As an American, I just can't get my head around this idea that each outgoing call on a landline phone has a separate charge, and as other posts said, this is what makes such a huge difference between the two systems.
Having said that, I used to call my friend in the Netherlands on her cellphone, but then my long distance company changed the rate. If I were calling a landline Dutch phone I would pay 11cents per minute, but a Dutch cellphone cost 55cents per minute. It was a great transatlantic deal until they raises rates for cellphones. I stopped calling her because that was dumb.
While she didn't pay anything to receive calls, outgoing calls were outrageously priced imho. Sprint PCS offers the following right now--3000 minutes for $50. Outgoing/incoming/long distance. At best, my landline phone could have 4.5cents interstate long distance--but if all 3000 minutes were used for outgoing long distance--well that's about two cents a minute. You can't beat the outgoing rate, and in fact, I use my cell for long distance service exclusively, opting not to have it on my landline phone (which would be irrelevant if it were not for my fax machine.)
SMS is cute and all...but I don't see what the purpose is given this system. That (and not to start a flame war) I am one of those who subscribes to the idea that CDMA and TDMA is superior technology to GSM. I used to have a GSM phone (Aerial) and I have been much happier with CDMA.
CCTVs in public places aren't placed there to infringe on the constitutional rights of you or anyone else. They can't do that because the Constitution doesn't protect your right to be invisible in a public place.
As time has gone on, it is becoming obvious to me that this concept has become an anachronism. I remember reading an interesting article concerning a case that was decided in Quebec. The Provincial High Court (forgot what it's called there) decided that there are has to be some type of protections in public with regards to being under surveillance/photographed otherwise an individual may lose the liberty to enjoy a public space. (If memory serves, it was a straight CCTV case.)
I like to say it this way--there are multiple levels of "public" versus just one level of private. Certainly a candidate campaigning for public office speaking at the local library is in "public." I am also in "public" when I take the trash out to the curb at 6am in my skivvies. In my mind, it's absurd to consider both scenarios as being equivalent to each other--i.e., you can use surveillance in the same way in either situation (however, in the latter situation, if I were George Clooney, then they may be equivalent.) I do know that I am in public in some way--my snooping neighbor may be looking out their window, but unless I am someone of consequence, I normally do not expect television cameras videotaping--even though it is a risk taken. Just because the risk is there does not necessarily mean that I should then accept them when they are installed (for my protection and benefit) right on my street.
If your a known criminal or are engaging in criminal activity then a CCTV camera on the street corner isn't exactly welcome. But if your Joe Average it's no better or no worse than someone standing there taking in the view.
When I go out in public as Joe Average, I do indeed expect that people can look at me, however I don't necessarily expect that there is some person wondering about who has a mental database of potentially millions of people in his/her brain who can quickly scan through that database comparing my visage to that internal photograph database. This is a level of "public" that I am normally not accustomed to, since I am not a celebrity.
Researchers have long known that there is one extremely common genetic factor that confers at least a ten-fold increase in the propensity to exhibit criminally violent behavior. It is called the Y chromosome. No one has suggested that all those who possess this genetic marker--that is, all males--ought to be seen as lacking free will or inherently possessing criminal intent.
And while that may be the case, thank God, it still doesn't stop automotive insurance companies from charging those Y Chromosome carriers much higher auto insurance premiums--regardless to how they actually operate a motor vehicle or their previous driving history.
It's a rant I like to go on a lot...just because I feel like I'm being charged more simply because I have a penis. My insurance company doesn't know what kinda man I am...hell...I could be bordering transgenderism...but somehow the fact that I have a penis (or a Y Chromosome, and those two things can at times be mutually exclusive concepts) is enough to put me into a higher risk category.
Ok...several peeps have already pointed out the inaccuracy in the original post.
Now I'm not a programmer, but I could imagine a bunch of people working long periods of time (in excess of ten years) on things which they only wanted to program. Bob has done kernel work the entire time he's been here, Alice does network stack, she was there for Windows for Workgroups...et cetera.
One of the things people learn in Microeconomics is that while one group may finish a particular set of tasks faster, chances are it's best to collaborate with another slower group, whose members may individually excel in one thing. I expect the same of programming.
However, couldn't it be possible that these people spend so much time in their little programming domains that they start to lose track of the reality of how an entire program fits together? And while such a structure works out for Linux (which i'm gonna crudely summarize as having a bunch of different components working together with the kernel, which is managed by overlord Torvalds) I have to wonder if that is the best situation for Windows. Now I look at Windows and think that very talented people may have programmed the networking stack, IE, the NT kernel, et cetera...and it also makes sense that they haven't done anything else for quite some time. They have all these people programming in their little worlds...and someone else has to fit it altogether.
. Because the law defines the penalties being assessed to the DRIVER of the car.
Actually, my understanding is that photo radar tickets are not assessed against the driver's driver's license...but just against the vehicle's owner, kinda like a parking ticket. Ohio is mulling the introduction of them (well sorta...some cities have put them in without permission of the state legislature) and it would go on like a parking ticket (if the owner wasn't driving, he's gotta track down the guy whom he lent the car to.) An affirmative defence is if the owner filed a stolen vehicle affidavit or showed a rental/leasing agreement with someone else.
