I think the idea is that you could go to a store and get a copy. The theory here being that material cost is rather low. Say for example you wanted a copy of say one of the old Burroghs (sp?) Mars books. Since the text is public domain you could go to a store pay for the materials and a reasonable service charge and walk out with a copy. With something out of print but not public domain they could set a fee of a few dollars for the content. (Think about clearly they are making nothing off of it if it is out of print so they are ahead of the game either way) The same could go for music right now I'd pay up to $20 a cd for some early Swans but you can't get it for anything. Now granted I'm a freak and so they can't make any money keeping it in print in a traditional way. But if they built a system where I could go to a Borders (or whatever) and burn a copy for myself they would make, not a lot, but more than they do now and it would have little to no marginal cost for them. All in all this tech could be a win win.
Go tell that to the woman in Tacoma who was shot by the chief of police who liked to hit her. Telling the cops did her jack shit. Her story is not unique. Google for studies on police spousal abuse and you will learn that you are overly optimistic in your estimation of how that situation would work.
I'm certainly glad that the founding fathers got the concept and wrote the 4th amendment. If this were 2000 I would be worried about this but not up in arms the way I am today. You take this as just one more step down the slope that we have been going for the past 3 years though and it is a bad thing. It is not a matter of people seeing it. It is a matter of the government making a permanant record of it WITH NO REASONABLE CAUSE in a country where you can be jailed with no access to a lawyer or courts for any length of time the government should choose. This creates a massive chilling effect that simple human observation does not.
Now for you people who think I'm paranoid which is it. Can these cameras be used to track people and solve crimes, as some of you claim, or as others claim is it impossible to track anyone with them?
Also at least you admit that they can not prevent crime. Many others in this thread have claimed that they can PREVENT crime.
Your story seems to just prove my point. The abductions took place. Period end of story. The cameras made solving the crime somewhat easier. The simple fact is all you can do is speculate that some crimes did not happen. You can not say that crime as come to a halt or even that people have stopped crime where they know the cameras can see them in fact you point to examples where people did crime in spite of the cameras. So what does your story prove?
OK but having a big totalitarian neighbor with a better army than yours to the south would scare me. I would think if I was Canadian I would be very concerned about where the US is heading.
In 1931 Germans could have said that they had no problem with tracking where Jews lived and worked because really how often had anyone taken some random Jew and sent them off to be killed.:)
Yes I hate the idea of all public cameras. Government ones we can still complain about and with any luck change. I just hope the people operating private ones come to their senses and understand how bad they are with the current regime in place.
If a security camera can't be used to track people then how are they going to help against the "terrorists"? More importantly than these cameras in Boston is that they are yet another step down the slippery slope towards where this regime wants to take us and that is a damn scary place. Give up a right here and there. Don't worry we have your best interests in place. And don't let yourself think for a second that Ashcroft and W are above taking the footage from security and cameras and producing a little "evidence" when and where they need it.
So to sum up you think that these cameras can't really be used to track someone. So they aren't going to do any good for the reason the government are talking about deploying them for. There is the chance that they could be abused and of course they have a massive chilling effect. So in what sense are they not evil?
1. This assumes that most crimes are thought out in advance and that most criminals are not stupid. Evidence seems to be that both those assumptions are wrong.
2. Big floppy hats, sunglasses and ski masks.
3. Just because they have a picture of you does not mean that they can catch you or even identify you.
4. Go to a bookstore get a copy of "Grimmer than Hell" or a used bookstore and get a copy of "Lacey and His Friends" (David Drake) both of them contain stories that, while fiction, answer your objection better than I ever could.
5. The only thing you point out is that it can make solving the crime easier. Which was in my first post. You do not explain how it will stop someone from committing the crime. Keep in mind that if most criminals were to really sit down and think about what they were about to do they would not do it. Fact is most of them don't and those who think they can get away with it now will also think they can get away with it in spite of a camera.
6. So how do you feel about issuing every adult a firearm and making sure they are trained in how to use it and forced to carry it with them at all times? After all you would have to be pretty stupid to commit a crime if you know that everyone around you is armed and it would just be paranoid to think that someone might use them for purposes other than the intended purpose.
Yea because they could *never* use the camera to get pictures of you at say a perfectly legal protest, put you on their enemies list then send you a secret letter and putting you away in some hole with no access to communications to the outside for a very long time. That could never happen in America.
Oh wait in the last 3 years the groundwork to be able to do just that has been laid by the people now in power. The same ones who where able to pull a huge piece of complex legislation out of their asses in a couple of weeks. The same ones who at that time said "now we can do some things that we have wanted to for a long time now". The same ones who during the campaign said "there should be limits on speech". The same ones who are trying to get rules in place so that a unelected committee can overrule the Constitution.
