Not sure about a homicide, but there have been plenty of instances of people being accosted for using cameras or smartphones to take photos of kids. In many of these instances, the people accused were actually the fathers of the kids in question, but the accusers assumed the worst because Male Taking Photo Of Child = Pervert but Female Taking Photo Of Child = Loving Mother.
Google Glass and everything Nest are useless fucking trash. Even if they somehow becomes useful in the future, they'll never be worth the invasion of privacy and security risks. Take your "IoT" and show up back up your own fucking asses.
Are you talking the same features caused by a device with a camera and network capability like a cell phone? We should ban everyone wearing cell phones on their hips because they might be filming us!
Not to mention people with dress shirts who put their phones in the dress shirts with the camera facing out. Seriously, I never got the hate over Google Glass. Yes, it was overpriced (but then again it was a glorified prototype, not a consumer release) and, yes, it could record you without your knowing, but nearly everyone walking down the street has the ability to record you without you knowing about it. Walk into a bar/restaurant? Most of the patrons there are likely equipped with devices that can secretly record you. The only difference is that this is built into a pair of eyeglasses instead of a relatively small box that could be stuck in a shirt pocket or affixed to a hip.
Have you ever seen a movie where the bomb was defused with 3 minutes left on the clock. No-one will be interested until its in single digits of seconds to midnight.
That's why, if I ever turn super-villain, I'll set my bombs to detonate at 3 minutes and fourteen seconds. This way, the heroes will just be starting to decide that they should disarm the bomb when it blows up.
I wasn't saying "give parents a break because parenting is hard." I said that parents naturally want to see the good in their kids and not the bad. I do recognize when my children do something wrong and I will have serious discussions with them (backed up with punishment if need be) to explain why the action is wrong, what they should have done instead, and what the consequences of the action could have been. That being said, nobody wants to think they're doing a bad job at something. Especially when it comes to parenting. (We'll leave out those "parents" - and I use the term loosely - that don't seem to care about their kids and/or actively hurt their kids. Those people don't deserve the title "Parent.")
I hate to compare parenting to the Nigerian scams, but think of this as a similar principle. If you get hooked in a Nigerian scam, your options are to a) admit you were wrong and were fooled or b) keep believing that the whole thing is true and you weren't wrong. It can be very hard for people to admit that they were wrong/fooled so they persist with option B long past the time when any objective observer would say there was the slightest possibility that they would see any return.
Similarly, in parenting, there's a drive to think of yourself as a good parent and this means (in part) thinking that you've raised your kid right. If you raised your kid right, they should be able to make appropriate decisions about what to do and what not to do. So parents can easily fall into the trap of just assuming that their kid is turning out ok while not seeing warning signs of bad activity. It's a blind spot that parents can be tempted not to check.
The mother in the article likely fell into this trap and ignored warning signs. It doesn't mean she's a bad mother. The guy who was arrested was 19. Maybe he was very respectful to her, had a steady job, and just played some games online during his free time. To her direct observation, she wouldn't have seen anything wrong. As he was 19, I wouldn't expect her to supervise his every action, which means that bad behavior could be easily missed.
Parents have a big impact in their kids' lives, but we can only do so much. When our children get older, we just need to hope that the lessons we've imparted are stronger than any bad influences they are likely to encounter.
1) When people are arrested, their friends, family, and neighbors routinely say "I can't believe he did that. He seemed like such a nice guy."
2) Parents naturally want to see the good in their children and will ignore any bad warning signs lest their kid be anything less than perfect. (Disclosure: I'm a father of two and while I think they are mostly good kids, they are far from perfect.)
Some people are just really good at hiding their misdeeds or limiting their wrongdoings to specific areas. (e.g. Calling 911 on people playing video games.)
they just insisted on privacy safeguards and advanced notification of customers and ensuring accuracy of the list of people they would be forced to reveal the information of
That's crazy talk. Big content companies should be able to get all of the personal information of anyone they want based on the flimsiest allegation of copyright infringement!
Content company dream scenario:
Content company: "We think these people downloaded something at some point." ISP: "Here are their names, dates of birth, address, SSN, bank account information, credit card information, and employer name."
95% of driving is mundane: Stay in your lane, signal and turn here, stop there, etc. Self driving cars will likely excel at these maneuvers at first while lagging in the less mundane tasks like: avoid that car that just cut you off, snow is obscuring the road, deer runs into the road, etc.