In Ohio most of the red light running devices are in Toledo...which borders Michigan and Indiana. While Ohio has both front and rear license plates, Michigan and Indiana have only rear plates--so photographing the front of the vehicle is rather worthless if the car is from either MI or IN. Therefore they are set to photograph only from the back.
How would you feel if you are from New York, but now you moved to Florida. One day you heard on the news saying that New Yorkers are asking for independence.
Oh I can only dream. Does this really bother anyone else? Perhaps they could convince Taxachussetts to go as well.:-)
On a serious note, I have a new theory. If the southern states had each individually seceded into separate little countries, instead of seceding as one big country, they would have been more successful in the long run, because then the union would have had too complex a situation (with multiple countries) to deal with.
Not just an impractical solution, but who in they're right mind would give up their fingerprints (and have them put into a database) just to gamble online? (Hell, I choose where to live based on whether that state requires fingerprints for drivers licenses--i stay away from those states.) Especially when you could just go to an offshore site where they don't care.
I was suspecting something along the lines of your dirty fingers joke--they would do it based on fingerprint size. But clearly there are adults with small fingers and children with big fingers, so that couldn't be all that useful. In the end, I think some people were thinking of gee-whiz technology that really offers no solution.
The company took great pains to discuss flywheel safety. As you know, there is a pretty big danger of this massive disk spinning around at high speeds and suddenly breaking apart due to physical forces and spreading shrapnel around everywhere.
I think it is bound to happen as these devices become more popular, but it probably will be fairly unusual.
The only reason I mention this is that I am "somewhat" amused by the idea that a new technology is creating a new way of dying as well. Perhaps there will be a day where the casual newspaper reader will come across the headline "Two engineers killed in flywheel discharge in Coeur d'Alene" and not think it out of the ordinary.
This also goes along with the idea that mother nature will invent all sorta of gruesome ways of dying to deal with the fact that we keep on solving conventional ways of dying as time goes on. In the end, I suspect that she will be forced to rely on spontaneous human combustion as the catch-all unsolvable/incurable death once science has cured disease and engineers have prevented most accidents. Until then, expect that flywheel discharge will occasionally send a hapless individual into their next life.
Emanuel Kronitz, chief operating officer of TTR, which says two major labels are testing its software. "It's a major technological challenge, which is why we believe that what we've done -- mostly beating it -- is not trivial."
Mostly beating it? I don't think that's much to be proud of. Fact is, Al Gore mostly beat George Bush...but really...how far did it get him?
One of the big advantages of the current Mac OS is that color cues are helpful but not necessary. That's a throwback to the time when the Mac OS ran on non-color monitors.
It's a big help to the color blind, who can see shading and figure out that a particular window is the focus, whereas Windows uses color to differentiate between a focused window and a non-focused window.
Mac OS X seems to employ color more and more in functions that used to not rely on color. It may work out ok, as long as it is easily learnable. But Microsoft must not employ anybody color blind because it uses color cues everywhere.
This has always provided a bee in my bonnet...but admittedly I'm not color blind, so I don't know if the rant is justifiable. It just seems to me that keeping in mind that color differentiation can't be discerned by everyone would make much more intuitive interfaces.
Remember, this is the same guy who sponsored the Boucher bill which allowed the mere public onto the Internet in 1992 (the bill which changed the NSF use policy). The elder Bush signed it into law in November of 1992.
Well if that's the case...and he was the sponsor of the bill...couldn't it be said that he contributed to the openining of the Internet more than any other politician? He should be highlighted more for his contribution.
Should those of us not in Wayne County be affected by its law enforcement measures? Of course not--they're not accountable to the rest of Americans. These issues should be resolved by nationally elected officials (if they're dealt with at all). I don't think that this could ever withstand national scrutiny; they'd be forced to deal with the real issues of privacy that are so casually dismissed in Wayne County.
But there is a beautiful outcome to this. Should this pass, then it only effects ISP's based in Michigan. ISP's in other states will not have this silly law. People can then choose to use other ISP's or the ISP's can move across the border into Canada/Ohio..et cetera. My fear is that if this were considered at the national level, such legislation would pass anyway.
On another note, each state has differing levels of Constitutional protection for anonymity and privacy. (I actually believe Michigan's Constitution is much more protective of privacy than other state Constitution.) Each state will have different laws...and then people can choose whatever fits their needs.
I put a lot of time into thinking about privacy. I started my own privacy group here in Ohio, dealing mostly with Social Security Number issues and driver's license privacy issues.
"Privacy" is deeply important to me...yet I admit that it's almost entirely a cultural concept. I was raised as an only child in the United States. I had my own room with a lock. In contrast, the Russian language doesn't even have a word for "privacy"--it's not a concept that exists (there have been linguistic studies of Russians that have moved to the United States, and then are able to kludge together Russian equivalents to English terms like privacy, personal space, et cetera. These emigres understand the concepts between themselves, but native Russians had difficulty getting them.)
At any rate, I have personally split "privacy" into three areas:
I use the generic word "privacy" to relate to what the author in this article uses the Big Brother metaphor for. Simply being watched. Dressing in private...using a bathroom with a locked door. Once again, the importance of this type of privacy is subjective. I have huge difficulty undressing unless I know the door is locked...yet there are individuals who have no problems undressing in front of others, within reason.
On a small tangent...this gets me to the idea of why privacy is indeed so subjective. For instance, I may be psychologically/emotionally hurt by knowing that someone was watching me undress. If that's the case, is my privacy invaded if there is a peeping tom watching me undress, but I don't actually know about it? Does a privacy invasion have to imply a consequence?
