Redundancy is good. What's more, the US-controlled GPS system can be crippled at will by the US military - and was for the longest time, until fairly recently. Do you trust the US to provide service with full accuracy to the entire world forever? Do you trust the US to have the capacity to replace failing GPS satellites? Heck, the US isn't even capable of keeping enough essential weather satellites up there anymore...
The United States is going more and more decrepit. I for one am glad there's Russian, European and Chinese alternatives to fall back onto if the GPS system becomes useless for one reason or another.
peta cares about animals (does that mean they don't care about humans?)
PETA puts animal welfare above that of humans - they've demontrated it time and time again. That's what I hate about them. But it's pretty ironic in a way, since humans are animals too...
but using drones to "interfere" with people sounds like something only the government would engage in
Indeed. I'm a big netbook fan, and good netbooks have all but disappeared. I dread the day my 2 current netbooks die because I fear I'll have nothing to replace them with.
The arrival of tablets and their touchscreen UI also have another nasty side effect: it's completely impossible to find a laptop with a matte (frosted, non-touchscreen) screen. All the screens out there are shiny and extremely nasty to do actual work with, because of reflections.
All this would be good and well if tablets could replace laptops (as in: buy a tablet, a keyboard and a mouse, and you have a laptop). Trouble is, you can't: their very touch event-driven UI makes using a mouse with them completely stupid - try hovering over something with a bluetooth mouse connected to a tablet: nothing happens. Keyboard locales too are handled catastrophically, since most of the work is done on on-screen soft keyboards.
So, tablets are great if used strictly as tablet. Trouble is, tablets aren't any good to do actual work, save for very specialized applications. And the tools to do real work have been killed by tablets.
A "car vending machine" is an automated garages, only instead of giving you your own car back when you insert your credit card in the slot, it gives you a rental car.
NASA is extremely good at burning through gigabucks doing design studies, 99.9% of which are never built. This is just another one of those designs. I'll be impressed when I see it strapped to a rocket and sent up.
I don't mean to sound like I have a tinfoil hat on, but all you're sure of is that you have instructed the software to turn the wifi off. That doesn't mean the software doesn't lie to you and keeps trying to connect without telling you.
Think I'm paranoid? Well, maybe I am, maybe I'm not.
What you really mean is that you don't wish for this to happen, not that it can't happen for technological (or political) reasons.
No, what I mean is, technology that's simple or natural enough, or hidden enough, will be used regardless of the law because the law is unenforceable.
It's already forbidden to share copyrighted files but people do it all the time because enforcing the ban is vastly more expensive and time-consuming for copyright holders than getting around it for file sharers. If the **AAs suddenly had the powers to become truly nasty, as you describe, people would encrypt their files. If encryption became illegal, people who use steganography.
Worst case, ultimately, if the penalty for trying anything to share files on the internet was so stiff that people would truly think twice before attempting it, they'd revert to the sneaker-net. It worked perfectly well before the internet you know...
In the case of face recognition, how do you know if someone is recording you and processing the image? How do you know if a company does it secretly? If the law prohibits it, who's to say this or that guy does it anyway?
What about people are having problems with demencia? With a lot of people not wanting their names on the list, the demincia person will have trouble identify their friends, fellow workers, asociates or relatives and etc.
People with demencia live in nursing homes with carers that tell them who's visiting them. They don't walk around in the street with Google glasses on thinking "who the hell's this guy? Oh yeah it's Kevin. Thanks Google!"
It can't be opt-in. How could it be? Would you opt-in for something that lets you be tracked and recognized everywhere by anybody (and more importantly by evil corporations)? Would you opt-in to receive telemarketer calls at home? Would you opt-in to get spam emails?
Of course not: even if you only have doubts about something, your doubts make you *not* opt-in.
That's why every service that people don't want or don't like are opt-out only: for one thing, the bastards who foist it on us hope people will be too lazy to jump through the hoops to opt-out, and as an added bonus, the opt-out database itself can be mined and monetized.
