That's the list I was expecting to see. Jay walking is not a crime where I live. I am sure that I have sped this year, but not to the extent that it constitutes a crime. I don't believe that I have ever written on a dollar bill, but even if I did I can't imagine anyone facing jail time for that. Drug abuse is a serious crime, but not one that I have to worry about. I do not know anyone that has committed a felony, and if I did, I would call the authorities.
Littering, really?
I am pretty sure that if you gathered up the last 20 years of my life on all of these subjects I would merit an honorable citizen award, not jail time.
That being the case, I *do* agree that there is an inherent problem with the idea of giving authorities unfettered access to too much information.
This seems like a clear case for more technology, not less. Instead of picking and choosing who to prosecute the systems should do it automatically, in the same way that red light cameras work. Your car runs a red light, you get a ticket in the mail. Sure, powerful people might try and get out of this, but the solution is to simply publish a list of everyone that got an exception. That way I could talk a judge out of giving me a speeding ticket if I was rushing my wife to the hospital, but the fat cat would probably just pay the fine rather than being put on the list of exceptions and having people wonder why he got off the hook.
Automated systems are far more likely to be fair and impartial than systems where people are involved. It is very hard to bribe a server.
Forcing people to make judgement calls guarantees that corruption will exist. The answer isn't less technology (and more people) it is more technology.
Let's not confuse the small town rumor mill with systematic and comprehensive collection of _evidence_ by the police. At the most superficial level, the former has almost no authority while the latter can and will be used in court.
I am just saying that if you value your privacy, a small town is no Utopia. However, I can't help but think that our civilization passes laws so that they can be enforced. I, personally, am pretty happy with the law, and I don't see the inherent problem with using technology to enforce the law. Assuming you don't have bad laws, why not enforce them? If you do have bad laws, you probably should fix that.
More importantly, the rumor mill has a lay perspective on the law; the only criminal behavior it's concerned with is that which actually affects the others in the town. Police, OTOH, are more than happy to enforce any violation, no matter how obscure or trivial. For example, how may times in your small town did you get mailed a ticket because the lady across the street noticed your car's registration expired last week?
It's pretty common, where I grew up, for neighbors to turn their neighbors in for stuff. Generally speaking the idea was to be on good enough terms with your neighbors so that they would talk to you first, but tensions definitely happen.
On the other hand I can't help but think that people *should* register their cars (and have insurance) and if they don't, they should have to pay a fine. In short, I don't think much of your example. If the worst thing that more technology in law enforcement did was make sure that everyone kept their vehicle registration up to date that would seem like a substantial win to me.
So, in a small town you may not be anonymous, but there "if you are innocent you should have nothing to hide" actually holds rather well, for the moral and socially useful meaning of innocent. The local pharmacist will know that you and your child are taking allergy medication, and that you're not actually cooking meth. In the police monitored city however, you end up in prison.
See the difference?
The police currently monitor use of medicines that can be used to cook meth, and I still have access to allergy medication. More surveillance should make it easier for me to a) prove I am using the medications for my allergies, and not to cook meth, and b) catch actual meth cookers. Once again, this seems like a win.
Obviously, this has to be handled carefully. However, putting cameras in police cars makes the testimony of police officers less important, not more important, as their is evidence that can be used to prove (or disprove) what the officer says. This makes getting pulled over by the police safer for all of us. Handled correctly I do not see how more camera footage couldn't also be helpful to people that are not actually breaking the law.
I don't need to have my actions monitored just in case 20 years from now I can be prosecuted for things I do now which are legal.
If in 20 years we can be prosecuted for crimes that we committed 20 years ago and that were previously legal then we will have much bigger problems than old surveillance tapes. That would require a very significant erosion of actual rights. We have statute of limitations for most crimes for a reason, and prosecuting people for actions that were previously legal would be a major change to our legal system.
I am not saying that your fears are unjustified. It is certainly possible that the future will be horrific. However, your horrific future will be horrific with or without current video surveillance.
Precisely. Anonymity is a relatively new concept, and it is over-rated as well. People do stuff all of the time because they feel it will not affect their "real lives," and that is just crap.
