And as others have pointed out (re bad laws, but the principle is the same)... don't think of any such tech as it will used by the GOOD guys. Think of them as it will be used by the BAD guys. Or even by the political party that merely opposes YOUR party of choice. If the thought makes you squirm, then it's a Bad Idea.
I've come to the opinion that the primary lobbyists behind the "War on Drugs" are the drug lords themselves -- because said "war" keeps prices artificially high. And of course the enforcement bureaus are all for it, because the confiscation of private property brings in millions, perhaps billions of dollars.
But as an effective deterrent? Not hardly. If it were, then why is the market so strong? Acto some figures, marijuana is California's #1 cash crop!
Legalise, tax, and regulate it just like we do alcohol and tobacco, and 99% of the crime-and-police aspects of the problem go away overnight. (Yeah, there'll be a few bootleggers. Small potatoes.) Morons will still fry their brains, nothing changes there, except that maybe they'll be more willing to get help if there's no risk of being thrown in jail on top of it.
In my observation, a culture of drunkenness derives from job despair in the working class. Not necessarily from poverty, but from *lack of work* and the consequent feelings of worthlessness... and plenty of time to drink their sorrows. (Since people *earning* any sort of living, no matter how low, invariably feel better about themselves than those living on the dole.)
I'd guess Britain has gleefully exported all its jobs and imported too much cheap labour, just as the U.S. has been doing for the past few decades, and that policy has now come home to roost.
Thank you for the very informative posts. I hadn't realised that cable providers were held hostage by the same sort of bundling as cable customers are screaming about. Clearly the industry has to change at a more fundamental level, so that bundling cannot be forced upon cable companies either.
Also, I hadn't realised that the upstream costs were so high per subscriber.. yikes!
But this all prevents me from being a cable customer (even if I were in a service area, which I'm not)... because to me, having to pay for the bundled kark is not worth it, and I'll do without ALL of it instead.
Hear hear!! I'd read everything Frank Herbert wrote, including his non-SF. And then I came to the first Brian And Frank novel.... I could tell *to the word* where Frank left off and Brian began. Problem is, Brian Herbert is a DULL writer. Not so much bad as -- dull. It take serious effort to slog through his stuff. After several brave efforts, I gave it up.
They do seem to forget that with broadcast, we only see commercials once. Lazy folk (meaning most people) would see downloaded commercials multiple times, if only cuz it wasn't worth the time and bother to remove them, at least so long as they're no worse than the average broadcast commercial.
As to phone-home, that would only happen with a proprietary player, which I don't think would get very far, compared to something that ANYONE can use at will. But that's easy to compensate too: just have a URL displayed at the beginning (can they be made embedded/clickable like I've seen in other media?), and "Come here to download next week's thrilling episode!" -- which of course would deliver next week's ads along with.
So, yes, I think this model would quickly propagate, and increase their net revenues considerably as advertisers twigged to it (hey look, this show got passed around 50000 times, we got 50000 cheap sets of eyeballs!). But I think the real issue is the same as the RIAA's -- they're too afraid of losing control: OMG, TV shows might not have to pay us to carry them anymore! now *anyone* can broadcast direct to the viewer, NO BROADCAST OR CABLE NETWORK NEEDED (don't need DVD distribution chains either), and we can't have THAT!!
Well, my Ford pickup has its gas tank behind the rear axle too. However, it's protected by a whopping heavy chunk of frame, which I suspect ain't there in passenger cars.
Presumably this is better'n the tank inside the cab behind the seat, like it used to be, but LIS I never heard of any problems with the old design either.
[I've been rear-ended by a passenger car. My first clue was the panicked face at my window. She crumpled her bumper; I wasn't aware I'd been hit and the truck took zero damage. Nice to have that mass differential on my side..)
I guess your real point is that even engineers can miss the obvious, and only discover it by OH SHIT. And they do usually learn from their mistakes.
