I've only circumvented security in places where I was allowed to be, but the people who were my innocent victims had no clue who I was. Much of the time, it's more bother than it's worth to get your badge.
A lot of it depends on the type of event you're crashing. For something like this, being a member of the media is amazingly useful. I *do* run a news site. We never bothered with "legitimate" press passes. That is, there is no such thing. A stack of business cards is handy, but not required. Something printed on card stock with the name of your publication, laminated, and in a clip on or noose (err, lanyard) will open a lot of doors. The most important part is having a DSLR camera in your hand. You can get older ones pretty cheap on eBay. It's nice if it works, but just as an access pass, it doesn't need to.
Dressing the part is a good idea. The media, unless they're to be in front of the camera, don't wear button up shirts or ties. T-shirt and jeans are perfectly acceptable, and actually preferred.
Once you're press identity works, you can be pretty much lost, and get help. That includes getting in the back stage door for the better shots.
I've walked on stage at concerts, right on the side lines at sporting events, and walked right up to the podium to take pictures. It can help to keep playing the part. I'm not sure if it's required, as I'm really taking photos for legitimate purposes. usually walking past security doesn't require any actual words to be spoken. Hold the camera up a little to show that you have one, and a nod are all it usually takes.
It's a good idea to have some sort of dialogue planned out. It's usually just "who do you work for." It really doesn't matter who it is. Smaller is frequently better, especially if there's a chance the organization you say you are with may actually attend.
If you don't want to go the press route, you can usually walk in with a crowd. Most events aren't secure enough to require every person to show their badges to go through every door. Blend into a crowd of 6 people or more going past security at the same time. Just make sure you're on the far side of security, so they don't notice that you didn't have a badge.
Security generally has no idea who's suppose to be there at such events. The only way they have a clue is because you have the cool badge. For a lot of events, it's a piece of paper inside a generic plastic holder, sometimes on a lanyard. Some of us bring our own lanyards. That's no big deal. The problem with lanyards is, your badge can easily flip around, so all the see is the white back of it. That "accident" can let you right through, with a plain piece of paper in it. An empty plastic holder can be good too. "Shit it must have fallen out. Can I get one after this session is over?" Many events stop taking signups after the first few hours of the event, so getting a "replacement' is impossible, and your empty holder is just as good as a replica of the real thing.
The biggest thing is, look like you belong there. Walk with a purpose. Ignore those commoners who are also attending. Have a good idea of where you're going, so you can walk directly there, without stopping. Wandering around like a lost attendee bulks you into the crowd of attendees, and you will likely e stopped.
I'm sorry but you are wrong and here is why: We have learned more about our system from a single NASA probe than from 40 years of/kicks on reverb/ "Meatbags in spaaaace!"/kills pedal/
So, you're saing V'ger is far superior in the advancement of human space travel, than the ISS and Space Shuttle programs? I find that, and the continued dialogue entertaining.
We waste more in endless foreign wars, than we do for so many other things.
Probes are nice and all, but they have a lot to be desired. Probes are good for recon. It still takes boots on the ground (as it may be) to learn more. Once a probe is launched, it can't do tests outside of its spec. My water balloon out the airlock is a simple example. Probes can't reconfigure, and do things that they weren't designed to, which people do very well.
Don't confuse government spending with the worth of the projects. There have been an abundance of amazing technologies that have come about due to the space programs. We'd have even more if we had many generations of spacecraft, building upon known technology. From Mercury to the Shuttle, there were tremendous advancements. What would it be like if we had multiple generations of spacecraft, and real space based societies?
Antarctica has a population in the thousands during the winter. Space? The most I could find was 13. That's not a huge population for a space faring population. That's a camping trip, without the woods. To put it in comparison, 0.0000002% of the world population was in space at the same time. Once.
No one does fun little experiments like "What happens if you space a water balloon?". There are important things to know, and until more people are up there doing oddball experiments, we won't discover 'em.
And, I'm all for spacing a water balloon. A thermite filled balloon launched towards the atmosphere should make a pretty light show. It might need to be a pretty big balloon. Lots of room to experiment.:)
This is an excellent demonstration of why we need to further our space travel. It may seem trivial, but to get real advancements in space require people there. Theory is nice and all, but there's so much to learn from practice.
