If by "take advantage of all of them" you mean something like "pay them a living wage" then you are correct, we can not do that. There are simply too many.
No, take advantage of them as in have them working on things which can be of use. From the article:
One reason that many doctoral programmes do not adequately serve students is that they are overly specialized, with curricula fragmented and increasingly irrelevant to the world beyond academia. Expertise, of course, is essential to the advancement of knowledge and to society. But in far too many cases, specialization has led to areas of research so narrow that they are of interest only to other people working in the same fields, subfields or sub-subfields. Many researchers struggle to talk to colleagues in the same department, and communication across departments and disciplines can be impossible.
One gets the impression that at the PhD level people might be researching things that are, well, useless. Nobody knows what it is, nobody knows what it's for... and other than an exhaustive analysis of the difference between the masturbation techniques of left handed invertebrates vs right hand ones, the research may actually have no value to anybody. It serves no purpose, but we've researched the hell out of it.
The author seems to be lamenting the fact that PhD students are more or less highly specialized people who take a very small field of study which is slightly different from that of their supervisor, and explore it in depth. If the supervisor trains 10 PhD candidates to extensively research something only he's ever cared about, what is being accomplished? Is this a good use of limited funding money? Are the students getting enough breadth to actually be useful to anybody?
True or not, the perception is that after a certain point... that highly specialized degree doesn't really translate into any knowledge that anybody needs, and doesn't translate into directly marketable skillsets. Sure, the things you learn in getting a PhD probably give you some really good, broad "soft skills" and research abilities... but did you need a PhD to actually get those?
Sometimes it seems that people can be so narrowly focused on one, obscure area of knowledge that there will never be any useful benefit to anybody else. So, one big academic circle jerk which churns out PhDs that nobody wants to hire and whose 'knowledge' is so specialized as to be bordering on the obscure and useless.
Not saying we shouldn't be producing educated people, or that pure research is a bad thing... but the author is talking about an educational/research system which has more or less jumped the shark.
What company doesn't "react badly" to people trying to get around their DRM?
Is putting on a different version of the Android OS breaking "DRM"?
Sony seems like the company you'd least buy a device which is supposedly based on an "open" platform like Android and not expect to buy something locked down, proprietary, and that you can only use as they tell you. In fact, it seems like Sony would be bigger asshats than everyone says Apple is.
I'm sure people will buy it, since not everyone seems to have realized that they're a bunch of evil pricks... but I can't really see many people who read Slashdot going anywhere near this thing.
After the rootkit stuff from a few years ago, and everything else I've seen Sony do... I wouldn't buy an actual device from them unless someone held a gun to my head.
The one aspect of fanboys that disgusts me is how they twist drawbacks into being "features", and then other assholes come along and mod them up for it. You, sir, are a fanboy of the most disgusting kind.
The one aspect of assholes that disgusts me is how they how they relentlessly harp on one thing they can't live without, and then other assholes come along and then mod them up for it. You sir, are an asshole of the most disgusting kind.
See, my problem is the level of absolute screeching irrationality that comes out of the anti-Apple camp -- you more or less assume that your pissing and moaning is a fact of nature, and that just because you hold that opinion, it is sacred and anybody who disagrees with it is clearly defective. Maybe not everybody wants a device they can recompile a kernel for or do a port of a Nintendo emulator to. Generally speaking, after 15 years in the industry, I don't.
Most of these posts amount to "zomg, teh Apple is the suxor and anybody who disagrees is a retard who should be removed from the gene pool". Dial it back a notch -- not all devices are for all users. Just because it's a feature that you absolutely can't live without, doesn't mean everyone cares. People judge these things by different criteria.
Deal with it -- it's not like it's something important, like the fact that vi is way better than emacs, and that all those guys have chosen wrong.;-)
Seriously, it's a computer device... but you guys make it into an issue like religion, abortion, or politics. Go have a beer, get laid, and try to remember the actual important things in life. I bet after your 3rd pint, the fact that a device you don't even own doesn't have an SD slot will miraculously not matter one whit.
Considering 95% of all tablets in the wild (meaning the iPad) have no SD Card, having a card reader in a tablet is still somewhat of a novelty. How Apple gets away with that kind of thing I'll never know.
