I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they dealt with AT&T to encourage them to implement the backend requirements to support some of the features like visual voicemail, and in exchange Apple tied the phones to AT&T for a limited time. Apple doesn't really lose anything out of the deal, only AT&T who arguably lose a customer. AT&T really only needs to recoup their investment for the backend hardware. I think X million established 2yr contracts have accomplished that, so they're only really "losing" potential future profits, which is hazy by any measure, and assumes people won't eventually migrate to AT&T to support the additional features.
You know.. not everyone who speaks with a southern accent is a redneck in favor of blind party loyalty, much the same way not everyone who speaks without one is a pompous ass.
Knowing my location is not nearly as invasive as knowing my actions and/or what I say, who I talk to, etc. Furthermore, just as someone has to be motivated to mull over the camera recordings, someone has to be motivated to look up the logs for your hypothetical ubiquitous tracking system. It might be slightly easier to search a database for a number than to run tapes backwards, but that's hardly a compelling difference. An RFID tracking system would, at best, show time/location. Cameras establish time, location, as well as everything you did, and possibly everything you said.
Additionally, "forgetting" you had an implant vs. not forgetting you were wearing a recording device is a strawman. Whether or not the wearer/bearer remembers he is being tracked does not affect the privacy implications. Moreover, remembering is more likely to affect the subject's actions, which is an even greater encroachment. Also, since we're in the purely hypothetical, we can easily replace the helmet cam with an implant to record the subject's views and hears AND provide the same functions as an RFID. Surely that trumps a mere RFID?
At any rate, I find monitoring communications and video surveillance to be far more infringing, and I was wryly amused by the Senator's statement. IMHO, it should have been more along the lines of "RFID? That's almost as bad as the crap we pull!"
Prop design is important information, and its dissemination should be minimized, but no reasonable person would presume that it had been effectively kept secret for this long. Not public != enemies don't know. My hunch is that the actual damage is minimal, at best, since those countries with the capability of producing subs probably already have the inside information on our designs, just like we probably have the same information on theirs. I'm not making any statements of fact, just speculation, but watching something like "Breach" shows the inherent problems with information security -- and that's just one we found out about. Who knows how many have gone undetected, or will continue to be uncovered in the future?
Also, I think you're overstating the level of detail obtainable from the photos, if the ones I saw were accurate. Without exact knowledge of the time of day and day of the year that the pictures were taken, shadow information is only an estimate. Image enhancement might help some, but it won't be anything like CSI. Additionally, I only saw 4 angles (at the cardinal compass points), and in 2 of those photos, almost nothing can be seen -- only one angle provided significant shadow information. Without time of day/day of year information (not to mention blade thickness), you probably aren't going to get more than 2-3 degrees of accuracy. I'm not a naval architect like yourself, but I'm guess you'd need a much greater degree of accuracy (no pun intended) to information more useful than an educated guess.
Finally, if there was any "wrongdoing" here, it was the fact that the prop was not concealed in the first place. It should always be assumed that an enemy satellite is overhead at any given time. You can't fault people for seeing things when they're placed in plain sight.
If operations specific information was accidentally posted on a non-secured server, or something along those lines, that would be a much greater breach. Knowing how far our guns can shoot is useful, but not nearly as useful as knowing when we're going to shoot, or where we're going to shoot, and publicly available satellite/areal photos probably won't do much to reveal that. Furthermore, competent leadership would assume that all movements and activities are being watched; hence the misdirection of the first Gulf War.
...we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy.
Really? The wireless equivalent of a bar code is the ultimate invasion of privacy? Not, say, ECHELON, or warrantless phone tapping, or a city filled with cameras? It's an RFID chip? Interesting. And all this time I thought the ultimate invasion of privacy would look more like a helmet cam. Silly me.
Of course it doesn't. It's not about blackmail, it's about desperation. Desperate people do desperate things, like sell secrets. See: Aldrich Ames, John Walker, Joseph Helmich, et al. Greed plays a role, but desperation is typically the spark.
Also, just because these people don't have access to classified information doesn't mean they don't have access to sensitive information which could be leveraged to gain access to classified information. I think a background check is a perfectly reasonable measure for employees at any government facility, and in fact I think they would be remiss if they did not.
Does it really make sense to risk the lives of tens or hundreds of customers just to call a bluff? I would draw the line at violence against another person (or myself for that matter), but ten grand of corporate funds? Who cares? "Here's the money, have a nice day," then call the cops when it's over. It's nothing to be embarrassed about; they did the right thing.