A better example of what I'm saying is thrust. There are plenty of people on the ground theorizing about the bigger and better thrust systems. There are some neat ideas. People would be able to work through them faster by actually being there, and not only doing the specified projects, but their personal pet projects. For example, someone may discover that a windmill style device for turning solar winds into usable energy, and cosmic could be converted into some usable fuel.
A cup is something. It's an example of what can be done from interest or necessity. Something that we're rapidly abandoning, as we watch manned space travel dwindle down to nothing.
I just built out a 4 Ghz 8 core machine with 16GB RAM and a pair of 1.5TB drives for right about $600.
I recall back in '91 my 486DX/33 with 4MB RAM cost somewhere in the ballpark of what you cited ($2,500).
Boot times are relative. My Linux machine with everything I don't need removed boots faster than the 486 with DOS, Desqview, and a fairly dirty config.sys and autoexec.bat.:) You can make anything boot slow if you try hard enough.
They could scale it down a bit. Say 10% scale. So only 8,800 pounds of TNT, and a 1/10 scale fridge with a 1/10 scale buster in it.. So, a mushroom cloud only 2.9 miles high, with a blast radius of.75 miles. That may be a bit much for their testing range. Lately, I'm pretty sure they'd have to beg for permission to light a firecracker.
Nah, it's the guy insisting that the imaginary black pot really exists, calling the kettle black. At least we know the kettle exists, and when utilized properly, can make us a nice cup of coffee. Coffee, which provides the caffeine to keep our scientists going for long hours while they make real discoveries.
All I've seen of his pot is that he must have been smoking way too much of it (oh, wrong pot), and continues to insist that his imaginary friends and some old fairytales are the way modern society should be run.
I'm thinking adjusting the orbit of a few hundred thousand asteroids would be a lot more powerful than any number of bullets a theoretical spacecraft could carry. When it's raining city sized rocks, it's really going to be messy.
Regardless, it's best against (relatively) stationary targets.
Unless your spacecraft happened to be ridiculously close to the enemy, it won't matter.
We're assuming a highly advanced method of space travel. With the technology we have now, we can see minor planets in other solar systems. Lets assume that just the next star away is far enough, and somehow you have bothered with advanced technology like a telescope. If the projectile were to accelerate to half the speed of light. It would only take about 8.4 years to reach you (assuming a pretty quick acceleration). Unless you're a *very* boring target that doesn't move, you have plenty of time to think about what to do. You'll have 4.2 year to say "look at that funny little object coming right at us really quick.
So back to adjusting the asteroids. The attacker would have to be pretty slick, to be freakin' invisible while they went *to* the asteroids to point them towards the target.
I was always entertained by poking my fingers through the shrink wrapped pallets. It's much safer than playing with nukes, and less hassle when someone finds out. That was back from my warehouse days. Oh, how I don't miss those.
Well, I meant anything horribly obvious. As you said, the tractor could say "Joe Jones Trucking". It's much better than "Department of Defense, Nuclear Munitions Transportation Division".:)
If I recall correctly, they were actually subcontracted to pre-authorized truckers. They were already authorized to haul for the DoD, and most likely had TS/SCI clearance.
For here in the US, you're pretty close. They just use trucks with the standard markings (company logos, and DOT number), but they do not display the required hazmat placards. They won't have a company name on the trailer though. A lot of trucks and trailers don't show a company name. There's plenty of trucks on the road that don't have the name of a grocery store on the side of them. They typically haul general merchandise, and could be contracted by anyone. If I wanted to have a pallet with bags of dirt on it shipped from Los Angeles to Maine, I'd just need to contract with a trucking company.
They typically will send out well marked decoys. These will have the hazmat placards in place, but will carry little to nothing. If they happen to have something to ship, like old office furniture, they'll load those up.
The plain looking truck could be there for virtually any purpose. They could be dropping food off for the base or power plant cafeteria. They could be delivering office supplies. You get the idea. There are plenty of legitimate shipments in and out of any working facility, that one more truck wouldn't be noticed.
This story came up several years ago, where they did (or claimed to) show one of the trucks used. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn't. In any case, you'd have no way to distinguish it from the thousands of trucks on the road in an area. I can spot several major interstates on the map. I-4, I-5, I-10, I-75, I-95. I can spot those right off, because I've driven the length of them quite a few times. For quite a bit of those routes, there are no alternate routes on side roads.