Do I trust self-driving cars today? No, but the thing about technology is that it is constantly being improved. The first generation of consumer model self driving cars will be glorified cruise control. You'll put in your destination and keep your hands ready to take over on a moment's notice. You might even have to do this once or twice a trip. It'll be better than human drivers in most situations, but you won't activate it (or will take over from it) during risky situations. (Similar to how you disable cruise control when you see an accident ahead of you.) Subsequent generations of self-driving cars will improve more and more until the human driver backup is no longer needed.
Once self driving cars have had a few generations, they'll be better than human drivers and people will talk disdainfully about those meatbags who insist on manually controlling their automobile.
I agree that's sleazy. Just add it to the vast pile of reasons why I don't use Facebook. My social media experience tends to be with Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Those sites don't show you content unless you explicitly say "show me what this person posts." It makes it easy to avoid what you don't like and just view what you like.
No, it's not new that governments want information about how to commit illegal actions blocked, but the big issue isn't "websites engaged in illegal activities will be blocked." Instead it is "how do you know those sites actually engage in illegal activities?" It might be very easy for some random site to be accidentally added to the list or for some government official to add a site because "I think that sort of thing should be against the law." If you get a political group with enough power, this blocking could be used to silence dissent and strengthen their political power. If you go online to read the news and only see positive things about GUY_IN_CHARGE and negative things about POLITICAL_OPPONENT, you're likely to support GUY_IN_CHARGE and oppose POLITICAL_OPPONENT.
This is why checks and balances are important, but they rarely seem to appear in connection with website block lists.
Followed up with "How will the scope of this block expand in time?"
Let's say we accept that these websites are so horrible that they deserve to be blocked. Fine, they're blocked. Except now, there are some sites that the government wants blocked because they sympathize with the terrorists (though they don't actively promote terrorism). Then, there are sites that promote other heinous illegal activities that are requested to be blocked. Then some not-so-heinous illegal activities (e.g. copyright infringement). Eventually, you get to the point that any site is blocked if the government disapproves of it.
This leads to the other question: "How will the list of sites to be blocked be managed?" In other words, will it just be "Government says X should be blocked so X is blocked?" Or is there some sort of process that will keep false positives (or abusive blocks) from being added to the list?
And with any social media platform, you can control what you see based on who you follow. Don't want to see stupid memes, astrology posts, and endless photos of people's food*? Don't follow people who post these things. There are plenty of people on social media having actual conversations so you can follow them and completely block out the rest of the garbage**.
* Full disclosure: I've been guilty of posting photos of my food on social media, but I try to keep it limited.
** Always keep in mind that one person's garbage is another person's valuable content. I might not care who CURRENT_BIG_POP_STAR is dating, but other people would love to hear this information. Social media (and the Internet in general) is big enough for all of us to post our content while we ignore the content we have no interest in.
As an identity theft victim, this doesn't surprise me. The whole system is set up to protect the large companies from any liability should your personal information be misused and to place the burden on you to prove that it was indeed misused.
Given that names, DOB, address, and SSN were likely breached - which together could be used to open credit lines in a person's name - my recommendation would be to freeze your credit if you were one of the affected. It's a pain because you can't open up any new lines of credit yourself unless you first thaw your credit (and pay for it), but neither can anyone else.
It's curious that they and Anthem discovered the breaches on the same day. I know coincidence doesn't prove a linkage, but still this seems a bit suspicious.
Actually using a soldering iron isn't anything like me, personally, as I've never used one. I was aiming for "encourage the little girl to use her mind instead of acting like brainless bimbo is a life goal."
Youth has the edge on age when it comes to body fitness. However, age has the edge on youth when it comes to experience. By the time you get to 40, you've made a ton of mistakes and have (hopefully) learned from them. You know what works and what doesn't. Youth likes rolling its eyes at Age and running headlong down a path that Age says won't work. Sometimes Youth succeeds, but more than likely Age is proven right.
Or, maybe, the child could have a conversation with her toy and use her imagination to have the toy reply. Why does everything need to be preset and electronically prepared for our kids so that they don't need to use their imaginations to play?
A thousand points to the person/group that does a "positive hack." Instead of the obvious string of obscenities, have Barbie embrace geekiness and the maker culture instead of being a brainless bimbo.
Little girl: "Barbie, do you want to go shopping?" Barbie: "Sure. I could use a new soldering iron. Also, my favorite comic book has a new issue out. I can't wait to read what happens this issue!"
