By that reasoning, any really good, well developed, high traffic position to place an add is a fantastic position to place an explosive device.
So the CN is responsible because there _could_ have been a bomb. This reminds me of the guy on the British subway who was gunned down because he _could_ have had a bomb, since his jacket was a little bulky, and he was running for the train. I'm believe both cases came about through fundamentally flawed reason and response, not to mention unreasonable levels of fear.
The reason this is all a HUGE problem, is that it sets a terrifying precedent for the way people think and act; Look over your shoulder all the time, and point the finger at anyone/thing that freaks you out. It can be summed up as, "Cry 'Wolf!' as often as possible.". This idea fundamentally opposes rational thought, and the very principles of "Innocent until proven guilty." are only a little further down this slippery slope.
This level of paranoia cannot be condoned as "reasonable" or "acceptable". It intrudes on the most basic principles of freedom and liberty. Or, to close with my favorite Ben Franklin quote:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
I thought you meant last mile, not upstream bandwidth. That having been said, that's more the type of contract you care about when hosting since most home users couldn't tell the difference anyway. When your ISP has "true" bandwidth, the site at the other end of the pipe can still be sluggish, but when you're hosting, you REALLY don't want your site(s) to choke.
Regardless, it's still not something that I think impedes net neutrality per se, depending on how you charge for things, and how you write the contract. You're providing a "superior quality" of internet connection for $. You're not giving priority to your content, or downgrading service to competitors, or using any other monopolizing or anti competitive tactic. You're likely charging standard market price, or you'll lose customers to competitors (for this argument we'll assume there's no collusion).
Once you start targeting that "premium" service to only boost bandwidth to specific networks like Microsoft, Google, Apple, or whoever, THEN there's a problem.
Your service also doesn't need to "bump" anyone (depending on how you set it up) nor should it. You have one class of customer using dial up, or broadband, or whatever, and they connect in the usual way, and they get routed to the interweeb. The second class, which likely connects to an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT network infrastructure gets this premium service. This can be effectively virtual, all you're doing is splitting your upstream bandwidth into 2 networks. One's oversold, but the other isn't given higher priority. Now IF you were to do some traffic filtering, giving "premium packets" some kind of priority, then once again you're crossing the line. It's kinda splitting hairs in some ways, but the distinctions are important.
Your example doesn't really work either. When you pay for something, it's pretty much guaranteed. If I pay for 1.5Mbits/sec from a company, as per a contract, and don't get it, it's called a refund, or a lawsuit.
You're not offering an additional service, you're offering to allow people to pay extra for their existing service. It's actually pretty close to "protection money". Which could be construed as outright illegal off the bat.
Spammers can simply be shut down or null routed as they tax systems unnecessarily and (presumably) violate your TOS. Your proposal furthur allows spammers to simply pay a little extra to be guaranteed the ability to spam. Turfing spammers is, in fact, NOT against Network Neutrality as that is a CUSTOMER policy decision, not a NETWORK policy decision.
Ok, to be less terse, if a "company" (ISP or otherwise) wants to offer a service that allows people to access cached movie downloads, they can. This isn't specifically in violation of net neutrality, it's a for pay service, which they can give free access to for people already signed up to their ISP service.
If you look at Wikipedia, they have a description of some of the things that Net Neutrality means. My favorite is: "Any particular internet host, protocol, or application should not receive preferential treatment...". Your example being an added service, and not a host protocol or application, does not fall within the perview of Net Neutrality.
When did Slashdot become the Vista Technical Support Forum? If XP works, and Vista doesn't, and we all know Vista is still effectively in beta, then the answer (as most people have said) is don't use Vista. The thing is, you don't need to ask someone this. It's obvious. It's kinda like this:
Ask Slashdot: I'm hungry, what should I do?
Mind you the number one answer will likely be: "Switch to Linux."
We're using fear mongering to push the idea that the ends justify the means, and by accepting a confession as acceptable proof of guilt, even though a confession alone isn't grounds enough for a conviction legally (think of people confessing for attention, or forced confessions). We'll just leave that last part out. We did good, give us our cookie... er... cameras.