The second type of privacy I call "data privacy." It is information on the individual, how much is kept, who can look at it, where it is. Bringing up the idea of the consequence again, it is also subjective. I care who has my home phone number not just because I don't want to be bothered my phone calls (an actual consequence of a privacy invasion) but also because I just don't want my phone number sitting in computers everywhere (a much more psychological/sociological idea.)
The third type of privacy is possibly the most abstract...I call it "anonymity." It's often under the umbrella of privacy. We do in fact seek the ability to go out into public and be anonymous (hence why people became so cheesed off with what happened at the Super Bowl. Do you have a right to "privacy" in public...no...you can be videotaped. But the problem was in comparing you to a criminal mugshot database you lost a certain amount of anonymity.) I say (and this also appeared in the article) that a person is most human when they are anonymous. Consider how you are treated at Wal-Mart when you walk in. You could just be buying some toothpaste, or you could be buying a $5000 riding lawnmower. It doesn't matter, no one really knows. But consider the DMV. Not only do they not care if you actually get your license plates renewed, but they have a gigantic amount of information on you (who else wants to see your birth certificate?) You likely have no other relationship where you are so dehumanized.
I speak of these as three separate categories, but often they are combined, in particular anonymity and data privacy. Going back to driver's licenses, it is mostly a combination of data privacy and anonymity issues. For instance, the fact that most states used to be selling your driver's license data was a data privacy invasion, as is the fact that many states keep a digital copy of your photograph (I could argue that it is also a regular privacy issue if it gives me emotional distress knowing that BMV employees can look up my photograph whenver they want..and hell, I wouldn't put it past them.) Also notable is how the driver's license document itself (in its photographic form) is so dehumanizing. Living in America, almost everyone has a photographic license and therefore everyone has some sorta proof as to who they are. Loss of anonymity. My driver's license says I'm male. Does that mean I prefer watching football on the couch on sundays...or barefoot walks on the beach? Neither, in the eyes of the Ohio BMV, it simply means I have a penis and not a vagina. (Dehumanizing. I can't hide the fact that I am male...nor do I have any great interest to do so. People on the street can look at me and determine I'm male, and once they get to know me, they will get to know my personality and what that means in the context of me being male. The BMV simply knows that I have a penis, which I argue is completely unrelated to my ability to operate an automobile, and therefore "isn't their business.")
I wish I were going somewhere with all of this, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm still analyzing the article.
That was not my experience, admittedly, I went to Ohio State, another Ohio college...perhaps Ohio law/case law is different.
The role of the university was essentially as a landlord. They had certain rules which a regular landlord wouldn't have, for instance, they prohibited alcohol unless you were over 21. On the other hand, they couldn't search your room for alcohol *without* 24 hours notice--which is essentially what a landlord has to do to go through your apartment. Now, the university could bust you for alcohol if it was in plain sight.
There have apparently been some cases of police/federal authorities going through federal housing...and apparently courts have rules that while they may be owned by the federal government, public housing is protected by 4th amendment rights.
The difference being that in one, you just extend a trust in the state that you have already established, and the other... Basically, you already chose for the government to have the ability to investigate and enforce crimes.
That's definitely jumping ahead of my feelings on the matter. I acknowledge that the role is there and being performed by government, but I sure did not choose them to do it nor do I trust them to do it.
If I had chosen them to do it then I would have a written contract with the police. That's the only way I would trust them. Should they breach that contract, I would sue. It is stupid and dangerous to place faith and trust with an organization with whom you have no contract.
As far as I am concerned, if I did not ask for their help, and I am not *directly* suspected of a crime, then the government is just a random third party performing an investigation unrelated to me. They can feel free to fly a kite.
If they didn't restrict this equipment, imagine a rapist who uses a condom, who then dumps another 2 or 3 others (innocent) DNA at the scene.
I always imagined something like a "DNA Bomb." Such a product would simply be a a device with a large amount of random human and animal DNA samples in all sorts of fluid. At a scene the perpetrator drops it and runs out...the bomb explodes dropping random DNA samples everywhere.
I don't see the problem. If you don't want people to see you, don't go out in public. That's how it's always been.
Has it? I think that that entirely depends on what the expectations associated with "being out in public" are. Consider for a few seconds walking around a town square in contrast to a politician debating another politician in a televised debate. Both acts are being performed in public. However one is significantly less private and more strenuous than the other--the political debate, since the politician knows that s/he is being actively watched. The politician doesn't know by how many and by whom, they may have an idea, but they do know it's all out there.
That contrasts to being out in public anonymously without CCTV. You aren't performing, and you aren't being paid attention to. There will be no record of your actions at that time.
The difference is that CCTV somehow fits between the two extremes. It is entirely possible that you could respond saying that CCTV is esentially another individual watching the town square who happens to have a really good memory. But that individual can then perfectly recite what happened that day countless times without fatigue to anyone, and you have no ability to identify whom, much like the politician on TV.
Thereby you become a data object in an unknown data system whereas before you were just a distant memory to a bunch of others standing around you. (A distant memory which isn't terribly useful...but how about a data system that could take your image and then process it to identify you...now you are a known data object as opposed to an anonymous data object as opposed to a distant memory. Being a known data object is not an implied consequence of being in public.)
