If in fact tools such as PGP are used by terrorists, how do governments protect against this?
They don't, to put it simply. There would be no beneift - I don't think the terrorists would send e-mails saying "Ready for the WTC attack on 09/11, I have brought knives and plane tickets". They would use a code of some sort, or maybe even phone calls, postal mail or even face-to-face meetings.
British citizens have "chosen" to give up their freedom for nothing.
The problem is: We havn't given up our freedom. We just have a few video cameras up in large, public areas like shopping centers and suchlike.
We can trust the government not to match the video cameras with pictures from photo-ID cards and photo driving licenses, using face-recognition technology to track every citizen's movement. Why? Well, why would they want to? it would have a significant cost, and would not produce any useful data.
Furthermore, when you're in the street, you have no implicit right to privacy. A policeman could stand on a long pole with a pair of binoculars, looking for crime, and that wouldn't be invading your privacy. A camera is simply a more practical way of doing that.
The british government has no interest in invading citizen's privacy. They want to prevent crime. We havn't lost our 'freedom'; we have simply allowed a crime-preventing tool to be effectively but not opressively utilised, leading to a drop in crime.
Other bin Laden agents make for the internet cafes that have sprung up in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. They use the most common service providers, all of them American, and refer to each other and to bin Laden himself by their first names. In the welter of e-mail traffic their messages go unnoticed.
Maybe AOL is the ISP that provides service to the cybercafes.
It's time for Sheriff Uncle Same to ride into town, and kick some bad-guy ass.
Well, clearly there must be justice; the guilty must be identified, and punished. But what we don't need is a wounded government, thier pride hurt, bombing a country because they suspect said country was somehow responsible for this terrible act.
War ain't the sort of thing you rush into. We mush investigate, identify the guilty, arrange thier presence in the United States for trial, try them, and if thier guilt is proven beyond all reasonable doubt, they can be executed.
That would be far more reasonable than a knee-jerk 'no-one pushes us around' air strike on Iraq or Iran or Palestein or wherever TV pundits think the attack originated from. The US has great military power, but with that power comes responsibility to see it is used rightly and justly.
Crying out 'It mush have been saddam hussein, let's lart the pinhead' and attacking a map of Iraq with a red crayon in a fit of anger is not the solution. If we want him dead, there are better ways than that, and in the end, he's just as dead.
Mob logic and racism are not the answer. Investigation, trial and punishment is, as with any other crimes. And this is what there muust be.
Michael
(Also, I would encourage you not to describe people with more moderate opinions than yours as 'cowards'. Most of us aren't cowards; We simply don't want something brash and shortsighted done. Insults and bickering help no-one.)
There has to be retaliation for this, without a doubt.
Not retaliation. Justice. "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi
We should identify individuals who are guilty of crimes, arrest them, allow them to be tried in accordance with law, and if they are guilty, arrange thier execution.
We can't just say 'Some evidence indicates Palistinian extremists - let's nuke a city in blind rage'. There must be due process. Guilt must be proven, and it must be done visibly and transparently. Killing foreigners in 'retaliation' will only make more people hate the united states. If they can see that only demonstrably guilty people have been killed, further 'revenge' will be far harder to justify.
Killing innocents for no reason other than to show what a big dick the US has is not an acceptable option. Visible accountability and justice is, and that is what is required.
what does this tell us about the ability of our internet infrastructure to handle the demand in cases of crisis?
As other posters have noted, this isn't an infrastructure problem; it's a site bandwidth problem. Specifically, this event is unlike most news events. Let's say this has caused a ten-times increase in traffic, whist most major stories only double the traffic.
If you are CNN.com, and you get an average traffic of 50Mbps. You could get a 100Mbps line, and be able to handle 99% of events, or you could get a 500Mbps line and handle 100% of events. The additional cost of bandwidth wouldn't be justified by that 1%-of-stories benefit.
