The problem with "drastic" is that it often envisions high frontier technologies when all that is needed is a really well thought out plan. If the UNIX system worked well for nearly 40 years, and was fairly simple to implement, then another 40 years *might* be had with something equally simple.
Nah, we'd need something drastic to fix what we currently have. Linux/Unix wouldn't help if it became dominate and users gave out root passwords to every program that asked nicely for them. I've just read the intro, and this sounds like it would be awesome if it works. I'm taking await and see outlook for the entire project. When the project gets to the point where slashdot could buy 1 million of these and all slashdotters bought several $100 laptops for each family member then we'd find out the limits of this system. I'd like to see if my mom could play her AOL flash games on this thing without tons of spyware getting installed in the process. Until this system is rolled out and being used, we just don't know if it is better, worse, or about the same as our current security models. I'd wait 4-5 years after its been rolled out to a few million kids to see if hackers have owned the entire system or if it runs as they said it should. The hackers could always break into the system the way that a legimate program from the cert. authority would. What happens when poorly written AOL flash games or spyware is certified from the government purchaser or a hacker uses the gov. cert. keys to run on those computers?
The constant monitoring, surveillance, identification, numbering and tagging of people in our society is an affront to human dignity. It's an affront not only to those being numbered and tagged, though they are the ones most offended, it's also a stain on the dignity of any state that permits it. Anyone who disagrees should ask people who have been tagged, with a barcode.
But the interesting fact is, human dignity is not a universally recognised right.
Since when did you ever think dignity was a right? You only have as much dignity as you think that you have. If I'm standing by you in the train, I don't lessen your dignity just because you are being looked at. You only have a very vague right to privacy. Anything that you emit sight, sound or smell is public information that others can and will pick up. We've not had recording tech long at all. This will change us.
I think this could be fun tech. Think the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter. I could see this being used in public schools to keep known sex offenders off school property. First take a map of building/property that you want protected, then estimate and mount up the needed cameras at all enterance/exits and around the outside of the property, then update your school/staff ID card process to record a good scan of every authorized student/staff/teacher that is allowed on the school. You could use this system so that attendance is taken for each class as well stick a few camera inside the class rooms for that purpose. Now you could know exactly when and where everyone is in the building or on the property at any given time. Next you need to attempt to map parents or authorized pick personnel to selected students. Only this person or group of people are allowed to pick up this student. If a student gets on the wrong buss or gets into an unauthorized friend's car or a non-authorized staff/teacher's car the system could flag it and e-mail an alert messages to the student, the student's teacher, the teacher's supervisor, and the student's parents. If the student ends up kidnapped, it should be trival exporting all information of who was recorded in the car by the system, surrounding students, parent and teacher witnesses to the event.
Any one not in the system would by default be unauthorized personnel. If you wanted to keep out just sex offenders though, you would have to attempt to get valid information for your system from your state that could be tricky.
Stores like Walmart could use this for loss prevention or just IDing those that walked through the entrance. The store could follow the movements of everyone inside and if you ever make a check or credit card purchase map that a blame they could know exactly how you browse their store. They attempt to group families or just groups of shoppers/browsers. If pair parents, and 3 kids show up they'd track individual movements and link everyone up as possible family unit. I don't know how useful the software guessing at the groupings would be. A single store wouldn't have much data. Say Walmart did it across all its stores though. They could in theory track the same iris pattern through out everyone of their stores. Say they started tracking my kids in the buggy or walking allong with the parents, but they've never had any personal information on who those two kids are other than the same two parents show up. They could in theory track and tie all your cash, credit, and check purchases together. Say my kids only have an allowance or birthday cash and only have $40 cash to spend before they get a job at 16-18. Somewhere at 16-18, they could open a checking account or get a debit card. Using either of those forms of payment the store could tie back all those cash purchases and all your just browsing history to a name, payment account, and maybe an address and phone number as well.
I'd love to actually know all this information for myself. Stores would love to know this information to better design their internal store layout and move frequently purchased together products together. Think Amazon suggested purchases except at Walmart on the shelf.
Puzzle games that make you think don't have a place anymore, in a world where if there's no walkthrough or FAQ about a game, it is considered "frustrating and impossible".
What would be a good thing for the entire puzzle genre would be stealth educational games. Instead of just the hunt for the really hidden item or pull/push switches/levers in the right order to unlock something, why can't they be centered around say chemistry, physics, biology and some math? I've been playing FFXII lately and in that game, you kill xx monster and it may give you aa, bb, or cc loot. You just sell the loot and sometimes unlock things. You could have a game where you had to say get hydrogen, oxygen, or carbon in certain forms and having dozens of legitmate ways within the game to process items from one form to another. Say instead of just collecting the items, and the game doing its thing, it asked the gamer for quantities or a formula to use. The tradional way things like are done in games are you can't use an advanced formula until you've collected the recipe. I've recently played Dragon Quest 8 and that one encouraged randomly mixing items. What could be really neat is the game having many different labs and you having to scale something up. You could play with something in the lab and figure out the bare min. of what's needed, but then you have to do something like blow up a rock or process some item for an entire village, or let's be honest find a better way to brew beer for the pub. Think of all those really dangerous experiments that you'd never actually try in real life like what's found in the anarchist cook book. You could have to collect the ingredients for gun powder from scratch, process them, find metal and process it into various shapes, and then play with results to have various devices that explode or burn in various ways. Let's be honest something like that would be greatly open ended and you should have dozens of ways to solve any of the problems not just one or two set ways.
The reason puzzle games are hard or very difficult is because that generally the game designer wanted only one way to solve the problem. When the player can't figure out that one magic way to solve a problem, it becomes a game/series killer.
So the difference is not 3D vs. 2D (many adventure games went for at least pseudo-3D), nor is it sprites vs. rendered graphics. It's all about action with some puzzles vs. all puzzles, all the time. It drastically changes the tone and feel of the game. Zelda, Okami, and the like, while good games, do not have the "feel" of pure adventure games. Hence "action adventure."
Let's face it, puzzles and more puzzles don't sell video games. The annoying part of most video games are those puzzles. You don't remember the annoying puzzles. I'll admit that there are just as main annoying action reflexes where you just have to do it really well in order to beat that mini game or unlock it. The "problem" with tradionally adventures is that most people get stuck early at really difficult puzzles. It's really annoying to find out that you can't go any farther in the main plot or game because you didn't pick up a certain item from the beginning of the game and that section is sealed off once you finish the beginning areas. You know what games that I'm talking about. It's one thing when you have to jump through wierd hoops to unlock better weapons/armor, but its completely different when you have to jump through really obtuse hoops for the main plot. I'll admit, the slashdot crowd gets off on that. Does your average person like that in their video game? Not often.
Your post mostly deals on "something you do" (like criminals, terrorists, and the possibility to ban them based on id:ing their DNA), and protecting people from "evildoers".
Im sorry to point out that you should focus more on the "something you are" aspect of the discussion - as the DNA you get from birth is what you have to deal with, and you are currently unable to do anything about it. So basically you miss the point where someone who is ok, but with the genes (trait) for becoming an alcoholic could be banned from bars, or just refused insurance, e.t.c. Not because something they did, but because something that they (potentially) are, or just the greater risk of becoming something undesirable.