Besides that, this type of monitoring catches people only AFTER the crime is over. What's the saying? Something about an ounce of prevention? Maybe we could focus on detering crime in the first place, or avoiding the circumstances that drive people to crime in the first place... or does that make too much sense?
Doesn't suborbital flight still take you out of a significant percentange of earths natural cosmic radiation sheild? Isn't that a problem for people who may want to have kids, or whatever? Maybe 2 hours exposure isn't enough to matter, but if you fly often enough, I'd think you'd still be affected.
How will they deal with the vastly different power levels in the Marvel Universe?
For instance, you've got guys like the Punisher, who may have really big guns, but he's just a guy with guns, so he's sort of on the "normal guy level. Then you have guys like the Silver Surfer, Galactus , Quasar, etc. who are all on the "cosmic" level. Then there are guys on the mid level, which includes most mutants save for the super powerful ones (Magneto, Professor X), and then the REALLY powerful but still mostly just on earth guys like Thor, The Hulk and Iron Man.
Comic games like X-Men legends did a good job of balancing out the power levels of the different mutant characters (IMHO), but that's a very different style of play.
In the Marvel Super Heroes table top RPG, the GM controls the interaction on a much more finite level to keep these things balanced. This kind of control is absent in a MMORPG.
Is everyone going to be stuck with a middle "Spider-Man Level" hero? (Not that that would necessarily be boring) I don't see many ways to deal with the complexities of the Marvel universe otherwise.
Ok, so plagiarism is bad. We all know this. But lets take a look at what's bad about it here in particular.
1) You are SUPPOSED to be learning about a topic(subject, etc., whatever), and researching it yourself.
If you plagiarize someone, you're avoiding the entire point, and not learning. This is the main problem in a specifically academic situation.
2) It's morally wrong to copy someone else's work without giving credit.
Ok, so what. Why is this such a HUGE deal that you can get expelled for copying some or all of a single paper in a single course. We know it's bad. We know it should be punished. But what's the big friggen deal? Simply put, it's easier to deal with it this way than to fix the actual problem(s) in the academic process.
So what then, is the magic solution? How do you discourage this type of cheating, and what do you do in situations where it is exposed? Well, here are a couple thoughts:
First, if you have a discussion about papers with students, you can tell pretty quick how well they know the paper they're supposed to have written. The professor can do it, or TAs could do it, so don't say it'd take too much time to go through every student. It wouldn't take much more time than grading papers, or checking them against this stupid online DB.
Second, if you get a student caught plagiarizing, the FIRST offence should be dealt with in a way that doesn't totally screw their entire lives up. Have a Copyright sensitivity course or something which requires students to learn about what they've done, why it's wrong, etc. And have the course be a 0 credit course, that becomes mandatory if you cheat, and still costs as much as a regular course. Cheat again and you're out.
Finally, there's a bunch of ways this system could backfire horribly, and generate TONNS of false positives. i.e. If one TA is responsible for uploading papers to the system, and another cross checks them. If they don't co-ordinate, then the papers get uploaded first, and they get flagged against themselves. Or, if the system is too sensitive, it will flag a paper with a paragraph from another paper which is properly credited within the "offending" paper.
The point is, this is a stop gap solution to the extraordinary hands off way students are treated in academic institutions. With so much money and time going into getting a university degree, with so much pressure and emphasis on the importance of that degree, it's easy to see where a student could grab a paper off the net for the course that fell off their plate, or their worst subject. This solution only serves to further dehumanize students.
That is incorrect. If a format has DRM in it, which would be considered both encryption, and copy protection, format shifting would require you 1) reverse engineer the format, which is illegal by the DMCA, 2) undo the encryption, and remove the copy protection, which is illegal by the DMCA, and 3) convert it to a playable format. The last part isn't illegal, although the RIAA would like it to be.
DRM + DMCA makes format shifting illegal, because circumventing DRM is illegal. If you're just converting from WAV to MP3, or ripping a CD or something, you're in the clear. It's the combination that's the real problem.
The DMCA sounds like a good idea at first, until you see the loopholes you can drive a truck through. It's made all kinds of reasonable actions illegal, and allowed copyright holders to abuse it for their own ends. It's also law for and about technology, made and approved by people who don't understand it.
