It is no longer Kids will be kids, kids and gangs especially are not as much a criminal element like the gangsters of the 1930's they are a pack of wild humans, they don't do crimes because of things like money and power (in a society scale) they do it for Survival, Dominance, or Acceptance amongst their group. In my mind these kids (and adults too) are wild animals who happen to be human species.
Um, didn't you know there is no such thing as a civilized human? These kids prove that. If you could civilize people by public education and such, this would be stopped in a generation or two. Once we started this whole urbanization thing, I'm pretty sure we've been stuck with the problem.
I find it funny. These kids are apparently getting their Survival, Dominance, or Acceptance amongst their group kicks. If they felt a part of the larger society and not completely dominated by it, they might care a bit more than issues of their own survival. The goal is to make the kids half way civilized citizens. By my mind, you should recruit them to fix the problem. Sure this is your turf, do you really want your turf to be a dump? Give them strict polished uniforms to wear, the flashier the better, and have them patrol the streets.
The kids who gather there are an effing nuisance, they insist on playing football right in front of the cars trying to use the car park, they harrass people and treat adults there like crap...
You never, ever see the police turn up. They do *nothing*. The parents of the kids do *nothing*. For the reasons listed above, everyone else does *nothing*. The kids, meanwhile, go mental. It's a total failure of control.
I know that I shouldn't belittle your entire problem, but I find it funny. It isn't a failure of control at all. Its actually democracy at its roots. Those of the peer group finally have limited power over another group that has historically always had control over them.
I'd dislike the kids behavior as well. But here is the thing. They finally do have control. Those that use force/control measures have control over those that don't. The police and their parents don't care. So these kids have some limited control over those older them, the age group of folks that usually sets rules.
I understand this. There is a part of me that thinks that the voting age needs to drop to 12 years old just so kids will actually be a part of the democracy instead of feeling like they are growing up in a prison. What am I saying? It's the UK of course they feel like they are growing up in a prison!
And if it came to an armed revolt, it would be like the US Army vs Iraq... no not Iraq... Iraq had tanks, rocket launchers, fighter planes, SAM installations, a proper disciplined armed forces each armed and trained with using automatic weapons, etc, etc, etc. And they couldn't hold off the US at all. What do you think some angry rabble with rifles and pistols is going to accomplish in a pitched battle?
Armed revolution is much less interesting than reality TV or celebrity gossip. Bread and Circuses. Keep the masses fed and entertained and you can get away with anything.
I'm just waiting for them to open up the RIAA and MPAA libraries. That's the ultimate circus that will appease us while the government can go do whatever else they want. What do I care as long as I have free music, free tv, free internet, and free porn and even free match making options on the internet so I can find willing partners into my fetishes! Who cares about what the government is doing as long it leaves us to our pleasures?
Long live Bread and Circuses! Long live the Emperor!
For all the incessant claims that the world is ending, that we're losing all of our freedoms, and that the "enemy" has won and we are all doomed to live a dystopian nightmare, I've noticed a few things.
* The sun still shines (unless you live in Seattle, in which case you get "the rain still falls." heh).
* You're still allowed to rant and scream about the government.
* Nobody is beating your door down because you think the government sucks.
I think the present US government and the way most of its citizens/population is managed should be a source of pride for future dictatorships. Citizens will put up with tons of crap if they are raised with it and as long as you give them some areas where they can rant and rave. Websites like slashdot are great for a dictatorship to control their republic/democracy because most will be content to rant and rave in non-effective forums such as slashdot/digg or their myspace pages. There is no reason to go all storm trooper on those folks. They don't matter if they aren't trying to actively change government.
CmdTaco isn't a political figure and the candidates that slashdot support (want to win) don't win elections. So although there are thousands of people that view and comment here, we aren't an effective means of change. Heck, we can't even agree to build an IT union that sole purpose would be to get us more money or higher benefits for less of our work.
I think all dictatorships of the future will be controlled republics/democracies. Using present day population management, the citizenry don't raise up and change government. Heck, look how many peasant up risings China and Europe have had throughout their histories. The trick is controlling the government without the bulk of the effective voters/parties noticing. Heck, now a days both parties are too similar on core issues and its only the extreme issues that people take sides with. Honestly, I could care less about abortion or gay marriages, I want lower tax rates. Any political figure has to take a stand on abortion, gay marriage, and a dozen other issues that they might not really care about to get into office to finally try to do anything. It's easy to change your opinion on petty extreme issue if you never really cared about it in the first place.
The beauty with our system is that it takes those that do try to change it into the system so they become what they were trying to fight.;)
At least the government is still trying to convince detractors of this program that they'll ask for warrants and whatnot; Google does it with impunity, daily, and you think it's cool!
Wake up, people. Be consistent in your positions. If you're going to whine about how The Man(tm) is trying to make 1984 look like child's play, then complain about Google basically doing the same exact thing, with *YOUR* help (but in a much cooler way).