I didn't stray into that area because I've not given it nearly as much thought. Plus, I think that within 10-20 years that we'll be living in a society that nearly every one is unavoidably tracked by various means. (You could say its even the present, but we aren't tagged enough to really nail down realtime locations.) Not long ago on slashdot, there was a UK article/headline/opinion piece about "mentally ill" sex offenders stating something along the lines that most of our existing laws are based on what you do and on the religious view of free will. If we come to the desicion that some people are wired different and have no or little control of how they act, then that opens up the use of jailing or medicating or hospitalizing those found to be likely to commit crimes. Take public school shots, we accept that as normal. What if they did gene scans at the same time and flagged those with a high tendency to commit bullying or other crimes and "treat" them before they do anything wrong?
That's why I said the medical research part of DNA is far more scary than just the ID use of DNA. The government already tries to track everyone. DNA is just an improvement. The medical research or insurance tying to DNA could judge or flag people before they ever do anything "wrong." What I think is potentially useful about it, is flagging and IDing folks "that need" a more healthy lifestyle or extra excerise and getting them into a life time preventive rountine early. That's the "good" side of it. The bad side is that instead of treating a person, they could just be jailed/hospitalized instead of "trying" to fix the negatives. I'd be interested in the results that the insurance companies come up with verse the medical establishments. We can point out negatives of the insurance industry, but one of their postives is promoting safer houses, cars, and better medical practices. I'm certain bad/evil things will be done with the tech, but fair/good things can also be done with it. We need to explore both ideas before we try either option.
Why should Wal-Mart get into this? Easy, because it has such a low cost of operation. Pay for bandwidth, the servers, and that is a lot less than a B&M existance.
Well hell then, let's all get into the movie download business, since it's so cheap! You're forgetting the cost of developing and maintaining the software, marketing, and guaranteeing a certain level of service and uptime. These kinds of things are not cheap. If Wal-Mart takes their typical attitude of trying to do it on the cheap, you'll have software that is excruciatingly painful to use, lots of system down time due to back-end hardware and software issues, non-existent customer service and support for the mass of e-mail complaints that will pour in, and other such problems.
Walmart has a bigger data center than google. If Walmart has never gone cheap on their backend IT support structure.
Based on my past experience with Wal-Mart, the answer is a dismal no. I'd say that you aren't a Walmart shopper. Are you married with kids? Then your wife, or her friends or many of your neighbors do shop there. Are you going to call Wal-mart shoppers stupid because they shop there and you don't? That seems to be the main slashdot rant on Walmart.
Case in point, Wal Mart got into a lot of trouble over stating that many of their workers in Maryland would be better off on the state's(tax payer funded) insurance than on Wal-Marts(Walton funded) insurance.
Um, so did Walmart and walmart employees suddenly not become Maryland taxpayers? Walmart insurance isn't Walton funded. It's paid for mainly by the Walmart employees. If the state of Maryland can get a better insurance plan than Walmart, why shouldn't Walmart encourage its employees to take advantage of that state resource. In Arkansas, Walmart is very good at letting its employees know what state aid programs that they quailify for and helping them obtain them. The Walmart employees are paying those taxes as much as you are. Why shouldn't they take advantage of those social programs? I work for a city government and my kids quailfy for the state insurance program for insuring low income kids. Is my city government evil for not providing a better insurance program than the state can? I'm paying taxes to both, and I'd still have to pay premiums with either of their insurance programs for my kids so why shouldn't I pick the better package?
Wal-Mart has always been about one thing and one thing only: Dirt cheap stuff. They might as well make it their slogan: "Wal-Mart, where you get Dirt Cheap Stuff(TM)." You can see this attitude in their stores with cluttered aisles, severe lack of cashiers, poor treatment of employees, etc. People have unfortunately been willing to put with this this because, well, they want dirt cheap stuff.
The online movie download business isn't about dirt cheap, it's about customer service. The people who use it aren't poor; they're at least middle-incomers with computers and high-speed access to the Internet. If Wal-Mart tries to go dirt cheap on this service, they're going to get eaten alive in this space.
Oh, just another average slashdot anti-Walmart or anti-poor US comment. Cause the poor buy "dirt cheap" and are too stupid to pay more for the proper way they should be buying their goods. Walmart isn't and won't aim at the NetFlix or Apple upper income folks. Who will Walmart target? Their customers that bought that $400-$500 HP computer at Walmart. Folks like my mom. Now my mom is on dialup. My family is on dailup. We both aren't interested in digital movies. We do pick up DVDs from Walmart ranging from $5-$15. Walmart is about making the shopping experience easy and without unwanted or too many excess workers. I'm sorry, Walmart is successful because they do things right.
What I'd really like to see is Walmart sponsoring their own direct to dvd movies. Walmart could do it, and they'd only sponsor what they know that their customers would buy.
Does anybody remember the post-9/11 homeland security debacle with Tom Ridge reccomending people use duct tape and plastic sheeting [chicagotribune.com] to protect themselves from terrorists.. and then several people dying by asphyxiating themselves in their own homes?
If you're being investigated no drive encryption is going to help; if they want access to your system they can just as easily use hardware keyloggers. They'll have the evidence they want long before they let you know you're being investigated.
What's more important is that we believe that the feds, NSA, CIA, and other 3 letter agencies have this magic decrypting tech or the knowledge to get into a system without the users being aware of it. They may or may not. The important thing is the ways that the 3 letter agencies would work to get into your computer are the same as if the mafia, other criminals, or spy ware was trying to get into your computer or decrypt without your knowledge. The criminals can just as easily take physical custody of you and force you under threat of torture to give them what ever security keys that are needed. The FBI atleast has to go through the legal system and you'd be arrested and all your equipment taken before they start trying for your keys. The feds go through legal ways and MS could be required to provide backdoors to them. The problem isn't really the feds, its those terrorists or criminals or rogue black hat slashdotters that want into my computer. How can I protect against them without just unplugging my computer from the internet?
Every Christain Church that I've ever been dragged too preached titheing to the church and passed collection plates around. Catholics still pass the collection plate (or basket), but don't push so much on the tithing; I've seen it more from the Protestant faiths.
I've attended mainly Baptist, Methodist, and Church of Christ churches and they all preach tithing and pass the collection plate. I've never seen any one actually donate 1/10th of their income to their church, but that hasn't stopped any of the churches from asking. I don't see any problem with a religion asking/demanding money from its followers. As long as it isn't a state religion that it tax supported by the general population, I don't care what your private religions are upto. I would actually like tax forms keeping track of "tithing," and it lowering taxable income for those that chose to give to their chosen religion. I'd view government tracking of tithing as non interfering with religion and government allowing for all various religions to take their tithes in what ever format is required. I'd view being able to take tithes off of taxes the same as taking any charity money off on taxes or any special interest tax deduction. I don't give money to church, but the government should make it easy and simple for those that do to properly record that currency transaction in their taxes and have it religiously exempt from being taxable income. Let's face it: humans like religion and religious intuitions. I'll accept that those instutions won't be going anywhere any time soon and make acceptable allowances for them.
The fact that something which was started in our lifetimes as a get-rick-quick scheme, could become considered a "legitimate religion" on legal par with Christianity and Islam and all the rest, is the most striking demonstration to date of why religion is a crock and in fact deserves no special legal recognition whatsoever.
Some one needs to outdo Scientology and not as a get rich scheme. It should be for power, political lobbying, and then money. I think the idea of an open source religion sounds neat, but we'd have to start with you either believe in 0, 1 or more gods or goddesses and then branch out from there. I'd most likely try to stick a generic politically safe moral code at the beginning. Then you'd start your titheing / acceptable religion spreading section. Then you'd start with your creation myth and some moral parables. Throw in some random faith based miracles, and you're set.