So, who's responsible? Is this considered "treason", Or just "fraud". If such a scam gets wholly exposed (which is unlikely in this day and age, but we'll just cross our fingers here), what happens? Is the election overturned, or the current president just impeached? Does someone hang, or just get a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to?
Without a truly impartial review board with limited power over the presidency exists, and a system of accountability is established, there's almost no point in voting at all. At this point, it'd almost take another civil war, or revolution to fix things.
'The better question to ask is: "Are random searches effective in keeping everyone safe?" '
No, that's actually an off topic question, and beyond that, the small modicum of safety this *might* achieve is MUCH less important than the freedom and, quite frankly, the dignity this costs.
Has anyone noticed that "terrorists" have already won? They've substantially changed the quality of life in North America(and other parts of the world). They've got everyone looking over their shoulder. Etc. etc.
THIS IS WHAT TERRORISM IS TRYING TO ACHEIVE!
It's not about blowing up as much stuff as possible, that's George "Dubbya's" job. It's about terror. Scaring people. Well, looks like we're so scared we're treating our own citizens like dirt. I'd call that a win for them.
Ebay's management is in serious need of a kick in the pants. More for customer service, support, and the way it deals with fraud (which is all part of the same thing really).
Just because it's more difficult to sell on Ebay does NOT mean the problem is management, it means there's more traffic (buyers and sellers), so you have more competition. It may take twice as long to sell a game as 2 years ago, but I'm willing to bet there's well more than twice as many video games on Ebay now, as there were then.
Um... Shouldn't Canada be up there somewhere? It's the only G8 country not listed. All humour aside, I consider that a rather large oversight for a "scientific" study.
And if we were just lumped in with the US, that's even more stupid. There are (metric) tonns of socio-economic differences between us.
Ok, I like being safe as much as the next guy, but there's an inherent problem with this particular level of safety. Actually there are a couple problems, but they stem from the same one.
First, getting used to such safeties will lead to a lack of common sense. Sound stupid? Not really. Think of the first lesson you learn in shop class, about how NOT to cut off your fingers. Well we can just skip over that one right? In fact, we'll probably demo how the saw will stop before mulching your fingers. Yay. So 1) no common sense, 2) no respect for the machine that can hurt you.
Second, and I think anyone who's ever used a machine, or electronics of any kind will understand this one, what happens when the system fails? Do NOT tell me it's fool proof, I will laugh at you, right before your digits go flying in separate directions. If people start to rely on this sort of thing, it could easily lead to a much greater number of injuries.
Society has an odd concept about responsibility. It tries to protect everyone from everything always. This is actually detrimental. The truth is that the responsibility for your safety is yours, the responsibility for your child's safety is yours. We've gotten so used to pointing fingers when people get hurt or worse, we've forgotten to hold ourselves accountable.
If you cut off your bits, you should have been careful, if your child gets hurt wandering into some one's yard, you should have been watching them. etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, if you're walking along, and a piano falls on you, that's not your fault, but there's a certain amount of self sufficiency we're losing.
That having been said, if this sort of system is used only as a backup to proper training and common sense, then it's a good idea.
Comdex was once a prestigious event, now it's basically gone due to the same forces. Large companies backing out. Why? 'cause they messed with something that worked. Kick out the public, ban booth babes (restrict how I can use the space I pay for, and I stop paying), etc. Rather than keep things fresh, and trying to raise the bar each year for the show, it's the same thing, with less "fun" each year.
I have a hint for anyone organizing any such event; Don't try to make it "better" by restricting it. You aren't going to make it seem any more exclusive or elite, and you're not going to draw any more media attention, or exhibitors.
Another thing that's probably hit E3 is the SAME GAMES being exhibited several years in a row. Companies drag devel for games out over 2 or 3 years now(I have no idea how this can make ANY business sense), which means seeing the same game 3 or 4 times at comdex. If a games been demoed so many times you've basically finished it, there's a problem.
The only reason for these shows, is for big companies to hype their new stuff to the public. That's about it. If you've got to the point where the public is bored with your offerings, big companies are better off spending their money on billboards and commercials.
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong but... doesn't the RFID chip simply give a serial number to a computer that the computer checks against an existing database? Worst case, it would be your social security number or something, but still, that's all the information someone could get.