IANAE, but from all the discussion above (some from the Boeing engineer) it seems like there's really no ideal material when it comes to lightness vs strength etc., but there are some pretty good compromises, especially in light of how Airworthyness Directives are enforced.
To the contrary. Fear of repeated pain is the strongest conditioning agent there is. There need be no fear of physical damage whatsoever -- the body still reacts to pain *as if* it will be damaged, and if you can repeat that pain without damage, you can take the conditioning a lot deeper than if you're worrying about missing body parts.
Try a whip or club vs a cattle prod, and you'll see what I mean real quick.
Back in the 1970s, my college had one of the early chromatographs... we abused wheat protein by boiling it in a saturated lye solution for an hour to separate the amino acids for the 'graph. (Strong enough that we used sulphuric acid as the neutralizer. Working in the lab was lots of fun.:) If it takes that much to debond amino acids, I suspect the relatively mild and extremely dilute bleach and soap of a laundry will do no more than slightly dislodge DNA that's somewhat protected by being inside shed skin cells and the like (perhaps just to the point where it's readily harvestable).
Just incorporate 'em into those cameras that are supposed to reduce crime. Like the ones that now permeate London. Total coverage means total control! if you spot a perp with the camera, just zap him on the spot!
Or put 'em at the tops of light poles for handy crowd control. Endless fun!
Maybe install the unit in the hallowed halls of Congress... every time they do something stupid, turn it on for a few minutes. Better yet, tune it so it only affects lobbyists.
If your cornea gets cooked, you're just as blind, tho the damage may not be immediately evident. Who do you sue when a few months later, you develop corneal cataracts (or possibly pannus) ?? who pays for your corneal transplant if you don't have insurance? (Who pays for it when insurance companies twig to this as a cause, and since injuries due to "riots" are usually excluded from medical coverage, and getting hit by this device could be construed as evidence that you participated in a riot...)
Also, what about high-moisture contact lenses? If those get heated up, are you going to get 'em out of your eyes before they cook more than just the cornea? We don't yet have aqueous humor or iris transplants...
Or what about when some punk kid aims it at a busy freeway??
As the other reply points out, it will doubtless be classed as unlawful for civilians to possess, but that never stopped anyone before.... and one suspects it could be constructed from readily-available materials anyway.
I had a similar thought... this is going to hit someone in the eyes, sooner or later, and even if the damage isn't immediately evident, I suspect it will eventually lead to corneal cataracts or possibly pannus.
Or better yet, what happens to people wearing high-moisture contacts -- which will heat up and STAY hot long enough to cook more than just the cornea, if this beam happens to hit 'em. You can't fix THAT sort of damage with a corneal transplant.
I think what was meant is that when you see bloody bodies littering the ground, you feel far more incentive to overthrow the government than you feel when people are "merely" induced to run away like stampeding sheep.
I'm wondering what happens if it happens to nail someone in the eyes (or ears). I think it could conceivably cook fragile tissues like the cornea -- which are thinner than its penetration depth.
Second, as some point out up above -- "better" nonlethal weapons have far more potential for abuse than lethal weapons ever did, since it's so much easier to justify their use -- after all, "no one gets hurt".
Agreed... I remember when the cops were your friends. Now? They're out to prove you're their enemy, more often than not. If you're their enemy, ANY action they take against you is automatically justified. (Side note: I think this has been a huge aid in the passing of more and more laws that allow confiscation of property for even relatively minor offenses.)
And as to the use of mass non-lethal weaponry for crowd control -- this will be a great advance for the science of sheepherding. When protest can be so easily rendered impossible, no one will protest.
That might be a good general criterion for the necessity of ANY warrant -- "Will the judge THANK me for waking him in the middle of the night to request this warrant??" If the answer is NO, then perhaps the warrant isn't justified.
You remember a lot more details than I did offhand... still boiled down to the way it was built was overly sensitive to inadequate tire pressure. But OMFG WE'LL ALL BE KILLED!! -- Don't know anything about Porsche but I do recall that VW Bugs were easy to flip, tho you weren't likely to be killed in the process.