In any case, even if you opt out, how will you know your mug won't be tracked anyway? Do you believe in corporate morals? Who's the overseeing body? The government? Do you believe in government morals?
Okay, then wear a niqab: technically it's not allowed in many countries (for the very reason that the police can't see your face), but it falls in the "religion" category, so niqab wearers often get away with it on the ground that society as a whole is supposed to show the greatest amount of tolerance for religious stuff for some reason.
With a garment like this, even men can wear one and become virtually undetectable.
This sort of application is like file shaing: it's just gonna happen, whether you like it or not. You can't legislate it away, and you can't make facial recognition technology disappear by punching people in the face. In both cases, someone will come up with smart contact lenses (or something else that's pretty much undetectable) even faster, and you'll be none the wiser.
I know I'm not the first one to point this out here, but seriously, let me repeat this:
HOW CAN ANYBODY THROW AWAY HALF A MILLION TONS OF FOOD WHEN SO MANY HUMAN BEINGS ARE STARVING?
How have we - collectively - come to the point where this sort of things is acceptable? This is completely indecent, and someone in power should be shot over this.
A Finnish friend of mine told me when kids there reach the age of 2, during summer holidays, they take them to the countryside and get them to play naked in dirt and mud on purpose, to build up their immune system.
Slashdot Mirror
Redundancy is good. What's more, the US-controlled GPS system can be crippled at will by the US military - and was for the longest time, until fairly recently. Do you trust the US to provide service with full accuracy to the entire world forever? Do you trust the US to have the capacity to replace failing GPS satellites? Heck, the US isn't even capable of keeping enough essential weather satellites up there anymore...
The United States is going more and more decrepit. I for one am glad there's Russian, European and Chinese alternatives to fall back onto if the GPS system becomes useless for one reason or another.
peta cares about animals (does that mean they don't care about humans?)
PETA puts animal welfare above that of humans - they've demontrated it time and time again. That's what I hate about them. But it's pretty ironic in a way, since humans are animals too...
but using drones to "interfere" with people sounds like something only the government would engage in
Paparazzis do it too nowadays.
But but... it's Apple man. It's an iSomething product! That's why it's so newsworthy!!
Otherwise yeah, mobile point of sales with portable printers have been around since the Flinstones...
Indeed. I'm a big netbook fan, and good netbooks have all but disappeared. I dread the day my 2 current netbooks die because I fear I'll have nothing to replace them with.
The arrival of tablets and their touchscreen UI also have another nasty side effect: it's completely impossible to find a laptop with a matte (frosted, non-touchscreen) screen. All the screens out there are shiny and extremely nasty to do actual work with, because of reflections.
All this would be good and well if tablets could replace laptops (as in: buy a tablet, a keyboard and a mouse, and you have a laptop). Trouble is, you can't: their very touch event-driven UI makes using a mouse with them completely stupid - try hovering over something with a bluetooth mouse connected to a tablet: nothing happens. Keyboard locales too are handled catastrophically, since most of the work is done on on-screen soft keyboards.
So, tablets are great if used strictly as tablet. Trouble is, tablets aren't any good to do actual work, save for very specialized applications. And the tools to do real work have been killed by tablets.
That sucks...
Which begs the question: who are you stealing wifi from?
No it doesn't
A "car vending machine" is an automated garages, only instead of giving you your own car back when you insert your credit card in the slot, it gives you a rental car.
Not really an earth-shattering concept...
NASA is extremely good at burning through gigabucks doing design studies, 99.9% of which are never built. This is just another one of those designs. I'll be impressed when I see it strapped to a rocket and sent up.
Oh, and my reader's wifi, is never on.
I don't mean to sound like I have a tinfoil hat on, but all you're sure of is that you have instructed the software to turn the wifi off. That doesn't mean the software doesn't lie to you and keeps trying to connect without telling you.
Think I'm paranoid? Well, maybe I am, maybe I'm not.
That's called a comic book.
Don't buy e-book readers that force you to be connected to the internet, or only read proprietary file formats, or buy from online store.