People said, to the word, the exact same thing about babies born from IVF therapy. Do you think they're soulless automatons too?
Thank you! We IVF babies are NOT machines, and just because we don't show up in photos or reflections doesn't make us soulless. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go perform some mundane and repetitive tasks until refueling time.
Except it's not an "emulation chip" -- it's a PS2 chip. Emulation is where you make hardware pretend to be something it's not, in order to support the software. Not that I think it matters.. If you're concerned about PS2 games, you probably already have a PS2. Yeah it's nice to only need one console hooked up, but in the end it's just a minor inconvenience to have both.
I remember when recovery discs were new. Before that, we actually got the OS installation media so we didn't have to wipe our drives just to reinstall the OS.
Those are interface speeds. If they were actual expected speeds, you should be sending your hard drive back or starting a class action, because there's not a single 7200.10 that will hit 100MB/s (let alone 300MB/s) for more than.16 seconds -- the best case time it takes to empty/fill the cache at that speed.
Woah, woah, woah.. If I buy my 14, 15, or 16 year-old a game with fictional violence, when I'm around to put it in context, I'm a bad parent? But if they go off to college, they're suddenly prepared for scenes of intense violence and prolonged/graphic sexual content? Sorry, but the only change from 17 to 18 is a number. A birthday doesn't magically make someone more prepared for the world, and they're going to have to deal with a lot more than a hot coffee mod. I'm fine with ratings to ensure parents are involved in the decision, and to help those parents who want to put people into the world who are unable to deal with the world around them, but the idea that someone is a bad parent for letting their teen play GTA is absurd. People who let an arbitrary panel of strangers make decisions as to what is and is not appropriate for their kids are bad parents because they're clearly putting the least effort possible into parenting.
It doesn't cost any more to provide broadband to a farm than to an urban apartment. It costs more to install, but those costs can be amortized over the life of the line -- perhaps 100+ years, if copper power and phone lines are any indication. Certainly 20+. Maintenance costs might be slightly higher, but that's no guarantee. Just about everything is below ground in a city, whereas the same lines could be above ground in a rural environment. No digging = less time and money, but above ground systems are also subject to the elements. At any rate, ISPs should be obligated to provide service to anyone willing to pay for the installation, like the guy in TFA.
As for equating cities to civilization, they're generally the highest crime areas, along with pollution, traffic congestion, and just having to deal with too many assholes on a daily basis. Cities are full of nameless faces, and the "culture" they foster is little more than hubris and pomp. If that's civilization, you can keep it. I grew up in a city, and I'll take a rural environment any day. I can still go into the city for to see the museums, or.. well, actually that's the only thing I miss. If it costs me $200/mo for internet in the sticks, so be it.
Eh.. I got through about 5 minutes of BioShock, and I wasn't compelled to continue.. at least not yet. (Okay, 5 minutes is probably an underestimate.. I got to the part where I'm trying to find the doctor. The point is, I played it once, and haven't felt the urge to continue.) For example, I actually watched the same 30 minute cable news loop 3 times just to kill time before bed last night, when I could easily have played BioShock.
Personally, I don't want stories in games. I never have been (and probably never will be) empathetic to a construct of a game, and as such, I can never find the story compelling. I can keep the suspension of disbelief active during a cartoon, or a CGI movie, but something about playing a game just breaks that illusion for me. It could be actually controlling the main character, who rarely speaks in most games, and when he does, almost never says the things I would say. Or it could be analyzing the never-changing patterns of AI behavior, which is typically the objective, or at least a requirement -- the constant reminder that you're dealing with a limited, pre-programmed response set. The only thing that interests me in a game is the gameplay, and the gameplay for BioShock is typical FPS, at least from what I experienced.
Without suspension of disbelief, stories create a problem: I don't care about the results of my choice beyond how it will affect the gameplay, and there's almost no way of knowing that ahead of time, barring spoilers. I'm not sure what's worse, when the consequences are trivial, or when they're significant. In the former case, it's simply annoying that I was presented with the choice, such as that in Marvel Superheroes (or whatever it was called) where you're forced to choose which character to save, and which to let die. When the consequences are grave, such as old text adventures where making a wrong turn could mean Game Over, it can be deeply frustrating (though that's largely been offset by the Save Game function).