Totally different. Google is us doing it. The government is some one else doing it to us. It doesn't matter what the "it is" we'd do it to our selves/families with out problems, but it would be a religious sin/moral civil war if a government was doing it to us.
Google isn't the government, yet. Google really should start google government pages that are designed to small communities to get as much of their government on the internet as possible in as much as consistent way possible. The fed and states couldn't get everyone to go their way, but if Google because the myspace of small town websites, then the google government template would become the default that most kept out of habit.
With the way things have been going, I'm surprised they're still even pretending to care about due process. And really, I wouldn't have a problem with law enforcement gaining access to spy satellite photography as long as they can only get it after supplying evidence to establish probable cause that a specific person committed a specific crime in a specific time and place. But I'm very concerned that little requirement is going to fall by the wayside and they'll be able to spy on citizens waiting for anybody to slip up.
Um, why? The specific evidence would be the recording of the person and it would be for the warrant for the person's arrest not for access to recordings of the movements. They'll know that only this exact handful of people were there at the time so they'll just arrest all of them then sort it out by questioning.
Where this will be really annoying/good is for all those leaving the scene of a traffic accident. In most states its written somewhere if you've witnessed the accident then you can't leave the scene until you've given a police statement. Well, if police had access to that kinda of spying power, then they could fine everyone that left the scene of an accident. You didn't think those types of laws would be taken off the books did you?
Actually, I'm with you. I think we'd more like demolish Mars for building material rather than terraform it. That's what those that want to spend centuries in space forget. If you have the tech to live long term in space, why was it we'd tie ourselves back to a planet again? No, its much more likely we'd demolish all the planets except Earth so we'd have them as building materials for space based humanity.
Earth wouldn't be able to stop them from doing it either. If you have the tech to mine a planet and live in space, then you don't need Earth except for historical/ its the homeworld type reasons. But if it came to a war, they'd just blow Earth up and use it as building materials as well. After awhile, they'd even forget that they came from a planet.
By the time the cost of technology required to go to Titan falls to a reasonable level, we should have already passed the need to use hydrocarbons as our main source of energy.
Shh, we need to convince the government that need this. It would force the development of either solar sails, ion drives, or fusion drives and some nice energy sources to get there. Of course by the time, we actually get there, we won't "need it" anymore, but that's not the point. We'd be in space with nice intra solar drives and a some type of nice energy source.
I was always curious why futurists and cyborg fanboys get RFID chips implanted underneath their skin. What's wrong with just wearing one on a ring or perhaps a chain around your neck? Maybe both for multiple redundancy. Does it really happen THAT often you go to the pub for a few pints and comeback so drunk you've lost all your possessions? Does that slim probability warrant tagging yourself like cattle?
I just thought that they were stupid. I wear a watch nearly every where I go outside the home. If I were going to play around with home automation or tracking myself or other family members it would be through physical gifts that they'd keep on their person. Of course, it can be evaded. The system where RFID is injected into a person "can be" evaded as well, it's just much more difficult for your average person to remove.
I was shocked to hear someone on TV say they got their whole family implanted "after 9/11 because it would make them safer". I'm sure it did:-/ You can mock all you like, but how many times has a building that they were occupying had an aircraft crash into it since the implantation?
By that logic, I use my regularly reading of slashdot and also regularly going to the bath room as the real reasons that we've not had any more major instances of terrorism in the US.
Probably the best solution would be to put anyone espousing religious ideas into a mental hospital until they get better.
Um, they don't. That's really why this country was founded. To have "safe area" to dump those religious radicals that Britain/Europe didn't want at home. Have you seen how those early colonies where setup? They were all strict church states. It wasn't until they had to get along that this whole freedom of religion came around. Of course we are all religious crazies compared to Europe. This is where they exported their worst folks. Heck, I even believe those that spread atheism are religious crazies spreading what they belief/hold as the one true religion.
I think humanity needs to belief in and worship something. It's just who we are. I actually think the first socialist/communists/and fascists had the same spread their religion impulses and were just using them to spread the faith. Heck, we claim to do it as well with spreading republics/democracies.
I said a few days ago that we need junior high classes in addiction management. You can be addicted to anything. Apparently, it is very easy to get addicted to spreading a faith/moral code.
The home of the future... 1,200-1,500 sq ft for $60-80K that uses 1/4-1/3 of the power current homes need to heat/cool the house, laundry/kitchen appliances, and TV/computer stuff.
The home of the future isn't a nagging bitch telling me that I need to move all my RFIDed stuff where it recommends or that I need to cook such and such recipes or and that I need to use exactly this type of soap in their app.
The ultimate app of the future would be a robot maid that does cooking, yard work, house hold cleaning, and running to the store to buy the recipes that you want even in home as old as one built in the 1950s.