So with the knowledge that a few hundred times a year, plain looking trucks are driving on those highways, gives no useful intelligence for anyone to want to intercept one. The biggest concern would be if there were an incident with the truck. Big rig accidents get the media's attention, because they frequently cause a lot of damage. The rate of accidents is pretty low. If the driver was aware of what he was carrying, they'd be a bit more cautious. As I understand it, the drivers don't even know if they're hauling the real load, or if they are a decoy.
I have talked to hazmat drivers that have done runs for the government. Sometimes they do know, but usually they don't. The knowledge is usually because someone was being sloppy when the truck was being loaded, and let the driver stay with the truck.
Set up in front of the Creation Museum. It has a better percentage of nuts coming through. Most of the Vatican guests are there to admire the historical value, and to buy T-shirts that say "My parents went to the Vatican and all I got was this god damned T-shirt".
If you want to attract the "Crazy, American, bible-thumping, wanting a sign anywhere crowd" (tm), you have to put your listings up in English. That, and offer to ship anywhere in the US for free.
Telomeres. As we age, telomeres break down, until our cells cannot reproduce correctly any more, leaving us... well... dead.
Now, if we could find why they break down, it could be stopped. If, provided with an earlier sample, they could be repaired to an earlier state, we may be young again.
The questions are then, do we want to find a mechanism for eternal life? If we did, who is to say who lives forever and who doesn't? As we've made improvements to extend the lifespan of humans, we've inadvertently caused the population to explode. Say we extend it from 100 years to 200 years. With the natural attrition reduced, we would overtax our required natural resources (food, water, etc). We're already pretty close to that now.
If anyone ever did discover how to do it, would they ever admit it? That person would be both the person who saved humanity from old age, and the person who doomed humanity.
There are some brilliant people out there. I'd be willing to bet that someone already found the solution, and summarily destroyed the work and evidence. If they're smart enough to do it, they're also smart enough to know what it would do to us.
You sir, have managed to master the art of numerology. And what an art it is. It can find anything relates to any number, and those numbers can relate to other things, to positively prove that any two completely unrelated things are equal and tied through destiny, predetermination, or that some deity has made himself known through an image of a dead guy on your grilled cheese sandwich.
That's also why I stopped eating grilled cheese sandwiches. But they did sell nicely on eBay to religious nuts.
Dogtanian hit it. The choice isn't between government or no government.
The government should (must) respect the rights of the people and their possessions.
When I worked in a jail, it was pretty simple. Inmates owned nothing. It could be seized at will, but we only seized "contraband". If we needed to seize everything (clothes, bedding, personal hygiene supplies) and throw them naked into solitary confinement, we could. They had absolutely no rights to any sort of "private" property.
The same mentality has been systematically applied to the general public. Many people aren't familiar with "eminent domain". The government can (and will) seize your property if they can show that it is in the best interest of the government. In many areas, what they must demonstrate is pretty slim, basically consisting of "because we say".
A government that respects the concept of private property is what we should have. This was already spelled out in the 4th amendment to the US Constitution. As with most of the constitution, it's now looked at as a curiosity of days past.
But even in an anarchist state, there would be a concept of private property and ownership. While total chaos does imply possession is 100% proof of ownership, it doesn't work in practice that way.
If I know that my property is mine, and I know that your property is yours, if we (the people) don't have the common understanding that this is true, there are problems. If you decide to come to my home and say "this is mine", then I could hop in your car, and drive to your home and say the same thing.
The same applies to intellectual property. We've allowed the government to go way too far with those ownerships. The original laws allowed for a short term, so an inventor could have a period to profit from their innovations, but after that period expired, it would be for the public good.
I haven't looked at the patents in question here. I suspect they're BS that shouldn't have ever been granted. I've been loosely attached to such lawsuits (my employers were involved, and I was informed). One that people will be familiar with was the Acacia streaming lawsuit. Who the hell granted patents on the idea of putting audio and/or video over a network? We'd been doing it for years before their patent was granted. And ya, I was on the defense side, not the plaintiff side.
Of course, the government reserves the right to take any patent they want, make it classified, and use it for their own purposes. Again, the government can supersede the interest of the people, which in itself is (again) unconstitutional.
Your land idea isn't totally correct. I've been watching foreclosures in my area lately. Up for court auction was a property worth about $150,000. The HOA claimed that they owned $3,000 in back HOA fees. The property was owned outright by someone in another state. It was gifted twice in the last 10 years between family members, so most likely it was an investment property.