In recent years Nader has blown all his credibility with me, and it does make a person wonder how much of his early fame in the Consumer Advocate business was built on bogus or at least questionably tilted grounds.
'I wish that the Press would start reporting facts and not trying to "educate" us.'
You and me both!! But the Press sees its job not as a purveyor of facts, but rather as the force that propels decision-making.
Well, exactly. And if it behaved like broadcast TV, I'd be happy:
Let me tape it to view whenever the hell I want, and let me view as many times as I wish for as long as I want
Let me skip ads, maybe not conveniently but don't make me view them more than once
Let me use that tape with any VCR that I own
Or in digital terms, just gimme the damn download, ads and all, to use however I please... first time I watch it, I won't know where the ads are and won't mind seeing them all that much, but just like with a VCR, next time I'll know when they occur and I'll want to skip past 'em (cuz most ads get old real fast, tho there are a few I'd watch over and over if I could).
And watermark the downloads if you're afraid of filesharing. -- Tho that seems rather counterintuitive if it's free to begin with -- hell, they should *encourage* filesharing with the ads left intact, and they could even raise their ad rates accordingly -- more eyeballs.
And realistically, most TV is only watched once or twice, and most ads get outdated anyway, so I don't see why they should care if I skip 'em on older content.
So, yes... offer it exactly like the broadcast TV it's intended to replace, and most of us will be happy as hell with it, ads and all. But limit its usability, and I won't bother; ain't nothing I need to see that bad.
But Rather touted himself as an investigative reporter -- so if he wanted to take all the credit for the investigation (for the assorted underlings you mention) then perhaps he also deserves the blame for any errors.
Slashdot Mirror
And as others have pointed out (re bad laws, but the principle is the same) ... don't think of any such tech as it will used by the GOOD guys. Think of them as it will be used by the BAD guys. Or even by the political party that merely opposes YOUR party of choice. If the thought makes you squirm, then it's a Bad Idea.
I've come to the opinion that the primary lobbyists behind the "War on Drugs" are the drug lords themselves -- because said "war" keeps prices artificially high. And of course the enforcement bureaus are all for it, because the confiscation of private property brings in millions, perhaps billions of dollars.
But as an effective deterrent? Not hardly. If it were, then why is the market so strong? Acto some figures, marijuana is California's #1 cash crop!
Legalise, tax, and regulate it just like we do alcohol and tobacco, and 99% of the crime-and-police aspects of the problem go away overnight. (Yeah, there'll be a few bootleggers. Small potatoes.) Morons will still fry their brains, nothing changes there, except that maybe they'll be more willing to get help if there's no risk of being thrown in jail on top of it.
In my observation, a culture of drunkenness derives from job despair in the working class. Not necessarily from poverty, but from *lack of work* and the consequent feelings of worthlessness... and plenty of time to drink their sorrows. (Since people *earning* any sort of living, no matter how low, invariably feel better about themselves than those living on the dole.)
I'd guess Britain has gleefully exported all its jobs and imported too much cheap labour, just as the U.S. has been doing for the past few decades, and that policy has now come home to roost.
Thank you for the very informative posts. I hadn't realised that cable providers were held hostage by the same sort of bundling as cable customers are screaming about. Clearly the industry has to change at a more fundamental level, so that bundling cannot be forced upon cable companies either.
... because to me, having to pay for the bundled kark is not worth it, and I'll do without ALL of it instead.
Also, I hadn't realised that the upstream costs were so high per subscriber.. yikes!
But this all prevents me from being a cable customer (even if I were in a service area, which I'm not)
Hear hear!! I'd read everything Frank Herbert wrote, including his non-SF. And then I came to the first Brian And Frank novel.... I could tell *to the word* where Frank left off and Brian began. Problem is, Brian Herbert is a DULL writer. Not so much bad as -- dull. It take serious effort to slog through his stuff. After several brave efforts, I gave it up.
