Yes, I've met him. Killed him shortly thereafter...;)
I had a Drill Sgt. tell me once that he always had a plan to kill whoever he met, particularly if they were smarter than he was. He followed that up by saying that since I made him laugh and could think him out of a bad situation, he'd kill me last.
Jokes aside, I've loved metal, punk, thrash, etc. since I first heard it. Oddly enough I love classical music too (even Joyce Hatto. Ha!) but can't stand country music, rap, hip hop....
Not unusual. Lots of my collection is eclectic including punk, metal, classical, world music, country music and at least old school rap. The new stuff is just like Top 40, formulaic and talentless. Interestingly, I've found many former punk artists that have moved into bluegrass or a fusion of punk and country. Think Uncle Tupelo, Wilco and Son Volt.
I still love it when some old Exploited or Discharge comes up on the ol' iPod. Emails with the subject "Your music is too loud" aren't uncommon at work.:)
I've just made my iTunes library available to everyone in the building. Someone can typically find something they like in it, but it is most excellent to be able to crank up Husker Du in the laboratory on weekends.
Really? Isn't most head bangin' heavy metal disseminated by the recording industry?
Perhaps you are revealing just how aware you are....;-)
Seriously though, there is *lots* of very good music out there including metal and punk that does not come through the big RIAA dominated scene. If you will note, that is why I invoked punk.
Very funny. Seriously though, you should know that there is *always* someone smarter than you out there. The trick I've found is to find as many of them as you can and surround yourself with them so they continue to challenge you, introduce you to new thinking etc...etc...etc...
Part of me wants to respond in an incredibly cynical manner to this as most "intelligent teenagers" are smart enough to be aware of much of the bullshit associated with growing up and being aware of wider sociopolitical, environmental and other issues and they need a release for the anger. Other cynical parts of me want to say they are also smart enough to be able to recognize the top 40 drivel that is being disseminated by the recording industry.
However, stepping back from the cynicism, I would note that this was always my experience with the punk scene. Specifically, most people I knew in the scene were incredibly talented, highly intelligent and for the most part more articulate than average. I always wondered how it was that we seemed to find one another, self assemble and take part in a scene that was a retreat of sorts from lives and upbringings that were in most cases not "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Cosby Show" type lives.
The issues of academic journals is becoming hugely problematic. Many institutions cannot afford subscriptions and the journals claim they have to charge such rates in order to stay in business. I would suggest that the enormous proliferation of specialized journals indicates that they in actuality are quite profitable. For those that do not know, there are also costs associated with publication in those same journals including costs for publishing images that can be stunningly high. One has to wonder just what the problem is with such high costs when organizations like PLOS and Molecular Vision have so much lower costs of entry, publication and distribution.
Note: I don't necessarily have a problem with profitability and am perfectly happy with a capitalistic approach to academic journals. However, what I *do* have a problem with is outrageous usage policies including DRM that is more problematic and slows progress, unfairly leveraged (illegal) monopolies, preventing fair usage and profiting from publicly funded science and engineering without fairly compensating the paying public or providing access to resources that have been paid in full for.
Honestly, given the companies past alleged illegal/unethical behavior, the first thing that came to my mind was.... "what is coming down the pipe that they are trying to avoid?" Specifically, by moving the corporate HQ out of the country, are they avoiding some potential legal action because of illegal or unethical corporate behavior? After all we do know about lots of no-bid contracts they were awarded, not to mention the overcharging of contracts and more. It should also be noted that Haliburton is trying to off-load KBR. But fundamentally, regardless of ones political bias, even if there is no forthcoming news of illegal activity, because this corporation has benefitted so much from contracts awarded by the US government, moving off shore to avoid paying US taxes is simply an additional insult.
P.S. Remember when Cheney refused to sell his Haliburton stock when appointed VP? He also resisted placing it into a blind trust and if I remember correctly, continues to receive compensation from Haliburton. Also, the content of Cheney's energy task force demonstrated that companies (Haliburton included) had direct input into the official federal energy plan, effectively allowing corporations to dictate US policy.