Well, as a counter point to that... I have never found myself thinking "boy, what I really need is an SD card slot in my iPad". Not even a little.
Maybe, just maybe, not everybody wants or needs an SD reader in a device like this. I've got most of my iPad filled with MP3s and movies, the rest is apps and books... and if I really needed to get something onto my iPad, I could always put it into my Dropbox account and it would show up on my iPad. But, generally, it's for accessing the web, as well as the content I already have on it. If I filled the 8GB card in my camera, I don't have room on my 64GB iPad to offload it.
To me, my iPad isn't used to offload data from other devices. In fact, if I compare it to my laptop (which I also bring with me on business trips)... I use the two devices for completely different purposes.
Clearly, by the volume of screeching and whining about the iPad, it isn't a device geared to the majority of Slashdot users. That doesn't mean that the people who own them don't find utility in them.
We used Feynman's intro physics book back when I was in college, and though I got an A in every physics course I ever took, I found that book completely baffling. Instead of being logical and straightforward, it was full of mathematical sleight-of-hand, bringing new variables from nowhere, because "we can call this anything we want!", and magically proceeding the final equation.
It's kind of always been my impression that was exactly how physicists did math.
Not trolling, but I've been told by physics majors that the stuff they do with math would make a mathematician apoplectic.
I gather Feyman was just a lot more gleeful about it.:-P
Oh, I'm not saying you said it wouldn't constitute police misbehavior -- I'm just completely baffled by the statement that you don't see the outrage over police brutality.
None of the things I list am I attributing to you, but I'm completely gobsmacked at the sentiment that police brutality shouldn't be a something which causes outrage. I'm more pointing out the dangers of such a line of thought. To me, it's a huge deal. And, having any threshold for it isn't a good thing.
Sorry for the vitriol, occasionally when it seems like someone is trading away rights, or downplaying the effects of stomping on then, I have a couple of neurons that seize up.;-)
The fact that any corporation can own the "rights" to a lecture series by one of the most brilliant physicists (and teachers of physics) in the last century is appalling.
These lectures were filmed by Caltech, and it's awful to have anybody "own" them. It's just the kind of thing that shouldn't be locked up in some corporations IP portfolio -- and I don't care if it's Microsoft, Sony, or Time Warner.
Really, what next... The Einstein/Pepsi Theory of Relativity? Planck's Constant, brought to you by Staples?
My point is that no commercial entity should hold the "rights" to this. This is quite depressing.
Me too. Never quite understood the outrage over police brutality. If it's a question between a cop punching me and letting me go, or arresting me and keeping me overnight, I'll go with the punch.
How about chopping off a finger? Maybe a prolonged beating? How about raping your wife? Stealing your money? Forcing you to sign over your house to him? Access to your bank accounts?
What, exactly, is your threshold for deciding that people who detain you under the threat of violence or loss of liberty -- and in an official capacity -- have misbehaved? Is it a sliding scale? Or is there a fixed threshold? At what point would you get it?
Pick any other right... do you have a scale for how much your freedom of speech or freedom of association could be infringed? Do you think unalienable rights are negotiable?
The reason people object to the notion of police brutality is that you don't have any recourse if they're gaming the system or abusing their authority. In a civilized society, the police are not expected to be thugs, and are held to a higher level of account -- or at least they should be. They're the ones intended to enforce society's rules -- if they can't live by them, then we're pretty much screwed.
I'm completely baffled that you seem to think there is an acceptable threshold for police brutality or misconduct. There's loads of examples of places where the police are so corrupt they can more or less commit crimes on a large scale with impunity.
Doesn't *ALL* software "belong to someone else"? Even with FOSS software you depend on others to maintain it. If they stop, then you don't get updates.
This isn't entirely about updates. Once Microsoft disables the activation servers, you won't be able to install it anymore. From the article:
Then there is the small matter of the activation codes and the activation servers that Microsoft has to provide to make it all work. Windows XP is the first such Microsoft OS to reach the end of support state. Given you can no longer buy XP will it still be OK to activate newly installed copies once support ceases? It seems unlikely that Microsoft would turn off the activation service close to the end of support but what about ten years after that?