From an unemotional standpoint it may not mean much, but psychologically it means a lot.
Your DNA isn't needed so much as your willingness to submit it. By submitting your DNA without protest, you silently advocate that a criminal's DNA be on file, when he first COMMITS a crime (which is when it is needed)... not after he gets caught. If you don't submit your DNA to the database, however, you allow a future criminal to make that same choice as you, and thereby make it more difficult to catch him when he does commit a crime.
Your suicide isn't needed so much as your willingness to submit it. By killing yourself without protest, you silently advocate that a murderer kills himself before he gets the chance to kill someone else. If you don't kill yourself first, then you allow a future murderer to be alive, and thereby allow him/her to murder.
The best identification option may be the already present state driver's license or ID card. Many state cards currently have a magnetic strip that could be used to hold a voter registration ID. A better storage solution would be for states to use smart cards, like the new Visa and Amex Blue, as the basis of driver's licenses and IDs.
Some people would however like the Driver's License to do one thing and that is simply allow them to drive a vehicle. My problem is that this is just going to make the Driver's license a document requiring more information to obtain and become less secure in the long run. Ya know the state with the least problems with fraudulent driver's licenses? New Jersey--because it still has a large percentage of non-photographic licenses. The state with the biggest fraud problem--California, who collect fingerprints, social security numbers and caches the photograph in a database.
I wish people would just keep the driver's license as a document to operate an automobile and let people decide if they want smart cards themselves. Is that too much to ask?
[carries an Ohio license without a photograph on it--religious objector]
Well cost also have something to do with it. Voting machines are expensive. The advantage of the bubble sheets or the punch cards is that the main cost is printing up the sheets or the cards. You only need a handful of scanners or punch card readers in any one district to read the ballots.
There are other machines. One machine is the AVC Edge (http://www.spve.com/products/avc_edge.html) that has a touch screen panel. It's light, easy to carry around, programmable, can do stuff in several languages, clear, can upload election data instantaneously, but costs about $5000 per box. One scanner that can scan a ward of bubble sheets in two hours costs less than one of those machines.
I live in Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus) and we have these big Shouptronic electronic voting machines, introduced in 1996. There is a plastic membrane on which the ballot is printed and a bunch of flashing lights next to each candidates name. You press a candidates button, and the flashing lights go out and only that candidates light is illuminated. It's straightforward, easy, and you don't have to piss about bubbling circles or punching in holes.
However they are expensive, in fact, other Ohio counties have talked about going to a touch screen or electronic voting machine system, but they needed to ask to voters to pass a property tax levy in order to buy the new machines. Furthermore, not only are they expensive,but they sit in warehouses 363 days of the year. What a racket the voting machine companies have...making an expensive machine that the government needs to buy in large quantities which only has one purpose once or twice a year, at best.
And finally, the Shouptronics used here in Franklin County are really big. Someone with a truck needs to move them to the polling place. The touch screen models are smaller and lighter, but ballots and sheets for one precinct can be brought in on election day by one poll worker in their Honda.
why the hell are we using punch cards still for something as important as an election? Shouldn't we be using technology that isn't 50 years old?
Well cost also have something to do with it. Voting machines are expensive. The advantage of the bubble sheets or the punch cards is that the main cost is printing up the sheets or the cards. You only need a handful of scanners or punch card readers in any one district to read the ballots.
There are other machines. One machine is the AVC Edge (http://www.spve.com/products/avc_edge.html) that has a touch screen panel. It's light, easy to carry around, programmable, can do stuff in several languages, clear, can upload election data instantaneously, but costs about $5000 per box. One scanner that can scan a ward of bubble sheets in two hours costs less than one of those machines.
I live in Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus) and we have these big Shouptronic electronic voting machines, introduced in 1996. There is a plastic membrane on which the ballot is printed and a bunch of flashing lights next to each candidates name. You press a candidates button, and the flashing lights go out and only that candidates light is illuminated. It's straightforward, easy, and you don't have to piss about bubbling circles or punching in holes.
However they are expensive, in fact, other Ohio counties have talked about going to a touch screen or electronic voting machine system, but they needed to ask to voters to pass a property tax levy in order to buy the new machines. Furthermore, not only are they expensive,but they sit in warehouses 363 days of the year. What a racket the voting machine companies have...making an expensive machine that the government needs to buy in large quantities which only has one purpose once or twice a year, at best.
And finally, the Shouptronics used here in Franklin County are really big. Someone with a truck needs to move them to the polling place. The touch screen models are smaller and lighter, but ballots and sheets for one precinct can be brought in on election day by one poll worker in their Honda.
Require the stub from their ballot as proof of voting and identification
I'm not a Floridian, so I don't know this, but did Florida give out stubs for the ballot? In Ohio you walk in with nothing and you walk out with nothing...there is no "receipt" for voting.
Colony said Radio Shack is packaging the Starband service with new Compaq computers for $59.95, but does not offer upgrade products for PCs.
I've never seen a store shoot itself in the foot more than Radio Shack. And actually, not to mention Compaq, which has seemingly turned itself into something just a bit better than Packard Bell (which as I recall was also sold by Radio Shack.)
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As an American, I just can't get my head around this idea that each outgoing call on a landline phone has a separate charge, and as other posts said, this is what makes such a huge difference between the two systems.