Yea I pretty much think that anyone who has been paying attention has good reason to think that anything that increases potential government power at this point is a bad thing. 3 years ago I would not have been really up in arms over these cameras. But combine this trend to public cameras along with a lot of what has happened in the last 3 years and I start to get scared. And so should you.
And I of course know plenty of Canadians who are as concerned about these issues as I am.
You of course think that it is a good thing that most people in general don't worry about these things. I of course think that it is sad and scary that so few people are paying attention. Oh well.....
How the hell can a crime be prevented by a camera? Maybe at most solved a bit faster, but prevented? I don't think so. I wish I had my e copy of "Grimmer than Hell" so I could point you at Drake's Lacey stories. They make the point better than I ever could. I'll have to put up a link to it tomorrow at work. In any case let me address your points.
" Why is it any different that a cop can see you on camera when they could otherwise see you as they drive by in a patrol car?"
I'll address a couple of other possible points in addition to your question. A cop driving by who looks at me as some reason to do so and he is certainly not going to recall seeing me unless I'm doing something to bring myself to his attention. You could even go so far as to say that if he looks at me and recalls what I look like as a result of looking at me that I was most likely doing something to give him "probable cause" to look at and remember me. Now the point you are going to try to trot out next is what if they have a camera in cop car. Same thing there is still going to be some reason for them to point the camera at me and keep it on me for any length of time. Same thing with a radar gun. Granted most of them don't do it but the story they have to tell in court is that they looked at you for a few seconds and based on that thought you were speeding before they used the radar gun on you. What all of these things have in common is that there is a person making the choice to use his/her limited resources to pay attention to you. A automatic camera on 24/7 is going to record anyone in its range at all times. You have just removed both the formal and informal requirement for "reasonable cause" from the choice to notice, pay attention to, and record you doing things.
"We have cameras downtown here and the world didn't end on the day they were installed"
Of course it did not end. But there is a chilling effect and there are possible bad effects. Say for example you are a woman trying to get away from a cop who likes to hit you. Well you just made it harder to do so. Say for example you wanted to assemble with some of your friends and express the opinion that W is maybe not doing the best possible job in the world. Given the way things are going in general I know that I and many other people feel that it may not be such a good idea to do that where there are cameras. Over time the kind of chilling effect these things cause will harm the country and will lead to bad things. In any case hope the above helps you to change your mind.
Every time I see one of these stories I get confused. Why mess around with running VOIP on a general computing device. When I was deciding what to do about my suddenly increased long distance needs I looked at the software VOIP solutions for about 30 seconds before going with Packet8. So why not just quit messing around with software and just call Vonage or Packet8 or one of the other hardware VOIP vendors?
And even if you assume that is what he meant he was wrong. ARPANET came online in 1969 when Al Gore was 21. So in what sense was he instrumental in funding ARPANET?
Another example and one that I think is very cool.
In one of the books by the "Killer Bs" Hari's wife (who is a robot) badly injures (maybe kills) a person who is tryint to kill Hari. She is able to do this because she buys into the zeroth law and she thinks that protecting Hari is important enough to the human race that it is worth killing for. But the conflict basically drives her to shut down. Points out that the laws merely provide a framework within which the robots work and live and they can make choices about how to apply those laws and that there are costs to those choices. Just like people in real life.
You will notice that while the defination of the terms in question refer to IQ they also refer to symptoms that have nothing to do with intelligence. My point was that most autistics are not also savants but are just slow (not this is not only intelligence and you simply point out another way in which they are slow.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=retarde d http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dict ion ary&va=retardation
Having said that I think that autism is often misdiagnosed. An example from my life. As a child I did not speak for a very long time. In fact I was nearly 5 before I started using English words (within weeks I was speaking at a normal level for a 5 year old) But prior to that I had been diagnosed as autistic. The county wanted to send me to the "special" school and all that. Luckily for me my Mom fought *very* hard to keep that from happening. By about halfway through kindergarten it was clear that I was not retarted at all. Although if I had been sent to a school where I was treated as if I were I certainly would have become so. Knowing that I was nothing special except for having very dedicated parents I often wonder how many kids in very similar situations are misdiagnosed and damaged for their whole lives by a system that does not give a shit about them. So on some level when I say they are "simply retraded" what I mean is that for some reason they have "been slowed up, especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment". I personally think that in more cases than we dare think about that it is because society threw them away.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the idea is that you could go to a store and get a copy. The theory here being that material cost is rather low. Say for example you wanted a copy of say one of the old Burroghs (sp?) Mars books. Since the text is public domain you could go to a store pay for the materials and a reasonable service charge and walk out with a copy. With something out of print but not public domain they could set a fee of a few dollars for the content. (Think about clearly they are making nothing off of it if it is out of print so they are ahead of the game either way) The same could go for music right now I'd pay up to $20 a cd for some early Swans but you can't get it for anything. Now granted I'm a freak and so they can't make any money keeping it in print in a traditional way. But if they built a system where I could go to a Borders (or whatever) and burn a copy for myself they would make, not a lot, but more than they do now and it would have little to no marginal cost for them. All in all this tech could be a win win.