Well, that's how I see it. They might be connected to a phat backbone, and pay by the megabyte. If that's the case, my point remains true, just for servers, instead of bandwidth. 100%-of-average overcapacity facility is easier to justify to the bosses than 1,000%-of-average overcapacity handling.
Javascript has quite a number of mouse dependant event-handlers, onMouseOver, onMouseOut, onMove, onClick, onMouseDown, onMouseUp.
Indeed. But there could be an issue, in MSIE at least; have you ever had a site with, for example, some text that follows the cursor around? If you open another window on top of that, the text follows the cursor around on the back page, even as you look at the front page.
If you couldn't work around this, the system would, well, suck.
Windows and OS/2 keep the darn pointer around even when typing
Interestingly, hide pointer is availiable for Windows. All the MS InteliMouse drivers include a control panel update. It has a 'hide pointer when typing' option.
This is true in Windows 95, at least. I think it might be built into Windows 2000 and other newer versions.
I hate it when I've spent five minutes filling out a form, click on a "help" link, and have all of that information lost.
For future reference, in many browsers (MSIE, certainly) you can right-click the link, and click 'Open in New Window'. That opens the page in a new window.
Let's see, $2500 for a robot dog + $100 in electricity oven ten years. A real dog costs, say $1/day to feed, lives ten years for $3650 on food, plus $1000 in vet bills. The robot wins hands down."
Let's see, $100 for am inflatable woman + $100 in batteries over 10 years. A real woman costs $45+ to take out for a meal, lives with you ten years for $3,000 in shoes, plus a $1000 engagement ring. The inflatable woman wins hands down.
I would expect it's because there would be very low demand. They want to advertise 'Surf the web at 10* your normal modem speed', not 'Download and Upload, both at 5 times the speed of a normal modem'.
Furthermore, ADSL isn't designed for running web servers. You'd want a fixed IP, which they would then have to provide. You'd be connected constantly, not just when you were using it. You'd expect them to provide very good uptime, which would be disproportionately expensive for them to supply.
If you want a server, get a leased line or co-location. They're designed for running servers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If all you want is hosting, there are pleanty of hosting / virtual server companies around.
I'm afraid no-one's going to go to all the hastle of reversing ADSL speed caps, configuring fixed IPs, etc etc etc for a single user. It wouldn't be cost-effective. And there aren't all that many users demanding this service. Ask around some ADSL providers, by all means, but don't get your hopes up; I've never heard of anything like this being offered.
Just sell friggin breathalyzers to the general public so they can see for themselves if they're over the legal limit.
An interesting idea, but it probably wouldn't work. Just as speedometers allow people to see if they are over the legal speed limit, people will still exceed it by 'Just a bit, it won't matter'.
If people want self regulation, they could just count how many drinke they've had, and work out from that if they can drive. Or better still, don't drive at all for 6 hours after drinking alcohol.
A better system would be a relay on the starter motor cable, that turns off when it detects alcohol. That is, people don't get arrested, they simply cannot make the car start if they are drunk. That way, people couldn't drive drunk, but wouldn't have to get arrested.
Oh, and we in the UK can but one of these. You can likely get them in America also.
Now if you think AI design is easy, why don't you go program one?
It's actually not as difficult as you make it sound. It doesn't have to be turing-test AI; you just need some motor management subroutines, a set of snesors with code to counteract the robot's own movement, and a centeral section to call the subroutines, and respond. A Pseudocode example:
front_distance {
Read distance from front sensor.
