You should be most especially concerned that a cartel of corporations will be able to track every detail of your child from "cradle to career". Your daughter will be tracked, collated, monetized, cross referenced, and have her information sold to whoever is willing to pay for it.
I don't even have children, and that concerns me.
If you see no problem with a bunch of shady players, doing stuff for which they have no evidence, and from which they will enrich their own agenda, knowing all of this information about your children... then maybe it's you who has failed to think of the children.
Having all this information about every damned thing they do be tracked so that it is detailed and complete before she's an adult who can make her own choices... well, I think it's a terrible idea.
If you think this won't be abused, or won't have affects nobody can think of right now... you should think harder.
Basically we're doing a huge social experiment on what happens when you raise a generation of children who have no privacy, have no say in it, aren't legally old enough to consent to it or understand it, and who will have to live with the consequences.
I see more potential for abuse and bad outcomes than I see room for benefit.
Unless, of course, the goal is to have your child accept a surveillance society as a normal part of life.
Land of the free and home of the brave has become a bad joke.
My inherent distrust of, well, pretty much everything... says that the use of this block chain to link a particular vote with a particular person is completely asinine, and violates one of the underlying points of voting... who I vote for can, and should, remain private.
Nobody can leak it or abuse it if they don't have it. So you'll pardon me for deciding it's best it's not accessible, instead of placing trust in any of the entities involved.
This is something which I think nobody else should be able to access. And some asshole will always try to abuse it if it's possible.
I'm sorry that you think the block chain of cryptography is some magical cure all. It really isn't.
And, yes, Bitcoin's issues may not be technological.. which means the problems to Bitcoin are far more intrinsic, and not fixable by technology. Because at a certain point, it comes down to placing trust where it is completely unjustified.
Blockchains to have their uses. Using them for tracking votes? I continue to see that as moronic.
It should be none of your fscking business who I voted for. And tying the vote to me and claiming it can't be traced to be is disingenuous, and assumes that I can trust the system.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The anonymity needs to be inherent, because there will always be someone in the system who is a lying, cheating bastard... just like with Bitcoin.
The incredibly smart people want nothing to do with it because the bar is too low. In relative terms, telling a smart person you were accepted by Mensa is roughly equivalent to telling a normal person you no longer shit your pants on a daily basis: good on you, but you were kind of expected to be past that point years ago.
I am not sure anybody sneers at Mensa because the bar is too low; at least not in my experience. But, hey, I'm not complaining that I have to hobnob with people who have an IQ of less than 200 so maybe I'm too stupid.
My experience with why people view Mensa with contempt is it has about as much meaning to us as telling us that you are wearing a sweater by Tommy Hilfiger... it's shallow, self-aggrandizing, and pointless.
Interesting people come in all stripes. The ones who lead with "I'm smart, are you?" are mostly shallow idiots, even if they do score high on a test which otherwise doesn't predict anything meaningful about you.
It's a cocktail party with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons -- nobody really cares about hanging out with some smug prick. Maybe a bunch of other smug pricks, but nobody else.
As I said, never met a single person who said "I'm in Mensa" wasn't a complete waste of oxygen.
So you'll never buy another piece of consumer grade electronics?
If it has a lifespan of 2 years? No, as a matter of fact. If the hardware failed after two years, I'd find a new vendor. If the software is obsolete after 2 years by design, I'm simply not playing.
My, TV, my DVD player, my amplifier, my car stereo, my GPS nav unit, my watch, my microwave, my stove... all of these things I realistically expect to last at least 4-5 years. There is almost no digital device I will accept a 2 year life for unless it costs about $40.
If Google and Apple think I'll buy their stuff which is obsolete in two years... they're wrong.
I'm old enough to not need to buy the latest shiniest bauble.
So, yes, if they think they can get away with a product which has a two year lifespan, then I won't be buying it. Especially not for full price. This is a rental model, and there's nothing in it for me.
Because I've never had any other kind of consumer electronics product where the manufacturers really thought they could get away with that kind of shit.
You want to buy it, go ahead. Me, I have other things I can spend my money on. It sure as hell won't be a tablet from Google or Apple.
As usual, we get the scope creep beyond what they told us it would be used for.
I think at this point we can safely conclude the FBI and the NSA (and every other TLA) are actively fighting against the rights of people, as well as undermining the law.
They're more than happy to become the total surveillance state.
And what's really pathetic is people seem to think this is OK.
Papers please, comrade. But don't think for a minute we're not listening.
If you go with a Nexus phone or tablet, updates have been rolling pretty steadily.