However, the disparity of information is a real problem. I don't mind if the police can follow my car to work and back, but I will admit that I do get somewhat concerned about the idea that they might know when my 12 year-old daughter is home alone. The answer to this sort of thing, however, is simply to make sure that the access to the data is well audited.
IIRC, something like 70-90% of US residents commit at least one illegal, (possibly felonious) act per day. But no one knows or cares about most of them. Most don't even realize they are doing so: The laws are so convoluted and arcane, and many should have been repealed decades ago.
Let's just say I find this particular statistic very hard to believe. Perhaps I would be less skeptical if you could come up with an example of a law that I break without knowing about it that could land me in prison.
I certainly agree that there are silly laws on the books, but prosecutors and judges have to worry about politics too. If they started trying to imprison people for "flicking boogers in public" there would be an outcry.
If you can't depend on your community to create just laws then you have much bigger problem than whether or not the police have a record of where you have driven your car.
I've worked in that sort of an environment as well, and you are correct. After a bit you fail to notice the cameras. However, there is a huge difference between doing something that is merely embarrassing, and doing something illegal. My guess is that if you were planning on stealing something from your employer you would spend a great deal of time thinking about those cameras.
My father is a retired judge, and I spent a few summers working in his office when he was still a public defender. During that time I came to a shocking conclusion. Criminals become criminals largely because they are too stupid to find a more reliable way to make a living. Making it easier to catch criminals does not cure this stupidity. Most criminals simply aren't rational enough to properly judge the risks involved.
In short, the cameras at your workplace probably don't actually deter criminals either. It simply makes it easier to apprehend the criminals after the fact.
Actually, the unintended consequence at some point will likely be that you'll get pulled over because the computer could not read your license plate automatically, even if it is NOT expired. The computer will handle all of the plates that it can handle automatically, and the human operator will be signaled when the computer fails. Personally, I would rather get the automated response (even if it is a ticket) than have to deal with a police officer.
I grew up in a small town. In small communities everyone tends to know your business in a way that people from the cities (or even the suburbs) would find very disconcerting. If you are worried about people watching your every move then a rural setting is not a Utopia.
Personally, I think that the dangers to "freedom" are somewhat overblown. What is legal and what is not has not changed. The difference is that our society has become a great deal better at actually monitoring individuals.
In some ways, however, it is really only a step backward in time. I grew up in a small town, and I became used to the idea that everyone around me knew who I was (and who to contact if I should step out of line). You worry about the government watching you, but from personal experience I think that you would be much better off to worry about your immediate neighbors. They are the ones that actually care about what you are up to, and it is your reputation with them that is actually most likely to effect your behavior. Yes, it is possible that the government might compile evidence of impropriety, but the worst they will realistically be able to do is tell your neighbors.
Unless, of course, you are talking about actual illegal activity, in which case you *should* be arrested. That's why we have laws.
For most of human existence it has been very difficult to hide improper behavior from your neighbors. Historically, we have lived in relatively small, very tight-knit communities, and your business was your neighbors business. The idea that you could go out in public and be anonymous is a relatively new idea. Apparently it is likely to be a short-lived idea as well.
If your definition of "freedom" includes being able to hide improper behavior from your neighbors, then yes, your freedom is in jeopardy. On the other hand, you only have to log on to facebook for a minute to realize that most people are more than happy to share the details of their life with whoever happens to be on the Internet. Most people seem to be willing to share details about their personal lives than even folks like me, that grew up knowing our neighbors' business, find uncomfortable. You can't blame government for that though.
In short, criminals are too stupid to be deterred by an increased threat of actually getting caught.
For the rest of us the idea that cameras make investigations easier (and therefore less expensive), and provide evidence that puts actual criminals in prison can generally be considered a win.
This is barely a discovery. The researchers have apparently found a temporary cure for hair loss in mice that were genetically modified to secrete abnormally high levels of corticotropin-releasing factor. It is a big leap to go from there to a cure for baldness in humans.