The HOA won the case, and the property was foreclosed on. It sold at auction for $6,000. So, the HOA got their $3k back (the judgement amount). The new owner could sell it easily at 50% value, and make a profit of about $69,000. The previous owner? Well, they have nothing but a foreclosure on their credit report.
You don't own your property. You borrow your property from the government. If anyone claims that you owe them, your property will be taken away from you. If the government decides they want it, it will be taken away from you. If it is used in any number of crimes, it will be taken from you.
In several states, anything used in relation to a drug crime will be seized by the state and auctioned off. So your kid gets a joint from a friend, and leaves it in the car. He (or you) are later stopped and caught with the joint. The car can be seized. The house can be seized. And you'll have a drug conviction on your criminal history. It's not hard to arrange for such things to happen either. I've known people who have been charged, because they had "drug paraphernalia". In those cases, it was an empty plastic baggie.
Yes, you, and everything you think you own, is owned by the government. They grant permission for you to have it, and they can take it away.
Did you even glance at the last part of the summary, or follow the second link?
The proposal would allow for charging you, the consumer, for power used elsewhere. It may require forging the identity of the outlet, or of the device, but likely both.
I would believe that the utilities would act as credit card companies do now.
If you use a device with a cloned ID, and the owner of the legitimate ID were to complain, they would be refunded. The debt would the fall on the place of purchase.
So, it may be slightly more involved. You may need to clone or "borrow" an outlet from a hotel, and clone the ID of a device, such as a TV or hair dryer.
I picked a hotel as an easy target. Individuals have 12 hours or more of undisturbed private access to the room. It would be easier to snag from a hotel, than from say a local convention center. But all kinds of places would be easy targets. Where can you get access to, that no one will see? A quiet part of a convention center.. A floor of an office building with no tenants. Larger facilities are less likely to notice your residential consumption. Your residential refrigerator isn't all that different from a vending machine, which you could find in either place. Cloning the device will most likely be trivial.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup.
I've only circumvented security in places where I was allowed to be, but the people who were my innocent victims had no clue who I was. Much of the time, it's more bother than it's worth to get your badge.
A lot of it depends on the type of event you're crashing. For something like this, being a member of the media is amazingly useful. I *do* run a news site. We never bothered with "legitimate" press passes. That is, there is no such thing. A stack of business cards is handy, but not required. Something printed on card stock with the name of your publication, laminated, and in a clip on or noose (err, lanyard) will open a lot of doors. The most important part is having a DSLR camera in your hand. You can get older ones pretty cheap on eBay. It's nice if it works, but just as an access pass, it doesn't need to.
Dressing the part is a good idea. The media, unless they're to be in front of the camera, don't wear button up shirts or ties. T-shirt and jeans are perfectly acceptable, and actually preferred.
Once you're press identity works, you can be pretty much lost, and get help. That includes getting in the back stage door for the better shots.
I've walked on stage at concerts, right on the side lines at sporting events, and walked right up to the podium to take pictures. It can help to keep playing the part. I'm not sure if it's required, as I'm really taking photos for legitimate purposes. usually walking past security doesn't require any actual words to be spoken. Hold the camera up a little to show that you have one, and a nod are all it usually takes.
It's a good idea to have some sort of dialogue planned out. It's usually just "who do you work for." It really doesn't matter who it is. Smaller is frequently better, especially if there's a chance the organization you say you are with may actually attend.
If you don't want to go the press route, you can usually walk in with a crowd. Most events aren't secure enough to require every person to show their badges to go through every door. Blend into a crowd of 6 people or more going past security at the same time. Just make sure you're on the far side of security, so they don't notice that you didn't have a badge.
Security generally has no idea who's suppose to be there at such events. The only way they have a clue is because you have the cool badge. For a lot of events, it's a piece of paper inside a generic plastic holder, sometimes on a lanyard. Some of us bring our own lanyards. That's no big deal. The problem with lanyards is, your badge can easily flip around, so all the see is the white back of it. That "accident" can let you right through, with a plain piece of paper in it. An empty plastic holder can be good too. "Shit it must have fallen out. Can I get one after this session is over?" Many events stop taking signups after the first few hours of the event, so getting a "replacement' is impossible, and your empty holder is just as good as a replica of the real thing.
The biggest thing is, look like you belong there. Walk with a purpose. Ignore those commoners who are also attending. Have a good idea of where you're going, so you can walk directly there, without stopping. Wandering around like a lost attendee bulks you into the crowd of attendees, and you will likely e stopped.