If there's going to be a story, I want it to be completely linear. Choices are not going to make me want to replay a game -- enduring hours of the same just to find out what small changes might happen -- and "nonlinear" storylines are nothing but a vague approximation, with current technology at least. E.g., you can find the candlestick first, or Colonel Mustard, but you must find both.* You can save the prisoner, or let him die, but it just changes the end movie and/or what weapons you get. Honestly, who cares? (Rhetorical.. I'm sure some people do, and I don't mean to belittle them; I'm just expressing my opinion). Just give me access to the entire game in one go-through so I can enjoy the gameplay. Furthermore, I find linearity to be essential for coherency and goals. You can't play C&C and suddenly defect to the other side, and then, surprise! you didn't really defect. Take that Nod! Current technology (not to mention the programmers themselves) just can't deal with a realistic range of possible actions that even the most unimaginative minds could conceive. And that is true open-ended gameplay, not whether to use a sniper rifle or a hand grenade, and it's fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is "What is the endgame scenario?" So let's admit that it's an impossibility and focus on quality linear plots.
* Like completing missions in GTA. Sure, you could just run around causing mayhem, but that gets old very quickly.
There's 2 types of people: Those who want broadband, and those who don't know they want broadband. There are plenty of people who don't need broadband, but that's a different matter. Additionally, people under 30 are increasingly less likely to have a landline, and the price of a landline + the price of dialup is typically about the same as the price of broadband. My cable provider, for example, offers 512kbit connections for $20/mo., which is less than the cost of a phone line by itself, and if you DO have a phone, it's never tied up.
Dialup is archaic. It's a kludge. It's suitable for a select number of households with a single occupant with minimal connectivity needs, who never needs to worry about incoming phone calls (either missing them, or having his connection interrupted) and who never needs to talk on the phone and be online at the same time. Basically people with lots of cats.
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I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they dealt with AT&T to encourage them to implement the backend requirements to support some of the features like visual voicemail, and in exchange Apple tied the phones to AT&T for a limited time. Apple doesn't really lose anything out of the deal, only AT&T who arguably lose a customer. AT&T really only needs to recoup their investment for the backend hardware. I think X million established 2yr contracts have accomplished that, so they're only really "losing" potential future profits, which is hazy by any measure, and assumes people won't eventually migrate to AT&T to support the additional features.
Bah.. it's not just politicians. I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.
You know.. not everyone who speaks with a southern accent is a redneck in favor of blind party loyalty, much the same way not everyone who speaks without one is a pompous ass.
Knowing my location is not nearly as invasive as knowing my actions and/or what I say, who I talk to, etc. Furthermore, just as someone has to be motivated to mull over the camera recordings, someone has to be motivated to look up the logs for your hypothetical ubiquitous tracking system. It might be slightly easier to search a database for a number than to run tapes backwards, but that's hardly a compelling difference. An RFID tracking system would, at best, show time/location. Cameras establish time, location, as well as everything you did, and possibly everything you said.
Additionally, "forgetting" you had an implant vs. not forgetting you were wearing a recording device is a strawman. Whether or not the wearer/bearer remembers he is being tracked does not affect the privacy implications. Moreover, remembering is more likely to affect the subject's actions, which is an even greater encroachment. Also, since we're in the purely hypothetical, we can easily replace the helmet cam with an implant to record the subject's views and hears AND provide the same functions as an RFID. Surely that trumps a mere RFID?
At any rate, I find monitoring communications and video surveillance to be far more infringing, and I was wryly amused by the Senator's statement. IMHO, it should have been more along the lines of "RFID? That's almost as bad as the crap we pull!"
Prop design is important information, and its dissemination should be minimized, but no reasonable person would presume that it had been effectively kept secret for this long. Not public != enemies don't know. My hunch is that the actual damage is minimal, at best, since those countries with the capability of producing subs probably already have the inside information on our designs, just like we probably have the same information on theirs. I'm not making any statements of fact, just speculation, but watching something like "Breach" shows the inherent problems with information security -- and that's just one we found out about. Who knows how many have gone undetected, or will continue to be uncovered in the future?
Also, I think you're overstating the level of detail obtainable from the photos, if the ones I saw were accurate. Without exact knowledge of the time of day and day of the year that the pictures were taken, shadow information is only an estimate. Image enhancement might help some, but it won't be anything like CSI. Additionally, I only saw 4 angles (at the cardinal compass points), and in 2 of those photos, almost nothing can be seen -- only one angle provided significant shadow information. Without time of day/day of year information (not to mention blade thickness), you probably aren't going to get more than 2-3 degrees of accuracy. I'm not a naval architect like yourself, but I'm guess you'd need a much greater degree of accuracy (no pun intended) to information more useful than an educated guess.