The vast majority of religions that do not require payment. Most religions will teach the beliefs regardless of whether you cough up money. Some ask for donations but that is hardly on the same level as Scientology.
Every Christain Church that I've ever been dragged too preached titheing to the church and passed collection plates around. Tithes are 1/10th of your pre-tax income. I don't know about any religion other than Christianity, but I'd assume most religions do have a payment system built in.
Too bad by wife is christain or I'd try forming my own religion. I'd have to make up some rules.. Hmm, screw tithing, I'd require broadband internet access be required to attend something like a Second Life church. Hmm, how are religious internet connections handled tax wise? What if I made it a requirement for my religion that devotees must all have internet access? The second would be something like and the great god made DNA to build and track all life. It is our duty to god to use DNA to track all earthily life. I'd need a moral code... I could just copy and paste from other religions. Next, I'd need a web server and a downloadable client that accepts credit card tithes/donations. Hmm, I just need to figure out how to get the average slashdotter to become a member of my religion and get my church's website slashdotted... Then, I can be the high priest and get a cut of said tithes. Nah, too much work.
Hmm, I'm not sure I want to know about people's past. What people did in their past, is their business. If they want to tell me, that's fine, it'll make me understand them better. If they do not want to tell me, equally as fine. They suffered for their sins, either mentally, physically or both. That does not mean I unconditionally trust people.
I'm an information junky. If the public wants to know about only a certain class of criminal, I ask why not all former criminals? I have kids, but generally don't care about sex offenders. There are atleast 80 living in my metro area of 50K-60K. I couldn't tell you what the numbers for other types of former criminals are though. I'm more worried about drunk drivers or getting robbed than I am of sex offenders.
The media has always been where Jack Thompson does most of his "fighting", that he happens to be a lawyer is incidental.
This is the summary post that says it all. It doesn't matter if Jack Thompson gets disbarred. He still knows the Flordia legal system and can still use it to sue any group that he dislikes just like any other citizen. If he can find any group people that slightly support his cause, he will keep on doing it. Nope, the only plus is that the Flordia Bar and other Bars would be able to disbar members that try Jack Thompson tactics. What fields do most ex-lawyers endup in? I'm slightly worried that Jack Thompson will shortly get into office or become a professional lobbist and become much more dangerous.
Jack Thompson is just a member of that breed of attention addicts who will do or say anything to get their faces in the paper. The news media happily obliges these guys, because they're outrageous and clearly demented. They're following is just as demented, and are probably psychologically not all that different from the kinds of guys who end up in cults. If Jack Thompson belongs anywhere, it's on the Jerry Springer Show fighting transexual hookers and eighty year old sex addicts.
If Jack Thompson gets disbarred, he'd still be able to make money off the way that he lives. Sure he is a nutjob, but he is some what famous and in certain circles fairly well known. He could be newspaper opinion writer or worse still blogger. He could have his own show "I hate you and what you are currently doing!" I would either be a game show or something sort of like Springer except Jack Thompson picking a topic several people that follow said topic and him telling them that he hates them and wants them to stop. Oddly, I could've seen Jack Thompson making a good living as a traveling prist/preacher afew generations back. You know the type. The guys that travel around because no community would support them, but he picks every topic that your church or community is doing that is slightly different and says follow the Bible/rules set or burn in hell for his entire visiting period. Everyone sighs a breath of relief when the nut job goes, but there are some old senile folks that take up the mantra of young sinner wil burn in hell so you better do what we tell you for a few weeks. People like this have always made a living somewhere. Heck, the news guys follow him because its entaining to most normal people to watch the nutjob.
I'm personally not sure about whether OLPC is going to be a success, but the desperate knocking and bad advice the project gets seems to suggest to me that some really big commercial interests are deeply afraid of this. I wonder why? Afraid to lose your cheap labour? Afraid that it will drive the success of free software? Afraid the poor will rise up? What is it? To me it seems like a fairly innocent technology experiment which will probably be a partial success but won't live up to the wild dreams of it's originators. It's probably going to cost a bit and give an economic return which is a little bit more than the investment. Who cares? Why not leave it alone?
We've been in economic war with that part of the world for centuries. (I'm talking the entire developed world here.) We don't want them to become anywhere near our equals. It's basic common sense. We are having problems enough adjusting to the concept of India and China trying to raise their standard of living to our levels. India's success has scared our unemployeed IT professionals and recent grads. We don't want the third world to have free education that's at our level. We want them to pay thousands like we had to for the college degree. OLPC would be long term good for humanity and would be globally good overall. For the US and the existing developed world power block? It might not be. Why take a chance with allowing them to develop? It's sort of the mindset of if we had working nanotech or genetic tech sure we'd let them develop to our current levels, but we don't have anything that pushes us that far ahead of the rest of the world so we keep our existing economic warfare up so our section of the globe is still in charge/in control somewhat.
We've been waging economic war with developing and third world countries for several generations now. It's only just starting to end. You can't buy African agricultural products (about all they can produce) because of the subsidies we give our own farming sectors to produce products at below market value.
The OLPC? Frankly it's irrelevant. What 3rd world countries need is first infrastructure and education. The OLPC isn't a particularly good way to educate people and there isn't enough infrastructure to make real use of it. The money spent on producing it would be better spent persuading American and European politicians to remove agricultural subsidies.
The OLPC is just taking our economic warfare into the next century. We don't want the 3rd world to become industrialized and a potential threat to us. By giving them the OLPC, we kill off any domestic IT firms trying to develop there. Yes, their next generation has better educational resources, but they'll have to leave their country and go to some place like India or China to make use of those high tech IT skills that they've picked up unless they want to work at a local call center that is 1/100th the cost of an Indian call center. They could use the educational tools to develop their part of the world, but why bother if it is easier to use the tools and find a job and move to one of the developed countries. OLPC will have a breeding effect on the populations. Those that can will raise up and move out ASAP. Those that can't stay there and will work at alave labor prices to us. Economic warfare is what really won the cold war. We should study it abit and find out why we really won instead of using it unintentionally. In many respects, all humans are in a constant economic war with each other. Maybe economic war should be a primary school subject. Wealth and power is good if you have it, and here is how we've been keeping ours.
I fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people. Yea... the military implications.. Well, if someone told you to go into an empty room and go very very near to a robot that's holding a sword, just, you know, don't do it. Plus it's still easier and cheaper for An Actual Human to simply shoot you with a conventional gun, rather than use Wii-eqipped sword holding robots.
Actually, after reading that and thinking of the real world military apps. Civilian transport drivers. Mount a camera in a tranport and have the steering mapped just like some game. You don't need to throw guns on it or have it kill people. You just need the bandwidth for driving center state side could drive all the transport and civilian driveable traffic around. Heck, you could do similar things with big rigs in the US if you had gas stations that could fuel by robot. Instead of big rig drivers having to travel all over the country or work odd hours: they could all work 8 hours jobs in central communication centers and just hand off the trucks to the next driver when their shift is over. The central communication centers could be anywhere in the globe as long as it was close enough and with enough bandwidth. The problems start when you make a list of repairs and such that a human could easily do, yet you'd have to park the rig and await a maintenance team to arrive and service it if you where using remote control tech.