Currently if you have a copy of Windows 98, 95 or even earlier you can install it if you have the right hardware. This might not be the case with XP - and what does this mean for digital history?
Now, obviously the guy writing the article doesn't know when MS will turn off the activation servers.
It's one thing to say you won't get updates... it's another thing to say that you don't get to keep running the software in a lab for testing or extended support. I can only imagine that point of sale or other things with XP might linger for quite some time. If XP actually phones home to see if it's still allowed to run, it's theoretically possible those could just stop working (though I have nothing to support this suggestion).
At least with FOSS, you're still allowed to install something old and busted -- if MS turns off the activation servers, you might not be able to do that. In this case, "owned by someone else" refers to the ability to disable new installs, and possible basically lock out existing installs.
That happened, it just coincided with the death of desktops so you didn't notice.
So, instead of Year of the Linux Desktop it's not Year of the Linux Smart phone? I missed the memo, apparently.
I also missed the death of the desktop... what a shame, I guess all these people who sit at their desk and use a computer hooked up to the wall and the network should probably all go stand out at the bus-stop and start using their BlackBerry or whatever.
Yes, but not an American one... I'm someone who believes that any time any government starts talking about providing a universal ID (for the internet or anything else), that it's time to immediately distrust the motivations of them and start looking at all of the unintended consequences.
I just think that such a thing becomes rife with opportunities for abuse, and that as soon as any government moves to implement something like this... then they will eventually move to make it mandatory, especially with an organization like the DHS which has a particular mandate -- which largely has nothing to do with internet security for you and I. Hence my reference to mandatory checkpoints -- even the naming of that organization has always made me think of the "fatherland" and has always creeped me out.
I'm not even singling out the US on this one. I'm just most especially disappointed to watch the US sliding towards stripping away her own freedoms in the name of what passes for 'security' -- because she used to be a model to keep the rest of the asshat governments at least partly in check. If nothing else, an example of what a free society should be doing. Sure, maybe the tinfoil hat is a little snug, but that doesn't mean we don't have plenty of examples of how this stuff goes horribly wrong from how it starts out. Someone needs to keep pointing it out, or everybody will just keep thinking it's a good idea.
If you want to equate that with your own rednecks and racists... well, that's your fucking problem, not mine. Being afraid of fascists and a surveillance society doesn't equate to me being for anything in particular. Sure as hell not that stuff.
Time was Americans would look at this kind of thing and equate it with the worst parts of Soviet Russia... now they line up to defend it.
Given that I had to google it to find out what it was, no.
Just because I don't trust the government, doesn't mean I'm part of, or sympathetic to, the radical right and the racists. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Nice ad hominem attack.
The tattoo was in reference to the friggin' Nazi's -- this kind of thing to me reeks of fascism.
Even if the Government got a warrant to look at your transactions, they'd still have to go to each website they want information from and request them one by one, just as things are today.
And, once it's in place and they have your ID for any site, then all they need to do is compile a list of however many people they want, and send out a series of documents to a bunch of sites and say "Please provide all of the information for the following IDs, and it's national security, so you can't tell anybody".
If you don't think this actually makes it easier for the government to spy on you, then you're far too trusting or don't know enough about technology.
And, of course, when it's illegal to have an account on one of those sites which isn't tied to this ID, then it will be impossible/illegal to have an ID with which the government can't track you nice and easily. Line up and get a tattoo for them to make it easier to track you as you go through the checkpoints, citizen.
I find your scenario to be hopelessly naive... or, exactly what someone who wanted the keys to everyone's privacy would say. Because, after all, government would never abuse their powers or use them in ways they initially said they wouldn't, right? The fact that it's the DHS pushing this means that I trust them even less -- they're more than willing to sidestep civil liberties if it suits their needs.
The credibility and trust of a system like this last about 1 week, and then someone will start to abuse it. And, then it's too damned late. As soon as government has this, it will be abused.
Sorry if I'm rude but, what the fuck is Sony doing there??
Looking out for their own interests.
Specifically in response to organizations like SCO who threatened to sue the users of Linux -- don't worry, Sony still doesn't give a crap about your rights. They also still don't care about your ability to run Linux on your Playstation.
