Another scenario is they could be doing testing on new sensors and systems for future satellites. Previously they would have had to develop everything on the ground then launch it and hope it worked as expected. If it didn't they had to troubleshoot, and if possible fix, the failures remotely. Seems like a platform where you can bring it all back down after letting it operate, or fail as the case maybe, during a test period would make development a lot easier. Since after you bring it down you can look over the results, inspect the equipment, make changes based on what you find or try new ideas and then send it up again for another round. If that is what they are doing it would seem that a new generation of more capable satellites could be on the way.
Not me. I'm behind ten proxies and use Tor for everything. I use throwaway e-mail addresses from places like Mailinator. I even registered my gmail account using a hospital courtesy phone... that was in another country. My friends joke that I'm paranoid of the government. No, I could care less about the government... it's all the corporations!
All of that sounds great for your electronic transactions. Not sure it will help all that much when they start tracking your physical movements through the world and building databases that way. I guess you could wear a variety of disguises, always pay cash, never sleep the same place twice and make your living by pan handling or something. The problem here is that as this stuff becomes more and more pervasive it is going to become harder and harder to avoid. I suspect what we really need is some strict data privacy rules that require people to get opt ins for this stuff. That may be possible in the EU I don't see it happening in the US.
Myself, I am quite sympathetic to the idea of workers organizing for greater leverage with their employers; however, every experience in my working life I ever had that brushed up against unions gave me the impression that they rarely brought any value to the table for anyone but them. It's a common perception, and perhaps that view is colored by brainwashing and mythology but there is more than a grain of truth to it.
I think this paragraph hits the nail on the head as to why American's don't like unions. It also tracks pretty closely with my experiences with them. While the idea of unions seems to have merit, as they are run in the US they are nearly indistinguishable from organized crime. In fact many of the strongest unions, such as the Teamsters, have been virtually controled by mob at various times. I have family members who are in unions and their experiences are that they get as much abuse from the union as they get from any employer. With the added insult that they are actually paying the union to treat them like that. The one exception to that is I have one cousin who lives in a right to work state. Where the union has to convince them to join. When she had a problem they jumped to do something about it. Primarily because they know people will just quit the union if they don't precieve value from it. So oddly enough the only union I have encountered that really worked hard for its members was in a state with strong anti-union laws. I guess having to compete for members matters.
What I wonder about with all of these restrictions how many finds are simply ignored or destroyed because people don't want to lose the use of their land? Farmer X plows up a roman era treasure and is faced with the prospect of having his whole farm disrupted for who knows how long, perhaps permanently. You have to think that perhaps he isn't so thrilled with this. Makes you wonder just how many farmer X's go get a sledge hammer smash whatever it is up and put it out in with the trash. I guess it would depend upon the compensation rates for locating things and cooperating with archeological preservation vs. the penalties for destruction. Though my guess is as long as you didn't try to sell it you could throw out king tuts treasure in your trash without people noticing. Especially if you say burned it all before you did it.
Possibly. A Kirtsaeng win simply represents the preservation of the status quo. If they lose the fundamentals of their foreign businesses really don't change much from when they opened them. On the other hand if they win then rights holders gain a huge new revenue stream off of the public. Really this is about protecting the deals that they cut with University book stores and if possible about seizing more money from the public. As far as text book publishers go, my guess is that if they lose they will start selling different domestic and foreign versions of the books. So that you can't use the foreign version in your US classes.
It sounds like they are gouging the hell out of their US customers if this guy can buy the same book abroad, pay international shipping on it, probably import duties etc. and still make $1.2 million dollars. Instead we have another case where a "rights holder" is trying to assert insane terms on the rest of country to preserve their business model. Let us hope that the Supreme Court hears this on one of its "non-crazy" days.
I'm at the point that unless I get the same specs as apple for like half the price i will buy a Mac.
All the crap pc makers lost my trust a long time ago
I spent $1100 on a 13"Mbp last year and the closest pc counterpart was about $1000.
This reminds me of talking to people about Japanese vs. American cars back in the 70's. It got the point where the US car makers had put out a product that people just had problems with for so long that huge numbers of people just stopped buying them. Even when they were cheaper to buy, cheaper to repair etc. People just didn't want to deal with it. I have a couple of friends who basically make exactly the same arguments about their Macs vs. PCs. Essentially they just don't want to deal with little problems and for what they do with the Mac they don't have to. As the US automakers learned the hard way that can be a powerful market force.