I wonder how many people turned to other entertainment venues due to the strike. If there is NOTHING good on, I am sure some people cut back on their tv watching. Now that viewers have so many options (ie netflix, internet downloads, itunes tv, youtube, dvd kiosks, etc) this could not have come at a worse time. I am curious if this writers strike was the tipping point for a lot of people to ween themselves from their tvs. Not from shows all together, but the old standard of scheduling your life around when your show comes on and sitting through commercials.
I grew up in the 80s. This device that you might not have heard of called a VCR did that for us. I hear a new improved device called TIVO has been invented. Which is like the magic of VCRs with out the tapes!
I couldn't tell you how little that my family ever views "live" TV. If we want to watch a TV series, we generally buy the season DVDs. My wife's got her 5 seasons of Smallville. I've got all of B5. We bought Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show Season DVDs for the kids. My kids really don't know what ads during TV is all about. They know how to load DVDs and watch what they want when we let them watch TV. This writers strike hasn't affected my family because we've not regularly boardcast TV in something like close to 7-8 years now. I can't say that missing the entire realty TV show thing/suvivor spin offs was a negative.
These people WERE ON WATCH LISTS. If the government had been any good at doing it's job with the information it already had and the means that it already had then then there would have been no attacks.
New methods to annoy the general population are not the answer.
New methods that only annoy the general population are so that the general population will know that the government is doing something about something which they can't solve, stop or prevent. Like everything of this nature it'll either get worse and worse, or enough of the wrong sort of people will get annoyed that those in power will change the annoying restrictions so the general population isn't so annoyed any more.
I am not American but I wonder why you have such problems with personal identity numbers. Here in Sweden we had them since 1947 and we all have ID cards with this number, name, address and a picture. Its really an easy way to identify yourself. All organizations also have an identity number.
We've always been against ID measures. We've never liked the entire SSN thing. DLs are needed evil. That we even have to register births is almost a mortal sin.
The thing is that we do know that they can be useful to have. Heck, we'd love to have every product/thing that we've purchased tracked so that we can keep track of it and where their at within our home. We mainly hate the idea of others keeping track of us or our stuff. We don't want the government, various corporations, our church, or our moms knowing what stuff we have in our home and where its at. Where I live there isn't a strip club. There would be briefly, but the local churches would take note of everyone that went. So if you were unwilling to be monitored/harassed by your church then you'd not go to the local strip club.
There is a part of me convinced that we aren't really worried about some deep dark evil people in government telling us what to do. We don't want the little old ladies down the street (or our mothers) monitoring us or telling us what to do or what not to do. The truly evil government will make it easy/trivial for mom, grand mom, and the church that you are a member of to always monitor you esp when you are 21-30 or just get married and haven't yet had kids, or heck you have kids 1-5 year's old and how you are raising them.
Having said all of that in my opinion the majority of US government is grossly incompetent and they have no business having access to my personal data. Just because I haven't figured out some cataclysmically stupid and devastating thing to do with my own personal data does not mean that some ass in government can't come with something (which would invariably be worse).
If they spent all this time & money understanding what about American society creates many addicts we'd be done already. Limiting purchases of cold medicine is just drug war theater
Addiction isn't a bad thing. Not controlling your addiction is. You can be addicted to anything: sex, food, drinks, games, sports, work, church, events of various nature, anything. As long as your addiction goes unnoticed by those around you and your family isn't concerned then there shouldn't be any big deal about it. If you addicted to something in a dangerous manner like unprotected sex with many partners then your family has valid concerns on your health. You can be addicted to video games or tv. I didn't lose a scholarship because of an addiction to video games, tv, or socializing with my peer group, but I encountered many freshmen that did.
I think we need a required junior high class on addiction management; it would be enough for most of us. Knowing the difference between enough for a good time and I'm ruining the rest of my life because of this thing is important, but apparently non obvious. An addiction to work or church can ruin marriages/relationships.
Just pull up the most useful math constants pages through wikipedia and use them as the source for your patents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
Any one that pretends to be a math geek should have a book like Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers setting on their shelf somewhere. (http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-Gullberg/dp/039304002X/ref=pd_sim_b_title_45) It has a very interesting section on the history of computing pi and the various methods. If I recall correctly, there was brief contest of who could put the most digits, but then it was "discovered" that you could use some method to put as many digits as you wanted. I think it got boring at that point and the real math guys moved to other stuff. 22/7 and 355/113 were "good enough" before computers and if you really cared about the precision then you'd be using the better methods to obtain as many freaking digits as you needed. Now that we've got computers, the computer guys have done pi to millions/billions of digits, but only number theory geeks care about that.;) 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 is what the windows cal uses so that's far more than good enough for your average person. What do you really need that many digits in pi for anyway?;)
Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands.
If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that?