I admire your ability to air legitimate concerns while simultaneously sounding like a paranoid crackpot.
It's a delicate balance.;-)
But, the reality is, for a lot of us, 1984 and Brave New World (and most any other dystopian future scenario) serve as a strong template for identifying all of the things which we must never allow to happen.
I believe this would be a colossal undermining of individual freedoms, and an incredibly terrifying notion. To me, this is the start of eroding several Constitutional amendments and articles -- all in the guise of "security" and a pandering government; and if China or Libya was doing this, everyone would be screeching loudly about how evil it is. But it's good if it's DHS? Fuck that.
Quite honestly, I can live with being accused of sounding like a paranoid crackpot.
So... I'm going to trust a government agency (especially one which has a vested interest in spying on us) to come up with a universal ID scheme which is secure, private, and actually works -- and doesn't have back doors?
What the hell does DHS care about how people keep track of their on-line accounts other than to be sure they can track you?
I'm sorry, but I don't trust this organization to perform this function... either from a competence perspective, or from a trust perspective. I can only imagine it subsequently becoming illegal to not use this and Officer Friendly shows up at your door for your internet ID re-education.
I can see all sorts of chilling effects like freedom of association and anonymous speech -- but, it will be hammered home to protect against kiddie porn and identity theft.
This is a colossally bad idea, and worthy of a full-on tin-foil hat response. The government should stay the hell out of the internet and how people authenticate on it. And, really, unless you're also planning on having "Internet America" which is firewalled and distinct from the rest of the internet, this simply won't work.
So they have "high precision" full body tracking and aren't doing games that would benefit the most?
In fairness to Microsoft, the Kinect can't detect any twist in your wrist, so apparently golf is something it won't really be able to support.
At some point there might be an evolution that allows for it... but I think right now the technology simply wouldn't work with a golf game since it can't read one of the aspects of a golf swing that is important.
Which still means that most people who use the internet for the web and email will continue to not give a flaming hoot about IPv6.
A family already spending $40/month on broadband isn't going to flinch at spending $100 on a new router every few years.
Horseshit. I only replaced my last router because its ability to handle wireless had gotten to the point where the device was useless to me. I couldn't connect any wireless devices to it, so it was essentially junk. It was, however, about 7 years old.
My internet already costs me enough money, and until this router dies I have no intention of replacing it... I don't know about you, but I absolutely don't think that replacing my router every few years just to make life easy for the ISP makes any sense. It's not like they go out of their way to make things easier or cheaper for me.
My parents only have a firewall/router because I bought one for them because they had a Windows machine plugged directly into their cable modem. They certainly don't give a crap about IPv6.
From my perspective, IPv6 brings me no tangible benefit. Therefore the amount of time and money I'm willing to expend on it is vanishingly small.
Truth is, I don't expect IPv6 to be widespread for about 10 years. The reasoning being that:
But, at this point that would make IPv6 a recurring meme like the "year of the Linux desktop". IPv6 has been something that's going to happen Real Soon Now for a decade.
One of the barriers I see to consumer adoption of IPv6 is that people simply don't care about it... it's not an issue that consumers care about or understand. Another problem is that if consumers are suddenly forced to spend their own money to replace, for example, routers/firewalls... they won't. My personal network behind a NAT'd firewall is IPv4 and I'm willing to expend not very much effort in order to facilitate this... NMFP.
To an end user, they more or less expect the people who operate the plumbing to sort it out and not involve them.
If you don't expect IPv6 to be widespread for a decade, and it's been that long that it was supposed to be coming on line... well, then I'm afraid I have to conclude that falls into the category of "epic failure".
I love bashing Microsoft as much as the next guy, but I disagree. The standard components in the XBox did allow developers to do stuff that wasn't possible on the PC - the minimum spec for Halo 2 on the PC is vastly above the original XBox spec. So they had the combined advantages of a familiar development environment (DirectX) and a standard platform. Innovative? Maybe not, but a damn good idea nonetheless.
But, consoles had already had standard specs and uniformity... all Microsoft really did was to take a PC and turn it into a console. Yes, it was a PC architecture and offered some better horsepower, but I'm not altogether convinced this is "innovation" so much as playing to their strengths.