"Uh oh, someone might see my passport number is '123456789'! Quick, everybody freak out!"
And even if that's not the case, as everyone's pointed out, the passport needs to be open anyway, and the range is really small, and the equipment is really expensive. This whole problem is just a tempest in a teapot.
I feel the need to remind everyone that "laser" doesn't mean "better". Yes, it's faster than a missle, but 1) you need to keep it on your target for more than an instant, which requires good tracking, 2) it's a point defense system, which again, means you need good tracking.
The patriot system didn't "intercept" scud missles, it detonated about half a kilometer in front of them, which is a very short distance at missle speeds. The detonation spread debris in front of the missle, which the missle hit at great speed, and BOOM, no more missle (more or less).
My point being, try using a 9mm, or even a.45 cal handgun to kill a fly, and you'll see the fly swatter works better, even though it's lower tech, and generally less cool.
Then there's always the question of where those rogue lasers that miss their target will go. After all, if they can blow up a rocket at up to 20 kilometers (for the "little" ones), they can kill or at least burn/blind someone further away in an instant. There are lots of hotels near airports, which would be in the line of fire.
Incidentally, regarding the patriot missle system, it's really quite good, but it's performance was vastly inferior than what it should have been. The hardware itself was built with electronics with wider than normal tolerances(I don't know why, money, time, whatever, it happened), and this led to a cumulative timing error, which would throw the systems aim off, causing it to miss it's targets. Anyone who was properly trained on the system would know that every 24 hours, the system needed to be rebooted, and it would recalibrate properly. This didn't happen. Many scud missles were missed because of improper operation and maintenance.
Just really stupid. This ad was poorly thought out for sure (as in I don't exactly want or care about the product), but don't people have anything better to do than try to call it racist? I have a huge problem with overly politically correct points of view. I think this qualifies. Lighten up people.
Slashdot Mirror
By that reasoning, any really good, well developed, high traffic position to place an add is a fantastic position to place an explosive device.
So the CN is responsible because there _could_ have been a bomb. This reminds me of the guy on the British subway who was gunned down because he _could_ have had a bomb, since his jacket was a little bulky, and he was running for the train. I'm believe both cases came about through fundamentally flawed reason and response, not to mention unreasonable levels of fear.
The reason this is all a HUGE problem, is that it sets a terrifying precedent for the way people think and act; Look over your shoulder all the time, and point the finger at anyone/thing that freaks you out. It can be summed up as, "Cry 'Wolf!' as often as possible.". This idea fundamentally opposes rational thought, and the very principles of "Innocent until proven guilty." are only a little further down this slippery slope.
This level of paranoia cannot be condoned as "reasonable" or "acceptable". It intrudes on the most basic principles of freedom and liberty. Or, to close with my favorite Ben Franklin quote:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Prayer has no place on Slashdot, just like rational thought has no place in organized religion.
Wow... poor bear...
How much do I have to donate to get diplomatic immunity?
Um... it's called Ebay. ;)
I thought you meant last mile, not upstream bandwidth. That having been said, that's more the type of contract you care about when hosting since most home users couldn't tell the difference anyway. When your ISP has "true" bandwidth, the site at the other end of the pipe can still be sluggish, but when you're hosting, you REALLY don't want your site(s) to choke.
;)
Regardless, it's still not something that I think impedes net neutrality per se, depending on how you charge for things, and how you write the contract. You're providing a "superior quality" of internet connection for $. You're not giving priority to your content, or downgrading service to competitors, or using any other monopolizing or anti competitive tactic. You're likely charging standard market price, or you'll lose customers to competitors (for this argument we'll assume there's no collusion).
Once you start targeting that "premium" service to only boost bandwidth to specific networks like Microsoft, Google, Apple, or whoever, THEN there's a problem.
Your service also doesn't need to "bump" anyone (depending on how you set it up) nor should it. You have one class of customer using dial up, or broadband, or whatever, and they connect in the usual way, and they get routed to the interweeb. The second class, which likely connects to an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT network infrastructure gets this premium service. This can be effectively virtual, all you're doing is splitting your upstream bandwidth into 2 networks. One's oversold, but the other isn't given higher priority. Now IF you were to do some traffic filtering, giving "premium packets" some kind of priority, then once again you're crossing the line. It's kinda splitting hairs in some ways, but the distinctions are important.