I'm going to call you on that one. Because it's not true. I just asked my 2012 Nexus 7 tablet to check for updates. I've done this numerous times since Android 5 came out.
It says I'm up to date. That, of course, is false. From this I conclude Google has abandoned me, and I will not be buying another Android device. So, to hell with Google. If they're going to expect me to buy a device which will be unsupported in a relatively short period of time, I won't be buying any more of them.
I specifically bought it because it was a Nexus and therefore I'd get updates. But, apparently, that's not true.
Basically these vendors have decided we should keep buying new stuff to stay on support. From this I see that there is no point in buying them at all.
I see my enthusiasm for Android and iOS devices waning... because it's just another series of expensive toys with a planned life of not nearly as long as what the consumer expects.
They've both burned me on this one now. But I won't let that happen again. If you aren't going to support it for at least 4-5 years, I'm simply not buying it.
Will Google or Apple care that I do this? Probably not.
And how many first gen iPads would still be in use if they hadn't been updated to the point of obsolescence? Because my first gen iPad gradually became slower and less useful, right up until Apple said "no longer supported".
I'm no longer willing to buy a device from either Apple or Google which is anywhere near bleeding edge or current release, there's nothing in it for me.
If they want to treat their tech as disposable, I'll oblige them -- I'll buy the oldest version of their product, and never apply an update to the fucking thing.
Planned obsolescence is great to the idiots in marketing. But it's complete crap for the consumer.
I wish I'd realize they were phasing out the iPod Classic, because since it wasn't running iOS it didn't need to worry about an OS upgrade making it useless. I'd have bought another one.
If the trend is to build over-priced toys which will only last two years, don't expect to sell me any of your new kit.
I'll just start to assume that the software will make the device obsolete long before the hardware dies. And I want no part of that.
Not being able to patch an older system that could be patched, that makes sense to you?
I'll never understand the logic of Android fanboys. At this point I'll pick iOS and Windows over Android any time.
I'm sorry, but what?
I bought my first gen iPad within a month of launch. In less than 2.5 years it was unsupported on the latest version of iOS.
When I updated my latest gen iPod touch to iOS 8.x, I ran into problems, had a few apps stop working, and generally found myself underwhelmed.
Apple does the exact same shit, and don't pretend they don't.
Basically manufacturers expect us to pay for a new device every year or two, and then quickly decree them to be off support.
So WTF should we pay full price for something they're going to abandon in a relatively short period of time for?
Sorry, but no. If you want to charge me $700 for a device, I expect you to support it longer than two years. Otherwise, I'm not buying your shit any more, because you somehow think of me as a revolving cash supply.
In this regards, I think both Android and iOS are sorely lacking.
So, screw the lot of them. Want these devices to be disposable? Sell them to us at discounted prices instead of your inflated prices. Or if you're going to charge us that much money, support it MUCH longer.
Two years support for a brand new device? Hell no.
The problem is they often spend as much (if not more) money promoting what an awesome job they're doing than they actually spend on doing that job.
They basically use public money as a PR machine for their own agenda, and their spending on advertising and promoting often outpaces the actual program spending.
So much of what they advertise is for partisan purposes.
Because it's easy to find examples of signage promoting "Canada's Action Plan at Work" where years later the sign is still up in front of an incomplete project they never actually funded.
They're all PR release, and no substance in a lot of ways.
And since they came into power on the heels of the Sponsorship Scandal, this is even more galling.
Way too many vacuous statements and claims, not nearly enough of doing anything.
This was not the first time Moore decided against reforms to the notice-and-notice system. Further government documents reveal that Bell Canada recommended reforms in January 2012 (before the bill was passed) that included a removal of a minimum statutory damage for failure to to forward a notice. Had the reform been accepted, the government would now be in a position to recommend that Internet providers not forward the misleading Rightscorp notices without fear of liability.
Basically, they were told their legislation was flawed. And, as usual, they're too focused on their own agenda and ideology to let little things like a poorly written law stop them.
They knew these problems existed, and did nothing about it.
These are the kind of clowns who will write a law which is clearly unconstitutional, and then whine about activist judges who don't see the supreme glorious wisdom in their bullshit ideology.
Mostly they consistently do the same crap over and over again, and keep going "la la la" when someone tells them their laws have to stand up to scrutiny by the courts.
Stephen Harper seems to believe he can simply decree something true and have it stick. In that sense, he's pretty scary.
This is a government who consistently fails to make evidence based policy, who routinely allows ideology to substitute for facts, and whose definition of "consultation" is informing people of what they plan to do.
This is a government who will do anything to give business a leg up, and who think that they should be able to pass laws which don't meet Constitutional and other requierments.