I would gladly watch a few ads if I could watch the shows that I wanted when I wanted to watch them. DVRs are nice, but Netflix's streaming is 100 times better. I need a break to get up and make a sandwich anyhow.
Then again, I don't mind ads so much. I buy things all the time, being informed of potential choices is not necessarily a bad thing.
I suppose we will soon see. All I know is that I have put stock Gnome and Canonical's Gnome in front of real live people, and there is no question which they prefer (it's not stock Gnome).
I think that it is much safer to say that Gnome owes nearly all of its success to Ubuntu, and that when Ubuntu takes its developers, and more importantly it's end users, Gnome is going to become irrelevant. Sure, there will still be *some* people that use Gnome. Then again, there are apparently still people that use AfterStep.
I suppose that you could look at it that way, although I think that the Canonical devs generally had good intentions when it came to working with Gnome. Either way, Canonical put Gnome on the map, and it still provides the bulk of Gnome users. Now the Gnome leadership has pissed the Canonical folk off so badly that they have basically created a fork, and worse, they've put most of their actual users squarely in the other side's camp.
Gnome 3 may be awesome, but how is anyone going to know. The former Gnome users are all going to be running Unity.
I will say this, there is a huge discrepancy in U.S. law between merely possessing copyrighted material that was obtained illegally, and actually distributing copyrighted material illegally yourself. In short, legally it is one thing if you have gigs of warez and illegal MP3s on your hard drive. It is another thing entirely if you are actively distributing someone else's copyrighted material. The laws against distributing someone else's copyrighted material without their permission are ridiculously harsh, as they were designed to stop organized crime from bootlegging records. When those laws are applied in the digital age you get cases like Jammie Thomas. She even had the excuse that she did not realize that she was distributing copyrighted material. Distributing Free Software without following the license is likely to get you far less sympathy from a judge, and far less free legal help as well.
What's more, if you are distributing your app via Apple's or Google's app store then the federal agents will have no problems finding you.
Obviously this isn't legal advice, but my guess is that if you actually paid for legal advice your lawyer would be even more direct.
That explains why it was that he announced that Nokia would be deep-sixing Symbian. He wanted to drive down the price of Nokia stock as far as possible before buying in.
There's no question that Elop's timing has cost Nokia investors money, and now it appears that the first Windows phone is almost a year out. It almost makes you wonder if Elop is actually trying to drive the stock price down. I mean, honestly, Nokia would probably have billions more in market capitalisation right now if Elop had simply been a little bit quieter about dumping Symbian. The $1 billion U.S. that Microsoft is pitching in (over 5 years) is peanuts compared to the money Nokia investors lost because of Elop's histrionics.
Unfortunately, it is not a question of being brave enough. Moonlight is not a replacement for Silverlight in the same way that starving to death is not a replacement for breakfast. I wish Moonlight was a credible replacement for Silverlight. I could even live with a little bit of DRM, and maybe the occasional poke in the eye.
However, Moonlight is so bad that I actually have my own re-implementation of Silverlight in Common Lisp that is considerably better than Moonlight. My version uses less memory, it crashes less often, and it starts up quicker, while still offering essentially the same functionality.
If you use a piece of Free Software in your software product and then distribute that product and you fail to follow the license then the folks that wrote that particular piece of software have you by the nuts. You might not like whining, but I can guarantee you that you'll like litigation a lot less. Especially because you will lose, and the penalties for copyright violation are ridiculous (at least in the U.S.). Assuming, of course, that the folks that wrote the Free Software that you "borrowed" actually care, which is probably not the case.
In fact, in this particular case the article is basically about a company that scans people's software for them, finds out if they have any licensing issues, and then offers to help you sort the licensing issues out if they find something bad. It's not really the Free Software developers that are whining. Instead it is a third party that wants you to pay them money to help you sort out a licensing issue on the off chance that the Free Software developers *do* decide to complain. You might not think that this is a service, but your legal counsel probably has a different opinion.
