Um, you ARE breaking the law. It's illegal to be in the intersection after the light turns red, no matter what your reason. Next time, wait behind the stop line to make your left turn.
I didn't say that this is unconstitutional, I merely asked the question. the fact is, I'm not really sure if it is or not. In analogy to the Supreme Court's recent decision that using thermal imaging from outside a house to look inside is unconstitional, the use of new technology to accomplish a common task (in this case, walking down the street, looking for criminals) is not always allowed.
The problem is, in the past, police would have to decided whether to spend (waste?) their time walking the beat, or doing other things that might be more useful. Now, they can do both at the same time, so there's little extra cost for all that extra surveillance.
Let's see -- there are 36 cameras in this one district, which we can assume is a few square blocks. If Tampa instead posted 36 uniformed police officers in this area, all standing on the street corners, each with a camera snapping pictures of EVERYONE who walked by, and periodically thumbing through a folder of mug shots, don't you think people would get a little creeped out?
Let's take it a step further -- perform an ID on all the faces, then build up a time-stamp database. Cross-reference that with driver's license photos at the DMV. Cross-reference that with records from electronic toll payments. Isn't that just the same as having a police officer follow you around everywhere you go, every time you leave your house? That's not unconstitutional, is it?
I agree with you completely -- yet another reason that this isn't the best idea. But, just about any cable is hosed if it gets cut, unless the owner is prepared to send a ROV down to pick up the ends, drag them back to the surface, and repair the break.
However, undersea fiber is as thick as your arm, with all of the attendant packaging, and it's buried several feet under the ocean floor until it gets to the edge of the continental shelf.
In "ordinary" (read: real) fiber optics, the light travels in a HIGH INDEX glass core that runs down the middle. It's reflected at the boundary of the core, where it meets up with a low-index shell. So, this is exactly the opposite.
This post stems from work done at MIT several years ago. The basic idea is to create an omnidirectional dielectric mirror (one that reflects 100% of the incoming light, no matter which angle it comes in at), then roll it up into a tube. Any light that comes in from one end has no choice but to go out the other end, right? So, therefore, with this technology, we could lay undersea cables with no amplifiers or repeaters in them. The light of one tiny little laser would be enough to cross the ocean.
One little problem -- it won't work. First, to get the light to propagate, you have to make the tube incredibly tiny. Second, to actually get it to move without loss, you have to magically suspend a rod down the middle of this microscopic cavity. Third, there is no way to actually build a perfect reflector. All materials absorb a little light, and these little bits add up.
Today's fibers can already go 50 miles or more without regeneration of the signal, and there's no reason to suspect these fibers would be any better.
As we look at why schoolhouse shootings are so common today, we have to realize that there are MANY factors that come together to create these events. They include:
Bullying adolescents
Apathetic/absentee parents
Pervasive societal violence
Easy access to guns
Publicity for previous school shootings
Large, impersonal school environments
It's true, adolescents can be some of the cruelest people in the world. An article on the 'Columbine effect' in TIME said that one of the California shooters had his shoes stolen by bullies!
Think about that for a minute.
Can you imagine if your colleagues in your workplace held you down and stole your footwear? Would people be so surprised if you returned with a gun?
But, that's only part of the problem. Bullies were just as mean 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. Guns were arguably just as available. So, maybe kids hadn't seen so many Terminator movies, or played as much Doom. Maybe their parents were at home more. Most likely, the idea never occurred to them, or they didn't think they could actually pull it off. Columbine changed that forever. To solve the problem now, we need to address every single one of the causes, and make some serious changes, or it's not going to stop.
The comments so far indicate that people are pretty doubtful about the future of holographic data storage, and rightfully so. What's been holding people back is the right storage material, and THESE GUYS HAVE IT! I worked with the founders at Lucent, and I've seen this system run. I can't speak for the other efforts out there, but this is for real.
As for the storage density, the numbers they quote are for platter-type media, something about the thickness of a CD, not a "data cube". Although holographic storage is a 3D process, absorption and scattering by the storage medium currently limit the technique to fairly flat samples.
Finally, why should the fact that this comes out of Lucent be encouraging? Because it's not just from Lucent, it's from Bell Labs. You know, the people who brought you the dial tone, the transistor, the communications satellite, the optical fiber, the laser...
Slashdot Mirror
You know, the phrase "Anonymous Coward" has never seemed so apt as right now.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Um, you ARE breaking the law. It's illegal to be in the intersection after the light turns red, no matter what your reason. Next time, wait behind the stop line to make your left turn.
The problem is, in the past, police would have to decided whether to spend (waste?) their time walking the beat, or doing other things that might be more useful. Now, they can do both at the same time, so there's little extra cost for all that extra surveillance.
Let's see -- there are 36 cameras in this one district, which we can assume is a few square blocks. If Tampa instead posted 36 uniformed police officers in this area, all standing on the street corners, each with a camera snapping pictures of EVERYONE who walked by, and periodically thumbing through a folder of mug shots, don't you think people would get a little creeped out? Let's take it a step further -- perform an ID on all the faces, then build up a time-stamp database. Cross-reference that with driver's license photos at the DMV. Cross-reference that with records from electronic toll payments. Isn't that just the same as having a police officer follow you around everywhere you go, every time you leave your house? That's not unconstitutional, is it?
However, undersea fiber is as thick as your arm, with all of the attendant packaging, and it's buried several feet under the ocean floor until it gets to the edge of the continental shelf.
In "ordinary" (read: real) fiber optics, the light travels in a HIGH INDEX glass core that runs down the middle. It's reflected at the boundary of the core, where it meets up with a low-index shell. So, this is exactly the opposite.
One little problem -- it won't work. First, to get the light to propagate, you have to make the tube incredibly tiny. Second, to actually get it to move without loss, you have to magically suspend a rod down the middle of this microscopic cavity. Third, there is no way to actually build a perfect reflector. All materials absorb a little light, and these little bits add up.
Today's fibers can already go 50 miles or more without regeneration of the signal, and there's no reason to suspect these fibers would be any better.
It's true, adolescents can be some of the cruelest people in the world. An article on the 'Columbine effect' in TIME said that one of the California shooters had his shoes stolen by bullies!
Think about that for a minute.
Can you imagine if your colleagues in your workplace held you down and stole your footwear? Would people be so surprised if you returned with a gun?
But, that's only part of the problem. Bullies were just as mean 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. Guns were arguably just as available. So, maybe kids hadn't seen so many Terminator movies, or played as much Doom. Maybe their parents were at home more. Most likely, the idea never occurred to them, or they didn't think they could actually pull it off. Columbine changed that forever. To solve the problem now, we need to address every single one of the causes, and make some serious changes, or it's not going to stop.
As for the storage density, the numbers they quote are for platter-type media, something about the thickness of a CD, not a "data cube". Although holographic storage is a 3D process, absorption and scattering by the storage medium currently limit the technique to fairly flat samples.
Finally, why should the fact that this comes out of Lucent be encouraging? Because it's not just from Lucent, it's from Bell Labs. You know, the people who brought you the dial tone, the transistor, the communications satellite, the optical fiber, the laser ...