So, I STILL don't agree with your example.
Your example doesn't really work either. When you pay for something, it's pretty much guaranteed. If I pay for 1.5Mbits/sec from a company, as per a contract, and don't get it, it's called a refund, or a lawsuit.
You're not offering an additional service, you're offering to allow people to pay extra for their existing service. It's actually pretty close to "protection money". Which could be construed as outright illegal off the bat.
Spammers can simply be shut down or null routed as they tax systems unnecessarily and (presumably) violate your TOS. Your proposal furthur allows spammers to simply pay a little extra to be guaranteed the ability to spam. Turfing spammers is, in fact, NOT against Network Neutrality as that is a CUSTOMER policy decision, not a NETWORK policy decision.
Um... No.
Ok, to be less terse, if a "company" (ISP or otherwise) wants to offer a service that allows people to access cached movie downloads, they can. This isn't specifically in violation of net neutrality, it's a for pay service, which they can give free access to for people already signed up to their ISP service.
If you look at Wikipedia, they have a description of some of the things that Net Neutrality means. My favorite is: "Any particular internet host, protocol, or application should not receive preferential treatment...". Your example being an added service, and not a host protocol or application, does not fall within the perview of Net Neutrality.
When did Slashdot become the Vista Technical Support Forum? If XP works, and Vista doesn't, and we all know Vista is still effectively in beta, then the answer (as most people have said) is don't use Vista. The thing is, you don't need to ask someone this. It's obvious. It's kinda like this:
Ask Slashdot:
I'm hungry, what should I do?
Mind you the number one answer will likely be:
"Switch to Linux."
But hey, you asked in the first place...
We're using fear mongering to push the idea that the ends justify the means, and by accepting a confession as acceptable proof of guilt, even though a confession alone isn't grounds enough for a conviction legally (think of people confessing for attention, or forced confessions). We'll just leave that last part out. We did good, give us our cookie... er... cameras.
Besides that, this type of monitoring catches people only AFTER the crime is over. What's the saying? Something about an ounce of prevention? Maybe we could focus on detering crime in the first place, or avoiding the circumstances that drive people to crime in the first place... or does that make too much sense?
Doesn't suborbital flight still take you out of a significant percentange of earths natural cosmic radiation sheild? Isn't that a problem for people who may want to have kids, or whatever? Maybe 2 hours exposure isn't enough to matter, but if you fly often enough, I'd think you'd still be affected.
It depends. If the times are not being observed, it's both, so it's Schrodinger. If they're being observed but you're just not sure, it's Heisenberg.
;)
Ergo, ignorance is bliss... and not.
How will they deal with the vastly different power levels in the Marvel Universe?
For instance, you've got guys like the Punisher, who may have really big guns, but he's just a guy with guns, so he's sort of on the "normal guy level. Then you have guys like the Silver Surfer, Galactus , Quasar, etc. who are all on the "cosmic" level. Then there are guys on the mid level, which includes most mutants save for the super powerful ones (Magneto, Professor X), and then the REALLY powerful but still mostly just on earth guys like Thor, The Hulk and Iron Man.
Comic games like X-Men legends did a good job of balancing out the power levels of the different mutant characters (IMHO), but that's a very different style of play.
In the Marvel Super Heroes table top RPG, the GM controls the interaction on a much more finite level to keep these things balanced. This kind of control is absent in a MMORPG.
Is everyone going to be stuck with a middle "Spider-Man Level" hero? (Not that that would necessarily be boring) I don't see many ways to deal with the complexities of the Marvel universe otherwise.
Ok, so plagiarism is bad. We all know this. But lets take a look at what's bad about it here in particular.
1) You are SUPPOSED to be learning about a topic(subject, etc., whatever), and researching it yourself.
If you plagiarize someone, you're avoiding the entire point, and not learning. This is the main problem in a specifically academic situation.
2) It's morally wrong to copy someone else's work without giving credit.
Ok, so what. Why is this such a HUGE deal that you can get expelled for copying some or all of a single paper in a single course. We know it's bad. We know it should be punished. But what's the big friggen deal? Simply put, it's easier to deal with it this way than to fix the actual problem(s) in the academic process.