This is not investment advice, but what Nokia got was a deal that promises to pay over $1 billion U.S. over 5 years. I haven't read the actual terms of the deal, but I would not be surprised if Nokia actually ends up getting paid substantially less. On the other hand, Nokia stock lost 20% of its value on the news of the deal with Microsoft. That's roughly $8 billion U.S. that Nokia investors lost in a matter of minutes.
For the most part the market saw this deal as a huge negative, and even Microsoft can't afford to pay Nokia investors enough money to make up for their stock losses.
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That's the list I was expecting to see. Jay walking is not a crime where I live. I am sure that I have sped this year, but not to the extent that it constitutes a crime. I don't believe that I have ever written on a dollar bill, but even if I did I can't imagine anyone facing jail time for that. Drug abuse is a serious crime, but not one that I have to worry about. I do not know anyone that has committed a felony, and if I did, I would call the authorities.
Littering, really?
I am pretty sure that if you gathered up the last 20 years of my life on all of these subjects I would merit an honorable citizen award, not jail time.
That being the case, I *do* agree that there is an inherent problem with the idea of giving authorities unfettered access to too much information.
This seems like a clear case for more technology, not less. Instead of picking and choosing who to prosecute the systems should do it automatically, in the same way that red light cameras work. Your car runs a red light, you get a ticket in the mail. Sure, powerful people might try and get out of this, but the solution is to simply publish a list of everyone that got an exception. That way I could talk a judge out of giving me a speeding ticket if I was rushing my wife to the hospital, but the fat cat would probably just pay the fine rather than being put on the list of exceptions and having people wonder why he got off the hook.
Automated systems are far more likely to be fair and impartial than systems where people are involved. It is very hard to bribe a server.
Forcing people to make judgement calls guarantees that corruption will exist. The answer isn't less technology (and more people) it is more technology.
I am just saying that if you value your privacy, a small town is no Utopia. However, I can't help but think that our civilization passes laws so that they can be enforced. I, personally, am pretty happy with the law, and I don't see the inherent problem with using technology to enforce the law. Assuming you don't have bad laws, why not enforce them? If you do have bad laws, you probably should fix that.
It's pretty common, where I grew up, for neighbors to turn their neighbors in for stuff. Generally speaking the idea was to be on good enough terms with your neighbors so that they would talk to you first, but tensions definitely happen.
On the other hand I can't help but think that people *should* register their cars (and have insurance) and if they don't, they should have to pay a fine. In short, I don't think much of your example. If the worst thing that more technology in law enforcement did was make sure that everyone kept their vehicle registration up to date that would seem like a substantial win to me.
The police currently monitor use of medicines that can be used to cook meth, and I still have access to allergy medication. More surveillance should make it easier for me to a) prove I am using the medications for my allergies, and not to cook meth, and b) catch actual meth cookers. Once again, this seems like a win.
Obviously, this has to be handled carefully. However, putting cameras in police cars makes the testimony of police officers less important, not more important, as their is evidence that can be used to prove (or disprove) what the officer says. This makes getting pulled over by the police safer for all of us. Handled correctly I do not see how more camera footage couldn't also be helpful to people that are not actually breaking the law.
If in 20 years we can be prosecuted for crimes that we committed 20 years ago and that were previously legal then we will have much bigger problems than old surveillance tapes. That would require a very significant erosion of actual rights. We have statute of limitations for most crimes for a reason, and prosecuting people for actions that were previously legal would be a major change to our legal system.
I am not saying that your fears are unjustified. It is certainly possible that the future will be horrific. However, your horrific future will be horrific with or without current video surveillance.
Precisely. Anonymity is a relatively new concept, and it is over-rated as well. People do stuff all of the time because they feel it will not affect their "real lives," and that is just crap.
However, the disparity of information is a real problem. I don't mind if the police can follow my car to work and back, but I will admit that I do get somewhat concerned about the idea that they might know when my 12 year-old daughter is home alone. The answer to this sort of thing, however, is simply to make sure that the access to the data is well audited.
Let's just say I find this particular statistic very hard to believe. Perhaps I would be less skeptical if you could come up with an example of a law that I break without knowing about it that could land me in prison.