So, you're saing V'ger is far superior in the advancement of human space travel, than the ISS and Space Shuttle programs? I find that, and the continued dialogue entertaining.
We waste more in endless foreign wars, than we do for so many other things.
Probes are nice and all, but they have a lot to be desired. Probes are good for recon. It still takes boots on the ground (as it may be) to learn more. Once a probe is launched, it can't do tests outside of its spec. My water balloon out the airlock is a simple example. Probes can't reconfigure, and do things that they weren't designed to, which people do very well.
Don't confuse government spending with the worth of the projects. There have been an abundance of amazing technologies that have come about due to the space programs. We'd have even more if we had many generations of spacecraft, building upon known technology. From Mercury to the Shuttle, there were tremendous advancements. What would it be like if we had multiple generations of spacecraft, and real space based societies?
Antarctica has a population in the thousands during the winter. Space? The most I could find was 13. That's not a huge population for a space faring population. That's a camping trip, without the woods. To put it in comparison, 0.0000002% of the world population was in space at the same time. Once.
No one does fun little experiments like "What happens if you space a water balloon?". There are important things to know, and until more people are up there doing oddball experiments, we won't discover 'em.
And, I'm all for spacing a water balloon. A thermite filled balloon launched towards the atmosphere should make a pretty light show. It might need to be a pretty big balloon. Lots of room to experiment. :)
This is an excellent demonstration of why we need to further our space travel. It may seem trivial, but to get real advancements in space require people there. Theory is nice and all, but there's so much to learn from practice.
A better example of what I'm saying is thrust. There are plenty of people on the ground theorizing about the bigger and better thrust systems. There are some neat ideas. People would be able to work through them faster by actually being there, and not only doing the specified projects, but their personal pet projects. For example, someone may discover that a windmill style device for turning solar winds into usable energy, and cosmic could be converted into some usable fuel.
A cup is something. It's an example of what can be done from interest or necessity. Something that we're rapidly abandoning, as we watch manned space travel dwindle down to nothing.
That'd be a good one. And kids would learn a lesson. "See kids, you can lose a hand by playing with fireworks."
Well...
I just built out a 4 Ghz 8 core machine with 16GB RAM and a pair of 1.5TB drives for right about $600.
I recall back in '91 my 486DX/33 with 4MB RAM cost somewhere in the ballpark of what you cited ($2,500).
Boot times are relative. My Linux machine with everything I don't need removed boots faster than the 486 with DOS, Desqview, and a fairly dirty config.sys and autoexec.bat. :) You can make anything boot slow if you try hard enough.
It won't matter much. By the time you know it happened, you were just vaporized. :)
They could scale it down a bit. Say 10% scale. So only 8,800 pounds of TNT, and a 1/10 scale fridge with a 1/10 scale buster in it.. So, a mushroom cloud only 2.9 miles high, with a blast radius of .75 miles. That may be a bit much for their testing range. Lately, I'm pretty sure they'd have to beg for permission to light a firecracker.
Nah, it's the guy insisting that the imaginary black pot really exists, calling the kettle black. At least we know the kettle exists, and when utilized properly, can make us a nice cup of coffee. Coffee, which provides the caffeine to keep our scientists going for long hours while they make real discoveries.
All I've seen of his pot is that he must have been smoking way too much of it (oh, wrong pot), and continues to insist that his imaginary friends and some old fairytales are the way modern society should be run.
I'm thinking adjusting the orbit of a few hundred thousand asteroids would be a lot more powerful than any number of bullets a theoretical spacecraft could carry. When it's raining city sized rocks, it's really going to be messy.
Regardless, it's best against (relatively) stationary targets.
Unless your spacecraft happened to be ridiculously close to the enemy, it won't matter.
We're assuming a highly advanced method of space travel. With the technology we have now, we can see minor planets in other solar systems. Lets assume that just the next star away is far enough, and somehow you have bothered with advanced technology like a telescope. If the projectile were to accelerate to half the speed of light. It would only take about 8.4 years to reach you (assuming a pretty quick acceleration). Unless you're a *very* boring target that doesn't move, you have plenty of time to think about what to do. You'll have 4.2 year to say "look at that funny little object coming right at us really quick.
So back to adjusting the asteroids. The attacker would have to be pretty slick, to be freakin' invisible while they went *to* the asteroids to point them towards the target.