Return distance
}
front_movement {
If Movement = True {
return True
} else {
return False
}
}
front_movement_sub1 {
If OldDistance is not equal to (front_distance() + Distance_moved_in_10ms){
OldDistance = front_distance()
Movement = True
} else {
OldDistance = front_distance()
Movement = False
}
}
main_routine {
Spawn front_movement_sub0() as child process
While 1=1 {
If Front_Movement() AND (front_distance is less than 30cm) {
SetSpeeds(0,0)
Use_Weapon(Forwards)
SetSpeeds(-30,-30)
}
Wait 20ms
}
}
Use_Weapon(HitDirection) {
Point weapon in HitDirection
Activate Weapon
}
LeftMotor(lspd) {
Set left motor running at lspd
}
RightMotor(rspd) {
Set right motor running at rspd
}
Clearly, this is just an example, but the point it illustrates is: Driving a robot can be broken down into a finite number of logical steps. In the above example, if an item is in front of the robot, within 30cm, and moving, the robot stops, hits at it once, and reverses at speed 30. Other functions coud easily be added, i.e. "if there is nothing within 150cm in any direction, spin left or right for a random time, then move forward" or "If front is within 10cm of a non-moving object (i.e. a wall), run backwards for one second, then turn 180 degrees plus a random number between -45 and 45 degrees, and run forwards".
Granted, working out all the requisite functions of a robot driver would be challenging, but I think it could be fun. Plus your robot could have really fast reactions, and that would be cool. It could make for an interesting program, certainly.
Re:But really, what's the difference?
on
Pentium IV Hits 2 Ghz
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Hey,
is there really a big difference between 1.9 and 2.0 on the software that people use today?
Well, that would depend on what you are doing. If you were, for example, word processing, you would notice practically no difference, since for the majority of the time, the processor is not being fully utilised anyway. In word processing, bottleknecks are more likely to occour from a program being slow to load (i.e. hard disk speed), or the fact Microsoft Word sometimes likes to move things on the page around for what seems like no reason at all.
If, however, you are doing a highly processor intensive task, like rendering a 3D scene in Caligri TrueSpace 4, you would (in theory, at least) notice a reduced render speed, if you cared to time it, because the processor is being used extensively in the rendering operation.
The problem with this, as with many things, is that the ultra-high-end chips are almost always disproportionately expensive. A 2Ghz chip will likely cost more than twice what a 1Ghz chip costs. Furthermore, a second-hand processor takes a big price hit, so staying 'bleeding edge' isn't really an option. If you have enough money to upgrade every time a new chip comes out, you have enough to get a rendering cluster, which will be faster.
So, where will a 2Ghz chip find a market? Firstly, among 'Power-stupid' people. They will buy ir because hey, it's... like... TWO gigahertz, which is twice as fast as a one gigahertz chip. They likely won't actually need the power, but they have more money than they know what to do with, and iw will be good to brag about.
Secondly, when it's cheaper. As the price drops off, if it can beat AMD's best offerings, people looking for high-end systems will like it.
Thirdly, corperate types who were considering making the switch to AMD because the performance was so much better. If Intel can beat AMD's performance, then AMD will be less attaractive because the performance isn't better, and 'Nobody ever got fired for buying Intel'.
Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I live in the United Kingdom, and we have had something similar to this for a while, and it has caused no real problems.
Voters' registration records are publically availiable. Also, people who don't ask to be ex-directory have thier phone numbers listed in thier regional phone book.
Anyway, a company called I-CD Publishing makes the UK Info Disk. They got all the (public) phone books, and all the (public) voter's records, and correlated the two, producing a range of CDs, and I gather they offer online searches as well. Linited versions of these CDs (i.e. only 15 records returned per search) were made availiable on the front of several computer magazines and the like.
I have one of these CDs; all it does is make accessing publicly availiable information easy. If I want a phone number for someone living a long way away, I can look them up on the CD, assuming I know the area in which they live, and thier second name, and optionally thier first initial. Then I will get returned thier address, and telephone number (assuming they are not ex-directory).
This isn't a terribly abusable resource. Nobody is harassed by EVIL TELEPHONE MARKETING COMPANIES, because you can ask to be put on a global British Telecom do not call list, and then telemarketers do not call you. nobody is ATTACKED BY EVIL STALKERS because there isn't much stalking over here. If you get stalked, you call the police, and the person in question is arrested. There's no EVIL IDENTY THEFT because there isn't enough information availaibe to perform identy theft, and banks tend to like solid proof of your identity before they will give you money.