So what then, is the magic solution? How do you discourage this type of cheating, and what do you do in situations where it is exposed? Well, here are a couple thoughts:
First, if you have a discussion about papers with students, you can tell pretty quick how well they know the paper they're supposed to have written. The professor can do it, or TAs could do it, so don't say it'd take too much time to go through every student. It wouldn't take much more time than grading papers, or checking them against this stupid online DB.
Second, if you get a student caught plagiarizing, the FIRST offence should be dealt with in a way that doesn't totally screw their entire lives up. Have a Copyright sensitivity course or something which requires students to learn about what they've done, why it's wrong, etc. And have the course be a 0 credit course, that becomes mandatory if you cheat, and still costs as much as a regular course. Cheat again and you're out.
Finally, there's a bunch of ways this system could backfire horribly, and generate TONNS of false positives. i.e. If one TA is responsible for uploading papers to the system, and another cross checks them. If they don't co-ordinate, then the papers get uploaded first, and they get flagged against themselves. Or, if the system is too sensitive, it will flag a paper with a paragraph from another paper which is properly credited within the "offending" paper.
The point is, this is a stop gap solution to the extraordinary hands off way students are treated in academic institutions. With so much money and time going into getting a university degree, with so much pressure and emphasis on the importance of that degree, it's easy to see where a student could grab a paper off the net for the course that fell off their plate, or their worst subject. This solution only serves to further dehumanize students.
That is incorrect. If a format has DRM in it, which would be considered both encryption, and copy protection, format shifting would require you 1) reverse engineer the format, which is illegal by the DMCA, 2) undo the encryption, and remove the copy protection, which is illegal by the DMCA, and 3) convert it to a playable format. The last part isn't illegal, although the RIAA would like it to be.
DRM + DMCA makes format shifting illegal, because circumventing DRM is illegal. If you're just converting from WAV to MP3, or ripping a CD or something, you're in the clear. It's the combination that's the real problem.
The DMCA sounds like a good idea at first, until you see the loopholes you can drive a truck through. It's made all kinds of reasonable actions illegal, and allowed copyright holders to abuse it for their own ends. It's also law for and about technology, made and approved by people who don't understand it.
So, who's responsible? Is this considered "treason", Or just "fraud". If such a scam gets wholly exposed (which is unlikely in this day and age, but we'll just cross our fingers here), what happens? Is the election overturned, or the current president just impeached? Does someone hang, or just get a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to?
Without a truly impartial review board with limited power over the presidency exists, and a system of accountability is established, there's almost no point in voting at all. At this point, it'd almost take another civil war, or revolution to fix things.
No, that's actually an off topic question, and beyond that, the small modicum of safety this *might* achieve is MUCH less important than the freedom and, quite frankly, the dignity this costs.
Has anyone noticed that "terrorists" have already won? They've substantially changed the quality of life in North America(and other parts of the world). They've got everyone looking over their shoulder. Etc. etc.
THIS IS WHAT TERRORISM IS TRYING TO ACHEIVE!
It's not about blowing up as much stuff as possible, that's George "Dubbya's" job. It's about terror. Scaring people. Well, looks like we're so scared we're treating our own citizens like dirt. I'd call that a win for them.
Ebay's management is in serious need of a kick in the pants. More for customer service, support, and the way it deals with fraud (which is all part of the same thing really).
Just because it's more difficult to sell on Ebay does NOT mean the problem is management, it means there's more traffic (buyers and sellers), so you have more competition. It may take twice as long to sell a game as 2 years ago, but I'm willing to bet there's well more than twice as many video games on Ebay now, as there were then.
Um... Shouldn't Canada be up there somewhere? It's the only G8 country not listed. All humour aside, I consider that a rather large oversight for a "scientific" study.
And if we were just lumped in with the US, that's even more stupid. There are (metric) tonns of socio-economic differences between us.
Ok, I like being safe as much as the next guy, but there's an inherent problem with this particular level of safety. Actually there are a couple problems, but they stem from the same one.