I agree that, at least in the near term, there is nothing we can do about it. Though I think we still have to try. We still need to complain, sue, protest, put up candidates who are against this etc. If only to slow the spread of this stuff. My problem with the whole "if you're doing doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" bit is that what is defined as wrong has a habit of changing with the political winds. Historically when Government's made unreasonable demands people would find ways to work around it. That is becoming harder and harder to do as we get closer and closer to continuous surveillance of the population. All it takes is for us to elect one real bad player and all of these tools we aren't worrying about become an electronic leash around our necks.
Despite this I don't disagree that China is a threat to nations in it's region- and that does include nations that have a body of water between it and them such as Japan, but ultimately, I do not think China is a threat to North America, precisely because of the distinct lack of worthwhile naval power. Similarly, I don't think it's a threat to Europe because by the time it reaches there it'll already be spread far too thin including having passed a nation almost it's size and manpower - India.
China is working very hard on building a blue water navy. Notice that within the last week they brought their first air craft carrier on line. While that ship isn’t state of the art by any means it provides them with the test bed necessary to start training the necessary personnel and developing the doctrine for carrier operations. It is in effect a statement of intent that they intend to become a naval power and that they intend to develop the ability to project that power. Just look at what the US can do with its carriers and you’ll see that once such a power has been developed there are few places they can’t extend it to.
So if they want to impact Europe they won’t do it via driving through Russia, past India etc. They’ll sail around all of that and do it by picking some strategic point and blockading it until Europe, or the US or whomever gives them what they want. Actually 9 out of 10 times they’ll just threaten to do it. Much of the time just having the ability is enough.
You don’t need to conquer a place to have power there. Really all you need is a sufficiently credible threat to influence policy and behavior. The US has it and China wants it as well. Considering how belligerent China has been with its neighbors recently this should, and from press reports it appears that it does, greatly concern them. I mean it appears this is causing a rapprochement between the US and Vietnam. Which considering the history there tells you how seriously they take this.
Union fix this? You are kidding right? My brother works in a union shop, not even a call center, and due to contract enforcement on the Union / Company contract there is a guy with a watch who logs when you walk through the door. Putting this in a Union contract won't change a thing but will make it much more expensive for you when you have to pay Union dues.
The sad truth is call centers are terrible places to work. I worked in one some years ago doing tech support and it was awful. They log everything and where I worked every quarter or so they would come in and compare your figures to the rest of the department. Well I was handling escalations and my figures where always terrible compared to the rest of the department because my calls lasted five times as long. So every quarter I got to listen to a lecture about my needing to bring my numbers in line and then they ignored it. Because the manager knew why my numbers were different but she still had to give me this song and dance. Call centers are not good places to work. They never were and they never will be.
USA has actually spent much of the last 70 years holding back its own development so it could support its allies in Western Europe and East Asia against USSR and China...
You do realize that the dominance of USA for the last 70 years has more to do with it not being one of the countries on the territories of which large-scale armed conflicts were fought during that period, right?
Both of your statements are true to a point. The US did benefit from coming out of WW2 with pretty much the only intact major industrial base. On the other hand it is also true that the US used that industrial base to rebuild Europe and Japan after the war. In effect US tax payers paid to reestablish our industrial competitors. Who in many cases ended up competing with us using newer more advanced factories that we had helped them build. So I'd say to some degree there is a bit of truth in both of your positions.
We have been steadily eroding freedom in this country for the last 70 years. People want the state to take care of them, to provide for their personal comfort, for their safety, for their retirement, for helping raise their kids, for their health and probably another 50 things I don't even know about. The state can't do that without increased powers and increased powers for them equal less freedoms for us. This is what the majority in this country has voted for over the last few decades. I don't see that changing. They will continue to erode your 4th amendment rights, the rights to your property, the rights to be secure in your home etc. In large part because it is necessary for them to do that in order to provide the level of services and protection that we the citizens have demanded from them. That doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to fight the good fight to defend your freedoms. It just means that you need to understand that right now those of use that value individual freedom are a minority and it is unlikely that this trend will change anytime soon.