Where this has the best long term use is space. If we could have remote controlled drivers here, we should be able to have remote controlled construction equipment as well. We aren't there, yet.
I'll just mention that Sweden has a (for medical use only - but that's currently under discussion) DNA database of all in sweden newborns since 1975 (if you havent specifically asked for non-participation), called the PKU database. It's still ongoing (my little dude was just last week registred - he's a couple of weeks)
Certain "high profile" crimes have been resulted in that the use of this database is under discussion - and the debate is for what uses this database could/should be used.
My hopes are that never, ever will this database be sent to the US/Feds/CIA (as flight iternaries are), and also that private corporation use is prohibited. Think of the society where your employer knows all about your DNA... (go see GATTACA).
DNA can be used for several different things. We have all used DNA to build our bodies, and our kids will use half of ours to build their body. The number one human use of DNA is building the human body. The second human use of DNA is in identifying humans. (This workes great except for twins or clones and that our tech isn't quite there yet.) The third human use of DNA is medical research. The medical research part of DNA is the scary GATTACA part not the ID use. There is a legitmate need for the government to have a DNA database of all its new citizens from birth onward for ID reasons. There isn't a medical need for the government to have a DNA database of all its citizens. The only reason tha Sweden's is used for "medical" research is so that you can travel down the GATTACA path. The fourth scifi use for DNA is once we've figured out enough to ticker with it and engineer new humans to spec. It is scifi believable to have tech that transforms your entire DNA so you wouldn't have to worry about some of these id measures. That is of varying usefulness depending on how much DNA ID tech is used by your scifi tech society.
Think shopping cards/keyss or places like Walmart fingerprinting or doing DNA scans of everyone either entering/exiting or buying stuff. Most places of business that are open to the public and able to be targeted to robbed are recorded by video cameras. What if we develop the tech to remotely scan DNA of a clothed person? The scan would have to go through in under second and be able to scan everyone passing in or out of a commerical entrance. Stores could require fingerprints for all credit card or check purchases to combat ID theft and crack down on forgery. They'd have to have a system that could scan in and verify your fingerprint in under 5 seconds and maybe return your picture ID or address information. Would you put up with finger print scans every where, knowing that if anyone tried to steal your ID that they'd instantly be found out or easily found out and tracked down by a collation of commerical store security forces sharing data. Remember all docket information is public. I'm sure that it would almost be trival for companies to purchase all the docket information esp. for all those arrested for shop lifting. Imagine a world where those arrested for shop lifting at Target would be banned from shopping at any Target store and any store that uses the same ID network that Target uses, and that shop lifter gets banned from Walmart by association. This isn't just an electronic ban. Imagine those store greaters at Walmart being alerted and told to turn away those found shop lifting at any commerical establishment. If they ever expanded the program to deny service to former criminals, they'd have to have police or store security with guns there. Your average Walmart/Target/Best Buy customer would love knowing that the store that they are going to is blockng physical access to criminals. What's really good though is that the stores would still sell to former criminals only through their websites or through third party agencies.
Imagine a world where some one does drives off from a gas station without paying, and that vehicle being tagged and banned from all gas stations. Our current video cameras aren't enough to capture license plates,
Lynn Parrish is quoted saying: "Rapists are generalists. They don't just rape, they also murder." brr. I can see where this is heading. "Robbers don't just rob, they also murder." --> "Beggers don't just beg, they also murder." --> "People spitting on the ground don't just spit on the ground, they also murder." Basically what she's saying is that all criminals are inherently equal, and potential murderers, and thus deserve to be treated in the worst way. Now pray, do tell me that that is not a scary viewpoint.
Hey, it's not like she said murders or robbers or all criminals must be treated as sex offenders. Murder is apparently a step down from sex offender with how we currently treat both times of criminals afterwards. If we were going to do public notifications for former criminals, we should do it for every crime and not just sex offenders. This would be an "easy thing" for us to do now a days. What would you do if you found out that you are living in an area with 0 sex offenders, 1 released robber, 2 assaults, 5 drunk drivers, 0 murders, and 10 counts of domestic violence being mailed to your residence? Would you read and take any action on it? Or would you either start stacking them all up or just tossing them in trash as they come in? Or would you start modifying your home to be a minifort just incase one of these neighbors decides to visit?
If you want to be sure that nobody steals your identity, don't give it to anyone for any reason, or better yet, always pretend to be someone else. Same applies to sensitive infrastructure. The problem with trying to hide information is that you tell people where to look more intensely. This simply puts a big target on those areas for local spy work. It doesn't take much to find out what you want to know about most places, if they aren't hidden or protected with the same efforts as is Area 51.
Well, things like Area 51 show up because its the only military air base that the US tried to hide. I'd hope no real research was done in decades there. That place should be just a fake or distraction base. Where this would work is instead of trying to take out just photos of "Area 51" it took out all military and civilian airports, every government building of any value (your local post office or city hall) to really increase those possible targets to search. The locations of things like city halls, courts, police departments, water departments, military bases may be easily findable on a map, but does that general (global) public really need online maps and photos of "every" public building? I guess every airport or military base will just have to be labeled "water treatment plant" or some such on maps.
As to how one would go about ranking them as to difficulty, if you can do that even with problems that we know the answers to, you're a better man than I. In fact, I think that the question of how to rank problems by the difficulty they present is yet another unsolved problem.
I think that best "rank" of difficulty is years, decades, or centuries left unsolved. If we can solve some 600 year old problem with computers, yeah go humanity, but that doesn't mean we've solved all of those 600-700 year old problems that only phds in any given field even know about. I don't know if age left unsolved would be a proper rank, but it would help divide problems into "new" to humanity and those that have been around awhile. I think that both the old and the new problems need solving. In 500-600 years, how many of the problems that we've just discovered will remain "unsolved?" We need to focus on both sets otherwise we'll close off entire branches of knowledge because we never solved some "basic" to that field problems.
Can I ask, since the article doesn't seem to really explain -- what good is this? I know converting to XML is supremely important _in theory_ so that your documents can be easily parsed and used among other software applications - but say for example:
I have a document I convert it to XML then what? Is this excellent news in theory, or is there a demand for this? I honestly don't know, I'm not claiming there isn't. Please tell me.
Can some one please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought MS's new format was xml based and the open document is also xml based. Wasn't the supposed beauty of the whole xml thing was that it was "easy" or "near trival" for programers to write coverters to display that xml data in different formats or style it differently? I don't see what the big "news" of this is? I also don't see what the big ruckus is that MS isn't using opendocment for its file format rather than their own xml standard. Sure, I understand in theory back in the day, all word documents you needed to go through MS to read anything out of it. Wasn't that mainly why their new format was in xml so that all those MS centric freelancers could "easily" do whatever they needed to do with the files? I'm sorry, but it seems like MS just kinda smiled and nodded at the whole open document thing and was like heck all we need is a "plugin" and you can convert or should be able to read this new handy dandy xml file "anywhere" sort of like a pdf. O.k. I recongize this is slashdot and isn't a good place to find any real MS news other than rantings, but some one around here must know what the whole big deal is with xml is and two seperate xml file formats. You'd think it wouldn't be difficult for folks to read either format if xml was so easy to read.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, what I'd really like to see is a death penalty for spammers.
Them, folks? Nah, those that practise ID theft yes. Spammers are just annoying. Those that do ID theft or forgery ruin living lives.