Having said that, I used to call my friend in the Netherlands on her cellphone, but then my long distance company changed the rate. If I were calling a landline Dutch phone I would pay 11cents per minute, but a Dutch cellphone cost 55cents per minute. It was a great transatlantic deal until they raises rates for cellphones. I stopped calling her because that was dumb.
While she didn't pay anything to receive calls, outgoing calls were outrageously priced imho. Sprint PCS offers the following right now--3000 minutes for $50. Outgoing/incoming/long distance. At best, my landline phone could have 4.5cents interstate long distance--but if all 3000 minutes were used for outgoing long distance--well that's about two cents a minute. You can't beat the outgoing rate, and in fact, I use my cell for long distance service exclusively, opting not to have it on my landline phone (which would be irrelevant if it were not for my fax machine.)
SMS is cute and all...but I don't see what the purpose is given this system. That (and not to start a flame war) I am one of those who subscribes to the idea that CDMA and TDMA is superior technology to GSM. I used to have a GSM phone (Aerial) and I have been much happier with CDMA.
CCTVs in public places aren't placed there to infringe on the constitutional rights of you or anyone else. They can't do that because the Constitution doesn't protect your right to be invisible in a public place.
As time has gone on, it is becoming obvious to me that this concept has become an anachronism. I remember reading an interesting article concerning a case that was decided in Quebec. The Provincial High Court (forgot what it's called there) decided that there are has to be some type of protections in public with regards to being under surveillance/photographed otherwise an individual may lose the liberty to enjoy a public space. (If memory serves, it was a straight CCTV case.)
I like to say it this way--there are multiple levels of "public" versus just one level of private. Certainly a candidate campaigning for public office speaking at the local library is in "public." I am also in "public" when I take the trash out to the curb at 6am in my skivvies. In my mind, it's absurd to consider both scenarios as being equivalent to each other--i.e., you can use surveillance in the same way in either situation (however, in the latter situation, if I were George Clooney, then they may be equivalent.) I do know that I am in public in some way--my snooping neighbor may be looking out their window, but unless I am someone of consequence, I normally do not expect television cameras videotaping--even though it is a risk taken. Just because the risk is there does not necessarily mean that I should then accept them when they are installed (for my protection and benefit) right on my street.
If your a known criminal or are engaging in criminal activity then a CCTV camera on the street corner isn't exactly welcome. But if your Joe Average it's no better or no worse than someone standing there taking in the view.
When I go out in public as Joe Average, I do indeed expect that people can look at me, however I don't necessarily expect that there is some person wondering about who has a mental database of potentially millions of people in his/her brain who can quickly scan through that database comparing my visage to that internal photograph database. This is a level of "public" that I am normally not accustomed to, since I am not a celebrity.
Researchers have long known that there is one extremely common genetic factor that confers at least a ten-fold increase in the propensity to exhibit criminally violent behavior. It is called the Y chromosome. No one has suggested that all those who possess this genetic marker--that is, all males--ought to be seen as lacking free will or inherently possessing criminal intent.
And while that may be the case, thank God, it still doesn't stop automotive insurance companies from charging those Y Chromosome carriers much higher auto insurance premiums--regardless to how they actually operate a motor vehicle or their previous driving history.
It's a rant I like to go on a lot...just because I feel like I'm being charged more simply because I have a penis. My insurance company doesn't know what kinda man I am...hell...I could be bordering transgenderism...but somehow the fact that I have a penis (or a Y Chromosome, and those two things can at times be mutually exclusive concepts) is enough to put me into a higher risk category.
Ok...several peeps have already pointed out the inaccuracy in the original post.
Now I'm not a programmer, but I could imagine a bunch of people working long periods of time (in excess of ten years) on things which they only wanted to program. Bob has done kernel work the entire time he's been here, Alice does network stack, she was there for Windows for Workgroups...et cetera.
One of the things people learn in Microeconomics is that while one group may finish a particular set of tasks faster, chances are it's best to collaborate with another slower group, whose members may individually excel in one thing. I expect the same of programming.
However, couldn't it be possible that these people spend so much time in their little programming domains that they start to lose track of the reality of how an entire program fits together? And while such a structure works out for Linux (which i'm gonna crudely summarize as having a bunch of different components working together with the kernel, which is managed by overlord Torvalds) I have to wonder if that is the best situation for Windows. Now I look at Windows and think that very talented people may have programmed the networking stack, IE, the NT kernel, et cetera...and it also makes sense that they haven't done anything else for quite some time. They have all these people programming in their little worlds...and someone else has to fit it altogether.
Is this a sensible thought?
. Because the law defines the penalties being assessed to the DRIVER of the car.
Actually, my understanding is that photo radar tickets are not assessed against the driver's driver's license...but just against the vehicle's owner, kinda like a parking ticket. Ohio is mulling the introduction of them (well sorta...some cities have put them in without permission of the state legislature) and it would go on like a parking ticket (if the owner wasn't driving, he's gotta track down the guy whom he lent the car to.) An affirmative defence is if the owner filed a stolen vehicle affidavit or showed a rental/leasing agreement with someone else.
In Ohio most of the red light running devices are in Toledo...which borders Michigan and Indiana. While Ohio has both front and rear license plates, Michigan and Indiana have only rear plates--so photographing the front of the vehicle is rather worthless if the car is from either MI or IN. Therefore they are set to photograph only from the back.