Newspeak also had the affect of cutting the current generation off from whatever knowledge previous generations managed to record. Since anything from before is basically in another language now. In essence the different versions of Newspeak served to let the party reset history every few years.
It makes you wonder if similar reasoning isn't behind the constant drive to redefine words in more politically acceptable ways?
I watched the video a couple of times to try and determine that as well. It looks like the arm is freely moving. My guess is the purpose is to prevent it from flying across the lab and killing somebody when it fails. I’d guess that the power is coming in through the cables at the top.
If they ever make this work I can envision some scary things that could be made with such technology. Killer robots hunting people down seems a little more plausible every day. For now this company has managed, with their previous robot design, to make what is basically a $32 million dollar robotic replacement for a mule.
The concern isn't for the children whose parents didn't get them immunized. The concern is for another group of children who can not be immunized due to allergies to ingredients in the vaccines. Basically the population refusing to be vaccinated is a vector to infect those who can't be vaccinated.
Sadly there is a bigger audience for watching people wade around in swamps, go to pawn shops, dig antiques out of crazy people's backyards etc than for actual documentary television. The amount of crap on the channels that used to play interesting documentary type programing is depressing. We are rapidly headed back to the situation in the 70's when the only place playing that kind of programing is PBS. Though even that would require them to back off their steady stream of "Antiques Road Show".
He may have damaged his reputation. Gartner's reputation is exactly in line with this sort of thing. I pretty much don't take anything they have to say seriously anymore. To many of their "learned" pronouncements just haven't passed the laugh test over the years.
Basically half the article is him throwing out various reasons a game company might want to own an MRI. Over the course of the article it is suggested that by owning one a game company could "make more exciting games, could learn to sell advertising better and could learn to conduct business more efficiently". The outlier that makes you wonder what kind of companies we are talking about here is the "find better ways to interrogate people". Actually the interrogate part is the first thing Adrian Hon lists in his response. Makes you wonder how much interrogation is going on at his company and what their current methods are? Frankly by the time I finished the article the whole idea had moved into the "scary creepy" category.
At my last job I was on call for over 3 years without a break. They called me so often that prior to cable Internet being available my company ran a fractional T1 into my house. The only upside to it was I got to count any time worked over night toward my weekly time. Which meant that for some periods I worked at home for days at a time. One of the major selling points for my current job is that I am only on call for actual emergencies. So instead of 7 to 12 calls per week I get 2 or 3 a year. I was salaried and never got anything extra for that even when it drove me upwards of 60 hours in a week on some occasions. My current job actually has me bill those hours which maybe another reason they don't call me much. I find if your time costs them money they treat it with a lot more respect.
As far as the dining at McDonald's part goes you see that a lot when people travel abroad. They eat all sorts of strange cuisine and after a few days they just want something similar to what they get at home. In my mind he should have left when the first person asked him about his head gear, forcing him to present his papers. I am sorry but fast food employees don't get to question me about anything beyond do you want fries with that. Perhaps he was on vacation and tired and didn't want to deal with it. Perhaps he was just tired and wanted to eat. Whatever the case his first warning was the first unreasonable question from a fast food cashier. He should have turned and walked out then.
It looks to me like nobody in France is taking this seriously because he didn't take it seriously. It sounds like he just went about his business and called some people. He treated it like some sort of customer service problem. If he wanted this to be taken seriously he could have called the police and emergency services from right outside the restaurant. All he really had to do then was say they attacked him and his head is hurting and he is feeling dizzy. He has pictures of the guys. If he had made a scene, with police and rescue personnel, my guess is they would have had to take statements and investigated right there. Witnesses may have still been present. Basically he is coming back later and saying "they were mean to me" and wondering why nobody cares. I mean how can they investigate this now? All he has is his story and a couple of pictures at this point. If nothing else having cops and an ambulance parked out front would cost that guy a bunch of business while they looked into it. Even if that was the only satisfaction you got it would be something. Perhaps he didn't want to be bothered on his vacation or didn't want to escalate the thing with his kid there?
Just out of curiosity why is he blanking out the perpetrators faces? Who cares if guys who roughed you up are happy?