The problem with "drastic" is that it often envisions high frontier technologies when all that is needed is a really well thought out plan.
If the UNIX system worked well for nearly 40 years, and was fairly simple to implement, then another 40 years *might* be had with something equally simple.
Nah, we'd need something drastic to fix what we currently have. Linux/Unix wouldn't help if it became dominate and users gave out root passwords to every program that asked nicely for them. I've just read the intro, and this sounds like it would be awesome if it works. I'm taking await and see outlook for the entire project. When the project gets to the point where slashdot could buy 1 million of these and all slashdotters bought several $100 laptops for each family member then we'd find out the limits of this system. I'd like to see if my mom could play her AOL flash games on this thing without tons of spyware getting installed in the process. Until this system is rolled out and being used, we just don't know if it is better, worse, or about the same as our current security models. I'd wait 4-5 years after its been rolled out to a few million kids to see if hackers have owned the entire system or if it runs as they said it should. The hackers could always break into the system the way that a legimate program from the cert. authority would. What happens when poorly written AOL flash games or spyware is certified from the government purchaser or a hacker uses the gov. cert. keys to run on those computers?
It's not about privacy. It's about human dignity.
The constant monitoring, surveillance, identification, numbering and tagging of people in our society is an affront to human dignity. It's an affront not only to those being numbered and tagged, though they are the ones most offended, it's also a stain on the dignity of any state that permits it. Anyone who disagrees should ask people who have been tagged, with a barcode.
But the interesting fact is, human dignity is not a universally recognised right.
Since when did you ever think dignity was a right? You only have as much dignity as you think that you have. If I'm standing by you in the train, I don't lessen your dignity just because you are being looked at. You only have a very vague right to privacy. Anything that you emit sight, sound or smell is public information that others can and will pick up. We've not had recording tech long at all. This will change us.
I think this could be fun tech. Think the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter. I could see this being used in public schools to keep known sex offenders off school property. First take a map of building/property that you want protected, then estimate and mount up the needed cameras at all enterance/exits and around the outside of the property, then update your school/staff ID card process to record a good scan of every authorized student/staff/teacher that is allowed on the school. You could use this system so that attendance is taken for each class as well stick a few camera inside the class rooms for that purpose. Now you could know exactly when and where everyone is in the building or on the property at any given time. Next you need to attempt to map parents or authorized pick personnel to selected students. Only this person or group of people are allowed to pick up this student. If a student gets on the wrong buss or gets into an unauthorized friend's car or a non-authorized staff/teacher's car the system could flag it and e-mail an alert messages to the student, the student's teacher, the teacher's supervisor, and the student's parents. If the student ends up kidnapped, it should be trival exporting all information of who was recorded in the car by the system, surrounding students, parent and teacher witnesses to the event.
Any one not in the system would by default be unauthorized personnel. If you wanted to keep out just sex offenders though, you would have to attempt to get valid information for your system from your state that could be tricky.
Stores like Walmart could use this for loss prevention or just IDing those that walked through the entrance. The store could follow the movements of everyone inside and if you ever make a check or credit card purchase map that a blame they could know exactly how you browse their store. They attempt to group families or just groups of shoppers/browsers. If pair parents, and 3 kids show up they'd track individual movements and link everyone up as possible family unit. I don't know how useful the software guessing at the groupings would be. A single store wouldn't have much data. Say Walmart did it across all its stores though. They could in theory track the same iris pattern through out everyone of their stores. Say they started tracking my kids in the buggy or walking allong with the parents, but they've never had any personal information on who those two kids are other than the same two parents show up. They could in theory track and tie all your cash, credit, and check purchases together. Say my kids only have an allowance or birthday cash and only have $40 cash to spend before they get a job at 16-18. Somewhere at 16-18, they could open a checking account or get a debit card. Using either of those forms of payment the store could tie back all those cash purchases and all your just browsing history to a name, payment account, and maybe an address and phone number as well.
I'd love to actually know all this information for myself. Stores would love to know this information to better design their internal store layout and move frequently purchased together products together. Think Amazon suggested purchases except at Walmart on the shelf.
Puzzle games that make you think don't have a place anymore, in a world where if there's no walkthrough or FAQ about a game, it is considered "frustrating and impossible".
What would be a good thing for the entire puzzle genre would be stealth educational games. Instead of just the hunt for the really hidden item or pull/push switches/levers in the right order to unlock something, why can't they be centered around say chemistry, physics, biology and some math? I've been playing FFXII lately and in that game, you kill xx monster and it may give you aa, bb, or cc loot. You just sell the loot and sometimes unlock things. You could have a game where you had to say get hydrogen, oxygen, or carbon in certain forms and having dozens of legitmate ways within the game to process items from one form to another. Say instead of just collecting the items, and the game doing its thing, it asked the gamer for quantities or a formula to use. The tradional way things like are done in games are you can't use an advanced formula until you've collected the recipe. I've recently played Dragon Quest 8 and that one encouraged randomly mixing items. What could be really neat is the game having many different labs and you having to scale something up. You could play with something in the lab and figure out the bare min. of what's needed, but then you have to do something like blow up a rock or process some item for an entire village, or let's be honest find a better way to brew beer for the pub. Think of all those really dangerous experiments that you'd never actually try in real life like what's found in the anarchist cook book. You could have to collect the ingredients for gun powder from scratch, process them, find metal and process it into various shapes, and then play with results to have various devices that explode or burn in various ways. Let's be honest something like that would be greatly open ended and you should have dozens of ways to solve any of the problems not just one or two set ways.
The reason puzzle games are hard or very difficult is because that generally the game designer wanted only one way to solve the problem. When the player can't figure out that one magic way to solve a problem, it becomes a game/series killer.
So the difference is not 3D vs. 2D (many adventure games went for at least pseudo-3D), nor is it sprites vs. rendered graphics. It's all about action with some puzzles vs. all puzzles, all the time. It drastically changes the tone and feel of the game. Zelda, Okami, and the like, while good games, do not have the "feel" of pure adventure games. Hence "action adventure."
Let's face it, puzzles and more puzzles don't sell video games. The annoying part of most video games are those puzzles. You don't remember the annoying puzzles. I'll admit that there are just as main annoying action reflexes where you just have to do it really well in order to beat that mini game or unlock it. The "problem" with tradionally adventures is that most people get stuck early at really difficult puzzles. It's really annoying to find out that you can't go any farther in the main plot or game because you didn't pick up a certain item from the beginning of the game and that section is sealed off once you finish the beginning areas. You know what games that I'm talking about. It's one thing when you have to jump through wierd hoops to unlock better weapons/armor, but its completely different when you have to jump through really obtuse hoops for the main plot. I'll admit, the slashdot crowd gets off on that. Does your average person like that in their video game? Not often.
Your post mostly deals on "something you do" (like criminals, terrorists, and the possibility to ban them based on id:ing their DNA), and protecting people from "evildoers".
Im sorry to point out that you should focus more on the "something you are" aspect of the discussion - as the DNA you get from birth is what you have to deal with, and you are currently unable to do anything about it.
So basically you miss the point where someone who is ok, but with the genes (trait) for becoming an alcoholic could be banned from bars, or just refused insurance, e.t.c.
Not because something they did, but because something that they (potentially) are, or just the greater risk of becoming something undesirable.