So, what's my point? Having some information publically availiable online, i.e. name / address / telephone number, does not instantly make your society degrade into anarchy. It is, however, a useful reference tool for legimate uses.
Don't get too paranoid. Anyone who has the time to search for your personal details out of the millions of other people in the country likely has enough free time to wander down to the county records office and ask for the relevent records.
Easier access to this information can be used by spammers, telemarketers, etc. to create mailing lists that bombard us with all kinds of garbage.
Wouldn't it be easier to have a government-run list of telephone numbers, and to say 'These people will not recieve telemarketing calls'?? You could then instill a fine of, say, $5,000 for every marketing call to a number on the list.
I mean, many people already have thier details on record. That's how all the postal spam you get has your name and address on it. Instead of making public records hard to get, why not simply offer a marketing opt-out procedure?
the science major today should be what classical Greek and Latin were in the 19th century, and the liberal-arts major was in the 20th: the union card required to enter the professional world.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey,
What are the uses of cryptography as a "Human Rights Tool"?
On Phil Zimmerman's website, he has some letters from human rights groups. You might consider looking at them.
If in fact tools such as PGP are used by terrorists, how do governments protect against this?
They don't, to put it simply. There would be no beneift - I don't think the terrorists would send e-mails saying "Ready for the WTC attack on 09/11, I have brought knives and plane tickets". They would use a code of some sort, or maybe even phone calls, postal mail or even face-to-face meetings.
Michael
Hey,
British citizens have "chosen" to give up their freedom for nothing.
The problem is: We havn't given up our freedom. We just have a few video cameras up in large, public areas like shopping centers and suchlike.
We can trust the government not to match the video cameras with pictures from photo-ID cards and photo driving licenses, using face-recognition technology to track every citizen's movement. Why? Well, why would they want to? it would have a significant cost, and would not produce any useful data.
Furthermore, when you're in the street, you have no implicit right to privacy. A policeman could stand on a long pole with a pair of binoculars, looking for crime, and that wouldn't be invading your privacy. A camera is simply a more practical way of doing that.
The british government has no interest in invading citizen's privacy. They want to prevent crime. We havn't lost our 'freedom'; we have simply allowed a crime-preventing tool to be effectively but not opressively utilised, leading to a drop in crime.
And I'm all for that.
Michael
Hey,
I don't think Osama used America Online
From the article:
Other bin Laden agents make for the internet cafes that have sprung up in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. They use the most common service providers, all of them American, and refer to each other and to bin Laden himself by their first names. In the welter of e-mail traffic their messages go unnoticed.
Maybe AOL is the ISP that provides service to the cybercafes.
Michael
Hey,
I am much in support of the cockpit/cargo isolation idea.
Alas, this would would cause a problem for most non-suicide missions, those with an aim like 'Release General X' or 'Give us $10,000,000' or whatever.
The terrorists could say 'We don't plan on killing anyone, but we will shoot one hostage every minute, until you unlock the door.
This would not be the ideal solution.
Michael
Hey,
It's time for Sheriff Uncle Same to ride into town, and kick some bad-guy ass.
Well, clearly there must be justice; the guilty must be identified, and punished. But what we don't need is a wounded government, thier pride hurt, bombing a country because they suspect said country was somehow responsible for this terrible act.
War ain't the sort of thing you rush into. We mush investigate, identify the guilty, arrange thier presence in the United States for trial, try them, and if thier guilt is proven beyond all reasonable doubt, they can be executed.
That would be far more reasonable than a knee-jerk 'no-one pushes us around' air strike on Iraq or Iran or Palestein or wherever TV pundits think the attack originated from. The US has great military power, but with that power comes responsibility to see it is used rightly and justly.