Good points. Politics is a path not a destination. Political power, in the US system at least, could be written as a formula. Money + Votes = Power. MPAA / RIAA are real heavy in the Money part of the equation. NRA has some money and some votes that they organize fairly effectively. AARP has a lot of money and a lot of voters and congress quakes in their boots when they go on the warpath. Right now we have a vague threat that maybe we might have some votes, assuming we remember come November.
In this case I don't think it is either. The article clearly states you can read the disk with a microscope. Which implies that it is simple text and diagrams printed very small on a durable material.
I don't know about you but I for one would like to see a hell of a lot of change in the whole copyright arena. I am not sure that I accept that premise though. There are lots of lobbying organizations that are primarily defensive. The one I used in my example, the NRA, spends the vast majority of its resources trying to preserve their view of the 2nd amendment. The main thing about effective lobbying is it changes the reelection equation for politicians as regards to some policy. They are far less likely to advocate something that a motivated lobby is dead set against and more likely to push something that some other motivated lobby is for. If you have opposing lobbies you can kind of cancel each other out
Your other point about the value of system inertia is dead on. If you look at the design of the US government power is divided up among the three branches of the Federal Government, the states and the localities. One of the major goals of that is to create systemic inertia. To make it hard, or impossible, for any group to really force their views on the entire nation. That is really one of the major goals of our Federal system. The problem is that for decades now we have been slowly breaking down the inherent inertia in the system and concentrating power in the Federal Government in general and the executive branch in particular.
Congress used to pass laws that specifically included regulations or whatever. Now days they pass laws that have some specifics in them but contain legalese to the effect of and we authorize agency X to create regulations that will have the force of law to control Y. Which in essence delegates vast powers that are supposed to be exercised by congress to the executive branch. I mean if you want to do something the public doesn't like which way is easier, have congress debate it and pass a bill or have an agency of the executive branch do it behind closed doors, if I was trying to enact rules without meaningful public input I'd take the agency path.
I don't think this is digital. The article says that you can read the documents with a microscope. Which implies they are simply printed very small on the surface of the disk. So sort of think a high tech version of the Rossetta stone for future generations.
Basically you have no options for the $2 trillion+ in taxes you either pay it or you go to jail. The people giving the campaign contributions have a choice who they give that money to. Which forces the politicians to listen to them.
Political contributions are not all bad. The need of politicians to raise money does force them to be somewhat responsive to the public. In countries where the public funds campaigns out of the treasury politicians know they only need enough supporters to qualify for support and they are golden. The real problem here is the people who want this stuff are very motivated, they stand to make millions or possibly billions off this. The people against it are far less motivated, we post on slashdot and possibly write / call our representatives. Basically we put up an ad hoc defense against an opponent that is working 24x7 on this. It is sort of like sports, who do you think will win the team that has professional trainers and practices constantly or the team that shows up on weekends for a pick up game? Sure the PUG group might win occasionally but overall the pro team is going win most of the time.
If we are really serious about opposing this stuff the only real answer is get our own full time team working on it. If enough of the public really becomes motivated for something they typically form an association and use that as a vehicle to push their agenda. No matter what you feel about the policy involved the best example, that I can think of, of this is the National Rifle Association. Gun owners don't like gun control and they are willing to join, fund and support with their votes and organization to push that agenda. In that case the NRA is out there 24 x 7 with their $100,000 donations and the threat of several million members who vote demanding that their views be heard. Not only do they lobby congress but they get out in front of the public and argue for their positions.
The EFF fights some of these battles but it is pretty clear most people here are not really motivated to act. The NRA has something like 3 million members who contribute, like $30 - $50 each per year, and vote. The EFF has about 140,000. People who propose gun control have been known to lose their seats. The people pushing this sort of thing never lose their seats. If we are really serious about this then we either need an EFF with 3 million members or some other organization. Still if we are really serious about blocking this stuff you need an organization with enough members, who provide money, support and votes, to make the members of congress take note. Elected officials tend to view everything through the prism of how does it impact their reelection chances. So when a group demands things they look at a number of things. How many votes can this group get me or cost me. How much money can they put into my war chest. What other benefits can they provide to me or to my constituents, all of which help me get reelected. Until you can shift that equation in your favor the best you are ever going to do is slow them down. The problem is we care but just not enough to really put our money or our votes behind it. Until that changes we lose.