As a neuroscientist who has a healthy respect for a little anarchy from time to time, I have to call shenanigans on this one. I'd love to kick down the doors on some fundamentally held beliefs (my dissertation did something close to that), but this had me laughing out loud.
I've recorded from nerve cells in the classical manner and run the parametrics on different ionic concentrations and it would take quite a solid argument backed up by data for me to displace any of the credibility built on the classic Hodgkin and Huxley work.
Yeah, there have been a number of folks using variations on this theme for a while now. It's been interesting that network performance really has not followed the same performance curve as storage and CPU throughput. Add to that the growing amount of data being pushed through "consumer" pipes from people obtaining broadband and pushing sources such as YouTube and company and you have the makings for a bandwidth crunch. This of course is the reason for separate academic and government Internet paths, but it is still a limited commodity. In fact, at some universities engaging in data intensive projects, it is not uncommon for them to occupy the entire bandwidth of the university in off hours to transfer data around the country to various collaborators.
This is absolutely the most cost effective way of transferring large amounts of data like this. If you do the calculations on terrabyte size files, sneakernet (of FedEx net) is actually faster and less expensive. We also went to one of Jim Grey's seminars when he was here giving an Organick Memorial Lecture and he made an incredibly compelling demonstration using a variety of data types. We ended up talking with him for some time after about new projects we are engaging in that will also be generating terrabytes of data and his suggestion was to pass applications rather than data which was interesting.
This is becoming more and more the norm in scientific research and Google's work is quite welcome.
Halo development for Macintosh was not canceled when Microsoft bought Bungie.
Yes, it was.
Halo was released for the Mac in December, 2003.
True, and in fact, I worked as an alpha and beta tester for the company that did the port (look for my name in the credits). The important thing to note is that MS *did* cancel all development for the platform and decided at a later date to allow the existing code to be brought to the Macintosh through a third party developer who did all the work required.
I don't believe a Linux version was ever being developed by Bungie.
To my peripheral knowledge, there were active efforts at Bungie to bring a number of their titles to Linux and Halo was one of them.
In many ways, MS has given Apple ten years to get its shit together from a MS perspective (ie. be a worthwhile platform for MS to support) but has this really happened?
The reality of that little ten year waiting period descended from MS being caught red-handed with their hand in the Quicktime cookie jar codebase. The outcome of that was that MS agreed to a public endorsement of the Macintosh platform, a $150 million dollar investment in Apple (non-voting stock), an agreement to continue producing Office for the Mac and to share certain codebases. It will be interesting to see what Apple got out of the codebase sharing agreement in the next month or two...
Perhaps "intention" isn't the right word to be using here.
Intention is precisely the right word that describes what they are trying to do as they are claiming to be able to *predict* an individuals course of action *before* it happens.
The brain controls everything you do, from breathing to posting on slashdot.
Really? Do tell...:-) Seriously though, I'd like to think that posting on Slashdot required cortical activity, but some of the posts I see appear to have been made by "lower" structures, like the brainstem.
Therefore, if they can "map" tasks to brain activity they can "predict intent".
It is actually a harder task than this as predicting complex behaviors from complex systems is not always so straight forward. Emergent behaviors are not uncommon in complex systems for instance and when you throw in imagination, things get harder still.
In the grand scheme of things, it would be impossible for people to predict "intentions" unless they can make an MRI the size of a hand-held device.
Again, not necessarily the case. There are projects underway to do much more with complex systems and they are not beholden on hand held devices. After all, what many institutions and security checkpoints require is a passageway. Devices can be as large as required at these points.
The problem with this is that if nothing else, Microsoft is good at making money and the Microsoft Mac Business unit is quite profitable, with Office as one of their biggest revenue generators. On the other hand, that has never hurt Microsoft when they felt that losses in revenue in one area would be made up for in another area if they cancelled development for a competing platform. Just look to the cancellation of Halo development for Macintosh and Linux after they bought Bungie.
