"If I can just choose to not carry the card, when I am challenged, I can simply state that I don't have an ID, and they will have to accomodate me, because after all, this is voluntary, right?"
In the extremely unlikely event that this "voluntary" National ID system is put in place, it still requires mass public support to succeed -- and minus any real benefits (just like crippled 'copy-protected' hardware), how could they possibly gain critical mass?
Maybe a jingoistic marketing campaign echoed by the media? -- "Are YOU a card carrying American, or a TERRORIST sympathizer?! Get Yours Today!"
Sure most Americans are smarter than this... at least I hope they are. I mean, I can see the need for drivers licenses and such, but I would hope that the "mark of the beast" would at least set off signals in the Bible Belt.:)
Anyway, no matter the penalty, and no matter the rah-rah pro-ID propaganda to come down the pike, I plan on remaining a disobediant potential "terrorist" by NOT carrying my 'papers'; and I won't be alone.
You're both an atheist and an vegan you say? So, you deny the possible, however unlikely, existence of God(s), rather than choose the more logically neutral position of agnosticism; and you deny yourself the tender, juicy, delicious steaks that your canine teeth are in fact adapted for (evolutionary neutral) -- that's fine, more meat for us "belly-size-economizers".:-)
Anyway, more to the point, if there's one thing us humans like to do above all else, it's imposing our self-righteous will on others, especially our children.
The difference here is that our government is set up to NOT allow it to impose much of its will on free people (parents), but as parents are often fond of saying to their kids, "as long as you're living under my roof this is NOT a democracy!"
...as long as you're not raising, say, assassins...have at it! But when your kid rejects your attempt at a vegan indoctrination... don't be a dicktator.:)
I absolutely LOVE physics simulations -- any way I can get them.
From Lunar Lander (the original), to that Java Soda Constructor, to (old)vids of Halo's hyped IK, to scene collision demo's, to educational sim software where I remember stitching together objects with springs and smashing them against walls with 10000E100N of force...
Can't wait till more games are based on a detailed physical model...
"So when you act like you know where you are going on a place where you have no reason to know, then we know you have been there before."
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I visit any website, even one I've never seen before, I use my eyeballs before I move the mouse--it's naturally much more efficient that way. In fact, most of the time it's my scrollwheel that's moving, and not the mouse itself.
Honestly, I consider my mouse movement patterns almost completely useless, and I have no idea what good a website that "changed according to mouse behaviour" could possibly do me. Well, maybe links that I almost never hover could be tucked away; but I doubt ads would be included in that bunch.
Can we still organize opposition like we did to the Decency act, or will the porn lobby and ACLU be on the content industry's side now?
On the one hand the porn industry needs free speech more than any other industry (CDA 1 & 2 struck down), and on the other hand, P2P file sharing networks have taken a significant bite out business, and it will only get worse. The "monkey spankers" could care less, but the content "pimps" still need to pay the "ho's" or we'll be stuck burping our worms to amateur porn, and re-runs from the 70s - late 90s.
So, without being hypocritical, they're between a rock and a hard place.
...larger reaction...A law against beer, or this bill?
Funny you should mention beer, as there's a good chance the beer tax will be cut in half. The cut amounts to peanuts ($1.7B/yr), but the reaction from beer guzzlers will be disproportionately greater. "SSSCA-what? buurrrrrp.":-)
So, if you're a smart frog being slowly boiled, what do you do?
Spread Jim Bell's assassination politics far and wide? (I kid you dear echelon)
Bill Gates bought Corbis a while ago, and to the best of my knowledge their images (thumbnails really) are NOT indexed by any of these engines (their choice, bla bla).
It's pathetic, but Corbis actually sells extremely low rez 640x480 images to "suckers."
I would argue that anything less than a print quality TGA image is a sample image, analogous to 128kbps MP3. i.e. it's free publicity in the eyes of real artists, and it's "copyright infringment" to greedy middlemen.
e.g. I happen to have a tangible print of this Pat Rawlings painting on my wall......and this is called free advertising.