I think that we should try the expand by conquest for a brief while. Of course, I think we should be massively trying to make Iraq become the next US state. I think the US messed up by not annexing Mexico when we had the chance. The reason Mexico exists as a separate country is because of racism in the US. The US at the time wanted a free white christain nation. They didn't want blacks or Indians to be citizen's in their white republic. The religious angle came into as well because Mexico at the time was almost entirely Catholic and those in the US also didn't want to add new Catholics to the mix of states. To be honest, Mexico would have come in as a free state and would have likely caused the civil war to happen sooner.
I'm honest. Most of the US doesn't give a shit about the middle east. We wanted to kick the shit out of countries for 9/11 and our leaders gave us two acceptable whipping boy nations. The reason that I'd like Iraq to be a US state is because it would give them a say in how the US is run and the rest of the nation would pay about as much attention to Iraq as they do to Arkansas or Alaska.
Dirty politics happens in the US as well. It's been awhile since we've beaten up losers or sent thugs to elections/polls to keep out those that would vote against the local party boss. It's one of the reasons that we now have secret ballots so employers and random thugs don't threaten people for voting the wrong way.
Let's be honest. The US is against other democracies taking actions that would be against the US interest. We'd rather an ancient Egyptian God King be in charge as long he supports our interests. The only way we'd really "care" about another democracy was if it was actually apart of our democracy system. I understand why the US hasn't grown and it's kinda of sad about what's limited US.
We've seen what kinda of profits spam brings in. I wonder how profitable this is.
Heck, spyware/adware, or some shady P2P programs could have something like this. Reminds me of what happened to http://www.shareaza.com/. It's claimed by a group that be like this. That address used to be shareaza's main site, and it easy for many to not know to go to http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/ for the new updates.
When you look at board games which do you think do better, the really complex Avalon Hill games that target a very select audience or Candy Land and Life? As much as I live Settlers of Cattan and Axis and Allies, I see Monopoly on more shelves at homes than of the previous.
When you make something easier to understand, you're going to get more market share: lowest common denominator, right?
We've got Monopoly, Life, some Monopoly JR game, and a couple of those Candy Land type of games. You know the best game system that out sells all three consoles? Decks of cards. You've got more people playing card games than "video games." I've only played those Avalon Hill type of games with one friend back in high school. That guy must have had 20+ of the games and could tell you how to play all of them. We'd start by spending the first hour trying to learn the rules, the next hour trying to setup the board/pieces and 5-6+ hours actually trying to play. I hate to say it, but at least every one knows how to play Life and Monopoly. They may not be the best games out there, but they are the most widespread that you can find other players. Video/online games have the advantage of easily hooking you up with/against other humans. Even if the game's AI is trashy as long as the human multi player part is good you can sell a solid game and nearly always find some descent humans to play against.
"Are governments really going to say "tough shit" and encourage people to just pirate content?"
Some are imposing a tax, others are investigating just completely legalising p2p. Yes, remember that democracy is about the interests of the population, not just IP "owners".
Um, it all goes back to the bread and circuses thing. The internet and most of the content on it is the modern bread/circus. Heck, you can cut back on giving them any more bread as along as they have their circus to play with. All content producers are lucky that their content isn't public domain on production. Of course, they could stop the whole recording of content thing and go back to live performances with a cover charge as the sole way to view/listen to music/theater content.
Everybody loves bashing RIAA, MPAA and the big bad studios, but come on: The Lord of the Rings was originally published in *1955* (more than 50 years ago). Tolkien died in 1973 (more than 35 years ago). The publishers really had enough time to make money; it should be public domain by now. Yes, I know copyright usually expires 50/70 years after the author's death, but these laws really need updating.
I'd agree mainly so that we can get 3-5 additional Lord of the Rings movies from other studios. It'd would be like those Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and other Disney type movies. All of them were based off stories from a long time ago and any other studio could make a Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella movie as long as it doesn't use the Disney characters.
I also support the Tolkien Trust on this mainly because it does need its split. It's one thing if the content was already PD, but just cause we all like/want the content doesn't mean we can make something PD at our will. It's like saying Batman, Spider man, and Super man should all be public domain since we all like/want to see that content. It's not quite that easy. The content makers need to have a way to make money/royalties/ a slice of the ad revenue/ or what ever your magic funding source is.
Slashdot Mirror
Guys print this out and hand it to your HR person. Here are things every new hire should know.
Balancing a checkbook
Clicking on the up and down arrows of a vertical scrollbar
Commuting
Extracting square roots
Handwriting (How to fill out forms and sign stuff and write notes.)
Having Cash (and how to properly make change)
Long division?
Look for a job in the classifieds?
Looking up a business on the yellow pages
Local Grocery Store?
Paying for something with a check
Playing solitaire with playing cards
Reading a paper map
Searching a card catalog
Using a cell phone to make a call
Untangling the cord of a telephone
Using a card catalog
Using a fax machine
Using the Dewey Decimal System
Zipping your pants
If your new hire can't do any of those, you do you really want them?