However, it is an unfortunate reality of the software business, no matter how the consumer may benefit. When it comes down to it, companies are interested in making money and they have to balance the needs and desires of the customer along with their requirements of making mo' and mo' money. Just look to insurance companies, right? They are not in business to provide health care insurance or to cover your medical bills. They are however in business to make money. Don't ever mistake the two or conflate their motives.
That is not to say that there are not companies that have motivations that are geared towards the consumers of their products. On the contrary, I feel that Apple has done a pretty good job over the years of balancing ethical behavior with making great products that will keep their customers happy, but even they have, on occasion screwed up, sometimes spectacularly.
I guess the most impressive thing to me about this is the continued flood of documents that have come out of the anti-trust trial that was dumped after the current POTUS entered the White House. These documents show an amazing culture of not just intense competition, but also one of dishonesty, dishonor and patently illegal behavior. I remember the case being dropped, but how could it have gone so wrong and how much more is there to find?
My first reaction is suspicion.... suspicion of a whole lot of possibilities regardless of whether or not this work has any validity. For instance, I've talked with more than one DOD general who was interested in military applications of electroencephalograms for "mind reading" and such. Certainly there are some applications for lie detection such as the P300, but one has to be very careful about the structure of the interview so as to not attempt to extract non-meaningful information from an evoked potential. My concern is that a whole bunch of additional DARPA type money will suddenly be thrown at the problem and claims will be made that will further impinge upon individual rights and freedoms waaaaaay before even the science is understood (not that understanding science is an excuse to stomp on civil liberties).
My more immediate concern is of the claims that are being made. The fundamental problem of course is developing a global signature for mind reading that is clean enough to derive robust statistics, keeping in mind that individuals brains are far from uniform in their anatomy, physiology or wiring. Work I performed more than a decade ago revealed similar cortical mapping patterns on subjects who performed tasks and then imagined performing those tasks. Certainly it is possible to determine volitional movements based upon our knowledge of neuroanatomy and statistical averages of wiring, but predicting "intentions" is a whole other ball game. The article is light on details and I've tried a search on more in-depth content, but if they are labeling "intentions" as complex behaviors, my eyebrows will be raised. For instance, determining which of two buttons to press invokes a whole series of kinesthetic volitional programming that should be able to be determined by mapping pre-motor cortex. However, if "intentions" are whether or not to engage in complex behaviors are what they are talking about, there is much more complex circuitry to consider including the possibility of imagery or imagining an action versus actually volitionally engaging in that activity.
A Slashdot-like karma system where editors with high karma can block those without from editing thei stuff?
I actually really like this idea... A system where expertise can have a karma ranking system through either qualifications or community mediated promotion through contribution. This would allow experts in their fields to contribute without fear of having their contribution savaged by those who may not know what is going on.
Now that Wikipedia has reached a critical mass, the time has come to establish a trusted editorial board that can vet articles to established experts in the field of subjects. This board could then also solicit articles by experts and find other wikis that host specialized information to link to the common Wikipedia. This will prevent much of the vandalism and uninformed disasters that seem to befall certain subjects or topics when they are edited by people who are not competent to be making edits in certain topics. As a professor in the biosciences, I've seen more than one article/entry on Wikipedia, written by an expert in that field that has been absolutely, shamefully and quite inaccurately edited or altered by well meaning individuals that absolutely have no idea what they are doing/saying.
Naw, it's not the Macs, but the database that is limiting the connections and likely their bandwidth restrictions. I have a fair amount of experience getting Slashdotted on another website hosted exclusively on a Mac and I've yet to see it have a problem, even though it is a graphics intensive site.
Loan / banking: Today. Go ahead, try and open any kind of fiscal account without government-issued identification.
Thanks to the "Patriot Act", it has become a crime to open a bank account without proving who you are.
Cross state lines: Never. Maybe to cross NATIONAL borders, but barring national revolt you won't see anyone suggest that the free-reign United States be clamped down on a state-line basis. (Now, there might be an "ID to enter state park or book a room", but that's something seperate.)