The one that grates on my nerves is NIC card. From people who claim to be net admins no less.
It's true I did the nasty in the pasty.
And the diffrence is?
Hint there is none.
So by your logic why is someplace like NYC not crime free? Oh and another one Why do banks continue to be robbed?
Go tell that to the woman in Tacoma who was shot by the chief of police who liked to hit her. Telling the cops did her jack shit. Her story is not unique. Google for studies on police spousal abuse and you will learn that you are overly optimistic in your estimation of how that situation would work.
I'm certainly glad that the founding fathers got the concept and wrote the 4th amendment. If this were 2000 I would be worried about this but not up in arms the way I am today. You take this as just one more step down the slope that we have been going for the past 3 years though and it is a bad thing. It is not a matter of people seeing it. It is a matter of the government making a permanant record of it WITH NO REASONABLE CAUSE in a country where you can be jailed with no access to a lawyer or courts for any length of time the government should choose. This creates a massive chilling effect that simple human observation does not.
Now for you people who think I'm paranoid which is it. Can these cameras be used to track people and solve crimes, as some of you claim, or as others claim is it impossible to track anyone with them?
Also at least you admit that they can not prevent crime. Many others in this thread have claimed that they can PREVENT crime.
Your story seems to just prove my point. The abductions took place. Period end of story. The cameras made solving the crime somewhat easier. The simple fact is all you can do is speculate that some crimes did not happen. You can not say that crime as come to a halt or even that people have stopped crime where they know the cameras can see them in fact you point to examples where people did crime in spite of the cameras. So what does your story prove?
OK but having a big totalitarian neighbor with a better army than yours to the south would scare me. I would think if I was Canadian I would be very concerned about where the US is heading.
In 1931 Germans could have said that they had no problem with tracking where Jews lived and worked because really how often had anyone taken some random Jew and sent them off to be killed. :)
Yes I hate the idea of all public cameras. Government ones we can still complain about and with any luck change. I just hope the people operating private ones come to their senses and understand how bad they are with the current regime in place.
If a security camera can't be used to track people then how are they going to help against the "terrorists"? More importantly than these cameras in Boston is that they are yet another step down the slippery slope towards where this regime wants to take us and that is a damn scary place. Give up a right here and there. Don't worry we have your best interests in place. And don't let yourself think for a second that Ashcroft and W are above taking the footage from security and cameras and producing a little "evidence" when and where they need it.
So to sum up you think that these cameras can't really be used to track someone. So they aren't going to do any good for the reason the government are talking about deploying them for. There is the chance that they could be abused and of course they have a massive chilling effect. So in what sense are they not evil?
OK.
1. This assumes that most crimes are thought out in advance and that most criminals are not stupid. Evidence seems to be that both those assumptions are wrong.
2. Big floppy hats, sunglasses and ski masks.
3. Just because they have a picture of you does not mean that they can catch you or even identify you.
4. Go to a bookstore get a copy of "Grimmer than Hell" or a used bookstore and get a copy of "Lacey and His Friends" (David Drake) both of them contain stories that, while fiction, answer your objection better than I ever could.
5. The only thing you point out is that it can make solving the crime easier. Which was in my first post. You do not explain how it will stop someone from committing the crime. Keep in mind that if most criminals were to really sit down and think about what they were about to do they would not do it. Fact is most of them don't and those who think they can get away with it now will also think they can get away with it in spite of a camera.
6. So how do you feel about issuing every adult a firearm and making sure they are trained in how to use it and forced to carry it with them at all times? After all you would have to be pretty stupid to commit a crime if you know that everyone around you is armed and it would just be paranoid to think that someone might use them for purposes other than the intended purpose.
Yea because they could *never* use the camera to get pictures of you at say a perfectly legal protest, put you on their enemies list then send you a secret letter and putting you away in some hole with no access to communications to the outside for a very long time. That could never happen in America.
Oh wait in the last 3 years the groundwork to be able to do just that has been laid by the people now in power. The same ones who where able to pull a huge piece of complex legislation out of their asses in a couple of weeks. The same ones who at that time said "now we can do some things that we have wanted to for a long time now". The same ones who during the campaign said "there should be limits on speech". The same ones who are trying to get rules in place so that a unelected committee can overrule the Constitution.
Yea I pretty much think that anyone who has been paying attention has good reason to think that anything that increases potential government power at this point is a bad thing. 3 years ago I would not have been really up in arms over these cameras. But combine this trend to public cameras along with a lot of what has happened in the last 3 years and I start to get scared. And so should you.