Anway... Everyone benefits from abundance...except the selfish FEW that would like to profit from artificial scarcity.
From the picture it looks as though the mice would be living in a rocket's payload nose cone, which has a very small radius, and in order to simulate.38G it's got be rotating pretty damn fast.
Most humans get nauseous under one RPM; what about mice?
A 28.8 link can do 3KB/s at best. Even with some super-duper-10X-better-than-DivX-codec, there's only so much data you can cram down a pipe that thin without resorting to tricks.
My first guess it that these aussies have impressed clueless execs with ordinary tech.
My second guess is that maybe someone finally got around to applying foveation in a way that works really well.
Perhaps these aussies are hooking up test audiences to eye-tracking devices, and recording their average gaze during a film so that they can get even higher compression by throwing out what's outside most peoples field of view?
The thing that scares me is that we have so many opinion sites that are advocating new products and they arn't revealing their affilations.
One glorious day in the not too distant future I imagine that the mother of all bullshit-detectors will be born (oh, and it'll be "p2p networked" too--buzzbuzzbuzz.:-)
When a SlimyCorp(tm) or SlimyHuman(tm) attempts to pull the wool over your eyes -- and trustworthy sources have validated the stench of the BS -- a seemlessly integrated klaxon alarm will sound to notify the ignorant of the scam and offer up the 'truth' instead.
A few examples that would trigger The Bullshit Alarm(tm):
When MSNBC downplays yet another "email virus" that only affects MS Outlook.
When a karma whore gets moderated to +5 with opinion presented as fact.
99.9999999% of the time that the word "FREE" is used in any context (eventually people will learn and can disable this filter.)
Anytime someone tries to sell you overpriced crap that you can buy cheaper from a less greedy merchant.
When a search engine sellout boosts paid listings, but doesn't mark them as such, the BS detector will cover the culprits in shit for you.
When a retail store announces a yet another sale, but shoppers failed to notice that prices had predictably inched upward for the past few weeks leading up to it.
When Yet-Another-Diet-Pill-Scam begins to rev up it's marketing campaign. (input fewer calories/output more energy.)
When a politican speaks.
When a lawyer speaks.
...........When Krusty the Clown impersonates George Carlin...badly.
When Austrailia claims that The BullShit Detector(tm) is liable for defamation..
Too much other bullshit to list...
I didn't mean to go on and on like that. The simple point is to network experts, insider knowledge and uncommon-common-sense so that it's not as easy for reptiles to exploit the uninformed as it once was.
(preemptive postscript: this whole post is bullshit -- ignorance is bliss -- mindless consumerism and entertainment-as-news is good for the economy!)
They've got a couple years to try to figure out another way to squeeze blood out of a turnip (like Apple did with style and video apps, for example), and then it's all over.
<sarcasm>
Oh, no -- you see, at that point the plan is to rent/lease everything 'as a service.' After all, who in their right mind would want to own a 10 year old clunker (or "old" piece of closed software), or pay twice the price for NEW, when for JUST $XX PER MONTH(!), you too can be on the upgrade treadmill, and at the same time know that you're helping to sustain tech-sector jobs!
</sarcasm>
But, you're right, MHz is fast becoming irrelevant. Just like today all calculators are pretty much equal in the eyes of most people (unless you're a dork that measures your dicklength in esoteric specs.)
Actually, if anything will save users from a police state it's going to have to be the users themselves.
But the problem with these 'users' is the fact that more Americans than ever are now masochistic stockholders of the very same corporations that would "control" them -- and most will never bite the hand that feeds them, no matter what it smells like.
Consider all the people who invested in the proprietary "goodness" of the "evil" RMBS, then did their part to fuel their devil by making sure to buy only an Intel/RIMM machine, in spite of bang/buck, and in spite of what's right. (maybe not the best example.)
Now, if ass-backwards IP laws mean that shareholders can profit from enforced artificial scarcity at the expense of cutting their own throats in the process...... the vast majority will.
There's only so much freedom available to trade in for a bit of [financial] security...