As I said before, because of trickle down issues with the Real ID act and some states accepting this situation where others do not, when it becomes an issue that will affect the financial well being of the states, I'd lay good odds that check points would spring up.
Those who can afford their own planes know they have to file detailed flight plans each time they go, and their ordinary transactions are so large they have to report a significant share of them due to money laundering laws.
Yes, yes, yes.... I have filed flight plans myself and flown on private jets more than once and unless the flight is chartered and they are checking to see if the manifest is full, *nobody* ever checks to see who gets on the plane and who does not. For truly private aircraft, travel around the country is remarkably easy. Firearms can be taken anywhere one desires without security checks, you can carry on gallons of water/soda/whatever liquid you desire and the TSA says boo about it. As to "ordinary transactions", if you are dealing with transactions involving banks and other equivalencies with amounts exceeding $10k, due to the Bank Secrecy Act, those transactions must be reported. Most of us at some point will have had at least several currency transaction reports filed, but let me tell you.... a tremendous amount can be accomplished with less than $10k which would in most cases fly right under the radar. The trick is, you have to have access to liquid assets and the wealthy do.
You can't drive a car without registering that specific car as your property. Heck, in your automobile you're broadcasting a simple code to identify your household to anyone withing SIGHT.
Sure, but what if the car is borrowed? What if it is your parents car? What if you want to be anonymous? Being anonymous should not be a crime. According to many implementations of the Real ID act, it would be illegal for you to not have documentation of identity on you.
Doctors should track their case incidents in similar fashions regardless of source of payment; doing so aids in diagnosis of future cases and identification of epidemics.
Doctors do track their case incidents, however there is this little privacy act called HIPPA? Perhaps you have heard of it? Centralizing this information in a government database that will require you to submit your identity to obtain healthcare is a problem and for those individuals who don't have to worry about healthcare costs, they can remain anonymous.
Yes. If you fire a gun, you should be able to stand up before a jury of your peers and say why. If you cannot justify the discharge, you shouldn't even have the gun drawn.
So, you are saying if I fire a gun, then I have performed an illegal act and will be subject to legal retribution? Are you nuts? You do realize that there are those who hunt, target shoot, practice biathlon (it's an Olympic sport, perhaps you have heard of it?), etc... and it is entirely within their Constitutional rights to do so? Are you suggesting that those rights should be revoked? If so, you are opening up a pretty big can of worms....
The government has little business telling you that you cannot have a gun and cannot fire it without prior approval, but they are entirely within their purpose to require that you justify the discharge after the fact.
Perhaps if one has violated the law through a discharge of the firearm, but if I am on my own ranch and within the law, i
You know.... it is not like a national ID card would abolish our Constitution. We would still have that.
Yes, while we would still have the Constitution, it's power and significance would be weakened by the Real ID act.
I doubt a piece of plastic would create the 1984 that you suggest.
While it will not bring about an Orwellian dystopia in of itself, it is one more step in that direction and I believe a number of people are rightfully, lawfully and morally justified in resisting those moves.
In theory, I agree with you and would even go so far as to say that many "arms" that are now illegal should be made legal so as to minimize the power differential that could theoretically be wielded against the common citizenry. However, let me ask you how many people you think would be willing to take up arms against the government... Would one, say with two kids and a mortgage, a good job and health insurance be willing to actively go up against a police force? I would wager that most Americans are so fat and happy that a vanishingly small percentage of the populace would actually be willing to sacrifice what would be required to truly overthrow a government these days. It is far easier to placate a society through shiny things while enslaving everyone through a culture of fear.
Well, I guess we know your politics. Seriously though, statements like these are simply non-starters that close off the dialogue before it can even start. So, you are telling me that you are gleefully giving away your rights to privacy of your person and documents, happy to waive your rights to travel without being identified or tracked, and more?
If so, you sir, deserve neitherLiberty nor Safety.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I've met him. Killed him shortly thereafter... ;)
:)
I had a Drill Sgt. tell me once that he always had a plan to kill whoever he met, particularly if they were smarter than he was. He followed that up by saying that since I made him laugh and could think him out of a bad situation, he'd kill me last.