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Another scenario is they could be doing testing on new sensors and systems for future satellites. Previously they would have had to develop everything on the ground then launch it and hope it worked as expected. If it didn't they had to troubleshoot, and if possible fix, the failures remotely. Seems like a platform where you can bring it all back down after letting it operate, or fail as the case maybe, during a test period would make development a lot easier. Since after you bring it down you can look over the results, inspect the equipment, make changes based on what you find or try new ideas and then send it up again for another round. If that is what they are doing it would seem that a new generation of more capable satellites could be on the way.
Not me. I'm behind ten proxies and use Tor for everything. I use throwaway e-mail addresses from places like Mailinator. I even registered my gmail account using a hospital courtesy phone... that was in another country. My friends joke that I'm paranoid of the government. No, I could care less about the government... it's all the corporations!
All of that sounds great for your electronic transactions. Not sure it will help all that much when they start tracking your physical movements through the world and building databases that way. I guess you could wear a variety of disguises, always pay cash, never sleep the same place twice and make your living by pan handling or something. The problem here is that as this stuff becomes more and more pervasive it is going to become harder and harder to avoid. I suspect what we really need is some strict data privacy rules that require people to get opt ins for this stuff. That may be possible in the EU I don't see it happening in the US.
Myself, I am quite sympathetic to the idea of workers organizing for greater leverage with their employers; however, every experience in my working life I ever had that brushed up against unions gave me the impression that they rarely brought any value to the table for anyone but them. It's a common perception, and perhaps that view is colored by brainwashing and mythology but there is more than a grain of truth to it.
I think this paragraph hits the nail on the head as to why American's don't like unions. It also tracks pretty closely with my experiences with them. While the idea of unions seems to have merit, as they are run in the US they are nearly indistinguishable from organized crime. In fact many of the strongest unions, such as the Teamsters, have been virtually controled by mob at various times. I have family members who are in unions and their experiences are that they get as much abuse from the union as they get from any employer. With the added insult that they are actually paying the union to treat them like that. The one exception to that is I have one cousin who lives in a right to work state. Where the union has to convince them to join. When she had a problem they jumped to do something about it. Primarily because they know people will just quit the union if they don't precieve value from it. So oddly enough the only union I have encountered that really worked hard for its members was in a state with strong anti-union laws. I guess having to compete for members matters.
What I wonder about with all of these restrictions how many finds are simply ignored or destroyed because people don't want to lose the use of their land? Farmer X plows up a roman era treasure and is faced with the prospect of having his whole farm disrupted for who knows how long, perhaps permanently. You have to think that perhaps he isn't so thrilled with this. Makes you wonder just how many farmer X's go get a sledge hammer smash whatever it is up and put it out in with the trash. I guess it would depend upon the compensation rates for locating things and cooperating with archeological preservation vs. the penalties for destruction. Though my guess is as long as you didn't try to sell it you could throw out king tuts treasure in your trash without people noticing. Especially if you say burned it all before you did it.
Possibly. A Kirtsaeng win simply represents the preservation of the status quo. If they lose the fundamentals of their foreign businesses really don't change much from when they opened them. On the other hand if they win then rights holders gain a huge new revenue stream off of the public. Really this is about protecting the deals that they cut with University book stores and if possible about seizing more money from the public. As far as text book publishers go, my guess is that if they lose they will start selling different domestic and foreign versions of the books. So that you can't use the foreign version in your US classes.
It sounds like they are gouging the hell out of their US customers if this guy can buy the same book abroad, pay international shipping on it, probably import duties etc. and still make $1.2 million dollars. Instead we have another case where a "rights holder" is trying to assert insane terms on the rest of country to preserve their business model. Let us hope that the Supreme Court hears this on one of its "non-crazy" days.
I'm at the point that unless I get the same specs as apple for like half the price i will buy a Mac.
All the crap pc makers lost my trust a long time ago
I spent $1100 on a 13"Mbp last year and the closest pc counterpart was about $1000.
This reminds me of talking to people about Japanese vs. American cars back in the 70's. It got the point where the US car makers had put out a product that people just had problems with for so long that huge numbers of people just stopped buying them. Even when they were cheaper to buy, cheaper to repair etc. People just didn't want to deal with it. I have a couple of friends who basically make exactly the same arguments about their Macs vs. PCs. Essentially they just don't want to deal with little problems and for what they do with the Mac they don't have to. As the US automakers learned the hard way that can be a powerful market force.