My old Sony PRS-650 doesn't have hardware to go on the internet, and it reads whatever file I feed it, so I'm sure it doesn't snitch on me.
What you really mean is that you don't wish for this to happen, not that it can't happen for technological (or political) reasons.
No, what I mean is, technology that's simple or natural enough, or hidden enough, will be used regardless of the law because the law is unenforceable.
It's already forbidden to share copyrighted files but people do it all the time because enforcing the ban is vastly more expensive and time-consuming for copyright holders than getting around it for file sharers. If the **AAs suddenly had the powers to become truly nasty, as you describe, people would encrypt their files. If encryption became illegal, people who use steganography.
Worst case, ultimately, if the penalty for trying anything to share files on the internet was so stiff that people would truly think twice before attempting it, they'd revert to the sneaker-net. It worked perfectly well before the internet you know...
In the case of face recognition, how do you know if someone is recording you and processing the image? How do you know if a company does it secretly? If the law prohibits it, who's to say this or that guy does it anyway?
What about people are having problems with demencia? With a lot of people not wanting their names on the list, the demincia person will have trouble identify their friends, fellow workers, asociates or relatives and etc.
People with demencia live in nursing homes with carers that tell them who's visiting them. They don't walk around in the street with Google glasses on thinking "who the hell's this guy? Oh yeah it's Kevin. Thanks Google!"
It can't be opt-in. How could it be? Would you opt-in for something that lets you be tracked and recognized everywhere by anybody (and more importantly by evil corporations)? Would you opt-in to receive telemarketer calls at home? Would you opt-in to get spam emails?
Of course not: even if you only have doubts about something, your doubts make you *not* opt-in.
That's why every service that people don't want or don't like are opt-out only: for one thing, the bastards who foist it on us hope people will be too lazy to jump through the hoops to opt-out, and as an added bonus, the opt-out database itself can be mined and monetized.
In any case, even if you opt out, how will you know your mug won't be tracked anyway? Do you believe in corporate morals? Who's the overseeing body? The government? Do you believe in government morals?
Okay, then wear a niqab: technically it's not allowed in many countries (for the very reason that the police can't see your face), but it falls in the "religion" category, so niqab wearers often get away with it on the ground that society as a whole is supposed to show the greatest amount of tolerance for religious stuff for some reason.
With a garment like this, even men can wear one and become virtually undetectable.
This sort of application is like file shaing: it's just gonna happen, whether you like it or not. You can't legislate it away, and you can't make facial recognition technology disappear by punching people in the face. In both cases, someone will come up with smart contact lenses (or something else that's pretty much undetectable) even faster, and you'll be none the wiser.
Get ready to live in a panopticon world. It'll happen. It's already happened in fact...
How to Beat Facial-Recognition Software
I know I'm not the first one to point this out here, but seriously, let me repeat this:
HOW CAN ANYBODY THROW AWAY HALF A MILLION TONS OF FOOD WHEN SO MANY HUMAN BEINGS ARE STARVING?
How have we - collectively - come to the point where this sort of things is acceptable? This is completely indecent, and someone in power should be shot over this.
I look forward to buying the first 3D-printed AK47 for $15k. I mean, who the hell would want a normal $30 one: they're so last century...
In this particular case, I can't engage in my usual "boycott the advertisers" rule, because I already ordered one of these on the kickstarter.
So what you're saying if that you have principles, but they take a back seat when they go against your interests.
Some morals...
Already mentioned here.
A Finnish friend of mine told me when kids there reach the age of 2, during summer holidays, they take them to the countryside and get them to play naked in dirt and mud on purpose, to build up their immune system.
You may be more right than you think: a scientist has proposed the theory that toxoplasmosis carried by cats affects everything we feel and do.
Is keeps Russian probes warm and turns Russian spys cold.
is a monopoly tightening its grip on the market it monopolizes.
I grew fed up with android years ago. What kind of calculator app requires weekly updates? Dumbphones FTW
You don't *have* to update. Once I find a fully working app, I never update it. What would be the point, since it already works?