How would you feel if you are from New York, but now you moved to Florida. One day you heard on the news saying that New Yorkers are asking for independence.
:-)
Oh I can only dream. Does this really bother anyone else? Perhaps they could convince Taxachussetts to go as well.
On a serious note, I have a new theory. If the southern states had each individually seceded into separate little countries, instead of seceding as one big country, they would have been more successful in the long run, because then the union would have had too complex a situation (with multiple countries) to deal with.
Not just an impractical solution, but who in they're right mind would give up their fingerprints (and have them put into a database) just to gamble online? (Hell, I choose where to live based on whether that state requires fingerprints for drivers licenses--i stay away from those states.) Especially when you could just go to an offshore site where they don't care.
I was suspecting something along the lines of your dirty fingers joke--they would do it based on fingerprint size. But clearly there are adults with small fingers and children with big fingers, so that couldn't be all that useful. In the end, I think some people were thinking of gee-whiz technology that really offers no solution.
The company took great pains to discuss flywheel safety. As you know, there is a pretty big danger of this massive disk spinning around at high speeds and suddenly breaking apart due to physical forces and spreading shrapnel around everywhere.
I think it is bound to happen as these devices become more popular, but it probably will be fairly unusual.
The only reason I mention this is that I am "somewhat" amused by the idea that a new technology is creating a new way of dying as well. Perhaps there will be a day where the casual newspaper reader will come across the headline "Two engineers killed in flywheel discharge in Coeur d'Alene" and not think it out of the ordinary.
This also goes along with the idea that mother nature will invent all sorta of gruesome ways of dying to deal with the fact that we keep on solving conventional ways of dying as time goes on. In the end, I suspect that she will be forced to rely on spontaneous human combustion as the catch-all unsolvable/incurable death once science has cured disease and engineers have prevented most accidents. Until then, expect that flywheel discharge will occasionally send a hapless individual into their next life.
Emanuel Kronitz, chief operating officer of TTR, which says two major labels are testing its software. "It's a major technological challenge, which is why we believe that what we've done -- mostly beating it -- is not trivial."
Mostly beating it? I don't think that's much to be proud of. Fact is, Al Gore mostly beat George Bush...but really...how far did it get him?
One of the big advantages of the current Mac OS is that color cues are helpful but not necessary. That's a throwback to the time when the Mac OS ran on non-color monitors.
It's a big help to the color blind, who can see shading and figure out that a particular window is the focus, whereas Windows uses color to differentiate between a focused window and a non-focused window.
Mac OS X seems to employ color more and more in functions that used to not rely on color. It may work out ok, as long as it is easily learnable. But Microsoft must not employ anybody color blind because it uses color cues everywhere.
This has always provided a bee in my bonnet...but admittedly I'm not color blind, so I don't know if the rant is justifiable. It just seems to me that keeping in mind that color differentiation can't be discerned by everyone would make much more intuitive interfaces.
Remember, this is the same guy who sponsored the Boucher bill which allowed the mere public onto the Internet in 1992 (the bill which changed the NSF use policy). The elder Bush signed it into law in November of 1992.
Well if that's the case...and he was the sponsor of the bill...couldn't it be said that he contributed to the openining of the Internet more than any other politician? He should be highlighted more for his contribution.
Should those of us not in Wayne County be affected by its law enforcement measures? Of course not--they're not accountable to the rest of Americans. These issues should be resolved by nationally elected officials (if they're dealt with at all). I don't think that this could ever withstand national scrutiny; they'd be forced to deal with the real issues of privacy that are so casually dismissed in Wayne County.
But there is a beautiful outcome to this. Should this pass, then it only effects ISP's based in Michigan. ISP's in other states will not have this silly law. People can then choose to use other ISP's or the ISP's can move across the border into Canada/Ohio..et cetera. My fear is that if this were considered at the national level, such legislation would pass anyway.
On another note, each state has differing levels of Constitutional protection for anonymity and privacy. (I actually believe Michigan's Constitution is much more protective of privacy than other state Constitution.) Each state will have different laws...and then people can choose whatever fits their needs.
I put a lot of time into thinking about privacy. I started my own privacy group here in Ohio, dealing mostly with Social Security Number issues and driver's license privacy issues.
"Privacy" is deeply important to me...yet I admit that it's almost entirely a cultural concept. I was raised as an only child in the United States. I had my own room with a lock. In contrast, the Russian language doesn't even have a word for "privacy"--it's not a concept that exists (there have been linguistic studies of Russians that have moved to the United States, and then are able to kludge together Russian equivalents to English terms like privacy, personal space, et cetera. These emigres understand the concepts between themselves, but native Russians had difficulty getting them.)
At any rate, I have personally split "privacy" into three areas:
I use the generic word "privacy" to relate to what the author in this article uses the Big Brother metaphor for. Simply being watched. Dressing in private...using a bathroom with a locked door. Once again, the importance of this type of privacy is subjective. I have huge difficulty undressing unless I know the door is locked...yet there are individuals who have no problems undressing in front of others, within reason.
On a small tangent...this gets me to the idea of why privacy is indeed so subjective. For instance, I may be psychologically/emotionally hurt by knowing that someone was watching me undress. If that's the case, is my privacy invaded if there is a peeping tom watching me undress, but I don't actually know about it? Does a privacy invasion have to imply a consequence?