I agree that, at least in the near term, there is nothing we can do about it. Though I think we still have to try. We still need to complain, sue, protest, put up candidates who are against this etc. If only to slow the spread of this stuff. My problem with the whole "if you're doing doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" bit is that what is defined as wrong has a habit of changing with the political winds. Historically when Government's made unreasonable demands people would find ways to work around it. That is becoming harder and harder to do as we get closer and closer to continuous surveillance of the population. All it takes is for us to elect one real bad player and all of these tools we aren't worrying about become an electronic leash around our necks.
Despite this I don't disagree that China is a threat to nations in it's region- and that does include nations that have a body of water between it and them such as Japan, but ultimately, I do not think China is a threat to North America, precisely because of the distinct lack of worthwhile naval power. Similarly, I don't think it's a threat to Europe because by the time it reaches there it'll already be spread far too thin including having passed a nation almost it's size and manpower - India.
China is working very hard on building a blue water navy. Notice that within the last week they brought their first air craft carrier on line. While that ship isn’t state of the art by any means it provides them with the test bed necessary to start training the necessary personnel and developing the doctrine for carrier operations. It is in effect a statement of intent that they intend to become a naval power and that they intend to develop the ability to project that power. Just look at what the US can do with its carriers and you’ll see that once such a power has been developed there are few places they can’t extend it to.
So if they want to impact Europe they won’t do it via driving through Russia, past India etc. They’ll sail around all of that and do it by picking some strategic point and blockading it until Europe, or the US or whomever gives them what they want. Actually 9 out of 10 times they’ll just threaten to do it. Much of the time just having the ability is enough.
You don’t need to conquer a place to have power there. Really all you need is a sufficiently credible threat to influence policy and behavior. The US has it and China wants it as well. Considering how belligerent China has been with its neighbors recently this should, and from press reports it appears that it does, greatly concern them. I mean it appears this is causing a rapprochement between the US and Vietnam. Which considering the history there tells you how seriously they take this.
Union fix this? You are kidding right? My brother works in a union shop, not even a call center, and due to contract enforcement on the Union / Company contract there is a guy with a watch who logs when you walk through the door. Putting this in a Union contract won't change a thing but will make it much more expensive for you when you have to pay Union dues.
The sad truth is call centers are terrible places to work. I worked in one some years ago doing tech support and it was awful. They log everything and where I worked every quarter or so they would come in and compare your figures to the rest of the department. Well I was handling escalations and my figures where always terrible compared to the rest of the department because my calls lasted five times as long. So every quarter I got to listen to a lecture about my needing to bring my numbers in line and then they ignored it. Because the manager knew why my numbers were different but she still had to give me this song and dance. Call centers are not good places to work. They never were and they never will be.
USA has actually spent much of the last 70 years holding back its own development so it could support its allies in Western Europe and East Asia against USSR and China...
You do realize that the dominance of USA for the last 70 years has more to do with it not being one of the countries on the territories of which large-scale armed conflicts were fought during that period, right?
Both of your statements are true to a point. The US did benefit from coming out of WW2 with pretty much the only intact major industrial base. On the other hand it is also true that the US used that industrial base to rebuild Europe and Japan after the war. In effect US tax payers paid to reestablish our industrial competitors. Who in many cases ended up competing with us using newer more advanced factories that we had helped them build. So I'd say to some degree there is a bit of truth in both of your positions.
We have been steadily eroding freedom in this country for the last 70 years. People want the state to take care of them, to provide for their personal comfort, for their safety, for their retirement, for helping raise their kids, for their health and probably another 50 things I don't even know about. The state can't do that without increased powers and increased powers for them equal less freedoms for us. This is what the majority in this country has voted for over the last few decades. I don't see that changing. They will continue to erode your 4th amendment rights, the rights to your property, the rights to be secure in your home etc. In large part because it is necessary for them to do that in order to provide the level of services and protection that we the citizens have demanded from them. That doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to fight the good fight to defend your freedoms. It just means that you need to understand that right now those of use that value individual freedom are a minority and it is unlikely that this trend will change anytime soon.