I certainly agree that there are silly laws on the books, but prosecutors and judges have to worry about politics too. If they started trying to imprison people for "flicking boogers in public" there would be an outcry.
If you can't depend on your community to create just laws then you have much bigger problem than whether or not the police have a record of where you have driven your car.
I've worked in that sort of an environment as well, and you are correct. After a bit you fail to notice the cameras. However, there is a huge difference between doing something that is merely embarrassing, and doing something illegal. My guess is that if you were planning on stealing something from your employer you would spend a great deal of time thinking about those cameras.
My father is a retired judge, and I spent a few summers working in his office when he was still a public defender. During that time I came to a shocking conclusion. Criminals become criminals largely because they are too stupid to find a more reliable way to make a living. Making it easier to catch criminals does not cure this stupidity. Most criminals simply aren't rational enough to properly judge the risks involved.
In short, the cameras at your workplace probably don't actually deter criminals either. It simply makes it easier to apprehend the criminals after the fact.
Actually, the unintended consequence at some point will likely be that you'll get pulled over because the computer could not read your license plate automatically, even if it is NOT expired. The computer will handle all of the plates that it can handle automatically, and the human operator will be signaled when the computer fails. Personally, I would rather get the automated response (even if it is a ticket) than have to deal with a police officer.
And I like *like* police officers.
I grew up in a small town. In small communities everyone tends to know your business in a way that people from the cities (or even the suburbs) would find very disconcerting. If you are worried about people watching your every move then a rural setting is not a Utopia.
Personally, I think that the dangers to "freedom" are somewhat overblown. What is legal and what is not has not changed. The difference is that our society has become a great deal better at actually monitoring individuals.
In some ways, however, it is really only a step backward in time. I grew up in a small town, and I became used to the idea that everyone around me knew who I was (and who to contact if I should step out of line). You worry about the government watching you, but from personal experience I think that you would be much better off to worry about your immediate neighbors. They are the ones that actually care about what you are up to, and it is your reputation with them that is actually most likely to effect your behavior. Yes, it is possible that the government might compile evidence of impropriety, but the worst they will realistically be able to do is tell your neighbors.
Unless, of course, you are talking about actual illegal activity, in which case you *should* be arrested. That's why we have laws.
For most of human existence it has been very difficult to hide improper behavior from your neighbors. Historically, we have lived in relatively small, very tight-knit communities, and your business was your neighbors business. The idea that you could go out in public and be anonymous is a relatively new idea. Apparently it is likely to be a short-lived idea as well.
If your definition of "freedom" includes being able to hide improper behavior from your neighbors, then yes, your freedom is in jeopardy. On the other hand, you only have to log on to facebook for a minute to realize that most people are more than happy to share the details of their life with whoever happens to be on the Internet. Most people seem to be willing to share details about their personal lives than even folks like me, that grew up knowing our neighbors' business, find uncomfortable. You can't blame government for that though.
In short, criminals are too stupid to be deterred by an increased threat of actually getting caught.
For the rest of us the idea that cameras make investigations easier (and therefore less expensive), and provide evidence that puts actual criminals in prison can generally be considered a win.
This is barely a discovery. The researchers have apparently found a temporary cure for hair loss in mice that were genetically modified to secrete abnormally high levels of corticotropin-releasing factor. It is a big leap to go from there to a cure for baldness in humans.
I see NOTHINK!
(perhaps I should get myself a 3-d monocle).
I would gladly watch a few ads if I could watch the shows that I wanted when I wanted to watch them. DVRs are nice, but Netflix's streaming is 100 times better. I need a break to get up and make a sandwich anyhow.
Then again, I don't mind ads so much. I buy things all the time, being informed of potential choices is not necessarily a bad thing.
I suppose we will soon see. All I know is that I have put stock Gnome and Canonical's Gnome in front of real live people, and there is no question which they prefer (it's not stock Gnome).
I think that it is much safer to say that Gnome owes nearly all of its success to Ubuntu, and that when Ubuntu takes its developers, and more importantly it's end users, Gnome is going to become irrelevant. Sure, there will still be *some* people that use Gnome. Then again, there are apparently still people that use AfterStep.