Crying out 'It mush have been saddam hussein, let's lart the pinhead' and attacking a map of Iraq with a red crayon in a fit of anger is not the solution. If we want him dead, there are better ways than that, and in the end, he's just as dead.
Mob logic and racism are not the answer. Investigation, trial and punishment is, as with any other crimes. And this is what there muust be.
Michael
(Also, I would encourage you not to describe people with more moderate opinions than yours as 'cowards'. Most of us aren't cowards; We simply don't want something brash and shortsighted done. Insults and bickering help no-one.)
Hey,
There has to be retaliation for this, without a doubt.
Not retaliation. Justice. "An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi
We should identify individuals who are guilty of crimes, arrest them, allow them to be tried in accordance with law, and if they are guilty, arrange thier execution.
We can't just say 'Some evidence indicates Palistinian extremists - let's nuke a city in blind rage'. There must be due process. Guilt must be proven, and it must be done visibly and transparently. Killing foreigners in 'retaliation' will only make more people hate the united states. If they can see that only demonstrably guilty people have been killed, further 'revenge' will be far harder to justify.
Killing innocents for no reason other than to show what a big dick the US has is not an acceptable option. Visible accountability and justice is, and that is what is required.
Michael
Hey,
what does this tell us about the ability of our internet infrastructure to handle the demand in cases of crisis?
As other posters have noted, this isn't an infrastructure problem; it's a site bandwidth problem. Specifically, this event is unlike most news events. Let's say this has caused a ten-times increase in traffic, whist most major stories only double the traffic.
If you are CNN.com, and you get an average traffic of 50Mbps. You could get a 100Mbps line, and be able to handle 99% of events, or you could get a 500Mbps line and handle 100% of events. The additional cost of bandwidth wouldn't be justified by that 1%-of-stories benefit.
Well, that's how I see it. They might be connected to a phat backbone, and pay by the megabyte. If that's the case, my point remains true, just for servers, instead of bandwidth. 100%-of-average overcapacity facility is easier to justify to the bosses than 1,000%-of-average overcapacity handling.
Michael
Hey,
Javascript has quite a number of mouse dependant event-handlers, onMouseOver, onMouseOut, onMove, onClick, onMouseDown, onMouseUp.
Indeed. But there could be an issue, in MSIE at least; have you ever had a site with, for example, some text that follows the cursor around? If you open another window on top of that, the text follows the cursor around on the back page, even as you look at the front page.
If you couldn't work around this, the system would, well, suck.
Michael
Hey,
Windows and OS/2 keep the darn pointer around even when typing
Interestingly, hide pointer is availiable for Windows. All the MS InteliMouse drivers include a control panel update. It has a 'hide pointer when typing' option.
This is true in Windows 95, at least. I think it might be built into Windows 2000 and other newer versions.
Michael
Hey,
Wouldn't a better title have been "Cat"? Or perhaps "Rodent Stalker"?
Perhaps DEATH OF RATS?
Okay, maybe not.
Michael
Hey,
I hate it when I've spent five minutes filling out a form, click on a "help" link, and have all of that information lost.
For future reference, in many browsers (MSIE, certainly) you can right-click the link, and click 'Open in New Window'. That opens the page in a new window.
Michael
Hey,
Let's see, $2500 for a robot dog + $100 in electricity oven ten years. A real dog costs, say $1/day to feed, lives ten years for $3650 on food, plus $1000 in vet bills. The robot wins hands down."
Let's see, $100 for am inflatable woman + $100 in batteries over 10 years. A real woman costs $45+ to take out for a meal, lives with you ten years for $3,000 in shoes, plus a $1000 engagement ring. The inflatable woman wins hands down.
Except she isn't alive.
Michael
Hey,
I would expect it's because there would be very low demand. They want to advertise 'Surf the web at 10* your normal modem speed', not 'Download and Upload, both at 5 times the speed of a normal modem'.
Furthermore, ADSL isn't designed for running web servers. You'd want a fixed IP, which they would then have to provide. You'd be connected constantly, not just when you were using it. You'd expect them to provide very good uptime, which would be disproportionately expensive for them to supply.