I didn't stray into that area because I've not given it nearly as much thought. Plus, I think that within 10-20 years that we'll be living in a society that nearly every one is unavoidably tracked by various means. (You could say its even the present, but we aren't tagged enough to really nail down realtime locations.) Not long ago on slashdot, there was a UK article/headline/opinion piece about "mentally ill" sex offenders stating something along the lines that most of our existing laws are based on what you do and on the religious view of free will. If we come to the desicion that some people are wired different and have no or little control of how they act, then that opens up the use of jailing or medicating or hospitalizing those found to be likely to commit crimes. Take public school shots, we accept that as normal. What if they did gene scans at the same time and flagged those with a high tendency to commit bullying or other crimes and "treat" them before they do anything wrong?
That's why I said the medical research part of DNA is far more scary than just the ID use of DNA. The government already tries to track everyone. DNA is just an improvement. The medical research or insurance tying to DNA could judge or flag people before they ever do anything "wrong." What I think is potentially useful about it, is flagging and IDing folks "that need" a more healthy lifestyle or extra excerise and getting them into a life time preventive rountine early. That's the "good" side of it. The bad side is that instead of treating a person, they could just be jailed/hospitalized instead of "trying" to fix the negatives. I'd be interested in the results that the insurance companies come up with verse the medical establishments. We can point out negatives of the insurance industry, but one of their postives is promoting safer houses, cars, and better medical practices. I'm certain bad/evil things will be done with the tech, but fair/good things can also be done with it. We need to explore both ideas before we try either option.
Why should Wal-Mart get into this? Easy, because it has such a low cost of operation. Pay for bandwidth, the servers, and that is a lot less than a B&M existance.
Well hell then, let's all get into the movie download business, since it's so cheap! You're forgetting the cost of developing and maintaining the software, marketing, and guaranteeing a certain level of service and uptime. These kinds of things are not cheap. If Wal-Mart takes their typical attitude of trying to do it on the cheap, you'll have software that is excruciatingly painful to use, lots of system down time due to back-end hardware and software issues, non-existent customer service and support for the mass of e-mail complaints that will pour in, and other such problems.
Walmart has a bigger data center than google. If Walmart has never gone cheap on their backend IT support structure.
Based on my past experience with Wal-Mart, the answer is a dismal no.
I'd say that you aren't a Walmart shopper. Are you married with kids? Then your wife, or her friends or many of your neighbors do shop there. Are you going to call Wal-mart shoppers stupid because they shop there and you don't? That seems to be the main slashdot rant on Walmart.
Case in point, Wal Mart got into a lot of trouble over stating that many of their workers in Maryland would be better off on the state's(tax payer funded) insurance than on Wal-Marts(Walton funded) insurance.
Um, so did Walmart and walmart employees suddenly not become Maryland taxpayers? Walmart insurance isn't Walton funded. It's paid for mainly by the Walmart employees. If the state of Maryland can get a better insurance plan than Walmart, why shouldn't Walmart encourage its employees to take advantage of that state resource. In Arkansas, Walmart is very good at letting its employees know what state aid programs that they quailify for and helping them obtain them. The Walmart employees are paying those taxes as much as you are. Why shouldn't they take advantage of those social programs? I work for a city government and my kids quailfy for the state insurance program for insuring low income kids. Is my city government evil for not providing a better insurance program than the state can? I'm paying taxes to both, and I'd still have to pay premiums with either of their insurance programs for my kids so why shouldn't I pick the better package?
Wal-Mart has always been about one thing and one thing only: Dirt cheap stuff. They might as well make it their slogan: "Wal-Mart, where you get Dirt Cheap Stuff(TM)." You can see this attitude in their stores with cluttered aisles, severe lack of cashiers, poor treatment of employees, etc. People have unfortunately been willing to put with this this because, well, they want dirt cheap stuff.
The online movie download business isn't about dirt cheap, it's about customer service. The people who use it aren't poor; they're at least middle-incomers with computers and high-speed access to the Internet. If Wal-Mart tries to go dirt cheap on this service, they're going to get eaten alive in this space.
Oh, just another average slashdot anti-Walmart or anti-poor US comment. Cause the poor buy "dirt cheap" and are too stupid to pay more for the proper way they should be buying their goods. Walmart isn't and won't aim at the NetFlix or Apple upper income folks. Who will Walmart target? Their customers that bought that $400-$500 HP computer at Walmart. Folks like my mom. Now my mom is on dialup. My family is on dailup. We both aren't interested in digital movies. We do pick up DVDs from Walmart ranging from $5-$15. Walmart is about making the shopping experience easy and without unwanted or too many excess workers. I'm sorry, Walmart is successful because they do things right.
What I'd really like to see is Walmart sponsoring their own direct to dvd movies. Walmart could do it, and they'd only sponsor what they know that their customers would buy.
Does anybody remember the post-9/11 homeland security debacle with Tom Ridge reccomending people use duct tape and plastic sheeting [chicagotribune.com] to protect themselves from terrorists.. and then several people dying by asphyxiating themselves in their own homes?
Butbutbut... duct tape fixes ANYTHING!!!
Duct tape even fixes stupid people.
If you're being investigated no drive encryption is going to help; if they want access to your system they can just as easily use hardware keyloggers. They'll have the evidence they want long before they let you know you're being investigated.
What's more important is that we believe that the feds, NSA, CIA, and other 3 letter agencies have this magic decrypting tech or the knowledge to get into a system without the users being aware of it. They may or may not. The important thing is the ways that the 3 letter agencies would work to get into your computer are the same as if the mafia, other criminals, or spy ware was trying to get into your computer or decrypt without your knowledge. The criminals can just as easily take physical custody of you and force you under threat of torture to give them what ever security keys that are needed. The FBI atleast has to go through the legal system and you'd be arrested and all your equipment taken before they start trying for your keys. The feds go through legal ways and MS could be required to provide backdoors to them. The problem isn't really the feds, its those terrorists or criminals or rogue black hat slashdotters that want into my computer. How can I protect against them without just unplugging my computer from the internet?
Every Christain Church that I've ever been dragged too preached titheing to the church and passed collection plates around.
Catholics still pass the collection plate (or basket), but don't push so much on the tithing; I've seen it more from the Protestant faiths.
I've attended mainly Baptist, Methodist, and Church of Christ churches and they all preach tithing and pass the collection plate. I've never seen any one actually donate 1/10th of their income to their church, but that hasn't stopped any of the churches from asking. I don't see any problem with a religion asking/demanding money from its followers. As long as it isn't a state religion that it tax supported by the general population, I don't care what your private religions are upto. I would actually like tax forms keeping track of "tithing," and it lowering taxable income for those that chose to give to their chosen religion. I'd view government tracking of tithing as non interfering with religion and government allowing for all various religions to take their tithes in what ever format is required. I'd view being able to take tithes off of taxes the same as taking any charity money off on taxes or any special interest tax deduction. I don't give money to church, but the government should make it easy and simple for those that do to properly record that currency transaction in their taxes and have it religiously exempt from being taxable income. Let's face it: humans like religion and religious intuitions. I'll accept that those instutions won't be going anywhere any time soon and make acceptable allowances for them.
The fact that something which was started in our lifetimes as a get-rick-quick scheme, could become considered a "legitimate religion" on legal par with Christianity and Islam and all the rest, is the most striking demonstration to date of why religion is a crock and in fact deserves no special legal recognition whatsoever.