It is no longer Kids will be kids, kids and gangs especially are not as much a criminal element like the gangsters of the 1930's they are a pack of wild humans, they don't do crimes because of things like money and power (in a society scale) they do it for Survival, Dominance, or Acceptance amongst their group. In my mind these kids (and adults too) are wild animals who happen to be human species.
Um, didn't you know there is no such thing as a civilized human? These kids prove that. If you could civilize people by public education and such, this would be stopped in a generation or two. Once we started this whole urbanization thing, I'm pretty sure we've been stuck with the problem.
I find it funny. These kids are apparently getting their Survival, Dominance, or Acceptance amongst their group kicks. If they felt a part of the larger society and not completely dominated by it, they might care a bit more than issues of their own survival. The goal is to make the kids half way civilized citizens. By my mind, you should recruit them to fix the problem. Sure this is your turf, do you really want your turf to be a dump? Give them strict polished uniforms to wear, the flashier the better, and have them patrol the streets.
The kids who gather there are an effing nuisance, they insist on playing football right in front of the cars trying to use the car park, they harrass people and treat adults there like crap...
You never, ever see the police turn up. They do *nothing*. The parents of the kids do *nothing*. For the reasons listed above, everyone else does *nothing*. The kids, meanwhile, go mental. It's a total failure of control.
I know that I shouldn't belittle your entire problem, but I find it funny. It isn't a failure of control at all. Its actually democracy at its roots. Those of the peer group finally have limited power over another group that has historically always had control over them.
I'd dislike the kids behavior as well. But here is the thing. They finally do have control. Those that use force/control measures have control over those that don't. The police and their parents don't care. So these kids have some limited control over those older them, the age group of folks that usually sets rules.
I understand this. There is a part of me that thinks that the voting age needs to drop to 12 years old just so kids will actually be a part of the democracy instead of feeling like they are growing up in a prison. What am I saying? It's the UK of course they feel like they are growing up in a prison!
And if it came to an armed revolt, it would be like the US Army vs Iraq... no not Iraq... Iraq had tanks, rocket launchers, fighter planes, SAM installations, a proper disciplined armed forces each armed and trained with using automatic weapons, etc, etc, etc. And they couldn't hold off the US at all. What do you think some angry rabble with rifles and pistols is going to accomplish in a pitched battle?
Squat. Jack Squat.
The same thing that happened the last time we tried it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
Armed revolution is much less interesting than reality TV or celebrity gossip. Bread and Circuses. Keep the masses fed and entertained and you can get away with anything.
I'm just waiting for them to open up the RIAA and MPAA libraries. That's the ultimate circus that will appease us while the government can go do whatever else they want. What do I care as long as I have free music, free tv, free internet, and free porn and even free match making options on the internet so I can find willing partners into my fetishes! Who cares about what the government is doing as long it leaves us to our pleasures?
Long live Bread and Circuses! Long live the Emperor!
Yeah, but I'm not a good enough shot to hit one of those spy satellites. I doubt you can either!
Buy a Chinese anti-satellite laser weapon?
For all the incessant claims that the world is ending, that we're losing all of our freedoms, and that the "enemy" has won and we are all doomed to live a dystopian nightmare, I've noticed a few things.
;)
* The sun still shines (unless you live in Seattle, in which case you get "the rain still falls." heh).
* You're still allowed to rant and scream about the government.
* Nobody is beating your door down because you think the government sucks.
I think the present US government and the way most of its citizens/population is managed should be a source of pride for future dictatorships. Citizens will put up with tons of crap if they are raised with it and as long as you give them some areas where they can rant and rave. Websites like slashdot are great for a dictatorship to control their republic/democracy because most will be content to rant and rave in non-effective forums such as slashdot/digg or their myspace pages. There is no reason to go all storm trooper on those folks. They don't matter if they aren't trying to actively change government.
CmdTaco isn't a political figure and the candidates that slashdot support (want to win) don't win elections. So although there are thousands of people that view and comment here, we aren't an effective means of change. Heck, we can't even agree to build an IT union that sole purpose would be to get us more money or higher benefits for less of our work.
I think all dictatorships of the future will be controlled republics/democracies. Using present day population management, the citizenry don't raise up and change government. Heck, look how many peasant up risings China and Europe have had throughout their histories. The trick is controlling the government without the bulk of the effective voters/parties noticing. Heck, now a days both parties are too similar on core issues and its only the extreme issues that people take sides with. Honestly, I could care less about abortion or gay marriages, I want lower tax rates. Any political figure has to take a stand on abortion, gay marriage, and a dozen other issues that they might not really care about to get into office to finally try to do anything. It's easy to change your opinion on petty extreme issue if you never really cared about it in the first place.
The beauty with our system is that it takes those that do try to change it into the system so they become what they were trying to fight.