They do seem to forget that with broadcast, we only see commercials once. Lazy folk (meaning most people) would see downloaded commercials multiple times, if only cuz it wasn't worth the time and bother to remove them, at least so long as they're no worse than the average broadcast commercial.
As to phone-home, that would only happen with a proprietary player, which I don't think would get very far, compared to something that ANYONE can use at will. But that's easy to compensate too: just have a URL displayed at the beginning (can they be made embedded/clickable like I've seen in other media?), and "Come here to download next week's thrilling episode!" -- which of course would deliver next week's ads along with.
So, yes, I think this model would quickly propagate, and increase their net revenues considerably as advertisers twigged to it (hey look, this show got passed around 50000 times, we got 50000 cheap sets of eyeballs!). But I think the real issue is the same as the RIAA's -- they're too afraid of losing control: OMG, TV shows might not have to pay us to carry them anymore! now *anyone* can broadcast direct to the viewer, NO BROADCAST OR CABLE NETWORK NEEDED (don't need DVD distribution chains either), and we can't have THAT!!
Well, my Ford pickup has its gas tank behind the rear axle too. However, it's protected by a whopping heavy chunk of frame, which I suspect ain't there in passenger cars.
Presumably this is better'n the tank inside the cab behind the seat, like it used to be, but LIS I never heard of any problems with the old design either.
[I've been rear-ended by a passenger car. My first clue was the panicked face at my window. She crumpled her bumper; I wasn't aware I'd been hit and the truck took zero damage. Nice to have that mass differential on my side..)
I guess your real point is that even engineers can miss the obvious, and only discover it by OH SHIT. And they do usually learn from their mistakes.
IANAE, but from all the discussion above (some from the Boeing engineer) it seems like there's really no ideal material when it comes to lightness vs strength etc., but there are some pretty good compromises, especially in light of how Airworthyness Directives are enforced.
Geez, you've just reinvented Woodstock!
You misspelled keelhauling ...
To the contrary. Fear of repeated pain is the strongest conditioning agent there is. There need be no fear of physical damage whatsoever -- the body still reacts to pain *as if* it will be damaged, and if you can repeat that pain without damage, you can take the conditioning a lot deeper than if you're worrying about missing body parts.
Try a whip or club vs a cattle prod, and you'll see what I mean real quick.
Back in the 1970s, my college had one of the early chromatographs... we abused wheat protein by boiling it in a saturated lye solution for an hour to separate the amino acids for the 'graph. (Strong enough that we used sulphuric acid as the neutralizer. Working in the lab was lots of fun. :) If it takes that much to debond amino acids, I suspect the relatively mild and extremely dilute bleach and soap of a laundry will do no more than slightly dislodge DNA that's somewhat protected by being inside shed skin cells and the like (perhaps just to the point where it's readily harvestable).
Just incorporate 'em into those cameras that are supposed to reduce crime. Like the ones that now permeate London. Total coverage means total control! if you spot a perp with the camera, just zap him on the spot!
Or put 'em at the tops of light poles for handy crowd control. Endless fun!
Maybe install the unit in the hallowed halls of Congress... every time they do something stupid, turn it on for a few minutes. Better yet, tune it so it only affects lobbyists.
If your cornea gets cooked, you're just as blind, tho the damage may not be immediately evident. Who do you sue when a few months later, you develop corneal cataracts (or possibly pannus) ?? who pays for your corneal transplant if you don't have insurance? (Who pays for it when insurance companies twig to this as a cause, and since injuries due to "riots" are usually excluded from medical coverage, and getting hit by this device could be construed as evidence that you participated in a riot...)
Also, what about high-moisture contact lenses? If those get heated up, are you going to get 'em out of your eyes before they cook more than just the cornea? We don't yet have aqueous humor or iris transplants...
Or what about when some punk kid aims it at a busy freeway??
As the other reply points out, it will doubtless be classed as unlawful for civilians to possess, but that never stopped anyone before.... and one suspects it could be constructed from readily-available materials anyway.