If you want a server, get a leased line or co-location. They're designed for running servers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If all you want is hosting, there are pleanty of hosting / virtual server companies around.
I'm afraid no-one's going to go to all the hastle of reversing ADSL speed caps, configuring fixed IPs, etc etc etc for a single user. It wouldn't be cost-effective. And there aren't all that many users demanding this service. Ask around some ADSL providers, by all means, but don't get your hopes up; I've never heard of anything like this being offered.
Michael
Hey,
Just sell friggin breathalyzers to the general public so they can see for themselves if they're over the legal limit.
An interesting idea, but it probably wouldn't work. Just as speedometers allow people to see if they are over the legal speed limit, people will still exceed it by 'Just a bit, it won't matter'.
If people want self regulation, they could just count how many drinke they've had, and work out from that if they can drive. Or better still, don't drive at all for 6 hours after drinking alcohol.
A better system would be a relay on the starter motor cable, that turns off when it detects alcohol. That is, people don't get arrested, they simply cannot make the car start if they are drunk. That way, people couldn't drive drunk, but wouldn't have to get arrested.
Oh, and we in the UK can but one of these. You can likely get them in America also.
Michael
Hey,
doesn't it vary from person to person
Da. Could be sayink "Different Jokes for Different Folks".
Well, I thought it was funny.
Michael
So what was it NASA sent to Mars again?
A remote controlled mars lander?
Sorry, just my little joke.
Now if you think AI design is easy, why don't you go program one?
It's actually not as difficult as you make it sound. It doesn't have to be turing-test AI; you just need some motor management subroutines, a set of snesors with code to counteract the robot's own movement, and a centeral section to call the subroutines, and respond. A Pseudocode example:
Clearly, this is just an example, but the point it illustrates is: Driving a robot can be broken down into a finite number of logical steps. In the above example, if an item is in front of the robot, within 30cm, and moving, the robot stops, hits at it once, and reverses at speed 30. Other functions coud easily be added, i.e. "if there is nothing within 150cm in any direction, spin left or right for a random time, then move forward" or "If front is within 10cm of a non-moving object (i.e. a wall), run backwards for one second, then turn 180 degrees plus a random number between -45 and 45 degrees, and run forwards".
Granted, working out all the requisite functions of a robot driver would be challenging, but I think it could be fun. Plus your robot could have really fast reactions, and that would be cool. It could make for an interesting program, certainly.
That's my $0.02, anyway.
Michael
Hey,
for snailmail... Plus replying costs money, and takes far more effort
You can reply to postal spam quickly, easily and at no cost with the help of one of these. Most postal spammers will delist you too.
Well, assuming the post office doesn't pick up on the stamp and cancel all your mail...
Michael
Hey,
It looks as if Aerie Networks is ready to pounce on Metricom's assets.
What kind of name is Aerie Networks? Surely they're not named after the Cleric/Mage NPC in Baldur's Gate 2???....
Michael
Hey,
Posted by HeUnique on Thu August 30, 08:26 PM
I've never seen HeUnique before. Is he new, or have I just never noticed him before?
Michael
That's the most disinterested, apathetic attitude I've seen in a long time. Get over it? Is that how you respond to valid criticisms?
Yah. So?
Michael
(twajs)
Hey,
is there really a big difference between 1.9 and 2.0 on the software that people use today?
Well, that would depend on what you are doing. If you were, for example, word processing, you would notice practically no difference, since for the majority of the time, the processor is not being fully utilised anyway. In word processing, bottleknecks are more likely to occour from a program being slow to load (i.e. hard disk speed), or the fact Microsoft Word sometimes likes to move things on the page around for what seems like no reason at all.
If, however, you are doing a highly processor intensive task, like rendering a 3D scene in Caligri TrueSpace 4, you would (in theory, at least) notice a reduced render speed, if you cared to time it, because the processor is being used extensively in the rendering operation.