And I of course know plenty of Canadians who are as concerned about these issues as I am.
You of course think that it is a good thing that most people in general don't worry about these things. I of course think that it is sad and scary that so few people are paying attention. Oh well.....
I think you missed the humor tags. :)
:)
But you are %100 right. I think the post above also understood that you were right.
How the hell can a crime be prevented by a camera? Maybe at most solved a bit faster, but prevented? I don't think so. I wish I had my e copy of "Grimmer than Hell" so I could point you at Drake's Lacey stories. They make the point better than I ever could. I'll have to put up a link to it tomorrow at work. In any case let me address your points.
" Why is it any different that a cop can see you on camera when they could otherwise see you as they drive by in a patrol car?"
I'll address a couple of other possible points in addition to your question. A cop driving by who looks at me as some reason to do so and he is certainly not going to recall seeing me unless I'm doing something to bring myself to his attention. You could even go so far as to say that if he looks at me and recalls what I look like as a result of looking at me that I was most likely doing something to give him "probable cause" to look at and remember me. Now the point you are going to try to trot out next is what if they have a camera in cop car. Same thing there is still going to be some reason for them to point the camera at me and keep it on me for any length of time. Same thing with a radar gun. Granted most of them don't do it but the story they have to tell in court is that they looked at you for a few seconds and based on that thought you were speeding before they used the radar gun on you. What all of these things have in common is that there is a person making the choice to use his/her limited resources to pay attention to you. A automatic camera on 24/7 is going to record anyone in its range at all times. You have just removed both the formal and informal requirement for "reasonable cause" from the choice to notice, pay attention to, and record you doing things.
"We have cameras downtown here and the world didn't end on the day they were installed"
Of course it did not end. But there is a chilling effect and there are possible bad effects. Say for example you are a woman trying to get away from a cop who likes to hit you. Well you just made it harder to do so. Say for example you wanted to assemble with some of your friends and express the opinion that W is maybe not doing the best possible job in the world. Given the way things are going in general I know that I and many other people feel that it may not be such a good idea to do that where there are cameras. Over time the kind of chilling effect these things cause will harm the country and will lead to bad things. In any case hope the above helps you to change your mind.
I could have sworn that we still had the 4th amendment.
I know what you do on Thursdays. That's why I put a towel on the couch before I sit down. :)
Is there any event in life for which one can't find a Penny Arcade that fits? :)
You are right they always were crap and always will be crap. I'm hoping that they put her on trail for stuffing and then basting a turkey.
For a hardware VOIP solution how is 2.99 cents a minute better than say 0.00 cents a minute?
http://www.packet8.net
http://www.vonage.com
Every time I see one of these stories I get confused. Why mess around with running VOIP on a general computing device. When I was deciding what to do about my suddenly increased long distance needs I looked at the software VOIP solutions for about 30 seconds before going with Packet8. So why not just quit messing around with software and just call Vonage or Packet8 or one of the other hardware VOIP vendors?
And even if you assume that is what he meant he was wrong. ARPANET came online in 1969 when Al Gore was 21. So in what sense was he instrumental in funding ARPANET?
Another example and one that I think is very cool.
In one of the books by the "Killer Bs" Hari's wife (who is a robot) badly injures (maybe kills) a person who is tryint to kill Hari. She is able to do this because she buys into the zeroth law and she thinks that protecting Hari is important enough to the human race that it is worth killing for. But the conflict basically drives her to shut down. Points out that the laws merely provide a framework within which the robots work and live and they can make choices about how to apply those laws and that there are costs to those choices. Just like people in real life.
You will notice that while the defination of the terms in question refer to IQ they also refer to symptoms that have nothing to do with intelligence. My point was that most autistics are not also savants but are just slow (not this is not only intelligence and you simply point out another way in which they are slow.
e dt ion ary&va=retardation
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=retard
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dic
Having said that I think that autism is often misdiagnosed. An example from my life. As a child I did not speak for a very long time. In fact I was nearly 5 before I started using English words (within weeks I was speaking at a normal level for a 5 year old) But prior to that I had been diagnosed as autistic. The county wanted to send me to the "special" school and all that. Luckily for me my Mom fought *very* hard to keep that from happening. By about halfway through kindergarten it was clear that I was not retarted at all. Although if I had been sent to a school where I was treated as if I were I certainly would have become so. Knowing that I was nothing special except for having very dedicated parents I often wonder how many kids in very similar situations are misdiagnosed and damaged for their whole lives by a system that does not give a shit about them. So on some level when I say they are "simply retraded" what I mean is that for some reason they have "been slowed up, especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment". I personally think that in more cases than we dare think about that it is because society threw them away.
The point, which is correct, is that most autistics are simply retarted and not in any way shape or form gifted.
They go for like 3 bucks on ebay. Having said that tmobiletestaccount@yahoo.com