Finally, if there was any "wrongdoing" here, it was the fact that the prop was not concealed in the first place. It should always be assumed that an enemy satellite is overhead at any given time. You can't fault people for seeing things when they're placed in plain sight.
If operations specific information was accidentally posted on a non-secured server, or something along those lines, that would be a much greater breach. Knowing how far our guns can shoot is useful, but not nearly as useful as knowing when we're going to shoot, or where we're going to shoot, and publicly available satellite/areal photos probably won't do much to reveal that. Furthermore, competent leadership would assume that all movements and activities are being watched; hence the misdirection of the first Gulf War.
...we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy.
Really? The wireless equivalent of a bar code is the ultimate invasion of privacy? Not, say, ECHELON, or warrantless phone tapping, or a city filled with cameras? It's an RFID chip? Interesting. And all this time I thought the ultimate invasion of privacy would look more like a helmet cam. Silly me.
Of course it doesn't. It's not about blackmail, it's about desperation. Desperate people do desperate things, like sell secrets. See: Aldrich Ames, John Walker, Joseph Helmich, et al. Greed plays a role, but desperation is typically the spark.
Also, just because these people don't have access to classified information doesn't mean they don't have access to sensitive information which could be leveraged to gain access to classified information. I think a background check is a perfectly reasonable measure for employees at any government facility, and in fact I think they would be remiss if they did not.
On the other hand, if they *had* found a bomb...
Does it really make sense to risk the lives of tens or hundreds of customers just to call a bluff? I would draw the line at violence against another person (or myself for that matter), but ten grand of corporate funds? Who cares? "Here's the money, have a nice day," then call the cops when it's over. It's nothing to be embarrassed about; they did the right thing.
People said, to the word, the exact same thing about babies born from IVF therapy. Do you think they're soulless automatons too?
Thank you! We IVF babies are NOT machines, and just because we don't show up in photos or reflections doesn't make us soulless. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go perform some mundane and repetitive tasks until refueling time.
Yeah, he said a woman.
Thanks, I'll be here until the first woman reads that. (A long time, in other words). Ah, make it stop!
Except it's not an "emulation chip" -- it's a PS2 chip. Emulation is where you make hardware pretend to be something it's not, in order to support the software. Not that I think it matters.. If you're concerned about PS2 games, you probably already have a PS2. Yeah it's nice to only need one console hooked up, but in the end it's just a minor inconvenience to have both.
Doesn't it also come without hardware PS2 emulation?
I remember when recovery discs were new. Before that, we actually got the OS installation media so we didn't have to wipe our drives just to reinstall the OS.
It would almost be worth it just to see them put a brain in a dick.
Or you could just use GPS time. You do have GPS don't you?
Where are they getting the brains to implant?!?
Yeah, I'm sure Symantec wouldn't have any problems if they renamed their product to CockBlocker Deluxe.
A good name won't necessarily win, but a bad name will always lose.
You mean I can download all my OS updates through an unknown, untrusted intermediary with a questionable URL? Sign me up!
They're so cute they just make me want to limit my searches to government approved propaganda and puppies.
lol.. the specs say the interface speed: 100/300MB/s
Show me a single 7100.10 that can hit those numbers for a filesize > cache size and I'll be your goatse for a week.
Those are interface speeds. If they were actual expected speeds, you should be sending your hard drive back or starting a class action, because there's not a single 7200.10 that will hit 100MB/s (let alone 300MB/s) for more than .16 seconds -- the best case time it takes to empty/fill the cache at that speed.
Woah, woah, woah.. If I buy my 14, 15, or 16 year-old a game with fictional violence, when I'm around to put it in context, I'm a bad parent? But if they go off to college, they're suddenly prepared for scenes of intense violence and prolonged/graphic sexual content? Sorry, but the only change from 17 to 18 is a number. A birthday doesn't magically make someone more prepared for the world, and they're going to have to deal with a lot more than a hot coffee mod. I'm fine with ratings to ensure parents are involved in the decision, and to help those parents who want to put people into the world who are unable to deal with the world around them, but the idea that someone is a bad parent for letting their teen play GTA is absurd. People who let an arbitrary panel of strangers make decisions as to what is and is not appropriate for their kids are bad parents because they're clearly putting the least effort possible into parenting.