The second type of privacy I call "data privacy." It is information on the individual, how much is kept, who can look at it, where it is. Bringing up the idea of the consequence again, it is also subjective. I care who has my home phone number not just because I don't want to be bothered my phone calls (an actual consequence of a privacy invasion) but also because I just don't want my phone number sitting in computers everywhere (a much more psychological/sociological idea.)
The third type of privacy is possibly the most abstract...I call it "anonymity." It's often under the umbrella of privacy. We do in fact seek the ability to go out into public and be anonymous (hence why people became so cheesed off with what happened at the Super Bowl. Do you have a right to "privacy" in public...no...you can be videotaped. But the problem was in comparing you to a criminal mugshot database you lost a certain amount of anonymity.) I say (and this also appeared in the article) that a person is most human when they are anonymous. Consider how you are treated at Wal-Mart when you walk in. You could just be buying some toothpaste, or you could be buying a $5000 riding lawnmower. It doesn't matter, no one really knows. But consider the DMV. Not only do they not care if you actually get your license plates renewed, but they have a gigantic amount of information on you (who else wants to see your birth certificate?) You likely have no other relationship where you are so dehumanized.
I speak of these as three separate categories, but often they are combined, in particular anonymity and data privacy. Going back to driver's licenses, it is mostly a combination of data privacy and anonymity issues. For instance, the fact that most states used to be selling your driver's license data was a data privacy invasion, as is the fact that many states keep a digital copy of your photograph (I could argue that it is also a regular privacy issue if it gives me emotional distress knowing that BMV employees can look up my photograph whenver they want..and hell, I wouldn't put it past them.) Also notable is how the driver's license document itself (in its photographic form) is so dehumanizing. Living in America, almost everyone has a photographic license and therefore everyone has some sorta proof as to who they are. Loss of anonymity. My driver's license says I'm male. Does that mean I prefer watching football on the couch on sundays...or barefoot walks on the beach? Neither, in the eyes of the Ohio BMV, it simply means I have a penis and not a vagina. (Dehumanizing. I can't hide the fact that I am male...nor do I have any great interest to do so. People on the street can look at me and determine I'm male, and once they get to know me, they will get to know my personality and what that means in the context of me being male. The BMV simply knows that I have a penis, which I argue is completely unrelated to my ability to operate an automobile, and therefore "isn't their business.")
I wish I were going somewhere with all of this, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm still analyzing the article.
That was not my experience, admittedly, I went to Ohio State, another Ohio college...perhaps Ohio law/case law is different.
The role of the university was essentially as a landlord. They had certain rules which a regular landlord wouldn't have, for instance, they prohibited alcohol unless you were over 21. On the other hand, they couldn't search your room for alcohol *without* 24 hours notice--which is essentially what a landlord has to do to go through your apartment. Now, the university could bust you for alcohol if it was in plain sight.
There have apparently been some cases of police/federal authorities going through federal housing...and apparently courts have rules that while they may be owned by the federal government, public housing is protected by 4th amendment rights.
In case ya wondered, California, Texas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii require one thumb.
West Virginia has it optional.
No other state collects fingerprints for licenses.
A. Californians elected GOP legislators who, fed by fat cat Texan-owned firm campaign contributions, pushed through deregulation.
My recollection is that the California Legislature has been majority Democrat for about ten years now.
The difference being that in one, you just extend a trust in the state that you have already established, and the other... Basically, you already chose for the government to have the ability to investigate and enforce crimes.
That's definitely jumping ahead of my feelings on the matter. I acknowledge that the role is there and being performed by government, but I sure did not choose them to do it nor do I trust them to do it.
If I had chosen them to do it then I would have a written contract with the police. That's the only way I would trust them. Should they breach that contract, I would sue. It is stupid and dangerous to place faith and trust with an organization with whom you have no contract.
As far as I am concerned, if I did not ask for their help, and I am not *directly* suspected of a crime, then the government is just a random third party performing an investigation unrelated to me. They can feel free to fly a kite.
If they didn't restrict this equipment, imagine a rapist who uses a condom, who then dumps another 2 or 3 others (innocent) DNA at the scene.
I always imagined something like a "DNA Bomb." Such a product would simply be a a device with a large amount of random human and animal DNA samples in all sorts of fluid. At a scene the perpetrator drops it and runs out...the bomb explodes dropping random DNA samples everywhere.
I don't see the problem. If you don't want people to see you, don't go out in public. That's how it's always been.
Has it? I think that that entirely depends on what the expectations associated with "being out in public" are. Consider for a few seconds walking around a town square in contrast to a politician debating another politician in a televised debate. Both acts are being performed in public. However one is significantly less private and more strenuous than the other--the political debate, since the politician knows that s/he is being actively watched. The politician doesn't know by how many and by whom, they may have an idea, but they do know it's all out there.
That contrasts to being out in public anonymously without CCTV. You aren't performing, and you aren't being paid attention to. There will be no record of your actions at that time.
The difference is that CCTV somehow fits between the two extremes. It is entirely possible that you could respond saying that CCTV is esentially another individual watching the town square who happens to have a really good memory. But that individual can then perfectly recite what happened that day countless times without fatigue to anyone, and you have no ability to identify whom, much like the politician on TV.