Not really passing any judgement on the XBox or Microsoft... but, really, they joined the console gaming market, only the underlying architecture was what they'd already been focusing on.
Also - Kinect? Innovative? Damn straight! That thing is amazing.
The Kinect is cool, and quite well done. And it does involve some new technology... but, again, the Wii controller had been out for several years, and Sony had released the "glowing golf ball" controller whose name I don't care to look up.
I'm not sure it's "innovative" in the trail-blazing sense of the word, but innovative in that it's better than what anybody else had done before and brings some new stuff to the table. Though, I must say I'm disappointed to know I won't be able to have a golf game for my Kinect... I was really hoping for that.
The problem is that they're not deciding what they sell, they're deciding what you can buy or use.
Actually, they're targeting a rather annoying practice of app X saying "Hey, download App Z and get a free W".
Usually the suggested app is a complete piece of crap, but by having a more popular app push it, they might get more downloads than they otherwise would have. You just know that app X is getting paid to shill for other apps and getting a benefit for becoming rather tedious.
I've actually found this to be fairly annoying. Apple isn't telling me what I can I can buy or use... they're cutting down on the ability of an app I've had installed for all of 5 minutes popping up to suggest that I install all sorts of crap.
Slashdot Mirror
No, take advantage of them as in have them working on things which can be of use. From the article:
One gets the impression that at the PhD level people might be researching things that are, well, useless. Nobody knows what it is, nobody knows what it's for ... and other than an exhaustive analysis of the difference between the masturbation techniques of left handed invertebrates vs right hand ones, the research may actually have no value to anybody. It serves no purpose, but we've researched the hell out of it.
The author seems to be lamenting the fact that PhD students are more or less highly specialized people who take a very small field of study which is slightly different from that of their supervisor, and explore it in depth. If the supervisor trains 10 PhD candidates to extensively research something only he's ever cared about, what is being accomplished? Is this a good use of limited funding money? Are the students getting enough breadth to actually be useful to anybody?
True or not, the perception is that after a certain point ... that highly specialized degree doesn't really translate into any knowledge that anybody needs, and doesn't translate into directly marketable skillsets. Sure, the things you learn in getting a PhD probably give you some really good, broad "soft skills" and research abilities ... but did you need a PhD to actually get those?
Sometimes it seems that people can be so narrowly focused on one, obscure area of knowledge that there will never be any useful benefit to anybody else. So, one big academic circle jerk which churns out PhDs that nobody wants to hire and whose 'knowledge' is so specialized as to be bordering on the obscure and useless.
Not saying we shouldn't be producing educated people, or that pure research is a bad thing ... but the author is talking about an educational/research system which has more or less jumped the shark.
Is putting on a different version of the Android OS breaking "DRM"?
Sony seems like the company you'd least buy a device which is supposedly based on an "open" platform like Android and not expect to buy something locked down, proprietary, and that you can only use as they tell you. In fact, it seems like Sony would be bigger asshats than everyone says Apple is.
I'm sure people will buy it, since not everyone seems to have realized that they're a bunch of evil pricks ... but I can't really see many people who read Slashdot going anywhere near this thing.
After the rootkit stuff from a few years ago, and everything else I've seen Sony do ... I wouldn't buy an actual device from them unless someone held a gun to my head.
"Owning" the Feyman lectures?
I don't even understand why this is a property someone could buy in the first place. It's just bizarre.
The one aspect of assholes that disgusts me is how they how they relentlessly harp on one thing they can't live without, and then other assholes come along and then mod them up for it. You sir, are an asshole of the most disgusting kind.
See, my problem is the level of absolute screeching irrationality that comes out of the anti-Apple camp -- you more or less assume that your pissing and moaning is a fact of nature, and that just because you hold that opinion, it is sacred and anybody who disagrees with it is clearly defective. Maybe not everybody wants a device they can recompile a kernel for or do a port of a Nintendo emulator to. Generally speaking, after 15 years in the industry, I don't.
Most of these posts amount to "zomg, teh Apple is the suxor and anybody who disagrees is a retard who should be removed from the gene pool". Dial it back a notch -- not all devices are for all users. Just because it's a feature that you absolutely can't live without, doesn't mean everyone cares. People judge these things by different criteria.