It doesn't cost any more to provide broadband to a farm than to an urban apartment. It costs more to install, but those costs can be amortized over the life of the line -- perhaps 100+ years, if copper power and phone lines are any indication. Certainly 20+. Maintenance costs might be slightly higher, but that's no guarantee. Just about everything is below ground in a city, whereas the same lines could be above ground in a rural environment. No digging = less time and money, but above ground systems are also subject to the elements. At any rate, ISPs should be obligated to provide service to anyone willing to pay for the installation, like the guy in TFA.
As for equating cities to civilization, they're generally the highest crime areas, along with pollution, traffic congestion, and just having to deal with too many assholes on a daily basis. Cities are full of nameless faces, and the "culture" they foster is little more than hubris and pomp. If that's civilization, you can keep it. I grew up in a city, and I'll take a rural environment any day. I can still go into the city for to see the museums, or.. well, actually that's the only thing I miss. If it costs me $200/mo for internet in the sticks, so be it.
Eh.. I got through about 5 minutes of BioShock, and I wasn't compelled to continue.. at least not yet. (Okay, 5 minutes is probably an underestimate.. I got to the part where I'm trying to find the doctor. The point is, I played it once, and haven't felt the urge to continue.) For example, I actually watched the same 30 minute cable news loop 3 times just to kill time before bed last night, when I could easily have played BioShock.
Personally, I don't want stories in games. I never have been (and probably never will be) empathetic to a construct of a game, and as such, I can never find the story compelling. I can keep the suspension of disbelief active during a cartoon, or a CGI movie, but something about playing a game just breaks that illusion for me. It could be actually controlling the main character, who rarely speaks in most games, and when he does, almost never says the things I would say. Or it could be analyzing the never-changing patterns of AI behavior, which is typically the objective, or at least a requirement -- the constant reminder that you're dealing with a limited, pre-programmed response set. The only thing that interests me in a game is the gameplay, and the gameplay for BioShock is typical FPS, at least from what I experienced.
Without suspension of disbelief, stories create a problem: I don't care about the results of my choice beyond how it will affect the gameplay, and there's almost no way of knowing that ahead of time, barring spoilers. I'm not sure what's worse, when the consequences are trivial, or when they're significant. In the former case, it's simply annoying that I was presented with the choice, such as that in Marvel Superheroes (or whatever it was called) where you're forced to choose which character to save, and which to let die. When the consequences are grave, such as old text adventures where making a wrong turn could mean Game Over, it can be deeply frustrating (though that's largely been offset by the Save Game function).
If there's going to be a story, I want it to be completely linear. Choices are not going to make me want to replay a game -- enduring hours of the same just to find out what small changes might happen -- and "nonlinear" storylines are nothing but a vague approximation, with current technology at least. E.g., you can find the candlestick first, or Colonel Mustard, but you must find both.* You can save the prisoner, or let him die, but it just changes the end movie and/or what weapons you get. Honestly, who cares? (Rhetorical.. I'm sure some people do, and I don't mean to belittle them; I'm just expressing my opinion). Just give me access to the entire game in one go-through so I can enjoy the gameplay. Furthermore, I find linearity to be essential for coherency and goals. You can't play C&C and suddenly defect to the other side, and then, surprise! you didn't really defect. Take that Nod! Current technology (not to mention the programmers themselves) just can't deal with a realistic range of possible actions that even the most unimaginative minds could conceive. And that is true open-ended gameplay, not whether to use a sniper rifle or a hand grenade, and it's fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is "What is the endgame scenario?" So let's admit that it's an impossibility and focus on quality linear plots.
* Like completing missions in GTA. Sure, you could just run around causing mayhem, but that gets old very quickly.
There's 2 types of people: Those who want broadband, and those who don't know they want broadband. There are plenty of people who don't need broadband, but that's a different matter. Additionally, people under 30 are increasingly less likely to have a landline, and the price of a landline + the price of dialup is typically about the same as the price of broadband. My cable provider, for example, offers 512kbit connections for $20/mo., which is less than the cost of a phone line by itself, and if you DO have a phone, it's never tied up.
Dialup is archaic. It's a kludge. It's suitable for a select number of households with a single occupant with minimal connectivity needs, who never needs to worry about incoming phone calls (either missing them, or having his connection interrupted) and who never needs to talk on the phone and be online at the same time. Basically people with lots of cats.