First, getting used to such safeties will lead to a lack of common sense. Sound stupid? Not really. Think of the first lesson you learn in shop class, about how NOT to cut off your fingers. Well we can just skip over that one right? In fact, we'll probably demo how the saw will stop before mulching your fingers. Yay. So 1) no common sense, 2) no respect for the machine that can hurt you.
Second, and I think anyone who's ever used a machine, or electronics of any kind will understand this one, what happens when the system fails? Do NOT tell me it's fool proof, I will laugh at you, right before your digits go flying in separate directions. If people start to rely on this sort of thing, it could easily lead to a much greater number of injuries.
Society has an odd concept about responsibility. It tries to protect everyone from everything always. This is actually detrimental. The truth is that the responsibility for your safety is yours, the responsibility for your child's safety is yours. We've gotten so used to pointing fingers when people get hurt or worse, we've forgotten to hold ourselves accountable.
If you cut off your bits, you should have been careful, if your child gets hurt wandering into some one's yard, you should have been watching them. etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, if you're walking along, and a piano falls on you, that's not your fault, but there's a certain amount of self sufficiency we're losing.
That having been said, if this sort of system is used only as a backup to proper training and common sense, then it's a good idea.
Comdex was once a prestigious event, now it's basically gone due to the same forces. Large companies backing out. Why? 'cause they messed with something that worked. Kick out the public, ban booth babes (restrict how I can use the space I pay for, and I stop paying), etc. Rather than keep things fresh, and trying to raise the bar each year for the show, it's the same thing, with less "fun" each year.
I have a hint for anyone organizing any such event; Don't try to make it "better" by restricting it. You aren't going to make it seem any more exclusive or elite, and you're not going to draw any more media attention, or exhibitors.
Another thing that's probably hit E3 is the SAME GAMES being exhibited several years in a row. Companies drag devel for games out over 2 or 3 years now(I have no idea how this can make ANY business sense), which means seeing the same game 3 or 4 times at comdex. If a games been demoed so many times you've basically finished it, there's a problem.
The only reason for these shows, is for big companies to hype their new stuff to the public. That's about it. If you've got to the point where the public is bored with your offerings, big companies are better off spending their money on billboards and commercials.
So... anyone want to explain to me how iTunes Movies being a subscription based service makes sense in light of this?
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong but... doesn't the RFID chip simply give a serial number to a computer that the computer checks against an existing database? Worst case, it would be your social security number or something, but still, that's all the information someone could get.
"Uh oh, someone might see my passport number is '123456789'! Quick, everybody freak out!"
And even if that's not the case, as everyone's pointed out, the passport needs to be open anyway, and the range is really small, and the equipment is really expensive. This whole problem is just a tempest in a teapot.
I feel the need to remind everyone that "laser" doesn't mean "better". Yes, it's faster than a missle, but 1) you need to keep it on your target for more than an instant, which requires good tracking, 2) it's a point defense system, which again, means you need good tracking.
.45 cal handgun to kill a fly, and you'll see the fly swatter works better, even though it's lower tech, and generally less cool.
The patriot system didn't "intercept" scud missles, it detonated about half a kilometer in front of them, which is a very short distance at missle speeds. The detonation spread debris in front of the missle, which the missle hit at great speed, and BOOM, no more missle (more or less).
My point being, try using a 9mm, or even a
Then there's always the question of where those rogue lasers that miss their target will go. After all, if they can blow up a rocket at up to 20 kilometers (for the "little" ones), they can kill or at least burn/blind someone further away in an instant. There are lots of hotels near airports, which would be in the line of fire.
Incidentally, regarding the patriot missle system, it's really quite good, but it's performance was vastly inferior than what it should have been. The hardware itself was built with electronics with wider than normal tolerances(I don't know why, money, time, whatever, it happened), and this led to a cumulative timing error, which would throw the systems aim off, causing it to miss it's targets. Anyone who was properly trained on the system would know that every 24 hours, the system needed to be rebooted, and it would recalibrate properly. This didn't happen. Many scud missles were missed because of improper operation and maintenance.
Just really stupid. This ad was poorly thought out for sure (as in I don't exactly want or care about the product), but don't people have anything better to do than try to call it racist? I have a huge problem with overly politically correct points of view. I think this qualifies. Lighten up people.