Even our inevitable economy of abundance won't guarantee a "utopian existence" for the simple reason that we humans are still too primitive for our own good.
It'll take a lot of hard work to "weed out" the negative aspects of human nature that no longer serve our accelerating evolutionary progess.
Even if ReplayTV doesn't cave to the networks'/advertisers' demands (and they will), you can bet that the MARKET for filtering out commercials/banners/spam/etc will continue to grow -- in spite of the pleas from advertisers that you must subject yourself to mental engineering.
Anyway... all that will accomplish is the line between content and product becoming even more blurred. We'll see even more pathetic product placement, like we've seen with: Castaway/FedEx, Dracula2000/Virgin, Conan O'Brien/Budweiser, and The Sopranos/Coca-Cola (with the label perpetually facing the camera), etc...
Then comes the next step: "Phantom Edits" of content where the crap (branding influence) is removed completely, or replaced by generic "Acme's".
Yes... my hatred of advertising is extreme, and I recognize that.:-)
Yet teachers are often instructed to give kids the grades their parents want. I have met many blank stares -- and one or two outright laughs -- when I tell parents I can't recommend their kids for an advanced class because it would violate my professional ethics.
The arrogance of some of these parents angers me to no end. You would think that they would expect their kids to EARN the grades that reflect their knowledge right? Apparently all they care about is making sure their spoiled brats get a free pass, and a fluffed up record that looks good on a college application.
[The CD tax] brings money mostly to music corps that don't exactly need it...
But to these megacorps, 'need' is pretty much synonymous with 'greed', and government agrees.
Am I the only one who thinks it [government enforced corporate tax] is a dangerous road for an economy to tread?
No, you're not alone; in fact, it's probably the majority opinion that corporate handouts, in their many forms, are as repulsive as they are a sign of growing corruption in govt.
An economy is supposed to be about how limited resources are distributed among unlimited desires. This trend towards government being ever more a tool of business, in order to directly & indirectly profit from an enforced artificial scarcity... is scary.
IMO though, we won't go too much futher down that road -- which ends in totalitarian control over all things abundant, so that a few might profit. I know it's cliche, but the RIAA and brethren are living dinosaurs... gasping for air... their cashcows dead.
So, Brian didn't just happen to stumble across an obviously unlocked door; instead, he [allegedly] intently picked at the locks for a while, then reported the results of this lockpicking vulnerability... to his competition.
A, "hey, I noticed your door's unlocked," from any Joe Schmoe I can appreciate, but what doesn't deserve my thanks is a, "hey, for the past few hours I tried breaking & entering into your place and finally discovered that your backdoor is vulnerable to the XYZZY-lockpick exploit -- you're most welcome...Oh, and btw, nice porn collection you've got there under your bed. Might I suggest a safe?"
Maybe Brian considers himself a kind of Neighborhood Watchman... whose only crime is making damn sure your doors are properly locked, and that a midget thief can't squeeze in through your doggy-door.;-)
Myth #1: The Internet is Too International to Be Controlled:
TechReview's argument: Safe havens typically don't have enough pipe to host Napster volumes of data; and, to deter law-abiding companies in the "goodguy" international community from dealing with these outlaws, you will be punished with asset forfeiture if you so much as look at them.
My counterargument: The first point is invalidated by the eventuality of distributed networks being more efficient with that volume of data anyway (think anonymous, dynamic akamai), and the second only requires that the "outlaws" be self-sufficient. e.g. If/when South Korea cracks down on the physical servers located @ astalavista.box.sk, it would resurface in a nebulous new form.
Myth #2: The Net Is Too Interconnected to Control:
TechReview's argument: Gnutella had to implement supernodes in order to fix its old bottleneck problem. What once was completely distributed now has a bit of hierarchy, and hence, is easier to attack with the help of the mega-ISPs.
My counterargument: There's a big difference between a massive central server being targetted, and hundreds of thousands of potential supernodes, which can also pop into and out of existance with the same ease as regular peers. Also, they mention that ISPs may move from simple port blocking to traffic analysis in order to defeat gnutella, and other 'rogue' packets, by sniffing their signature. That will work, but it also means that they'll NEXT have to blacklist ALL encrypted communication too--fat chance of that happening.