My phone (Motorola Droid Turbo) has a voice-activated assistant that I can enable to help launch apps, perform searches, read/reply to texts, etc. It requires an activation phrase to work (which you can customize). Unfortunately, it recognizes too much speech as the activation phrase. I set it to "Droid Activate" and it would activate with "She has a record." It got so annoying hearing the "I'm ready to take your command" beep coming from my phone during ordinary conversations that I disabled it. I didn't lose much because I can either launch the apps manually or, if I'm in a position where I can't launch apps like when I'm driving, I can just wait until I can.
Common Core isn't a curriculum and has no required materials or teaching methods.
Teachers that think outside the box can still think outside the box under Common Core.. especially because the STANDARDS set aside in Common Core have been around for decades in a lot of states!
Not in New York. Here, Common Core was implemented using EngageNY which is a series of scripts that tell teachers what subjects to cover, what to say, how to say it, what questions to ask, what kids' responses should be, and how long (down to the minute) to spend on each section.
My wife and I are fighting back against just this in New York state. Here, the politicians have enacted EngageNY which is literally a script for teachers to read. It tells them not only what subjects to cover, but what to say, how to say it, what questions to ask the kids, what their responses should be, and how long (down to the minute) to spend on each section. Gone are the days of teachers using their brains/skills and tailoring lessons to the strengths of each kid. Now, they are required to read the script and emote on command like an actor. Each kid is required to learn in exactly the same way because the politicians decided that one size really does fit all when it comes to education. And if it doesn't work, don't worry. Pearson and other big education companies are standing by to sell "solutions" such as training seminars for teachers. (Teachers need to take time off to attend Studio Classroom sessions where they learn how to follow the EngageNY script.)
Oh, and what if teachers go off-script? The politicians have that covered. Tests are administered and if the kids don't continually keep getting better on the tests, the teachers can be fired. So if a teacher wants to keep his/her job, they should spend as much time on test prep and following EngageNY as possible. Actual learning is not required.
My wife was a teacher. When we were expecting our second son, we did some budgeting and realized that, after daycare, after school care for our oldest son, and other expenses for her to continue teaching, we'd be PAYING money for her to keep her job. Her salary as a teacher was just too low. Not to mention that she had to deal with so much stress (from kids, parents, administrators) and worked so many long hours (begin before kids arrive to set up, stay late to grade tests, work on vacations to come up with new lesson plans, etc). Anyone who thinks teachers are high paid, have a cushy job, and work short hours doesn't know the first thing about teaching.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure about a homicide, but there have been plenty of instances of people being accosted for using cameras or smartphones to take photos of kids. In many of these instances, the people accused were actually the fathers of the kids in question, but the accusers assumed the worst because Male Taking Photo Of Child = Pervert but Female Taking Photo Of Child = Loving Mother.
Not to mention people with dress shirts who put their phones in the dress shirts with the camera facing out. Seriously, I never got the hate over Google Glass. Yes, it was overpriced (but then again it was a glorified prototype, not a consumer release) and, yes, it could record you without your knowing, but nearly everyone walking down the street has the ability to record you without you knowing about it. Walk into a bar/restaurant? Most of the patrons there are likely equipped with devices that can secretly record you. The only difference is that this is built into a pair of eyeglasses instead of a relatively small box that could be stuck in a shirt pocket or affixed to a hip.
Sir, we found the missing plutonium. It was under a pile of socks from the dryer, car keys, and TV remote controls.
That's why, if I ever turn super-villain, I'll set my bombs to detonate at 3 minutes and fourteen seconds. This way, the heroes will just be starting to decide that they should disarm the bomb when it blows up.
I wasn't saying "give parents a break because parenting is hard." I said that parents naturally want to see the good in their kids and not the bad. I do recognize when my children do something wrong and I will have serious discussions with them (backed up with punishment if need be) to explain why the action is wrong, what they should have done instead, and what the consequences of the action could have been. That being said, nobody wants to think they're doing a bad job at something. Especially when it comes to parenting. (We'll leave out those "parents" - and I use the term loosely - that don't seem to care about their kids and/or actively hurt their kids. Those people don't deserve the title "Parent.")
I hate to compare parenting to the Nigerian scams, but think of this as a similar principle. If you get hooked in a Nigerian scam, your options are to a) admit you were wrong and were fooled or b) keep believing that the whole thing is true and you weren't wrong. It can be very hard for people to admit that they were wrong/fooled so they persist with option B long past the time when any objective observer would say there was the slightest possibility that they would see any return.