Jokes aside, I've loved metal, punk, thrash, etc. since I first heard it. Oddly enough I love classical music too (even Joyce Hatto. Ha!) but can't stand country music, rap, hip hop....
Not unusual. Lots of my collection is eclectic including punk, metal, classical, world music, country music and at least old school rap. The new stuff is just like Top 40, formulaic and talentless. Interestingly, I've found many former punk artists that have moved into bluegrass or a fusion of punk and country. Think Uncle Tupelo, Wilco and Son Volt.
I still love it when some old Exploited or Discharge comes up on the ol' iPod. Emails with the subject "Your music is too loud" aren't uncommon at work.
I've just made my iTunes library available to everyone in the building. Someone can typically find something they like in it, but it is most excellent to be able to crank up Husker Du in the laboratory on weekends.
Really? Isn't most head bangin' heavy metal disseminated by the recording industry?
;-)
Perhaps you are revealing just how aware you are....
Seriously though, there is *lots* of very good music out there including metal and punk that does not come through the big RIAA dominated scene. If you will note, that is why I invoked punk.
Ha ha ha grub,
Very funny. Seriously though, you should know that there is *always* someone smarter than you out there. The trick I've found is to find as many of them as you can and surround yourself with them so they continue to challenge you, introduce you to new thinking etc...etc...etc...
Part of me wants to respond in an incredibly cynical manner to this as most "intelligent teenagers" are smart enough to be aware of much of the bullshit associated with growing up and being aware of wider sociopolitical, environmental and other issues and they need a release for the anger. Other cynical parts of me want to say they are also smart enough to be able to recognize the top 40 drivel that is being disseminated by the recording industry.
However, stepping back from the cynicism, I would note that this was always my experience with the punk scene. Specifically, most people I knew in the scene were incredibly talented, highly intelligent and for the most part more articulate than average. I always wondered how it was that we seemed to find one another, self assemble and take part in a scene that was a retreat of sorts from lives and upbringings that were in most cases not "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Cosby Show" type lives.
The issues of academic journals is becoming hugely problematic. Many institutions cannot afford subscriptions and the journals claim they have to charge such rates in order to stay in business. I would suggest that the enormous proliferation of specialized journals indicates that they in actuality are quite profitable. For those that do not know, there are also costs associated with publication in those same journals including costs for publishing images that can be stunningly high. One has to wonder just what the problem is with such high costs when organizations like PLOS and Molecular Vision have so much lower costs of entry, publication and distribution.
Note: I don't necessarily have a problem with profitability and am perfectly happy with a capitalistic approach to academic journals. However, what I *do* have a problem with is outrageous usage policies including DRM that is more problematic and slows progress, unfairly leveraged (illegal) monopolies, preventing fair usage and profiting from publicly funded science and engineering without fairly compensating the paying public or providing access to resources that have been paid in full for.
Honestly, given the companies past alleged illegal/unethical behavior, the first thing that came to my mind was.... "what is coming down the pipe that they are trying to avoid?" Specifically, by moving the corporate HQ out of the country, are they avoiding some potential legal action because of illegal or unethical corporate behavior? After all we do know about lots of no-bid contracts they were awarded, not to mention the overcharging of contracts and more. It should also be noted that Haliburton is trying to off-load KBR. But fundamentally, regardless of ones political bias, even if there is no forthcoming news of illegal activity, because this corporation has benefitted so much from contracts awarded by the US government, moving off shore to avoid paying US taxes is simply an additional insult.
P.S. Remember when Cheney refused to sell his Haliburton stock when appointed VP? He also resisted placing it into a blind trust and if I remember correctly, continues to receive compensation from Haliburton. Also, the content of Cheney's energy task force demonstrated that companies (Haliburton included) had direct input into the official federal energy plan, effectively allowing corporations to dictate US policy.
As a neuroscientist who has a healthy respect for a little anarchy from time to time, I have to call shenanigans on this one. I'd love to kick down the doors on some fundamentally held beliefs (my dissertation did something close to that), but this had me laughing out loud.