Newspeak also had the affect of cutting the current generation off from whatever knowledge previous generations managed to record. Since anything from before is basically in another language now. In essence the different versions of Newspeak served to let the party reset history every few years.
It makes you wonder if similar reasoning isn't behind the constant drive to redefine words in more politically acceptable ways?
I watched the video a couple of times to try and determine that as well. It looks like the arm is freely moving. My guess is the purpose is to prevent it from flying across the lab and killing somebody when it fails. I’d guess that the power is coming in through the cables at the top.
If they ever make this work I can envision some scary things that could be made with such technology. Killer robots hunting people down seems a little more plausible every day. For now this company has managed, with their previous robot design, to make what is basically a $32 million dollar robotic replacement for a mule.
The concern isn't for the children whose parents didn't get them immunized. The concern is for another group of children who can not be immunized due to allergies to ingredients in the vaccines. Basically the population refusing to be vaccinated is a vector to infect those who can't be vaccinated.
Sadly there is a bigger audience for watching people wade around in swamps, go to pawn shops, dig antiques out of crazy people's backyards etc than for actual documentary television. The amount of crap on the channels that used to play interesting documentary type programing is depressing. We are rapidly headed back to the situation in the 70's when the only place playing that kind of programing is PBS. Though even that would require them to back off their steady stream of "Antiques Road Show".
He may have damaged his reputation. Gartner's reputation is exactly in line with this sort of thing. I pretty much don't take anything they have to say seriously anymore. To many of their "learned" pronouncements just haven't passed the laugh test over the years.
Basically half the article is him throwing out various reasons a game company might want to own an MRI. Over the course of the article it is suggested that by owning one a game company could "make more exciting games, could learn to sell advertising better and could learn to conduct business more efficiently". The outlier that makes you wonder what kind of companies we are talking about here is the "find better ways to interrogate people". Actually the interrogate part is the first thing Adrian Hon lists in his response. Makes you wonder how much interrogation is going on at his company and what their current methods are? Frankly by the time I finished the article the whole idea had moved into the "scary creepy" category.
At my last job I was on call for over 3 years without a break. They called me so often that prior to cable Internet being available my company ran a fractional T1 into my house. The only upside to it was I got to count any time worked over night toward my weekly time. Which meant that for some periods I worked at home for days at a time. One of the major selling points for my current job is that I am only on call for actual emergencies. So instead of 7 to 12 calls per week I get 2 or 3 a year. I was salaried and never got anything extra for that even when it drove me upwards of 60 hours in a week on some occasions. My current job actually has me bill those hours which maybe another reason they don't call me much. I find if your time costs them money they treat it with a lot more respect.
As far as the dining at McDonald's part goes you see that a lot when people travel abroad. They eat all sorts of strange cuisine and after a few days they just want something similar to what they get at home. In my mind he should have left when the first person asked him about his head gear, forcing him to present his papers. I am sorry but fast food employees don't get to question me about anything beyond do you want fries with that. Perhaps he was on vacation and tired and didn't want to deal with it. Perhaps he was just tired and wanted to eat. Whatever the case his first warning was the first unreasonable question from a fast food cashier. He should have turned and walked out then.
It looks to me like nobody in France is taking this seriously because he didn't take it seriously. It sounds like he just went about his business and called some people. He treated it like some sort of customer service problem. If he wanted this to be taken seriously he could have called the police and emergency services from right outside the restaurant. All he really had to do then was say they attacked him and his head is hurting and he is feeling dizzy. He has pictures of the guys. If he had made a scene, with police and rescue personnel, my guess is they would have had to take statements and investigated right there. Witnesses may have still been present. Basically he is coming back later and saying "they were mean to me" and wondering why nobody cares. I mean how can they investigate this now? All he has is his story and a couple of pictures at this point. If nothing else having cops and an ambulance parked out front would cost that guy a bunch of business while they looked into it. Even if that was the only satisfaction you got it would be something. Perhaps he didn't want to be bothered on his vacation or didn't want to escalate the thing with his kid there?
Just out of curiosity why is he blanking out the perpetrators faces? Who cares if guys who roughed you up are happy?