Deal with it -- it's not like it's something important, like the fact that vi is way better than emacs, and that all those guys have chosen wrong. ;-)
Seriously, it's a computer device ... but you guys make it into an issue like religion, abortion, or politics. Go have a beer, get laid, and try to remember the actual important things in life. I bet after your 3rd pint, the fact that a device you don't even own doesn't have an SD slot will miraculously not matter one whit.
Well, as a counter point to that ... I have never found myself thinking "boy, what I really need is an SD card slot in my iPad". Not even a little.
Maybe, just maybe, not everybody wants or needs an SD reader in a device like this. I've got most of my iPad filled with MP3s and movies, the rest is apps and books ... and if I really needed to get something onto my iPad, I could always put it into my Dropbox account and it would show up on my iPad. But, generally, it's for accessing the web, as well as the content I already have on it. If I filled the 8GB card in my camera, I don't have room on my 64GB iPad to offload it.
To me, my iPad isn't used to offload data from other devices. In fact, if I compare it to my laptop (which I also bring with me on business trips) ... I use the two devices for completely different purposes.
Clearly, by the volume of screeching and whining about the iPad, it isn't a device geared to the majority of Slashdot users. That doesn't mean that the people who own them don't find utility in them.
Man, I thought that was because it could turn into a car.
This is essentially just a docking station. How lame is that? ;-)
It's kind of always been my impression that was exactly how physicists did math.
Not trolling, but I've been told by physics majors that the stuff they do with math would make a mathematician apoplectic.
I gather Feyman was just a lot more gleeful about it. :-P
Oh, I'm not saying you said it wouldn't constitute police misbehavior -- I'm just completely baffled by the statement that you don't see the outrage over police brutality.
None of the things I list am I attributing to you, but I'm completely gobsmacked at the sentiment that police brutality shouldn't be a something which causes outrage. I'm more pointing out the dangers of such a line of thought. To me, it's a huge deal. And, having any threshold for it isn't a good thing.
Sorry for the vitriol, occasionally when it seems like someone is trading away rights, or downplaying the effects of stomping on then, I have a couple of neurons that seize up. ;-)
Cheers
Well, then your a short sighted moron.
The fact that any corporation can own the "rights" to a lecture series by one of the most brilliant physicists (and teachers of physics) in the last century is appalling.
These lectures were filmed by Caltech, and it's awful to have anybody "own" them. It's just the kind of thing that shouldn't be locked up in some corporations IP portfolio -- and I don't care if it's Microsoft, Sony, or Time Warner.
Really, what next ... The Einstein/Pepsi Theory of Relativity? Planck's Constant, brought to you by Staples?
My point is that no commercial entity should hold the "rights" to this. This is quite depressing.
I was bummed to discover that Microsoft owns the rights to the Feynman lectures. Available in Silverlight only just rubs salt in the wound.
How about chopping off a finger? Maybe a prolonged beating? How about raping your wife? Stealing your money? Forcing you to sign over your house to him? Access to your bank accounts?
What, exactly, is your threshold for deciding that people who detain you under the threat of violence or loss of liberty -- and in an official capacity -- have misbehaved? Is it a sliding scale? Or is there a fixed threshold? At what point would you get it?
Pick any other right ... do you have a scale for how much your freedom of speech or freedom of association could be infringed? Do you think unalienable rights are negotiable?
The reason people object to the notion of police brutality is that you don't have any recourse if they're gaming the system or abusing their authority. In a civilized society, the police are not expected to be thugs, and are held to a higher level of account -- or at least they should be. They're the ones intended to enforce society's rules -- if they can't live by them, then we're pretty much screwed.
I'm completely baffled that you seem to think there is an acceptable threshold for police brutality or misconduct. There's loads of examples of places where the police are so corrupt they can more or less commit crimes on a large scale with impunity.
This isn't entirely about updates. Once Microsoft disables the activation servers, you won't be able to install it anymore. From the article:
Now, obviously the guy writing the article doesn't know when MS will turn off the activation servers.