They routinely pass laws which are terrible, and which won't hold up to a court. And like a bunch of winy morons, they feel their incompetently written laws should trump the guidelines for what is a valid law.
Basically they're assholes and luddites, who routinely craft poorly thought out laws.
Being a member of mensa, in my personal experience, makes you an insufferable ass who wants to brag about your IQ. Because everyone I've ever met who said they were in it, was an insufferable ass who wanted to brag about their IQ.
I have yet to meet a single person who joined who didn't come across as a complete tool.
I've been in a room full of nerds and geeks, and one person stated proudly they were in mensa, as if the rest of us should care.
The mocking was pretty incessant as everyone else let it be known how little they cared or respected that claim.
I find mensa far more interesting for the sheer number of incredibly smart people I've known who want nothing to do with it.
The one thing I hate about social networking, especially when used in a corporate setting, is the ridiculous use of badges.
There is nothing more annoying than a tool which is touted as something which will make it easier to do our jobs which wants to give us badges for participating.
In the end the platform becomes utterly useless, but somehow it's trying to reward you/motivate you to keep using it to get some stupid fscking badge.
I predict this will lead to privacy issues for the kids, and provide zero net benefit in education, because there is no evidence or research that this improves anything.
I will be very glad when this overly-hyped "social media" starts to wind down. It doesn't add anything of value in a lot of contexts, but somehow the marketing wankers have all latched onto it as the wave of the future.
So.. Where do you find the OWNER'S MANUAL for kids?
Well, think of it like open source. A few people have taken a stab at a manual, but they don't mention any of the problems you mention, and it's grossly out of date. You can look on the internet, but the support forums aren't very helpful and often contradictory. And there's always a guy telling you to switch to the stuff they use.
In the end, you give up on the whole thing.
My advise, release them into the wild, and let them go feral.;-)
Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm the last person you want to take parenting advise from.
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In fact, the 3 laws were a convenient plot device to show how those 3 laws would break down.
I don't believe Asimov himself ever treated them as anything other than a plot device to explore the topic.
He didn't seriously see them as the way to keep us safe from robotics.
You should be most especially concerned that a cartel of corporations will be able to track every detail of your child from "cradle to career". Your daughter will be tracked, collated, monetized, cross referenced, and have her information sold to whoever is willing to pay for it.
I don't even have children, and that concerns me.
If you see no problem with a bunch of shady players, doing stuff for which they have no evidence, and from which they will enrich their own agenda, knowing all of this information about your children ... then maybe it's you who has failed to think of the children.
Having all this information about every damned thing they do be tracked so that it is detailed and complete before she's an adult who can make her own choices ... well, I think it's a terrible idea.
If you think this won't be abused, or won't have affects nobody can think of right now ... you should think harder.
Basically we're doing a huge social experiment on what happens when you raise a generation of children who have no privacy, have no say in it, aren't legally old enough to consent to it or understand it, and who will have to live with the consequences.
I see more potential for abuse and bad outcomes than I see room for benefit.
Unless, of course, the goal is to have your child accept a surveillance society as a normal part of life.
Land of the free and home of the brave has become a bad joke.
My inherent distrust of, well, pretty much everything ... says that the use of this block chain to link a particular vote with a particular person is completely asinine, and violates one of the underlying points of voting ... who I vote for can, and should, remain private.
Nobody can leak it or abuse it if they don't have it. So you'll pardon me for deciding it's best it's not accessible, instead of placing trust in any of the entities involved.
This is something which I think nobody else should be able to access. And some asshole will always try to abuse it if it's possible.
I'm sorry that you think the block chain of cryptography is some magical cure all. It really isn't.
And, yes, Bitcoin's issues may not be technological .. which means the problems to Bitcoin are far more intrinsic, and not fixable by technology. Because at a certain point, it comes down to placing trust where it is completely unjustified.
Blockchains to have their uses. Using them for tracking votes? I continue to see that as moronic.
It should be none of your fscking business who I voted for. And tying the vote to me and claiming it can't be traced to be is disingenuous, and assumes that I can trust the system.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The anonymity needs to be inherent, because there will always be someone in the system who is a lying, cheating bastard ... just like with Bitcoin.
Doesn't need to worry about getting re-elected ... doesn't need to care.
I am not sure anybody sneers at Mensa because the bar is too low; at least not in my experience. But, hey, I'm not complaining that I have to hobnob with people who have an IQ of less than 200 so maybe I'm too stupid.
My experience with why people view Mensa with contempt is it has about as much meaning to us as telling us that you are wearing a sweater by Tommy Hilfiger ... it's shallow, self-aggrandizing, and pointless.