Similarly, in parenting, there's a drive to think of yourself as a good parent and this means (in part) thinking that you've raised your kid right. If you raised your kid right, they should be able to make appropriate decisions about what to do and what not to do. So parents can easily fall into the trap of just assuming that their kid is turning out ok while not seeing warning signs of bad activity. It's a blind spot that parents can be tempted not to check.
The mother in the article likely fell into this trap and ignored warning signs. It doesn't mean she's a bad mother. The guy who was arrested was 19. Maybe he was very respectful to her, had a steady job, and just played some games online during his free time. To her direct observation, she wouldn't have seen anything wrong. As he was 19, I wouldn't expect her to supervise his every action, which means that bad behavior could be easily missed.
Parents have a big impact in their kids' lives, but we can only do so much. When our children get older, we just need to hope that the lessons we've imparted are stronger than any bad influences they are likely to encounter.
In defense of the mother:
1) When people are arrested, their friends, family, and neighbors routinely say "I can't believe he did that. He seemed like such a nice guy."
2) Parents naturally want to see the good in their children and will ignore any bad warning signs lest their kid be anything less than perfect. (Disclosure: I'm a father of two and while I think they are mostly good kids, they are far from perfect.)
Some people are just really good at hiding their misdeeds or limiting their wrongdoings to specific areas. (e.g. Calling 911 on people playing video games.)
That's crazy talk. Big content companies should be able to get all of the personal information of anyone they want based on the flimsiest allegation of copyright infringement!
Content company dream scenario:
Content company: "We think these people downloaded something at some point."
ISP: "Here are their names, dates of birth, address, SSN, bank account information, credit card information, and employer name."
95% of driving is mundane: Stay in your lane, signal and turn here, stop there, etc. Self driving cars will likely excel at these maneuvers at first while lagging in the less mundane tasks like: avoid that car that just cut you off, snow is obscuring the road, deer runs into the road, etc.
Do I trust self-driving cars today? No, but the thing about technology is that it is constantly being improved. The first generation of consumer model self driving cars will be glorified cruise control. You'll put in your destination and keep your hands ready to take over on a moment's notice. You might even have to do this once or twice a trip. It'll be better than human drivers in most situations, but you won't activate it (or will take over from it) during risky situations. (Similar to how you disable cruise control when you see an accident ahead of you.) Subsequent generations of self-driving cars will improve more and more until the human driver backup is no longer needed.
Once self driving cars have had a few generations, they'll be better than human drivers and people will talk disdainfully about those meatbags who insist on manually controlling their automobile.
I agree that's sleazy. Just add it to the vast pile of reasons why I don't use Facebook. My social media experience tends to be with Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Those sites don't show you content unless you explicitly say "show me what this person posts." It makes it easy to avoid what you don't like and just view what you like.
No, it's not new that governments want information about how to commit illegal actions blocked, but the big issue isn't "websites engaged in illegal activities will be blocked." Instead it is "how do you know those sites actually engage in illegal activities?" It might be very easy for some random site to be accidentally added to the list or for some government official to add a site because "I think that sort of thing should be against the law." If you get a political group with enough power, this blocking could be used to silence dissent and strengthen their political power. If you go online to read the news and only see positive things about GUY_IN_CHARGE and negative things about POLITICAL_OPPONENT, you're likely to support GUY_IN_CHARGE and oppose POLITICAL_OPPONENT.
This is why checks and balances are important, but they rarely seem to appear in connection with website block lists.
Followed up with "How will the scope of this block expand in time?"
Let's say we accept that these websites are so horrible that they deserve to be blocked. Fine, they're blocked. Except now, there are some sites that the government wants blocked because they sympathize with the terrorists (though they don't actively promote terrorism). Then, there are sites that promote other heinous illegal activities that are requested to be blocked. Then some not-so-heinous illegal activities (e.g. copyright infringement). Eventually, you get to the point that any site is blocked if the government disapproves of it.
This leads to the other question: "How will the list of sites to be blocked be managed?" In other words, will it just be "Government says X should be blocked so X is blocked?" Or is there some sort of process that will keep false positives (or abusive blocks) from being added to the list?
And with any social media platform, you can control what you see based on who you follow. Don't want to see stupid memes, astrology posts, and endless photos of people's food*? Don't follow people who post these things. There are plenty of people on social media having actual conversations so you can follow them and completely block out the rest of the garbage**.