Some one needs to outdo Scientology and not as a get rich scheme. It should be for power, political lobbying, and then money. I think the idea of an open source religion sounds neat, but we'd have to start with you either believe in 0, 1 or more gods or goddesses and then branch out from there. I'd most likely try to stick a generic politically safe moral code at the beginning. Then you'd start your titheing / acceptable religion spreading section. Then you'd start with your creation myth and some moral parables. Throw in some random faith based miracles, and you're set.
The vast majority of religions that do not require payment. Most religions will teach the beliefs regardless of whether you cough up money. Some ask for donations but that is hardly on the same level as Scientology.
Every Christain Church that I've ever been dragged too preached titheing to the church and passed collection plates around. Tithes are 1/10th of your pre-tax income. I don't know about any religion other than Christianity, but I'd assume most religions do have a payment system built in.
Too bad by wife is christain or I'd try forming my own religion. I'd have to make up some rules.. Hmm, screw tithing, I'd require broadband internet access be required to attend something like a Second Life church. Hmm, how are religious internet connections handled tax wise? What if I made it a requirement for my religion that devotees must all have internet access? The second would be something like and the great god made DNA to build and track all life. It is our duty to god to use DNA to track all earthily life. I'd need a moral code... I could just copy and paste from other religions. Next, I'd need a web server and a downloadable client that accepts credit card tithes/donations. Hmm, I just need to figure out how to get the average slashdotter to become a member of my religion and get my church's website slashdotted... Then, I can be the high priest and get a cut of said tithes. Nah, too much work.
Hmm, I'm not sure I want to know about people's past.
What people did in their past, is their business. If they want to tell me, that's fine, it'll make me understand them better. If they do not want to tell me, equally as fine. They suffered for their sins, either mentally, physically or both.
That does not mean I unconditionally trust people.
I'm an information junky. If the public wants to know about only a certain class of criminal, I ask why not all former criminals? I have kids, but generally don't care about sex offenders. There are atleast 80 living in my metro area of 50K-60K. I couldn't tell you what the numbers for other types of former criminals are though. I'm more worried about drunk drivers or getting robbed than I am of sex offenders.
The media has always been where Jack Thompson does most of his "fighting", that he happens to be a lawyer is incidental.
This is the summary post that says it all. It doesn't matter if Jack Thompson gets disbarred. He still knows the Flordia legal system and can still use it to sue any group that he dislikes just like any other citizen. If he can find any group people that slightly support his cause, he will keep on doing it. Nope, the only plus is that the Flordia Bar and other Bars would be able to disbar members that try Jack Thompson tactics. What fields do most ex-lawyers endup in? I'm slightly worried that Jack Thompson will shortly get into office or become a professional lobbist and become much more dangerous.
Jack Thompson is just a member of that breed of attention addicts who will do or say anything to get their faces in the paper. The news media happily obliges these guys, because they're outrageous and clearly demented. They're following is just as demented, and are probably psychologically not all that different from the kinds of guys who end up in cults. If Jack Thompson belongs anywhere, it's on the Jerry Springer Show fighting transexual hookers and eighty year old sex addicts.
If Jack Thompson gets disbarred, he'd still be able to make money off the way that he lives. Sure he is a nutjob, but he is some what famous and in certain circles fairly well known. He could be newspaper opinion writer or worse still blogger. He could have his own show "I hate you and what you are currently doing!" I would either be a game show or something sort of like Springer except Jack Thompson picking a topic several people that follow said topic and him telling them that he hates them and wants them to stop. Oddly, I could've seen Jack Thompson making a good living as a traveling prist/preacher afew generations back. You know the type. The guys that travel around because no community would support them, but he picks every topic that your church or community is doing that is slightly different and says follow the Bible/rules set or burn in hell for his entire visiting period. Everyone sighs a breath of relief when the nut job goes, but there are some old senile folks that take up the mantra of young sinner wil burn in hell so you better do what we tell you for a few weeks. People like this have always made a living somewhere. Heck, the news guys follow him because its entaining to most normal people to watch the nutjob.
I'm personally not sure about whether OLPC is going to be a success, but the desperate knocking and bad advice the project gets seems to suggest to me that some really big commercial interests are deeply afraid of this. I wonder why? Afraid to lose your cheap labour? Afraid that it will drive the success of free software? Afraid the poor will rise up? What is it? To me it seems like a fairly innocent technology experiment which will probably be a partial success but won't live up to the wild dreams of it's originators. It's probably going to cost a bit and give an economic return which is a little bit more than the investment. Who cares? Why not leave it alone?
We've been in economic war with that part of the world for centuries. (I'm talking the entire developed world here.) We don't want them to become anywhere near our equals. It's basic common sense. We are having problems enough adjusting to the concept of India and China trying to raise their standard of living to our levels. India's success has scared our unemployeed IT professionals and recent grads. We don't want the third world to have free education that's at our level. We want them to pay thousands like we had to for the college degree. OLPC would be long term good for humanity and would be globally good overall. For the US and the existing developed world power block? It might not be. Why take a chance with allowing them to develop? It's sort of the mindset of if we had working nanotech or genetic tech sure we'd let them develop to our current levels, but we don't have anything that pushes us that far ahead of the rest of the world so we keep our existing economic warfare up so our section of the globe is still in charge/in control somewhat.
We've been waging economic war with developing and third world countries for several generations now. It's only just starting to end. You can't buy African agricultural products (about all they can produce) because of the subsidies we give our own farming sectors to produce products at below market value.
The OLPC? Frankly it's irrelevant. What 3rd world countries need is first infrastructure and education. The OLPC isn't a particularly good way to educate people and there isn't enough infrastructure to make real use of it. The money spent on producing it would be better spent persuading American and European politicians to remove agricultural subsidies.
The OLPC is just taking our economic warfare into the next century. We don't want the 3rd world to become industrialized and a potential threat to us. By giving them the OLPC, we kill off any domestic IT firms trying to develop there. Yes, their next generation has better educational resources, but they'll have to leave their country and go to some place like India or China to make use of those high tech IT skills that they've picked up unless they want to work at a local call center that is 1/100th the cost of an Indian call center. They could use the educational tools to develop their part of the world, but why bother if it is easier to use the tools and find a job and move to one of the developed countries. OLPC will have a breeding effect on the populations. Those that can will raise up and move out ASAP. Those that can't stay there and will work at alave labor prices to us. Economic warfare is what really won the cold war. We should study it abit and find out why we really won instead of using it unintentionally. In many respects, all humans are in a constant economic war with each other. Maybe economic war should be a primary school subject. Wealth and power is good if you have it, and here is how we've been keeping ours.
I fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people.
Yea... the military implications.. Well, if someone told you to go into an empty room and go very very near to a robot that's holding a sword, just, you know, don't do it.
Plus it's still easier and cheaper for An Actual Human to simply shoot you with a conventional gun, rather than use Wii-eqipped sword holding robots.
Actually, after reading that and thinking of the real world military apps. Civilian transport drivers. Mount a camera in a tranport and have the steering mapped just like some game. You don't need to throw guns on it or have it kill people. You just need the bandwidth for driving center state side could drive all the transport and civilian driveable traffic around. Heck, you could do similar things with big rigs in the US if you had gas stations that could fuel by robot. Instead of big rig drivers having to travel all over the country or work odd hours: they could all work 8 hours jobs in central communication centers and just hand off the trucks to the next driver when their shift is over. The central communication centers could be anywhere in the globe as long as it was close enough and with enough bandwidth. The problems start when you make a list of repairs and such that a human could easily do, yet you'd have to park the rig and await a maintenance team to arrive and service it if you where using remote control tech.