Interesting people come in all stripes. The ones who lead with "I'm smart, are you?" are mostly shallow idiots, even if they do score high on a test which otherwise doesn't predict anything meaningful about you.
It's a cocktail party with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons -- nobody really cares about hanging out with some smug prick. Maybe a bunch of other smug pricks, but nobody else.
As I said, never met a single person who said "I'm in Mensa" wasn't a complete waste of oxygen.
If it has a lifespan of 2 years? No, as a matter of fact. If the hardware failed after two years, I'd find a new vendor. If the software is obsolete after 2 years by design, I'm simply not playing.
My, TV, my DVD player, my amplifier, my car stereo, my GPS nav unit, my watch, my microwave, my stove ... all of these things I realistically expect to last at least 4-5 years. There is almost no digital device I will accept a 2 year life for unless it costs about $40.
If Google and Apple think I'll buy their stuff which is obsolete in two years ... they're wrong.
I'm old enough to not need to buy the latest shiniest bauble.
So, yes, if they think they can get away with a product which has a two year lifespan, then I won't be buying it. Especially not for full price. This is a rental model, and there's nothing in it for me.
Because I've never had any other kind of consumer electronics product where the manufacturers really thought they could get away with that kind of shit.
You want to buy it, go ahead. Me, I have other things I can spend my money on. It sure as hell won't be a tablet from Google or Apple.
As usual, we get the scope creep beyond what they told us it would be used for.
I think at this point we can safely conclude the FBI and the NSA (and every other TLA) are actively fighting against the rights of people, as well as undermining the law.
They're more than happy to become the total surveillance state.
And what's really pathetic is people seem to think this is OK.
Papers please, comrade. But don't think for a minute we're not listening.
I'm going to call you on that one. Because it's not true. I just asked my 2012 Nexus 7 tablet to check for updates. I've done this numerous times since Android 5 came out.
It says I'm up to date. That, of course, is false. From this I conclude Google has abandoned me, and I will not be buying another Android device. So, to hell with Google. If they're going to expect me to buy a device which will be unsupported in a relatively short period of time, I won't be buying any more of them.
I specifically bought it because it was a Nexus and therefore I'd get updates. But, apparently, that's not true.
Basically these vendors have decided we should keep buying new stuff to stay on support. From this I see that there is no point in buying them at all.
I see my enthusiasm for Android and iOS devices waning ... because it's just another series of expensive toys with a planned life of not nearly as long as what the consumer expects.
They've both burned me on this one now. But I won't let that happen again. If you aren't going to support it for at least 4-5 years, I'm simply not buying it.
Will Google or Apple care that I do this? Probably not.
I'm sorry, but what idiot has decided that having your vote be a matter of public record is a good idea?
From all of the news stories I've heard over the last year or so, I don't trust Bitcoin at all.
So WTF would I want this tied to voting for?
This sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. Bitcoin seems like it's barely usable as a currency, it has no place trying to prop up democracy.
And how many first gen iPads would still be in use if they hadn't been updated to the point of obsolescence? Because my first gen iPad gradually became slower and less useful, right up until Apple said "no longer supported".
I'm no longer willing to buy a device from either Apple or Google which is anywhere near bleeding edge or current release, there's nothing in it for me.
If they want to treat their tech as disposable, I'll oblige them -- I'll buy the oldest version of their product, and never apply an update to the fucking thing.
Planned obsolescence is great to the idiots in marketing. But it's complete crap for the consumer.
I wish I'd realize they were phasing out the iPod Classic, because since it wasn't running iOS it didn't need to worry about an OS upgrade making it useless. I'd have bought another one.
If the trend is to build over-priced toys which will only last two years, don't expect to sell me any of your new kit.
I'll just start to assume that the software will make the device obsolete long before the hardware dies. And I want no part of that.
I'm sorry, but what?
I bought my first gen iPad within a month of launch. In less than 2.5 years it was unsupported on the latest version of iOS.
When I updated my latest gen iPod touch to iOS 8.x, I ran into problems, had a few apps stop working, and generally found myself underwhelmed.
Apple does the exact same shit, and don't pretend they don't.
Basically manufacturers expect us to pay for a new device every year or two, and then quickly decree them to be off support.
So WTF should we pay full price for something they're going to abandon in a relatively short period of time for?
Sorry, but no. If you want to charge me $700 for a device, I expect you to support it longer than two years. Otherwise, I'm not buying your shit any more, because you somehow think of me as a revolving cash supply.
In this regards, I think both Android and iOS are sorely lacking.