At least the government is still trying to convince detractors of this program that they'll ask for warrants and whatnot; Google does it with impunity, daily, and you think it's cool!
Wake up, people. Be consistent in your positions. If you're going to whine about how The Man(tm) is trying to make 1984 look like child's play, then complain about Google basically doing the same exact thing, with *YOUR* help (but in a much cooler way).
Totally different. Google is us doing it. The government is some one else doing it to us. It doesn't matter what the "it is" we'd do it to our selves/families with out problems, but it would be a religious sin/moral civil war if a government was doing it to us.
Google isn't the government, yet. Google really should start google government pages that are designed to small communities to get as much of their government on the internet as possible in as much as consistent way possible. The fed and states couldn't get everyone to go their way, but if Google because the myspace of small town websites, then the google government template would become the default that most kept out of habit.
With the way things have been going, I'm surprised they're still even pretending to care about due process. And really, I wouldn't have a problem with law enforcement gaining access to spy satellite photography as long as they can only get it after supplying evidence to establish probable cause that a specific person committed a specific crime in a specific time and place. But I'm very concerned that little requirement is going to fall by the wayside and they'll be able to spy on citizens waiting for anybody to slip up.
Um, why? The specific evidence would be the recording of the person and it would be for the warrant for the person's arrest not for access to recordings of the movements. They'll know that only this exact handful of people were there at the time so they'll just arrest all of them then sort it out by questioning.
Where this will be really annoying/good is for all those leaving the scene of a traffic accident. In most states its written somewhere if you've witnessed the accident then you can't leave the scene until you've given a police statement. Well, if police had access to that kinda of spying power, then they could fine everyone that left the scene of an accident. You didn't think those types of laws would be taken off the books did you?
Mars. Will. NEVER. Be. Terraformed.
So we just need planetary force fields?
Actually, I'm with you. I think we'd more like demolish Mars for building material rather than terraform it. That's what those that want to spend centuries in space forget. If you have the tech to live long term in space, why was it we'd tie ourselves back to a planet again? No, its much more likely we'd demolish all the planets except Earth so we'd have them as building materials for space based humanity.
Earth wouldn't be able to stop them from doing it either. If you have the tech to mine a planet and live in space, then you don't need Earth except for historical/ its the homeworld type reasons. But if it came to a war, they'd just blow Earth up and use it as building materials as well. After awhile, they'd even forget that they came from a planet.
By the time the cost of technology required to go to Titan falls to a reasonable level, we should have already passed the need to use hydrocarbons as our main source of energy.
Shh, we need to convince the government that need this. It would force the development of either solar sails, ion drives, or fusion drives and some nice energy sources to get there. Of course by the time, we actually get there, we won't "need it" anymore, but that's not the point. We'd be in space with nice intra solar drives and a some type of nice energy source.
I was always curious why futurists and cyborg fanboys get RFID chips implanted underneath their skin. What's wrong with just wearing one on a ring or perhaps a chain around your neck? Maybe both for multiple redundancy. Does it really happen THAT often you go to the pub for a few pints and comeback so drunk you've lost all your possessions? Does that slim probability warrant tagging yourself like cattle?
I just thought that they were stupid. I wear a watch nearly every where I go outside the home. If I were going to play around with home automation or tracking myself or other family members it would be through physical gifts that they'd keep on their person. Of course, it can be evaded. The system where RFID is injected into a person "can be" evaded as well, it's just much more difficult for your average person to remove.
I was shocked to hear someone on TV say they got their whole family implanted "after 9/11 because it would make them safer". I'm sure it did :-/
You can mock all you like, but how many times has a building that they were occupying had an aircraft crash into it since the implantation?
By that logic, I use my regularly reading of slashdot and also regularly going to the bath room as the real reasons that we've not had any more major instances of terrorism in the US.
Probably the best solution would be to put anyone espousing religious ideas into a mental hospital until they get better.
Um, they don't. That's really why this country was founded. To have "safe area" to dump those religious radicals that Britain/Europe didn't want at home. Have you seen how those early colonies where setup? They were all strict church states. It wasn't until they had to get along that this whole freedom of religion came around. Of course we are all religious crazies compared to Europe. This is where they exported their worst folks. Heck, I even believe those that spread atheism are religious crazies spreading what they belief/hold as the one true religion.
I think humanity needs to belief in and worship something. It's just who we are. I actually think the first socialist/communists/and fascists had the same spread their religion impulses and were just using them to spread the faith. Heck, we claim to do it as well with spreading republics/democracies.
I said a few days ago that we need junior high classes in addiction management. You can be addicted to anything. Apparently, it is very easy to get addicted to spreading a faith/moral code.
The home of the future... 1,200-1,500 sq ft for $60-80K that uses 1/4-1/3 of the power current homes need to heat/cool the house, laundry/kitchen appliances, and TV/computer stuff.