Thereby you become a data object in an unknown data system whereas before you were just a distant memory to a bunch of others standing around you. (A distant memory which isn't terribly useful...but how about a data system that could take your image and then process it to identify you...now you are a known data object as opposed to an anonymous data object as opposed to a distant memory. Being a known data object is not an implied consequence of being in public.)
From an unemotional standpoint it may not mean much, but psychologically it means a lot.
Your DNA isn't needed so much as your willingness to submit it. By submitting your DNA without protest, you silently advocate that a criminal's DNA be on file, when he first COMMITS a crime (which is when it is needed)... not after he gets caught. If you don't submit your DNA to the database, however, you allow a future criminal to make that same choice as you, and thereby make it more difficult to catch him when he does commit a crime.
Your suicide isn't needed so much as your willingness to submit it. By killing yourself without protest, you silently advocate that a murderer kills himself before he gets the chance to kill someone else. If you don't kill yourself first, then you allow a future murderer to be alive, and thereby allow him/her to murder.
The best identification option may be the already present state driver's license or ID card. Many state cards currently have a magnetic strip that could be used to hold a voter registration ID. A better storage solution would be for states to use smart cards, like the new Visa and Amex Blue, as the basis of driver's licenses and IDs.
Some people would however like the Driver's License to do one thing and that is simply allow them to drive a vehicle. My problem is that this is just going to make the Driver's license a document requiring more information to obtain and become less secure in the long run. Ya know the state with the least problems with fraudulent driver's licenses? New Jersey--because it still has a large percentage of non-photographic licenses. The state with the biggest fraud problem--California, who collect fingerprints, social security numbers and caches the photograph in a database.
I wish people would just keep the driver's license as a document to operate an automobile and let people decide if they want smart cards themselves. Is that too much to ask?
[carries an Ohio license without a photograph on it--religious objector]
Well cost also have something to do with it. Voting machines are expensive. The advantage of the bubble sheets or the punch cards is that the main cost is printing up the sheets or the cards. You only need a handful of scanners or punch card readers in any one district to read the ballots.
There are other machines. One machine is the AVC Edge (http://www.spve.com/products/avc_edge.html) that has a touch screen panel. It's light, easy to carry around, programmable, can do stuff in several languages, clear, can upload election data instantaneously, but costs about $5000 per box. One scanner that can scan a ward of bubble sheets in two hours costs less than one of those machines.
I live in Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus) and we have these big Shouptronic electronic voting machines, introduced in 1996. There is a plastic membrane on which the ballot is printed and a bunch of flashing lights next to each candidates name. You press a candidates button, and the flashing lights go out and only that candidates light is illuminated. It's straightforward, easy, and you don't have to piss about bubbling circles or punching in holes.
However they are expensive, in fact, other Ohio counties have talked about going to a touch screen or electronic voting machine system, but they needed to ask to voters to pass a property tax levy in order to buy the new machines. Furthermore, not only are they expensive,but they sit in warehouses 363 days of the year. What a racket the voting machine companies have...making an expensive machine that the government needs to buy in large quantities which only has one purpose once or twice a year, at best.
And finally, the Shouptronics used here in Franklin County are really big. Someone with a truck needs to move them to the polling place. The touch screen models are smaller and lighter, but ballots and sheets for one precinct can be brought in on election day by one poll worker in their Honda.
why the hell are we using punch cards still for something as important as an election? Shouldn't we be using technology that isn't 50 years old?
Well cost also have something to do with it. Voting machines are expensive. The advantage of the bubble sheets or the punch cards is that the main cost is printing up the sheets or the cards. You only need a handful of scanners or punch card readers in any one district to read the ballots.
There are other machines. One machine is the AVC Edge (http://www.spve.com/products/avc_edge.html) that has a touch screen panel. It's light, easy to carry around, programmable, can do stuff in several languages, clear, can upload election data instantaneously, but costs about $5000 per box. One scanner that can scan a ward of bubble sheets in two hours costs less than one of those machines.
I live in Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus) and we have these big Shouptronic electronic voting machines, introduced in 1996. There is a plastic membrane on which the ballot is printed and a bunch of flashing lights next to each candidates name. You press a candidates button, and the flashing lights go out and only that candidates light is illuminated. It's straightforward, easy, and you don't have to piss about bubbling circles or punching in holes.
However they are expensive, in fact, other Ohio counties have talked about going to a touch screen or electronic voting machine system, but they needed to ask to voters to pass a property tax levy in order to buy the new machines. Furthermore, not only are they expensive,but they sit in warehouses 363 days of the year. What a racket the voting machine companies have...making an expensive machine that the government needs to buy in large quantities which only has one purpose once or twice a year, at best.
And finally, the Shouptronics used here in Franklin County are really big. Someone with a truck needs to move them to the polling place. The touch screen models are smaller and lighter, but ballots and sheets for one precinct can be brought in on election day by one poll worker in their Honda.
Require the stub from their ballot as proof of voting and identification
I'm not a Floridian, so I don't know this, but did Florida give out stubs for the ballot? In Ohio you walk in with nothing and you walk out with nothing...there is no "receipt" for voting.
Colony said Radio Shack is packaging the Starband service with new Compaq computers for $59.95, but does not offer upgrade products for PCs.
I've never seen a store shoot itself in the foot more than Radio Shack. And actually, not to mention Compaq, which has seemingly turned itself into something just a bit better than Packard Bell (which as I recall was also sold by Radio Shack.)