So, screw the lot of them. Want these devices to be disposable? Sell them to us at discounted prices instead of your inflated prices. Or if you're going to charge us that much money, support it MUCH longer.
Two years support for a brand new device? Hell no.
When you spend more money advertising what you're doing that you spend on what you are braying about ... something is seriously wrong.
Harper shows up for the photo op, and spends money advertising it, and then fails to do anything.
That's pretty much fraud and wasting tax payer money to promote themselves.
The problem is they often spend as much (if not more) money promoting what an awesome job they're doing than they actually spend on doing that job.
They basically use public money as a PR machine for their own agenda, and their spending on advertising and promoting often outpaces the actual program spending.
So much of what they advertise is for partisan purposes.
Because it's easy to find examples of signage promoting "Canada's Action Plan at Work" where years later the sign is still up in front of an incomplete project they never actually funded.
They're all PR release, and no substance in a lot of ways.
And since they came into power on the heels of the Sponsorship Scandal, this is even more galling.
Way too many vacuous statements and claims, not nearly enough of doing anything.
Basically, they were told their legislation was flawed. And, as usual, they're too focused on their own agenda and ideology to let little things like a poorly written law stop them.
They knew these problems existed, and did nothing about it.
These are the kind of clowns who will write a law which is clearly unconstitutional, and then whine about activist judges who don't see the supreme glorious wisdom in their bullshit ideology.
Mostly they consistently do the same crap over and over again, and keep going "la la la" when someone tells them their laws have to stand up to scrutiny by the courts.
Stephen Harper seems to believe he can simply decree something true and have it stick. In that sense, he's pretty scary.
This is a government who consistently fails to make evidence based policy, who routinely allows ideology to substitute for facts, and whose definition of "consultation" is informing people of what they plan to do.
This is a government who will do anything to give business a leg up, and who think that they should be able to pass laws which don't meet Constitutional and other requierments.
They routinely pass laws which are terrible, and which won't hold up to a court. And like a bunch of winy morons, they feel their incompetently written laws should trump the guidelines for what is a valid law.
Basically they're assholes and luddites, who routinely craft poorly thought out laws.
So, does this provide any actual additional security, or is is just security by obscurity because nobody is using it?
If it's just security by obscurity ... well, good luck with that.
You know, tweaking would explain a lot ...
Being a member of mensa, in my personal experience, makes you an insufferable ass who wants to brag about your IQ. Because everyone I've ever met who said they were in it, was an insufferable ass who wanted to brag about their IQ.
I have yet to meet a single person who joined who didn't come across as a complete tool.
I've been in a room full of nerds and geeks, and one person stated proudly they were in mensa, as if the rest of us should care.
The mocking was pretty incessant as everyone else let it be known how little they cared or respected that claim.
I find mensa far more interesting for the sheer number of incredibly smart people I've known who want nothing to do with it.
Of course raw intelligence isn't the be-all and end-all about how much you can achieve.
Look at the mensa members who work as security guards.
If you're smart, but lazy, you won't achieve much either.
Hell, I think I've met more than one person who would have qualified for mensa who went on to become seriously messed up people.
Your score on an IQ test doesn't define you.
The one thing I hate about social networking, especially when used in a corporate setting, is the ridiculous use of badges.
There is nothing more annoying than a tool which is touted as something which will make it easier to do our jobs which wants to give us badges for participating.
In the end the platform becomes utterly useless, but somehow it's trying to reward you/motivate you to keep using it to get some stupid fscking badge.
I predict this will lead to privacy issues for the kids, and provide zero net benefit in education, because there is no evidence or research that this improves anything.
I will be very glad when this overly-hyped "social media" starts to wind down. It doesn't add anything of value in a lot of contexts, but somehow the marketing wankers have all latched onto it as the wave of the future.
Get get off my damned lawn.
Doh, reading comprehension fail ... should have had that second cup of coffee. :-P
I don't know about where you live ... but I pretty much never need to cycle from heating to cooling in the same day.
Freezing cold in the winter, hot in the summer.
Seems kind of pointless to pay to warm up air and then pay to cool it back down again.
Well, think of it like open source. A few people have taken a stab at a manual, but they don't mention any of the problems you mention, and it's grossly out of date. You can look on the internet, but the support forums aren't very helpful and often contradictory. And there's always a guy telling you to switch to the stuff they use.
In the end, you give up on the whole thing.
My advise, release them into the wild, and let them go feral. ;-)
Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm the last person you want to take parenting advise from.
Except now someone will call them martyrs, instead of just murderers.
HEAD!! Pants!! Now!!