I've recorded from nerve cells in the classical manner and run the parametrics on different ionic concentrations and it would take quite a solid argument backed up by data for me to displace any of the credibility built on the classic Hodgkin and Huxley work.
Yeah, well it's not like Sweden has a document like the US Constitution that prot....ect......s.... its um, citizens from....... Er..... Nevermind.
Revolution!
Yeah, there have been a number of folks using variations on this theme for a while now. It's been interesting that network performance really has not followed the same performance curve as storage and CPU throughput. Add to that the growing amount of data being pushed through "consumer" pipes from people obtaining broadband and pushing sources such as YouTube and company and you have the makings for a bandwidth crunch. This of course is the reason for separate academic and government Internet paths, but it is still a limited commodity. In fact, at some universities engaging in data intensive projects, it is not uncommon for them to occupy the entire bandwidth of the university in off hours to transfer data around the country to various collaborators.
This is absolutely the most cost effective way of transferring large amounts of data like this. If you do the calculations on terrabyte size files, sneakernet (of FedEx net) is actually faster and less expensive. We also went to one of Jim Grey's seminars when he was here giving an Organick Memorial Lecture and he made an incredibly compelling demonstration using a variety of data types. We ended up talking with him for some time after about new projects we are engaging in that will also be generating terrabytes of data and his suggestion was to pass applications rather than data which was interesting.
This is becoming more and more the norm in scientific research and Google's work is quite welcome.
Excellent point. You of course, given your background would be ideally prepared to make this observation.
Mod parent up!
What happened between June 27 and August 6?
See my post here. In essence, MS got caught stealing code from Quicktime.
Halo development for Macintosh was not canceled when Microsoft bought Bungie.
Yes, it was.
Halo was released for the Mac in December, 2003.
True, and in fact, I worked as an alpha and beta tester for the company that did the port (look for my name in the credits). The important thing to note is that MS *did* cancel all development for the platform and decided at a later date to allow the existing code to be brought to the Macintosh through a third party developer who did all the work required.
I don't believe a Linux version was ever being developed by Bungie.
To my peripheral knowledge, there were active efforts at Bungie to bring a number of their titles to Linux and Halo was one of them.
In many ways, MS has given Apple ten years to get its shit together from a MS perspective (ie. be a worthwhile platform for MS to support) but has this really happened?
The reality of that little ten year waiting period descended from MS being caught red-handed with their hand in the Quicktime cookie jar codebase. The outcome of that was that MS agreed to a public endorsement of the Macintosh platform, a $150 million dollar investment in Apple (non-voting stock), an agreement to continue producing Office for the Mac and to share certain codebases. It will be interesting to see what Apple got out of the codebase sharing agreement in the next month or two...
Perhaps "intention" isn't the right word to be using here.
:-) Seriously though, I'd like to think that posting on Slashdot required cortical activity, but some of the posts I see appear to have been made by "lower" structures, like the brainstem.
Intention is precisely the right word that describes what they are trying to do as they are claiming to be able to *predict* an individuals course of action *before* it happens.
The brain controls everything you do, from breathing to posting on slashdot.
Really? Do tell...
Therefore, if they can "map" tasks to brain activity they can "predict intent".
It is actually a harder task than this as predicting complex behaviors from complex systems is not always so straight forward. Emergent behaviors are not uncommon in complex systems for instance and when you throw in imagination, things get harder still.
In the grand scheme of things, it would be impossible for people to predict "intentions" unless they can make an MRI the size of a hand-held device.
Again, not necessarily the case. There are projects underway to do much more with complex systems and they are not beholden on hand held devices. After all, what many institutions and security checkpoints require is a passageway. Devices can be as large as required at these points.
The problem with this is that if nothing else, Microsoft is good at making money and the Microsoft Mac Business unit is quite profitable, with Office as one of their biggest revenue generators. On the other hand, that has never hurt Microsoft when they felt that losses in revenue in one area would be made up for in another area if they cancelled development for a competing platform. Just look to the cancellation of Halo development for Macintosh and Linux after they bought Bungie.