That would be the same district that redefined pi as 3?
I know, I know. urban legend. It's still funny though. :)
But... how did it taste? :)
Actually, Wikipedia indicates that was a dubious claim by a con man.
The reference is dead, but you can get it it via archive.org here
I was always entertained by poking my fingers through the shrink wrapped pallets. It's much safer than playing with nukes, and less hassle when someone finds out. That was back from my warehouse days. Oh, how I don't miss those.
Well, I meant anything horribly obvious. As you said, the tractor could say "Joe Jones Trucking". It's much better than "Department of Defense, Nuclear Munitions Transportation Division". :)
If I recall correctly, they were actually subcontracted to pre-authorized truckers. They were already authorized to haul for the DoD, and most likely had TS/SCI clearance.
For here in the US, you're pretty close. They just use trucks with the standard markings (company logos, and DOT number), but they do not display the required hazmat placards. They won't have a company name on the trailer though. A lot of trucks and trailers don't show a company name. There's plenty of trucks on the road that don't have the name of a grocery store on the side of them. They typically haul general merchandise, and could be contracted by anyone. If I wanted to have a pallet with bags of dirt on it shipped from Los Angeles to Maine, I'd just need to contract with a trucking company.
They typically will send out well marked decoys. These will have the hazmat placards in place, but will carry little to nothing. If they happen to have something to ship, like old office furniture, they'll load those up.
The plain looking truck could be there for virtually any purpose. They could be dropping food off for the base or power plant cafeteria. They could be delivering office supplies. You get the idea. There are plenty of legitimate shipments in and out of any working facility, that one more truck wouldn't be noticed.
This story came up several years ago, where they did (or claimed to) show one of the trucks used. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn't. In any case, you'd have no way to distinguish it from the thousands of trucks on the road in an area. I can spot several major interstates on the map. I-4, I-5, I-10, I-75, I-95. I can spot those right off, because I've driven the length of them quite a few times. For quite a bit of those routes, there are no alternate routes on side roads.
So with the knowledge that a few hundred times a year, plain looking trucks are driving on those highways, gives no useful intelligence for anyone to want to intercept one. The biggest concern would be if there were an incident with the truck. Big rig accidents get the media's attention, because they frequently cause a lot of damage. The rate of accidents is pretty low. If the driver was aware of what he was carrying, they'd be a bit more cautious. As I understand it, the drivers don't even know if they're hauling the real load, or if they are a decoy.
I have talked to hazmat drivers that have done runs for the government. Sometimes they do know, but usually they don't. The knowledge is usually because someone was being sloppy when the truck was being loaded, and let the driver stay with the truck.
It was an old system. Older than time itself. You may remember tales of it, from a universe that long since expired. Its name was AC
fsck.universe failed. System terminally corrupt. Reinitializing world. . . . Complete.
Set up in front of the Creation Museum. It has a better percentage of nuts coming through. Most of the Vatican guests are there to admire the historical value, and to buy T-shirts that say "My parents went to the Vatican and all I got was this god damned T-shirt".
If you want to attract the "Crazy, American, bible-thumping, wanting a sign anywhere crowd" (tm), you have to put your listings up in English. That, and offer to ship anywhere in the US for free.
Telomeres. As we age, telomeres break down, until our cells cannot reproduce correctly any more, leaving us ... well ... dead.
Now, if we could find why they break down, it could be stopped. If, provided with an earlier sample, they could be repaired to an earlier state, we may be young again.
The questions are then, do we want to find a mechanism for eternal life? If we did, who is to say who lives forever and who doesn't? As we've made improvements to extend the lifespan of humans, we've inadvertently caused the population to explode. Say we extend it from 100 years to 200 years. With the natural attrition reduced, we would overtax our required natural resources (food, water, etc). We're already pretty close to that now.
If anyone ever did discover how to do it, would they ever admit it? That person would be both the person who saved humanity from old age, and the person who doomed humanity.
There are some brilliant people out there. I'd be willing to bet that someone already found the solution, and summarily destroyed the work and evidence. If they're smart enough to do it, they're also smart enough to know what it would do to us.
In the beginning, there was nothingness.
Then he brought something from nothingness.
Then he brought order from the chaos.
And he looked upon it, and saw that it was good.