* Full disclosure: I've been guilty of posting photos of my food on social media, but I try to keep it limited.
** Always keep in mind that one person's garbage is another person's valuable content. I might not care who CURRENT_BIG_POP_STAR is dating, but other people would love to hear this information. Social media (and the Internet in general) is big enough for all of us to post our content while we ignore the content we have no interest in.
As an identity theft victim, this doesn't surprise me. The whole system is set up to protect the large companies from any liability should your personal information be misused and to place the burden on you to prove that it was indeed misused.
Given that names, DOB, address, and SSN were likely breached - which together could be used to open credit lines in a person's name - my recommendation would be to freeze your credit if you were one of the affected. It's a pain because you can't open up any new lines of credit yourself unless you first thaw your credit (and pay for it), but neither can anyone else.
It's curious that they and Anthem discovered the breaches on the same day. I know coincidence doesn't prove a linkage, but still this seems a bit suspicious.
Microsoft Clippy-Zune?
Actually using a soldering iron isn't anything like me, personally, as I've never used one. I was aiming for "encourage the little girl to use her mind instead of acting like brainless bimbo is a life goal."
Youth has the edge on age when it comes to body fitness. However, age has the edge on youth when it comes to experience. By the time you get to 40, you've made a ton of mistakes and have (hopefully) learned from them. You know what works and what doesn't. Youth likes rolling its eyes at Age and running headlong down a path that Age says won't work. Sometimes Youth succeeds, but more than likely Age is proven right.
Or, maybe, the child could have a conversation with her toy and use her imagination to have the toy reply. Why does everything need to be preset and electronically prepared for our kids so that they don't need to use their imaginations to play?
A thousand points to the person/group that does a "positive hack." Instead of the obvious string of obscenities, have Barbie embrace geekiness and the maker culture instead of being a brainless bimbo.
Little girl: "Barbie, do you want to go shopping?"
Barbie: "Sure. I could use a new soldering iron. Also, my favorite comic book has a new issue out. I can't wait to read what happens this issue!"
If you've got nothing to hide using bananas, you've got nothing to fear?
My phone (Motorola Droid Turbo) has a voice-activated assistant that I can enable to help launch apps, perform searches, read/reply to texts, etc. It requires an activation phrase to work (which you can customize). Unfortunately, it recognizes too much speech as the activation phrase. I set it to "Droid Activate" and it would activate with "She has a record." It got so annoying hearing the "I'm ready to take your command" beep coming from my phone during ordinary conversations that I disabled it. I didn't lose much because I can either launch the apps manually or, if I'm in a position where I can't launch apps like when I'm driving, I can just wait until I can.
Not in New York. Here, Common Core was implemented using EngageNY which is a series of scripts that tell teachers what subjects to cover, what to say, how to say it, what questions to ask, what kids' responses should be, and how long (down to the minute) to spend on each section.
My wife and I are fighting back against just this in New York state. Here, the politicians have enacted EngageNY which is literally a script for teachers to read. It tells them not only what subjects to cover, but what to say, how to say it, what questions to ask the kids, what their responses should be, and how long (down to the minute) to spend on each section. Gone are the days of teachers using their brains/skills and tailoring lessons to the strengths of each kid. Now, they are required to read the script and emote on command like an actor. Each kid is required to learn in exactly the same way because the politicians decided that one size really does fit all when it comes to education. And if it doesn't work, don't worry. Pearson and other big education companies are standing by to sell "solutions" such as training seminars for teachers. (Teachers need to take time off to attend Studio Classroom sessions where they learn how to follow the EngageNY script.)
Oh, and what if teachers go off-script? The politicians have that covered. Tests are administered and if the kids don't continually keep getting better on the tests, the teachers can be fired. So if a teacher wants to keep his/her job, they should spend as much time on test prep and following EngageNY as possible. Actual learning is not required.
My wife was a teacher. When we were expecting our second son, we did some budgeting and realized that, after daycare, after school care for our oldest son, and other expenses for her to continue teaching, we'd be PAYING money for her to keep her job. Her salary as a teacher was just too low. Not to mention that she had to deal with so much stress (from kids, parents, administrators) and worked so many long hours (begin before kids arrive to set up, stay late to grade tests, work on vacations to come up with new lesson plans, etc). Anyone who thinks teachers are high paid, have a cushy job, and work short hours doesn't know the first thing about teaching.