The problem with this, as with many things, is that the ultra-high-end chips are almost always disproportionately expensive. A 2Ghz chip will likely cost more than twice what a 1Ghz chip costs. Furthermore, a second-hand processor takes a big price hit, so staying 'bleeding edge' isn't really an option. If you have enough money to upgrade every time a new chip comes out, you have enough to get a rendering cluster, which will be faster.
So, where will a 2Ghz chip find a market? Firstly, among 'Power-stupid' people. They will buy ir because hey, it's... like... TWO gigahertz, which is twice as fast as a one gigahertz chip. They likely won't actually need the power, but they have more money than they know what to do with, and iw will be good to brag about.
Secondly, when it's cheaper. As the price drops off, if it can beat AMD's best offerings, people looking for high-end systems will like it.
Thirdly, corperate types who were considering making the switch to AMD because the performance was so much better. If Intel can beat AMD's performance, then AMD will be less attaractive because the performance isn't better, and 'Nobody ever got fired for buying Intel'.
Just my $0.02
Michael
Hey,
Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I live in the United Kingdom, and we have had something similar to this for a while, and it has caused no real problems.
Voters' registration records are publically availiable. Also, people who don't ask to be ex-directory have thier phone numbers listed in thier regional phone book.
Anyway, a company called I-CD Publishing makes the UK Info Disk. They got all the (public) phone books, and all the (public) voter's records, and correlated the two, producing a range of CDs, and I gather they offer online searches as well. Linited versions of these CDs (i.e. only 15 records returned per search) were made availiable on the front of several computer magazines and the like.
I have one of these CDs; all it does is make accessing publicly availiable information easy. If I want a phone number for someone living a long way away, I can look them up on the CD, assuming I know the area in which they live, and thier second name, and optionally thier first initial. Then I will get returned thier address, and telephone number (assuming they are not ex-directory).
This isn't a terribly abusable resource. Nobody is harassed by EVIL TELEPHONE MARKETING COMPANIES, because you can ask to be put on a global British Telecom do not call list, and then telemarketers do not call you. nobody is ATTACKED BY EVIL STALKERS because there isn't much stalking over here. If you get stalked, you call the police, and the person in question is arrested. There's no EVIL IDENTY THEFT because there isn't enough information availaibe to perform identy theft, and banks tend to like solid proof of your identity before they will give you money.
So, what's my point? Having some information publically availiable online, i.e. name / address / telephone number, does not instantly make your society degrade into anarchy. It is, however, a useful reference tool for legimate uses.
Don't get too paranoid. Anyone who has the time to search for your personal details out of the millions of other people in the country likely has enough free time to wander down to the county records office and ask for the relevent records.
Michael
Hey,
Easier access to this information can be used by spammers, telemarketers, etc. to create mailing lists that bombard us with all kinds of garbage.
Wouldn't it be easier to have a government-run list of telephone numbers, and to say 'These people will not recieve telemarketing calls'?? You could then instill a fine of, say, $5,000 for every marketing call to a number on the list.
I mean, many people already have thier details on record. That's how all the postal spam you get has your name and address on it. Instead of making public records hard to get, why not simply offer a marketing opt-out procedure?
Michael
Hey,
the science major today should be what classical Greek and Latin were in the 19th century, and the liberal-arts major was in the 20th: the union card required to enter the professional world.
Oh, I disagree. I find that engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people.
Michael
Hey,
You will not need a mouse or keyboard to operate the computer as it will function when you converse with it.
"It is going to be the next user interface, the last user interface," Dunietz said, explaining that it will replace the mouse.
Me: Computer, play Quake for me.
Computer: Yes, master.
The firm's philosophy is simple. If it looks intelligent and it sounds intelligence, then it must be intelligent.
Maybe they could design a context sensitive spellchecker? One that would highlight terms like "It sounds intelligence"
Michael