However, it is an unfortunate reality of the software business, no matter how the consumer may benefit. When it comes down to it, companies are interested in making money and they have to balance the needs and desires of the customer along with their requirements of making mo' and mo' money. Just look to insurance companies, right? They are not in business to provide health care insurance or to cover your medical bills. They are however in business to make money. Don't ever mistake the two or conflate their motives.
That is not to say that there are not companies that have motivations that are geared towards the consumers of their products. On the contrary, I feel that Apple has done a pretty good job over the years of balancing ethical behavior with making great products that will keep their customers happy, but even they have, on occasion screwed up, sometimes spectacularly.
I guess the most impressive thing to me about this is the continued flood of documents that have come out of the anti-trust trial that was dumped after the current POTUS entered the White House. These documents show an amazing culture of not just intense competition, but also one of dishonesty, dishonor and patently illegal behavior. I remember the case being dropped, but how could it have gone so wrong and how much more is there to find?
OK, I almost sprayed coffee all over my keyboard and displays. Somebody mod this as funny!
My first reaction is suspicion.... suspicion of a whole lot of possibilities regardless of whether or not this work has any validity. For instance, I've talked with more than one DOD general who was interested in military applications of electroencephalograms for "mind reading" and such. Certainly there are some applications for lie detection such as the P300, but one has to be very careful about the structure of the interview so as to not attempt to extract non-meaningful information from an evoked potential. My concern is that a whole bunch of additional DARPA type money will suddenly be thrown at the problem and claims will be made that will further impinge upon individual rights and freedoms waaaaaay before even the science is understood (not that understanding science is an excuse to stomp on civil liberties).
My more immediate concern is of the claims that are being made. The fundamental problem of course is developing a global signature for mind reading that is clean enough to derive robust statistics, keeping in mind that individuals brains are far from uniform in their anatomy, physiology or wiring. Work I performed more than a decade ago revealed similar cortical mapping patterns on subjects who performed tasks and then imagined performing those tasks. Certainly it is possible to determine volitional movements based upon our knowledge of neuroanatomy and statistical averages of wiring, but predicting "intentions" is a whole other ball game. The article is light on details and I've tried a search on more in-depth content, but if they are labeling "intentions" as complex behaviors, my eyebrows will be raised. For instance, determining which of two buttons to press invokes a whole series of kinesthetic volitional programming that should be able to be determined by mapping pre-motor cortex. However, if "intentions" are whether or not to engage in complex behaviors are what they are talking about, there is much more complex circuitry to consider including the possibility of imagery or imagining an action versus actually volitionally engaging in that activity.
A Slashdot-like karma system where editors with high karma can block those without from editing thei stuff?
I actually really like this idea... A system where expertise can have a karma ranking system through either qualifications or community mediated promotion through contribution. This would allow experts in their fields to contribute without fear of having their contribution savaged by those who may not know what is going on.
What can be done to change the system?
Now that Wikipedia has reached a critical mass, the time has come to establish a trusted editorial board that can vet articles to established experts in the field of subjects. This board could then also solicit articles by experts and find other wikis that host specialized information to link to the common Wikipedia. This will prevent much of the vandalism and uninformed disasters that seem to befall certain subjects or topics when they are edited by people who are not competent to be making edits in certain topics. As a professor in the biosciences, I've seen more than one article/entry on Wikipedia, written by an expert in that field that has been absolutely, shamefully and quite inaccurately edited or altered by well meaning individuals that absolutely have no idea what they are doing/saying.
Naw, it's not the Macs, but the database that is limiting the connections and likely their bandwidth restrictions. I have a fair amount of experience getting Slashdotted on another website hosted exclusively on a Mac and I've yet to see it have a problem, even though it is a graphics intensive site.
Loan / banking: Today. Go ahead, try and open any kind of fiscal account without government-issued identification.
Thanks to the "Patriot Act", it has become a crime to open a bank account without proving who you are.
