every now and then, but fortunately it's 'only' been passed in two states.
The UCITA is so bad that even the lawyers have said that it's a terribly bad piece of legislation. And yet they were ignored in Maryland and Virginia. So don't ever buy software written by companies in those states.
Oh my god, it's the Grammar Gestapo! Run for your life! :)
Hear, hear! If he wants to start tossing kids in prison, he can start with his own.
8002 Bellcreek Ln
Dayton, OH 45426
(937) 837 - 6997
I also tried to find a satellite image, but no luck.
If someone can verify this info, that'd be great. This was the only one I could find.
Yes, they killed Napster. They managed to get rid of AudioGalaxy, too. But FreeNet, Kazaa, WinMX, and any P2P systems likely to show up in the future are comparatively unkillable. The killing off of the first few centralized sharing networks accomplished nothing except to make 'the enemy' harder to get next time around. They can't possibly affect them anymore, so instead they announce their uncopyable (and often unplayable) CDs as the solution to all copying problems. Not only is it a bad solution, it's a bad solution being applied to an entirely different problem. Similarly, a hardware/OS-level DRM-ed music file will only work until it is broken once, after which it gets shared as an ordinary unprotected file and the solution is worthless, inconveniencing only the non-sharing customers.
That's the best argument against public usage you can make? Bear in mind, the act of placing the bomb is likely to be caught and stored, even if nobody realizes it at the time.
But in the tradition of Juvenal, how about monitoring cameras and microphones on each and every person who monitors the surveillance cameras, with public access?
Excellent solution. Cameras might be on every street corner, but nowhere will they be as numerous as in the police stations and City Hall. Public servants, after all...
As David Brin said, the cameras are coming whether we like it or not. The only question is who gets to use them. Would you rather all the feeds went to police HQ where we can only hope they make good use of them, or should they instead be available for everyone to see?
Better yet, sign them up with no-ip.com and just keep a list of what domain name corresponds to which family member. Then you can VNC in without having to trust that they can read an IP address correctly (not exactly a sure thing!) and the only time you need to do phone maintenance is if "the internet is broken!" I started doing that with every machine I built and it's such a aggravation-saver.
Ok, you will give me your address because I have to go beat you down for that :)
I seem to recall watching a video along these lines in elementary school. Something about the biodegradability (that a word?) of modern materials. They went off on a tangent about various monuments, buildings, etc in the event of the 'departure' of human intervention. The only things I really remember were the bits about NYC skyscrapers not lasting more than a few centuries (with the surrounding cities being _long_ overgrown) but items like the Hoover Dam would remain intact for at least several millennia. Know of any more indepth studies on this topic?
I'll admit I don't converse with axe-toting dwarves all that often, but shouldn't that be 'agree', not 'argue'?
Other than that, very amusing. Where is this from?
Absolutely!
I just had this image of futuristic space sailors knowing the paths and intersections of the Lagrange Points like their nautical counterparts know every stream and depth marker of their respective domains. Similarly, such knowledge would only be useful until the advent of cheap high-energy propulsion, which makes all of it fairly moot.
So, the general premise is good. How useful it'll be when applied to porn, who knows? Likely they'll give it up after its biggest proponents find their own teenage sons to be the biggest 'offenders'.
Quite correct on all counts. The solution, obviously, is to open source the phone. They've got Linux on PDAs, why not your cell phone too?
Get far enough away from a source of radiant energy and a comet becomes nothing more than a weak asteroid with a high volatile content. Conversely, get an asteroid close enough to a star and you get a very rocky (and short-lived) comet.
Ahh, but if you know its True Name, then you can exert mastery over how it interacts with the universe. Very dangerous things, those True Names.
A check made out to the guy with lots of zeroes in the Amount field.