You sir, have managed to master the art of numerology. And what an art it is. It can find anything relates to any number, and those numbers can relate to other things, to positively prove that any two completely unrelated things are equal and tied through destiny, predetermination, or that some deity has made himself known through an image of a dead guy on your grilled cheese sandwich.
That's also why I stopped eating grilled cheese sandwiches. But they did sell nicely on eBay to religious nuts.
Dogtanian hit it. The choice isn't between government or no government.
The government should (must) respect the rights of the people and their possessions.
When I worked in a jail, it was pretty simple. Inmates owned nothing. It could be seized at will, but we only seized "contraband". If we needed to seize everything (clothes, bedding, personal hygiene supplies) and throw them naked into solitary confinement, we could. They had absolutely no rights to any sort of "private" property.
The same mentality has been systematically applied to the general public. Many people aren't familiar with "eminent domain". The government can (and will) seize your property if they can show that it is in the best interest of the government. In many areas, what they must demonstrate is pretty slim, basically consisting of "because we say".
A government that respects the concept of private property is what we should have. This was already spelled out in the 4th amendment to the US Constitution. As with most of the constitution, it's now looked at as a curiosity of days past.
But even in an anarchist state, there would be a concept of private property and ownership. While total chaos does imply possession is 100% proof of ownership, it doesn't work in practice that way.
If I know that my property is mine, and I know that your property is yours, if we (the people) don't have the common understanding that this is true, there are problems. If you decide to come to my home and say "this is mine", then I could hop in your car, and drive to your home and say the same thing.
The same applies to intellectual property. We've allowed the government to go way too far with those ownerships. The original laws allowed for a short term, so an inventor could have a period to profit from their innovations, but after that period expired, it would be for the public good.
I haven't looked at the patents in question here. I suspect they're BS that shouldn't have ever been granted. I've been loosely attached to such lawsuits (my employers were involved, and I was informed). One that people will be familiar with was the Acacia streaming lawsuit. Who the hell granted patents on the idea of putting audio and/or video over a network? We'd been doing it for years before their patent was granted. And ya, I was on the defense side, not the plaintiff side.
Of course, the government reserves the right to take any patent they want, make it classified, and use it for their own purposes. Again, the government can supersede the interest of the people, which in itself is (again) unconstitutional.
Your land idea isn't totally correct. I've been watching foreclosures in my area lately. Up for court auction was a property worth about $150,000. The HOA claimed that they owned $3,000 in back HOA fees. The property was owned outright by someone in another state. It was gifted twice in the last 10 years between family members, so most likely it was an investment property.
The HOA won the case, and the property was foreclosed on. It sold at auction for $6,000. So, the HOA got their $3k back (the judgement amount). The new owner could sell it easily at 50% value, and make a profit of about $69,000. The previous owner? Well, they have nothing but a foreclosure on their credit report.
You don't own your property. You borrow your property from the government. If anyone claims that you owe them, your property will be taken away from you. If the government decides they want it, it will be taken away from you. If it is used in any number of crimes, it will be taken from you.
In several states, anything used in relation to a drug crime will be seized by the state and auctioned off. So your kid gets a joint from a friend, and leaves it in the car. He (or you) are later stopped and caught with the joint. The car can be seized. The house can be seized. And you'll have a drug conviction on your criminal history. It's not hard to arrange for such things to happen either. I've known people who have been charged, because they had "drug paraphernalia". In those cases, it was an empty plastic baggie.
Yes, you, and everything you think you own, is owned by the government. They grant permission for you to have it, and they can take it away.
Did you even glance at the last part of the summary, or follow the second link?
The proposal would allow for charging you, the consumer, for power used elsewhere. It may require forging the identity of the outlet, or of the device, but likely both.
I would believe that the utilities would act as credit card companies do now.
If you use a device with a cloned ID, and the owner of the legitimate ID were to complain, they would be refunded. The debt would the fall on the place of purchase.
So, it may be slightly more involved. You may need to clone or "borrow" an outlet from a hotel, and clone the ID of a device, such as a TV or hair dryer.
I picked a hotel as an easy target. Individuals have 12 hours or more of undisturbed private access to the room. It would be easier to snag from a hotel, than from say a local convention center. But all kinds of places would be easy targets. Where can you get access to, that no one will see? A quiet part of a convention center.. A floor of an office building with no tenants. Larger facilities are less likely to notice your residential consumption. Your residential refrigerator isn't all that different from a vending machine, which you could find in either place. Cloning the device will most likely be trivial.