Cross state lines: Never. Maybe to cross NATIONAL borders, but barring national revolt you won't see anyone suggest that the free-reign United States be clamped down on a state-line basis. (Now, there might be an "ID to enter state park or book a room", but that's something seperate.)
As I said before, because of trickle down issues with the Real ID act and some states accepting this situation where others do not, when it becomes an issue that will affect the financial well being of the states, I'd lay good odds that check points would spring up.
Those who can afford their own planes know they have to file detailed flight plans each time they go, and their ordinary transactions are so large they have to report a significant share of them due to money laundering laws.
Yes, yes, yes.... I have filed flight plans myself and flown on private jets more than once and unless the flight is chartered and they are checking to see if the manifest is full, *nobody* ever checks to see who gets on the plane and who does not. For truly private aircraft, travel around the country is remarkably easy. Firearms can be taken anywhere one desires without security checks, you can carry on gallons of water/soda/whatever liquid you desire and the TSA says boo about it. As to "ordinary transactions", if you are dealing with transactions involving banks and other equivalencies with amounts exceeding $10k, due to the Bank Secrecy Act, those transactions must be reported. Most of us at some point will have had at least several currency transaction reports filed, but let me tell you.... a tremendous amount can be accomplished with less than $10k which would in most cases fly right under the radar. The trick is, you have to have access to liquid assets and the wealthy do.
You can't drive a car without registering that specific car as your property. Heck, in your automobile you're broadcasting a simple code to identify your household to anyone withing SIGHT.
Sure, but what if the car is borrowed? What if it is your parents car? What if you want to be anonymous? Being anonymous should not be a crime. According to many implementations of the Real ID act, it would be illegal for you to not have documentation of identity on you.
Doctors should track their case incidents in similar fashions regardless of source of payment; doing so aids in diagnosis of future cases and identification of epidemics.
Doctors do track their case incidents, however there is this little privacy act called HIPPA? Perhaps you have heard of it? Centralizing this information in a government database that will require you to submit your identity to obtain healthcare is a problem and for those individuals who don't have to worry about healthcare costs, they can remain anonymous.
Yes. If you fire a gun, you should be able to stand up before a jury of your peers and say why. If you cannot justify the discharge, you shouldn't even have the gun drawn.
So, you are saying if I fire a gun, then I have performed an illegal act and will be subject to legal retribution? Are you nuts? You do realize that there are those who hunt, target shoot, practice biathlon (it's an Olympic sport, perhaps you have heard of it?), etc... and it is entirely within their Constitutional rights to do so? Are you suggesting that those rights should be revoked? If so, you are opening up a pretty big can of worms....
The government has little business telling you that you cannot have a gun and cannot fire it without prior approval, but they are entirely within their purpose to require that you justify the discharge after the fact.
Perhaps if one has violated the law through a discharge of the firearm, but if I am on my own ranch and within the law, i
You know.... it is not like a national ID card would abolish our Constitution. We would still have that.
Yes, while we would still have the Constitution, it's power and significance would be weakened by the Real ID act.
I doubt a piece of plastic would create the 1984 that you suggest.
While it will not bring about an Orwellian dystopia in of itself, it is one more step in that direction and I believe a number of people are rightfully, lawfully and morally justified in resisting those moves.
In theory, I agree with you and would even go so far as to say that many "arms" that are now illegal should be made legal so as to minimize the power differential that could theoretically be wielded against the common citizenry. However, let me ask you how many people you think would be willing to take up arms against the government... Would one, say with two kids and a mortgage, a good job and health insurance be willing to actively go up against a police force? I would wager that most Americans are so fat and happy that a vanishingly small percentage of the populace would actually be willing to sacrifice what would be required to truly overthrow a government these days. It is far easier to placate a society through shiny things while enslaving everyone through a culture of fear.
Sounds like a solution rather than a problem.
Well, I guess we know your politics. Seriously though, statements like these are simply non-starters that close off the dialogue before it can even start. So, you are telling me that you are gleefully giving away your rights to privacy of your person and documents, happy to waive your rights to travel without being identified or tracked, and more?
If so, you sir, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.