The home of the future isn't a nagging bitch telling me that I need to move all my RFIDed stuff where it recommends or that I need to cook such and such recipes or and that I need to use exactly this type of soap in their app.
The ultimate app of the future would be a robot maid that does cooking, yard work, house hold cleaning, and running to the store to buy the recipes that you want even in home as old as one built in the 1950s.
I wonder how many people turned to other entertainment venues due to the strike. If there is NOTHING good on, I am sure some people cut back on their tv watching. Now that viewers have so many options (ie netflix, internet downloads, itunes tv, youtube, dvd kiosks, etc) this could not have come at a worse time. I am curious if this writers strike was the tipping point for a lot of people to ween themselves from their tvs. Not from shows all together, but the old standard of scheduling your life around when your show comes on and sitting through commercials.
I grew up in the 80s. This device that you might not have heard of called a VCR did that for us. I hear a new improved device called TIVO has been invented. Which is like the magic of VCRs with out the tapes!
I couldn't tell you how little that my family ever views "live" TV. If we want to watch a TV series, we generally buy the season DVDs. My wife's got her 5 seasons of Smallville. I've got all of B5. We bought Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show Season DVDs for the kids. My kids really don't know what ads during TV is all about. They know how to load DVDs and watch what they want when we let them watch TV. This writers strike hasn't affected my family because we've not regularly boardcast TV in something like close to 7-8 years now. I can't say that missing the entire realty TV show thing/suvivor spin offs was a negative.
These people WERE ON WATCH LISTS. If the government had been any good at doing it's job with the information it already had and the means that it already had then then there would have been no attacks.
New methods to annoy the general population are not the answer.
New methods that only annoy the general population are so that the general population will know that the government is doing something about something which they can't solve, stop or prevent. Like everything of this nature it'll either get worse and worse, or enough of the wrong sort of people will get annoyed that those in power will change the annoying restrictions so the general population isn't so annoyed any more.
I am not American but I wonder why you have such problems with personal identity numbers. Here in Sweden we had them since 1947 and we all have ID cards with this number, name, address and a picture. Its really an easy way to identify yourself. All organizations also have an identity number.
We've always been against ID measures. We've never liked the entire SSN thing. DLs are needed evil. That we even have to register births is almost a mortal sin.
The thing is that we do know that they can be useful to have. Heck, we'd love to have every product/thing that we've purchased tracked so that we can keep track of it and where their at within our home. We mainly hate the idea of others keeping track of us or our stuff. We don't want the government, various corporations, our church, or our moms knowing what stuff we have in our home and where its at. Where I live there isn't a strip club. There would be briefly, but the local churches would take note of everyone that went. So if you were unwilling to be monitored/harassed by your church then you'd not go to the local strip club.
There is a part of me convinced that we aren't really worried about some deep dark evil people in government telling us what to do. We don't want the little old ladies down the street (or our mothers) monitoring us or telling us what to do or what not to do. The truly evil government will make it easy/trivial for mom, grand mom, and the church that you are a member of to always monitor you esp when you are 21-30 or just get married and haven't yet had kids, or heck you have kids 1-5 year's old and how you are raising them.
Having said all of that in my opinion the majority of US government is grossly incompetent and they have no business having access to my personal data. Just because I haven't figured out some cataclysmically stupid and devastating thing to do with my own personal data does not mean that some ass in government can't come with something (which would invariably be worse).
If they spent all this time & money understanding what about American society creates many addicts we'd be done already. Limiting purchases of cold medicine is just drug war theater
Addiction isn't a bad thing. Not controlling your addiction is. You can be addicted to anything: sex, food, drinks, games, sports, work, church, events of various nature, anything. As long as your addiction goes unnoticed by those around you and your family isn't concerned then there shouldn't be any big deal about it. If you addicted to something in a dangerous manner like unprotected sex with many partners then your family has valid concerns on your health. You can be addicted to video games or tv. I didn't lose a scholarship because of an addiction to video games, tv, or socializing with my peer group, but I encountered many freshmen that did.
I think we need a required junior high class on addiction management; it would be enough for most of us. Knowing the difference between enough for a good time and I'm ruining the rest of my life because of this thing is important, but apparently non obvious. An addiction to work or church can ruin marriages/relationships.
Just pull up the most useful math constants pages through wikipedia and use them as the source for your patents.
;) 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 is what the windows cal uses so that's far more than good enough for your average person. What do you really need that many digits in pi for anyway? ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
Any one that pretends to be a math geek should have a book like Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers setting on their shelf somewhere.