Myth #3: The Net Is Too Filled with Hackers to Control
TechReview's argument: You can restrict free communication most effectively at the hardware level. If consumers won't buy the crippled products, it becomes governments' job to mandate it, "just like [they] insist that cars have certain antipollution methods."
My counterargument: I think people will get off their asses and 'revolt' before their last bastion of freedom be co-opted by the system. Also, as long as ANY communication is still possible, you can hide whatever data you want to communicate within that channel... defeating the orwell network.
Slashdot Mirror
In the extremely unlikely event that this "voluntary" National ID system is put in place, it still requires mass public support to succeed -- and minus any real benefits (just like crippled 'copy-protected' hardware), how could they possibly gain critical mass?
Maybe a jingoistic marketing campaign echoed by the media? -- "Are YOU a card carrying American, or a TERRORIST sympathizer?! Get Yours Today!"
Sure most Americans are smarter than this... at least I hope they are. I mean, I can see the need for drivers licenses and such, but I would hope that the "mark of the beast" would at least set off signals in the Bible Belt. :)
Anyway, no matter the penalty, and no matter the rah-rah pro-ID propaganda to come down the pike, I plan on remaining a disobediant potential "terrorist" by NOT carrying my 'papers'; and I won't be alone.
"email is to postcard as encryption is to effectively indestructable envelope.
You're both an atheist and an vegan you say? So, you deny the possible, however unlikely, existence of God(s), rather than choose the more logically neutral position of agnosticism; and you deny yourself the tender, juicy, delicious steaks that your canine teeth are in fact adapted for (evolutionary neutral) -- that's fine, more meat for us "belly-size-economizers". :-)
Anyway, more to the point, if there's one thing us humans like to do above all else, it's imposing our self-righteous will on others, especially our children.
The difference here is that our government is set up to NOT allow it to impose much of its will on free people (parents), but as parents are often fond of saying to their kids, "as long as you're living under my roof this is NOT a democracy!"
From Lunar Lander (the original), to that Java Soda Constructor, to (old)vids of Halo's hyped IK, to scene collision demo's, to educational sim software where I remember stitching together objects with springs and smashing them against walls with 10000E100N of force...
Can't wait till more games are based on a detailed physical model...
- NullSoft wasn't cheap, but WinAmp has been left completely untouched, and gnutella was spawned there...
- All RoadRunner needs is DHCP and you're up--no forced AOL crap (yet), and no fascist content policies (yet).
Everything else AOL has touched smells like shit so it's only a matter of time.I don't know about the rest of you, but when I visit any website, even one I've never seen before, I use my eyeballs before I move the mouse--it's naturally much more efficient that way. In fact, most of the time it's my scrollwheel that's moving, and not the mouse itself.
Honestly, I consider my mouse movement patterns almost completely useless, and I have no idea what good a website that "changed according to mouse behaviour" could possibly do me. Well, maybe links that I almost never hover could be tucked away; but I doubt ads would be included in that bunch.
Eye-tracking has much greater potential...
On the one hand the porn industry needs free speech more than any other industry (CDA 1 & 2 struck down), and on the other hand, P2P file sharing networks have taken a significant bite out business, and it will only get worse. The "monkey spankers" could care less, but the content "pimps" still need to pay the "ho's" or we'll be stuck burping our worms to amateur porn, and re-runs from the 70s - late 90s.
So, without being hypocritical, they're between a rock and a hard place.
Funny you should mention beer, as there's a good chance the beer tax will be cut in half. The cut amounts to peanuts ($1.7B/yr), but the reaction from beer guzzlers will be disproportionately greater. "SSSCA-what? buurrrrrp." :-)
So, if you're a smart frog being slowly boiled, what do you do?
Spread Jim Bell's assassination politics far and wide? (I kid you dear echelon)
It's pathetic, but Corbis actually sells extremely low rez 640x480 images to "suckers."