Where this has the best long term use is space. If we could have remote controlled drivers here, we should be able to have remote controlled construction equipment as well. We aren't there, yet.
I'll just mention that Sweden has a (for medical use only - but that's currently under discussion) DNA database of all in sweden newborns since 1975 (if you havent specifically asked for non-participation), called the PKU database. It's still ongoing (my little dude was just last week registred - he's a couple of weeks)
Certain "high profile" crimes have been resulted in that the use of this database is under discussion - and the debate is for what uses this database could/should be used.
My hopes are that never, ever will this database be sent to the US/Feds/CIA (as flight iternaries are), and also that private corporation use is prohibited. Think of the society where your employer knows all about your DNA... (go see GATTACA).
DNA can be used for several different things. We have all used DNA to build our bodies, and our kids will use half of ours to build their body. The number one human use of DNA is building the human body. The second human use of DNA is in identifying humans. (This workes great except for twins or clones and that our tech isn't quite there yet.) The third human use of DNA is medical research. The medical research part of DNA is the scary GATTACA part not the ID use. There is a legitmate need for the government to have a DNA database of all its new citizens from birth onward for ID reasons. There isn't a medical need for the government to have a DNA database of all its citizens. The only reason tha Sweden's is used for "medical" research is so that you can travel down the GATTACA path. The fourth scifi use for DNA is once we've figured out enough to ticker with it and engineer new humans to spec. It is scifi believable to have tech that transforms your entire DNA so you wouldn't have to worry about some of these id measures. That is of varying usefulness depending on how much DNA ID tech is used by your scifi tech society.
Think shopping cards/keyss or places like Walmart fingerprinting or doing DNA scans of everyone either entering/exiting or buying stuff. Most places of business that are open to the public and able to be targeted to robbed are recorded by video cameras. What if we develop the tech to remotely scan DNA of a clothed person? The scan would have to go through in under second and be able to scan everyone passing in or out of a commerical entrance. Stores could require fingerprints for all credit card or check purchases to combat ID theft and crack down on forgery. They'd have to have a system that could scan in and verify your fingerprint in under 5 seconds and maybe return your picture ID or address information. Would you put up with finger print scans every where, knowing that if anyone tried to steal your ID that they'd instantly be found out or easily found out and tracked down by a collation of commerical store security forces sharing data. Remember all docket information is public. I'm sure that it would almost be trival for companies to purchase all the docket information esp. for all those arrested for shop lifting. Imagine a world where those arrested for shop lifting at Target would be banned from shopping at any Target store and any store that uses the same ID network that Target uses, and that shop lifter gets banned from Walmart by association. This isn't just an electronic ban. Imagine those store greaters at Walmart being alerted and told to turn away those found shop lifting at any commerical establishment. If they ever expanded the program to deny service to former criminals, they'd have to have police or store security with guns there. Your average Walmart/Target/Best Buy customer would love knowing that the store that they are going to is blockng physical access to criminals. What's really good though is that the stores would still sell to former criminals only through their websites or through third party agencies.
Imagine a world where some one does drives off from a gas station without paying, and that vehicle being tagged and banned from all gas stations. Our current video cameras aren't enough to capture license plates,
Lynn Parrish is quoted saying: "Rapists are generalists. They don't just rape, they also murder."
brr.
I can see where this is heading. "Robbers don't just rob, they also murder." --> "Beggers don't just beg, they also murder." --> "People spitting on the ground don't just spit on the ground, they also murder."
Basically what she's saying is that all criminals are inherently equal, and potential murderers, and thus deserve to be treated in the worst way.
Now pray, do tell me that that is not a scary viewpoint.
Hey, it's not like she said murders or robbers or all criminals must be treated as sex offenders. Murder is apparently a step down from sex offender with how we currently treat both times of criminals afterwards. If we were going to do public notifications for former criminals, we should do it for every crime and not just sex offenders. This would be an "easy thing" for us to do now a days. What would you do if you found out that you are living in an area with 0 sex offenders, 1 released robber, 2 assaults, 5 drunk drivers, 0 murders, and 10 counts of domestic violence being mailed to your residence? Would you read and take any action on it? Or would you either start stacking them all up or just tossing them in trash as they come in? Or would you start modifying your home to be a minifort just incase one of these neighbors decides to visit?
If you want to be sure that nobody steals your identity, don't give it to anyone for any reason, or better yet, always pretend to be someone else. Same applies to sensitive infrastructure. The problem with trying to hide information is that you tell people where to look more intensely. This simply puts a big target on those areas for local spy work. It doesn't take much to find out what you want to know about most places, if they aren't hidden or protected with the same efforts as is Area 51.
Well, things like Area 51 show up because its the only military air base that the US tried to hide. I'd hope no real research was done in decades there. That place should be just a fake or distraction base. Where this would work is instead of trying to take out just photos of "Area 51" it took out all military and civilian airports, every government building of any value (your local post office or city hall) to really increase those possible targets to search. The locations of things like city halls, courts, police departments, water departments, military bases may be easily findable on a map, but does that general (global) public really need online maps and photos of "every" public building? I guess every airport or military base will just have to be labeled "water treatment plant" or some such on maps.
As to how one would go about ranking them as to difficulty, if you can do that even with problems that we know the answers to, you're a better man than I. In fact, I think that the question of how to rank problems by the difficulty they present is yet another unsolved problem.
I think that best "rank" of difficulty is years, decades, or centuries left unsolved. If we can solve some 600 year old problem with computers, yeah go humanity, but that doesn't mean we've solved all of those 600-700 year old problems that only phds in any given field even know about. I don't know if age left unsolved would be a proper rank, but it would help divide problems into "new" to humanity and those that have been around awhile. I think that both the old and the new problems need solving. In 500-600 years, how many of the problems that we've just discovered will remain "unsolved?" We need to focus on both sets otherwise we'll close off entire branches of knowledge because we never solved some "basic" to that field problems.
Can I ask, since the article doesn't seem to really explain -- what good is this? I know converting to XML is supremely important _in theory_ so that your documents can be easily parsed and used among other software applications - but say for example:
I have a document I convert it to XML then what? Is this excellent news in theory, or is there a demand for this? I honestly don't know, I'm not claiming there isn't. Please tell me.
Can some one please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought MS's new format was xml based and the open document is also xml based. Wasn't the supposed beauty of the whole xml thing was that it was "easy" or "near trival" for programers to write coverters to display that xml data in different formats or style it differently? I don't see what the big "news" of this is? I also don't see what the big ruckus is that MS isn't using opendocment for its file format rather than their own xml standard. Sure, I understand in theory back in the day, all word documents you needed to go through MS to read anything out of it. Wasn't that mainly why their new format was in xml so that all those MS centric freelancers could "easily" do whatever they needed to do with the files? I'm sorry, but it seems like MS just kinda smiled and nodded at the whole open document thing and was like heck all we need is a "plugin" and you can convert or should be able to read this new handy dandy xml file "anywhere" sort of like a pdf. O.k. I recongize this is slashdot and isn't a good place to find any real MS news other than rantings, but some one around here must know what the whole big deal is with xml is and two seperate xml file formats. You'd think it wouldn't be difficult for folks to read either format if xml was so easy to read.