Ah, those were the days.
I suppose that you could look at it that way, although I think that the Canonical devs generally had good intentions when it came to working with Gnome. Either way, Canonical put Gnome on the map, and it still provides the bulk of Gnome users. Now the Gnome leadership has pissed the Canonical folk off so badly that they have basically created a fork, and worse, they've put most of their actual users squarely in the other side's camp.
Gnome 3 may be awesome, but how is anyone going to know. The former Gnome users are all going to be running Unity.
I will say this, there is a huge discrepancy in U.S. law between merely possessing copyrighted material that was obtained illegally, and actually distributing copyrighted material illegally yourself. In short, legally it is one thing if you have gigs of warez and illegal MP3s on your hard drive. It is another thing entirely if you are actively distributing someone else's copyrighted material. The laws against distributing someone else's copyrighted material without their permission are ridiculously harsh, as they were designed to stop organized crime from bootlegging records. When those laws are applied in the digital age you get cases like Jammie Thomas. She even had the excuse that she did not realize that she was distributing copyrighted material. Distributing Free Software without following the license is likely to get you far less sympathy from a judge, and far less free legal help as well.
What's more, if you are distributing your app via Apple's or Google's app store then the federal agents will have no problems finding you.
Obviously this isn't legal advice, but my guess is that if you actually paid for legal advice your lawyer would be even more direct.
Laugh if you want, but Microsoft spent far more than that getting people to buy the original XBox.
Since this came up in a thread about Mormons, I thought I should mention that Mormons are the exception to this rule.
That explains why it was that he announced that Nokia would be deep-sixing Symbian. He wanted to drive down the price of Nokia stock as far as possible before buying in.
Well played Elop.
There's no question that Elop's timing has cost Nokia investors money, and now it appears that the first Windows phone is almost a year out. It almost makes you wonder if Elop is actually trying to drive the stock price down. I mean, honestly, Nokia would probably have billions more in market capitalisation right now if Elop had simply been a little bit quieter about dumping Symbian. The $1 billion U.S. that Microsoft is pitching in (over 5 years) is peanuts compared to the money Nokia investors lost because of Elop's histrionics.
Unfortunately, it is not a question of being brave enough. Moonlight is not a replacement for Silverlight in the same way that starving to death is not a replacement for breakfast. I wish Moonlight was a credible replacement for Silverlight. I could even live with a little bit of DRM, and maybe the occasional poke in the eye.
However, Moonlight is so bad that I actually have my own re-implementation of Silverlight in Common Lisp that is considerably better than Moonlight. My version uses less memory, it crashes less often, and it starts up quicker, while still offering essentially the same functionality.
(format t "~a~%" "epic fail!")
I'm not even a Lisp hacker.
If you use a piece of Free Software in your software product and then distribute that product and you fail to follow the license then the folks that wrote that particular piece of software have you by the nuts. You might not like whining, but I can guarantee you that you'll like litigation a lot less. Especially because you will lose, and the penalties for copyright violation are ridiculous (at least in the U.S.). Assuming, of course, that the folks that wrote the Free Software that you "borrowed" actually care, which is probably not the case.
In fact, in this particular case the article is basically about a company that scans people's software for them, finds out if they have any licensing issues, and then offers to help you sort the licensing issues out if they find something bad. It's not really the Free Software developers that are whining. Instead it is a third party that wants you to pay them money to help you sort out a licensing issue on the off chance that the Free Software developers *do* decide to complain. You might not think that this is a service, but your legal counsel probably has a different opinion.
This is not investment advice, but what Nokia got was a deal that promises to pay over $1 billion U.S. over 5 years. I haven't read the actual terms of the deal, but I would not be surprised if Nokia actually ends up getting paid substantially less. On the other hand, Nokia stock lost 20% of its value on the news of the deal with Microsoft. That's roughly $8 billion U.S. that Nokia investors lost in a matter of minutes.
For the most part the market saw this deal as a huge negative, and even Microsoft can't afford to pay Nokia investors enough money to make up for their stock losses.