I would argue that anything less than a print quality TGA image is a sample image, analogous to 128kbps MP3. i.e. it's free publicity in the eyes of real artists, and it's "copyright infringment" to greedy middlemen.
e.g. I happen to have a tangible print of this Pat Rawlings painting on my wall......and this is called free advertising.
Anway... Everyone benefits from abundance...except the selfish FEW that would like to profit from artificial scarcity.
Most humans get nauseous under one RPM; what about mice?
This is for the three people in the back who didn't get the joke.
My first guess it that these aussies have impressed clueless execs with ordinary tech.
My second guess is that maybe someone finally got around to applying foveation in a way that works really well.
Perhaps these aussies are hooking up test audiences to eye-tracking devices, and recording their average gaze during a film so that they can get even higher compression by throwing out what's outside most peoples field of view?
*shrug*
Do you really believe people are that fickl............Ooo...shiny object.
One glorious day in the not too distant future I imagine that the mother of all bullshit-detectors will be born (oh, and it'll be "p2p networked" too--buzzbuzzbuzz. :-)
When a SlimyCorp(tm) or SlimyHuman(tm) attempts to pull the wool over your eyes -- and trustworthy sources have validated the stench of the BS -- a seemlessly integrated klaxon alarm will sound to notify the ignorant of the scam and offer up the 'truth' instead.
A few examples that would trigger The Bullshit Alarm(tm):
- When MSNBC downplays yet another "email virus" that only affects MS Outlook.
- When a karma whore gets moderated to +5 with opinion presented as fact.
- 99.9999999% of the time that the word "FREE" is used in any context (eventually people will learn and can disable this filter.)
- Anytime someone tries to sell you overpriced crap that you can buy cheaper from a less greedy merchant.
- When a search engine sellout boosts paid listings, but doesn't mark them as such, the BS detector will cover the culprits in shit for you.
- When a retail store announces a yet another sale, but shoppers failed to notice that prices had predictably inched upward for the past few weeks leading up to it.
- When Yet-Another-Diet-Pill-Scam begins to rev up it's marketing campaign. (input fewer calories/output more energy.)
- When a politican speaks.
- When a lawyer speaks.
- ...........When Krusty the Clown impersonates George Carlin...badly.
- When Austrailia claims that The BullShit Detector(tm) is liable for defamation..
- Too much other bullshit to list...
I didn't mean to go on and on like that. The simple point is to network experts, insider knowledge and uncommon-common-sense so that it's not as easy for reptiles to exploit the uninformed as it once was.(preemptive postscript: this whole post is bullshit -- ignorance is bliss -- mindless consumerism and entertainment-as-news is good for the economy!)
<sarcasm>
Oh, no -- you see, at that point the plan is to rent/lease everything 'as a service.' After all, who in their right mind would want to own a 10 year old clunker (or "old" piece of closed software), or pay twice the price for NEW, when for JUST $XX PER MONTH(!), you too can be on the upgrade treadmill, and at the same time know that you're helping to sustain tech-sector jobs!
</sarcasm>
But, you're right, MHz is fast becoming irrelevant. Just like today all calculators are pretty much equal in the eyes of most people (unless you're a dork that measures your dicklength in esoteric specs.)
But the problem with these 'users' is the fact that more Americans than ever are now masochistic stockholders of the very same corporations that would "control" them -- and most will never bite the hand that feeds them, no matter what it smells like.
Consider all the people who invested in the proprietary "goodness" of the "evil" RMBS, then did their part to fuel their devil by making sure to buy only an Intel/RIMM machine, in spite of bang/buck, and in spite of what's right. (maybe not the best example.)
Now, if ass-backwards IP laws mean that shareholders can profit from enforced artificial scarcity at the expense of cutting their own throats in the process...... the vast majority will.
There's only so much freedom available to trade in for a bit of [financial] security...
It'll take a lot of hard work to "weed out" the negative aspects of human nature that no longer serve our accelerating evolutionary progess.
A: FREE.