It's one thing to say you won't get updates ... it's another thing to say that you don't get to keep running the software in a lab for testing or extended support. I can only imagine that point of sale or other things with XP might linger for quite some time. If XP actually phones home to see if it's still allowed to run, it's theoretically possible those could just stop working (though I have nothing to support this suggestion).
At least with FOSS, you're still allowed to install something old and busted -- if MS turns off the activation servers, you might not be able to do that. In this case, "owned by someone else" refers to the ability to disable new installs, and possible basically lock out existing installs.
So, instead of Year of the Linux Desktop it's not Year of the Linux Smart phone? I missed the memo, apparently.
I also missed the death of the desktop ... what a shame, I guess all these people who sit at their desk and use a computer hooked up to the wall and the network should probably all go stand out at the bus-stop and start using their BlackBerry or whatever.
Yes, but not an American one ... I'm someone who believes that any time any government starts talking about providing a universal ID (for the internet or anything else), that it's time to immediately distrust the motivations of them and start looking at all of the unintended consequences.
I just think that such a thing becomes rife with opportunities for abuse, and that as soon as any government moves to implement something like this ... then they will eventually move to make it mandatory, especially with an organization like the DHS which has a particular mandate -- which largely has nothing to do with internet security for you and I. Hence my reference to mandatory checkpoints -- even the naming of that organization has always made me think of the "fatherland" and has always creeped me out.
I'm not even singling out the US on this one. I'm just most especially disappointed to watch the US sliding towards stripping away her own freedoms in the name of what passes for 'security' -- because she used to be a model to keep the rest of the asshat governments at least partly in check. If nothing else, an example of what a free society should be doing. Sure, maybe the tinfoil hat is a little snug, but that doesn't mean we don't have plenty of examples of how this stuff goes horribly wrong from how it starts out. Someone needs to keep pointing it out, or everybody will just keep thinking it's a good idea.
If you want to equate that with your own rednecks and racists ... well, that's your fucking problem, not mine. Being afraid of fascists and a surveillance society doesn't equate to me being for anything in particular. Sure as hell not that stuff.
Time was Americans would look at this kind of thing and equate it with the worst parts of Soviet Russia ... now they line up to defend it.
Given that I had to google it to find out what it was, no.
Just because I don't trust the government, doesn't mean I'm part of, or sympathetic to, the radical right and the racists. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Nice ad hominem attack.
The tattoo was in reference to the friggin' Nazi's -- this kind of thing to me reeks of fascism.
And, once it's in place and they have your ID for any site, then all they need to do is compile a list of however many people they want, and send out a series of documents to a bunch of sites and say "Please provide all of the information for the following IDs, and it's national security, so you can't tell anybody".
If you don't think this actually makes it easier for the government to spy on you, then you're far too trusting or don't know enough about technology.
And, of course, when it's illegal to have an account on one of those sites which isn't tied to this ID, then it will be impossible/illegal to have an ID with which the government can't track you nice and easily. Line up and get a tattoo for them to make it easier to track you as you go through the checkpoints, citizen.
I find your scenario to be hopelessly naive ... or, exactly what someone who wanted the keys to everyone's privacy would say. Because, after all, government would never abuse their powers or use them in ways they initially said they wouldn't, right? The fact that it's the DHS pushing this means that I trust them even less -- they're more than willing to sidestep civil liberties if it suits their needs.
The credibility and trust of a system like this last about 1 week, and then someone will start to abuse it. And, then it's too damned late. As soon as government has this, it will be abused.
Looking out for their own interests.
Specifically in response to organizations like SCO who threatened to sue the users of Linux -- don't worry, Sony still doesn't give a crap about your rights. They also still don't care about your ability to run Linux on your Playstation.
This is all about them.
Not Communism, which is mostly about who owns the means of production and the like.
This is the beginnings of fascism.
It's a delicate balance. ;-)
But, the reality is, for a lot of us, 1984 and Brave New World (and most any other dystopian future scenario) serve as a strong template for identifying all of the things which we must never allow to happen.
I believe this would be a colossal undermining of individual freedoms, and an incredibly terrifying notion. To me, this is the start of eroding several Constitutional amendments and articles -- all in the guise of "security" and a pandering government; and if China or Libya was doing this, everyone would be screeching loudly about how evil it is. But it's good if it's DHS? Fuck that.