(http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-Gullberg/dp/039304002X/ref=pd_sim_b_title_45) It has a very interesting section on the history of computing pi and the various methods. If I recall correctly, there was brief contest of who could put the most digits, but then it was "discovered" that you could use some method to put as many digits as you wanted. I think it got boring at that point and the real math guys moved to other stuff. 22/7 and 355/113 were "good enough" before computers and if you really cared about the precision then you'd be using the better methods to obtain as many freaking digits as you needed. Now that we've got computers, the computer guys have done pi to millions/billions of digits, but only number theory geeks care about that.
Maybe we should have left them alone to begin with. If we go to war again there, it'll be another mess, since we'll just install another bloodthirsty dictator like we always do, and thousands upon thousands will die, at our hands.
If we want to avoid war, we just need to mind our own fucking business. How hard is that?
I think that we should try the expand by conquest for a brief while. Of course, I think we should be massively trying to make Iraq become the next US state. I think the US messed up by not annexing Mexico when we had the chance. The reason Mexico exists as a separate country is because of racism in the US. The US at the time wanted a free white christain nation. They didn't want blacks or Indians to be citizen's in their white republic. The religious angle came into as well because Mexico at the time was almost entirely Catholic and those in the US also didn't want to add new Catholics to the mix of states. To be honest, Mexico would have come in as a free state and would have likely caused the civil war to happen sooner.
I'm honest. Most of the US doesn't give a shit about the middle east. We wanted to kick the shit out of countries for 9/11 and our leaders gave us two acceptable whipping boy nations. The reason that I'd like Iraq to be a US state is because it would give them a say in how the US is run and the rest of the nation would pay about as much attention to Iraq as they do to Arkansas or Alaska.
Dirty politics happens in the US as well. It's been awhile since we've beaten up losers or sent thugs to elections/polls to keep out those that would vote against the local party boss. It's one of the reasons that we now have secret ballots so employers and random thugs don't threaten people for voting the wrong way.
Let's be honest. The US is against other democracies taking actions that would be against the US interest. We'd rather an ancient Egyptian God King be in charge as long he supports our interests. The only way we'd really "care" about another democracy was if it was actually apart of our democracy system. I understand why the US hasn't grown and it's kinda of sad about what's limited US.
We've seen what kinda of profits spam brings in. I wonder how profitable this is.
Heck, spyware/adware, or some shady P2P programs could have something like this. Reminds me of what happened to http://www.shareaza.com/. It's claimed by a group that be like this. That address used to be shareaza's main site, and it easy for many to not know to go to http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/ for the new updates.
When you look at board games which do you think do better, the really complex Avalon Hill games that target a very select audience or Candy Land and Life?
As much as I live Settlers of Cattan and Axis and Allies, I see Monopoly on more shelves at homes than of the previous.
When you make something easier to understand, you're going to get more market share: lowest common denominator, right?
We've got Monopoly, Life, some Monopoly JR game, and a couple of those Candy Land type of games. You know the best game system that out sells all three consoles? Decks of cards. You've got more people playing card games than "video games." I've only played those Avalon Hill type of games with one friend back in high school. That guy must have had 20+ of the games and could tell you how to play all of them. We'd start by spending the first hour trying to learn the rules, the next hour trying to setup the board/pieces and 5-6+ hours actually trying to play. I hate to say it, but at least every one knows how to play Life and Monopoly. They may not be the best games out there, but they are the most widespread that you can find other players. Video/online games have the advantage of easily hooking you up with/against other humans. Even if the game's AI is trashy as long as the human multi player part is good you can sell a solid game and nearly always find some descent humans to play against.
"Are governments really going to say "tough shit" and encourage people to just pirate content?"
Some are imposing a tax, others are investigating just completely legalising p2p. Yes, remember that democracy is about the interests of the population, not just IP "owners".
Um, it all goes back to the bread and circuses thing. The internet and most of the content on it is the modern bread/circus. Heck, you can cut back on giving them any more bread as along as they have their circus to play with. All content producers are lucky that their content isn't public domain on production. Of course, they could stop the whole recording of content thing and go back to live performances with a cover charge as the sole way to view/listen to music/theater content.
Everybody loves bashing RIAA, MPAA and the big bad studios, but come on: The Lord of the Rings was originally published in *1955* (more than 50 years ago). Tolkien died in 1973 (more than 35 years ago). The publishers really had enough time to make money; it should be public domain by now. Yes, I know copyright usually expires 50/70 years after the author's death, but these laws really need updating.
I'd agree mainly so that we can get 3-5 additional Lord of the Rings movies from other studios. It'd would be like those Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and other Disney type movies. All of them were based off stories from a long time ago and any other studio could make a Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella movie as long as it doesn't use the Disney characters.
I also support the Tolkien Trust on this mainly because it does need its split. It's one thing if the content was already PD, but just cause we all like/want the content doesn't mean we can make something PD at our will. It's like saying Batman, Spider man, and Super man should all be public domain since we all like/want to see that content. It's not quite that easy. The content makers need to have a way to make money/royalties/ a slice of the ad revenue/ or what ever your magic funding source is.