I had a similar thought... this is going to hit someone in the eyes, sooner or later, and even if the damage isn't immediately evident, I suspect it will eventually lead to corneal cataracts or possibly pannus.
Or better yet, what happens to people wearing high-moisture contacts -- which will heat up and STAY hot long enough to cook more than just the cornea, if this beam happens to hit 'em. You can't fix THAT sort of damage with a corneal transplant.
I think what was meant is that when you see bloody bodies littering the ground, you feel far more incentive to overthrow the government than you feel when people are "merely" induced to run away like stampeding sheep.
I'm wondering what happens if it happens to nail someone in the eyes (or ears). I think it could conceivably cook fragile tissues like the cornea -- which are thinner than its penetration depth.
Second, as some point out up above -- "better" nonlethal weapons have far more potential for abuse than lethal weapons ever did, since it's so much easier to justify their use -- after all, "no one gets hurt".
Ah! very interesting. Didn't know that. Shhh, don't tell the VW owners, they'll get uppity. :)
;)
I've seen a Beetle do the whirlygig on dry pavement, for no visible reason... I imagine this was more of the same fine German engineering at work.
I'll keep my dusty old Ford pickup with its twin I-beam front end, thank you... damnear CAN'T make the thing skid, even on ice.
More importantly, who is poised to win the next election? Maybe that's who we ought to be truly afraid of.
Agreed... I remember when the cops were your friends. Now? They're out to prove you're their enemy, more often than not. If you're their enemy, ANY action they take against you is automatically justified. (Side note: I think this has been a huge aid in the passing of more and more laws that allow confiscation of property for even relatively minor offenses.)
And as to the use of mass non-lethal weaponry for crowd control -- this will be a great advance for the science of sheepherding. When protest can be so easily rendered impossible, no one will protest.
That might be a good general criterion for the necessity of ANY warrant -- "Will the judge THANK me for waking him in the middle of the night to request this warrant??" If the answer is NO, then perhaps the warrant isn't justified.
You remember a lot more details than I did offhand ... still boiled down to the way it was built was overly sensitive to inadequate tire pressure. But OMFG WE'LL ALL BE KILLED!! -- Don't know anything about Porsche but I do recall that VW Bugs were easy to flip, tho you weren't likely to be killed in the process.
In recent years Nader has blown all his credibility with me, and it does make a person wonder how much of his early fame in the Consumer Advocate business was built on bogus or at least questionably tilted grounds.
'I wish that the Press would start reporting facts and not trying to "educate" us.'
You and me both!! But the Press sees its job not as a purveyor of facts, but rather as the force that propels decision-making.
Well, exactly. And if it behaved like broadcast TV, I'd be happy:
Let me tape it to view whenever the hell I want, and let me view as many times as I wish for as long as I want
Let me skip ads, maybe not conveniently but don't make me view them more than once
Let me use that tape with any VCR that I own
Or in digital terms, just gimme the damn download, ads and all, to use however I please... first time I watch it, I won't know where the ads are and won't mind seeing them all that much, but just like with a VCR, next time I'll know when they occur and I'll want to skip past 'em (cuz most ads get old real fast, tho there are a few I'd watch over and over if I could).
And watermark the downloads if you're afraid of filesharing. -- Tho that seems rather counterintuitive if it's free to begin with -- hell, they should *encourage* filesharing with the ads left intact, and they could even raise their ad rates accordingly -- more eyeballs.
And realistically, most TV is only watched once or twice, and most ads get outdated anyway, so I don't see why they should care if I skip 'em on older content.
So, yes... offer it exactly like the broadcast TV it's intended to replace, and most of us will be happy as hell with it, ads and all. But limit its usability, and I won't bother; ain't nothing I need to see that bad.
But Rather touted himself as an investigative reporter -- so if he wanted to take all the credit for the investigation (for the assorted underlings you mention) then perhaps he also deserves the blame for any errors.