Quite honestly, I can live with being accused of sounding like a paranoid crackpot.
So ... I'm going to trust a government agency (especially one which has a vested interest in spying on us) to come up with a universal ID scheme which is secure, private, and actually works -- and doesn't have back doors?
What the hell does DHS care about how people keep track of their on-line accounts other than to be sure they can track you?
I'm sorry, but I don't trust this organization to perform this function ... either from a competence perspective, or from a trust perspective. I can only imagine it subsequently becoming illegal to not use this and Officer Friendly shows up at your door for your internet ID re-education.
I can see all sorts of chilling effects like freedom of association and anonymous speech -- but, it will be hammered home to protect against kiddie porn and identity theft.
This is a colossally bad idea, and worthy of a full-on tin-foil hat response. The government should stay the hell out of the internet and how people authenticate on it. And, really, unless you're also planning on having "Internet America" which is firewalled and distinct from the rest of the internet, this simply won't work.
In fairness to Microsoft, the Kinect can't detect any twist in your wrist, so apparently golf is something it won't really be able to support.
At some point there might be an evolution that allows for it ... but I think right now the technology simply wouldn't work with a golf game since it can't read one of the aspects of a golf swing that is important.
Which still means that most people who use the internet for the web and email will continue to not give a flaming hoot about IPv6.
Horseshit. I only replaced my last router because its ability to handle wireless had gotten to the point where the device was useless to me. I couldn't connect any wireless devices to it, so it was essentially junk. It was, however, about 7 years old.
My internet already costs me enough money, and until this router dies I have no intention of replacing it ... I don't know about you, but I absolutely don't think that replacing my router every few years just to make life easy for the ISP makes any sense. It's not like they go out of their way to make things easier or cheaper for me.
My parents only have a firewall/router because I bought one for them because they had a Windows machine plugged directly into their cable modem. They certainly don't give a crap about IPv6.
From my perspective, IPv6 brings me no tangible benefit. Therefore the amount of time and money I'm willing to expend on it is vanishingly small.
But, at this point that would make IPv6 a recurring meme like the "year of the Linux desktop". IPv6 has been something that's going to happen Real Soon Now for a decade.
One of the barriers I see to consumer adoption of IPv6 is that people simply don't care about it ... it's not an issue that consumers care about or understand. Another problem is that if consumers are suddenly forced to spend their own money to replace, for example, routers/firewalls ... they won't. My personal network behind a NAT'd firewall is IPv4 and I'm willing to expend not very much effort in order to facilitate this ... NMFP.
To an end user, they more or less expect the people who operate the plumbing to sort it out and not involve them.
If you don't expect IPv6 to be widespread for a decade, and it's been that long that it was supposed to be coming on line ... well, then I'm afraid I have to conclude that falls into the category of "epic failure".
But, consoles had already had standard specs and uniformity ... all Microsoft really did was to take a PC and turn it into a console. Yes, it was a PC architecture and offered some better horsepower, but I'm not altogether convinced this is "innovation" so much as playing to their strengths.
Not really passing any judgement on the XBox or Microsoft ... but, really, they joined the console gaming market, only the underlying architecture was what they'd already been focusing on.
The Kinect is cool, and quite well done. And it does involve some new technology ... but, again, the Wii controller had been out for several years, and Sony had released the "glowing golf ball" controller whose name I don't care to look up.
I'm not sure it's "innovative" in the trail-blazing sense of the word, but innovative in that it's better than what anybody else had done before and brings some new stuff to the table. Though, I must say I'm disappointed to know I won't be able to have a golf game for my Kinect ... I was really hoping for that.
Actually, they're targeting a rather annoying practice of app X saying "Hey, download App Z and get a free W".
Usually the suggested app is a complete piece of crap, but by having a more popular app push it, they might get more downloads than they otherwise would have. You just know that app X is getting paid to shill for other apps and getting a benefit for becoming rather tedious.
I've actually found this to be fairly annoying. Apple isn't telling me what I can I can buy or use ... they're cutting down on the ability of an app I've had installed for all of 5 minutes popping up to suggest that I install all sorts of crap.