Friend, I'm no Millennial, I'm Gen-Y, and long before debit cards, and long before anyone gave me a credit card, I used cash. I'm back to it because there are too many data breaches and POS systems being compromised (a couple of which *I* used, and had to get a new debit card). I carry less than $100 at a time. I don't go to high-risk areas usually, and if I do no one bothers me because I don't look or act like a victim and don't do stupid risky things. I don't like having my purchasing habits tracked by anyone for any reason and am tired of using plastic for all the above reasons and more. I'm telling you: YOUR fears are way over-blown; you've drunk the Kool-Aid that credit card companies have been pushing on you, making you believe that cash is unsafe. I'm telling you they're wrong, and relying on plastic only will eventually bite you in the ass, one way or another.
Hah, people think I'm paranoid, but then there's someone like you, who is apparently shaking in their boots the entire time you're out in public, because people are watching you? LOL. You have NO expectation of privacy if you're walking around in public, and that's been a fact for as long as humans have had any sort of settled civilization. On the contrary, you walk around in public hiding your face and acting like you're avoiding being seen? That turns you into a lightning rod for police attention; people will BELIEVE you're up to no good even if you're not. You become a recluse, never leave your house? People come to think you're insane and/or are up to something criminal. Your entire point is pointless.
Try this experiment if you dare: Create a random-sized file full of random 8-bit numbers. Rename it to "TEST.COM" and try to run it. Do this many times. Eventually it'll do something that completely fries your computer, or at least does something Bad. That's what I'm afraid of, encoding miscellaneous things like movies into DNA strands.
Give them time. We've been warned for decades now that the full-on Police State is coming, and now I'm starting to think that's what's going to happen. Then all the terrorists in the world will throw a big party, because they will have won.
Apropos of nothing, I see why Humans can never be immortal: After you put up with a hundred years of the continual BULLSHIT that your own species perpetrates on itself, you just don't want to see any more and WISH to die.
What the actual fuck is wrong with these gods-be-damned politicians that they don't understand the simple FACT that if you put a gods-be-damned
'backdoor' into ANY encryption algorithm, that your DESTROY it's ability to keep sensitive data out of the hands of the very people you're trying to 'protect' against!? Does the entire gods-be-damned WORLD have lead in it's drinking water? THIS is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say "People are getting DUMBER". Don't these politicians have techical advisors who are (hopefully!) competent and intelligent, telling them precisely what I said above (and a million times already)?
I guess if you have no concern whatsoever for your privacy, don't mind credit card companies and others knowing what you buy, where, and when, then that's what you do. I like my privacy and like even more depriving nosy people from knowing my business. I'll accept the minimal risk of 'getting mugged', LOL.
Can only speak for myself but I like my privacy and cash gives me that, can't track purchasing habits on me if I pay cash. Also no worries about compromised POS terminals or systems. It's worth the minimal risk so far as I'm concerned.
I prefer to not use plastic at all if I can because I like my privacy and don't need to be giving away my spending habits. Cash does that nicely. I'll gladly accept the minimal risk of having up to $100 in my wallet.
If I was going to purchase a vehicle, I wouldn't ever pay in cash anyway, it'd be a cashier's check or a certified check from my bank. I may carry $100 or less with me on any given day, but not thousands, that's just asking for trouble.
Remember: So-called, inaccurately named 'AI' cannot actually 'think'; it's just mimicking us -- or at least some of us. It doesn't have a 'bias' of any kind, because that implies congnition, which is a quality it cannot posess. If your 'deep learning machine' or 'algorithm' is spitting out racist/sexist/ageist data at you, blame humans, not the machine. It's only doing what it was programmed to do, it has no 'free will', it has no 'opinions'.
What if the 'regulation' is 'NO regulation'? FREE AND OPEN INTERNET. All ISPs provide is connectivity and never mind the bullshit. Would you think that's OK? Or does it have to be the Wild West for ISPs, and let them do whatever they want?
You think you're smarter than everyone else; that's clear enough. I'm saying you're probably not as smart as you think you are.
Dear Customer, We've been detecting suspicious traffic on your IP address. We suspect that your computer might have been hacked. Please have a computer professional scan your computer for malware immediately. If you ignore this notice and we continue to see suspicious traffic on your IP address, we'll have no recourse other than to cancel your service.
Could you please be bothered to READ WHAT SOMEONE WRITES before going off on them!? I SAID: IF IT CAME DOWN TO IT, meaning: IF ALL OTHER AVENUES OF ACTION FAILED. Please don't preach to the choir.
Playing Devils Advocate for a moment: If I were ISPs and everyone did as you say, doing an end-run around my 'tiered walled garden', my response would be to ban all 'unauthorized' encrypted traffic, and threaten disconnection to anyone who violated the ToS that states that. I'd also ban use of Tor on the same grounds, since that's what most people would go to, to try to circumvent my ToS.
If you believe that the Internet is something totally optional, just a luxury, then your assertion that we don't need 'more government' in this case might be correct.