Don't try to water it down.
I'm not Mormon, but laws against polygamy are just plain puritanically regressive, and WRONG; and it doesn't belong in your list of examples.
If a man or woman wants to marry more than one consenting spouse, what right does the government have to lock you up for that? None.
The war against consensual crimes pisses me off.
Anyway... all that will accomplish is the line between content and product becoming even more blurred. We'll see even more pathetic product placement, like we've seen with: Castaway/FedEx, Dracula2000/Virgin, Conan O'Brien/Budweiser, and The Sopranos/Coca-Cola (with the label perpetually facing the camera), etc...
Then comes the next step: "Phantom Edits" of content where the crap (branding influence) is removed completely, or replaced by generic "Acme's".
Yes... my hatred of advertising is extreme, and I recognize that. :-)
</mini-rant>
The arrogance of some of these parents angers me to no end. You would think that they would expect their kids to EARN the grades that reflect their knowledge right? Apparently all they care about is making sure their spoiled brats get a free pass, and a fluffed up record that looks good on a college application.
But to these megacorps, 'need' is pretty much synonymous with 'greed', and government agrees.
Am I the only one who thinks it [government enforced corporate tax] is a dangerous road for an economy to tread?
No, you're not alone; in fact, it's probably the majority opinion that corporate handouts, in their many forms, are as repulsive as they are a sign of growing corruption in govt.
An economy is supposed to be about how limited resources are distributed among unlimited desires. This trend towards government being ever more a tool of business, in order to directly & indirectly profit from an enforced artificial scarcity... is scary.
IMO though, we won't go too much futher down that road -- which ends in totalitarian control over all things abundant, so that a few might profit. I know it's cliche, but the RIAA and brethren are living dinosaurs... gasping for air... their cashcows dead.
A, "hey, I noticed your door's unlocked," from any Joe Schmoe I can appreciate, but what doesn't deserve my thanks is a, "hey, for the past few hours I tried breaking & entering into your place and finally discovered that your backdoor is vulnerable to the XYZZY-lockpick exploit -- you're most welcome...Oh, and btw, nice porn collection you've got there under your bed. Might I suggest a safe?"
Maybe Brian considers himself a kind of Neighborhood Watchman... whose only crime is making damn sure your doors are properly locked, and that a midget thief can't squeeze in through your doggy-door. ;-)
TechReview's argument: Safe havens typically don't have enough pipe to host Napster volumes of data; and, to deter law-abiding companies in the "goodguy" international community from dealing with these outlaws, you will be punished with asset forfeiture if you so much as look at them.
My counterargument: The first point is invalidated by the eventuality of distributed networks being more efficient with that volume of data anyway (think anonymous, dynamic akamai), and the second only requires that the "outlaws" be self-sufficient. e.g. If/when South Korea cracks down on the physical servers located @ astalavista.box.sk, it would resurface in a nebulous new form.
Myth #2: The Net Is Too Interconnected to Control:
TechReview's argument: Gnutella had to implement supernodes in order to fix its old bottleneck problem. What once was completely distributed now has a bit of hierarchy, and hence, is easier to attack with the help of the mega-ISPs.
My counterargument: There's a big difference between a massive central server being targetted, and hundreds of thousands of potential supernodes, which can also pop into and out of existance with the same ease as regular peers. Also, they mention that ISPs may move from simple port blocking to traffic analysis in order to defeat gnutella, and other 'rogue' packets, by sniffing their signature. That will work, but it also means that they'll NEXT have to blacklist ALL encrypted communication too--fat chance of that happening.
Myth #3: The Net Is Too Filled with Hackers to Control
TechReview's argument: You can restrict free communication most effectively at the hardware level. If consumers won't buy the crippled products, it becomes governments' job to mandate it, "just like [they] insist that cars have certain antipollution methods."
My counterargument: I think people will get off their asses and 'revolt' before their last bastion of freedom be co-opted by the system. Also, as long as ANY communication is still possible, you can hide whatever data you want to communicate within that channel... defeating the orwell network.