Good points. Politics is a path not a destination. Political power, in the US system at least, could be written as a formula. Money + Votes = Power. MPAA / RIAA are real heavy in the Money part of the equation. NRA has some money and some votes that they organize fairly effectively. AARP has a lot of money and a lot of voters and congress quakes in their boots when they go on the warpath. Right now we have a vague threat that maybe we might have some votes, assuming we remember come November.
In this case I don't think it is either. The article clearly states you can read the disk with a microscope. Which implies that it is simple text and diagrams printed very small on a durable material.
I don't know about you but I for one would like to see a hell of a lot of change in the whole copyright arena. I am not sure that I accept that premise though. There are lots of lobbying organizations that are primarily defensive. The one I used in my example, the NRA, spends the vast majority of its resources trying to preserve their view of the 2nd amendment. The main thing about effective lobbying is it changes the reelection equation for politicians as regards to some policy. They are far less likely to advocate something that a motivated lobby is dead set against and more likely to push something that some other motivated lobby is for. If you have opposing lobbies you can kind of cancel each other out
Your other point about the value of system inertia is dead on. If you look at the design of the US government power is divided up among the three branches of the Federal Government, the states and the localities. One of the major goals of that is to create systemic inertia. To make it hard, or impossible, for any group to really force their views on the entire nation. That is really one of the major goals of our Federal system. The problem is that for decades now we have been slowly breaking down the inherent inertia in the system and concentrating power in the Federal Government in general and the executive branch in particular.
Congress used to pass laws that specifically included regulations or whatever. Now days they pass laws that have some specifics in them but contain legalese to the effect of and we authorize agency X to create regulations that will have the force of law to control Y. Which in essence delegates vast powers that are supposed to be exercised by congress to the executive branch. I mean if you want to do something the public doesn't like which way is easier, have congress debate it and pass a bill or have an agency of the executive branch do it behind closed doors, if I was trying to enact rules without meaningful public input I'd take the agency path.
I don't think this is digital. The article says that you can read the documents with a microscope. Which implies they are simply printed very small on the surface of the disk. So sort of think a high tech version of the Rossetta stone for future generations.
Basically you have no options for the $2 trillion+ in taxes you either pay it or you go to jail. The people giving the campaign contributions have a choice who they give that money to. Which forces the politicians to listen to them.
Political contributions are not all bad. The need of politicians to raise money does force them to be somewhat responsive to the public. In countries where the public funds campaigns out of the treasury politicians know they only need enough supporters to qualify for support and they are golden. The real problem here is the people who want this stuff are very motivated, they stand to make millions or possibly billions off this. The people against it are far less motivated, we post on slashdot and possibly write / call our representatives. Basically we put up an ad hoc defense against an opponent that is working 24x7 on this. It is sort of like sports, who do you think will win the team that has professional trainers and practices constantly or the team that shows up on weekends for a pick up game? Sure the PUG group might win occasionally but overall the pro team is going win most of the time.
If we are really serious about opposing this stuff the only real answer is get our own full time team working on it. If enough of the public really becomes motivated for something they typically form an association and use that as a vehicle to push their agenda. No matter what you feel about the policy involved the best example, that I can think of, of this is the National Rifle Association. Gun owners don't like gun control and they are willing to join, fund and support with their votes and organization to push that agenda. In that case the NRA is out there 24 x 7 with their $100,000 donations and the threat of several million members who vote demanding that their views be heard. Not only do they lobby congress but they get out in front of the public and argue for their positions.
The EFF fights some of these battles but it is pretty clear most people here are not really motivated to act. The NRA has something like 3 million members who contribute, like $30 - $50 each per year, and vote. The EFF has about 140,000. People who propose gun control have been known to lose their seats. The people pushing this sort of thing never lose their seats. If we are really serious about this then we either need an EFF with 3 million members or some other organization. Still if we are really serious about blocking this stuff you need an organization with enough members, who provide money, support and votes, to make the members of congress take note. Elected officials tend to view everything through the prism of how does it impact their reelection chances. So when a group demands things they look at a number of things. How many votes can this group get me or cost me. How much money can they put into my war chest. What other benefits can they provide to me or to my constituents, all of which help me get reelected. Until you can shift that equation in your favor the best you are ever going to do is slow them down. The problem is we care but just not enough to really put our money or our votes behind it. Until that changes we lose.