But even I think that the Internet is now too thoroughly integrated into everything to call it a 'luxury' anymore, not much more so than electricity, water service, and sewer service.
If the Internet is NOT a luxury, then ISPs should not be allowed to fuck us over as if it WERE a luxury. Otherwise it starts approaching the jackassery of Mylan and their gouging people for Epi Pens.
I'm serious when I say that if it came right down to it, I'd dump the Internet, and I'm fully cognizant of how much it would suck to do so. But if it came down to that, it would suck less to dump the Internet than it would to be fucked over by ISPs. If you can't get the government to step in and regulate bad behavior by private companies, then that may be the only avenue left to you to protest being fucked over.
Impromptu poll:
How many of you would be willing to abandon the Internet entirely, if it came down to that being the only form of protest against this bullshit that was left to you?
For my part, it would suck but I'd be willing if that's what it took to get the message across.
Of course I'm holding out hope in two areas: One, that there will always be companies that see profit in doing what's right, attracting customers who won't tolerate being jerked around like the Comcasts and AT&T's of the world jerk you around. Two, that Trump won't be in office for more than 1 term (if even that long, the way things are going) and the next POTUS will, hopefully, repair this and other damage being done to the country.
Of course, actually paying decent wages to most teachers would require school budgets not being devoted to failing sports programs.
No, it's all going to administrators, most of which have no teaching credentials and have never set foot in a classroom since they were students. Kick their asses out and give that money to decent teachers.
Good luck trying to tell people they can't make more babies. Remember you're talking about one item on a very, very short list of hardwired insticts that all living things have. Trying to institute population control in humans is the stuff that wars are started over. No one would abide by it, especially when you have religious types that insist on their wives being perpetually pregnant, even if they can't afford to take care of the litter of kids they already have.
If this doesn't turn out to be junk science, here's what I think will happen: as things get more and more desperate, humans will do more and more desperate things to survive, as a race, regardless of how pointless it increasingly becomes obvious it is. This will accelerate the destruction of the Earths biosphere. By the time humans can do nothing more to try to survive, the planet will have sustained so much damage and runaway greenhouse effect that even long after humans are dead and gone as a species, the Earth won't recover. In a million years it'll look like Venus.
I'm not even going to worry about it, much. I'll be dead in less than 50 years, things likely won't be too desperate by then, and quite frankly there's nothing I, as an individual, can do about it. If there's any chance at all of reversing the trend, it'll defiinitely have to be a top-down solution; those of us here at the bottom can't do enough to make any sort of difference, other than maybe start civil wars over the subject to force our governments to change -- and I don't even see enough popular support to even get people to complain, let alone be willing to fight over it. Not yet, anyway. The common citizen is 'concerned' on an intellectual level, passingly at least, but not enough. They'll have to be in panic mode before any real drastic changes are acceptable, and it'll probably be way too late by then.
...there will be an encrypted version of the internet available on another level.
Rest assured of it.
..and if they ban or otherwise succeed in destroying encyption, there will always be someone who creates unsullied encryption to power it. Viva la revolución! You can't stop the signal!
..and so on. Coffee is on a long list of things that almost literally every week they flip-flop on whether it's good for you or bad for you.
You want my advice? Ignore all of it and just do what you like. The list of things that will eventually kill you is even longer. Be as healthy as you can without paying attention to all the hype, and enjoy life while you can.
Nor smartphones, personal music players, handheld game consoles, and so on.
What we need in schools are talented teachers.
Also, as a sidebar: This is one area where so-called 'AI' will never do; humans need to teach young humans, ideally giving personalized attention where needed, to help them reach their intellectual potential.
Someoine manages to map out how human brains are conscious, cognizant, reasoning, and so on, so we can build TRUE 'AI'? Then that might change. The current level of not-as-smart-as-a-dog? Never.
The problem is when the media and the general public conflate 'machine learning' and the other things that are the more technically correct terms for what they're creating right now, with walking, talking, thinking, reasoning, self-aware, fully 'conscious' androids, like something from an Isaac Asimov novel, which is what's going on now. I'm fully convinced that there are is a sizable group of people out there that really believe that their so-called 'self driving car' is going to have full-on conversations with them as it drives them places. Nothing could be further from the truth. We currently have no idea how 'consciousness' or 'self-awareness' works therefore we can't write code for it. What we do have isn't even as smart as a dog.
Okay.:-) We aren't 'agreeing to disagree', then, we're 'agreeing that we're both right, for different reasons, and agreeing with one another on that basis'. I'm perfectly happy with that outcome.;-) I haven't set up my home theatre receiver again since I moved, but I keep thinking about it because even watching OTA televison is so much better with 5.1 surround sound than it is with the built-in stereo speakers.
Slashdot Mirror
Friend, I'm no Millennial, I'm Gen-Y, and long before debit cards, and long before anyone gave me a credit card, I used cash. I'm back to it because there are too many data breaches and POS systems being compromised (a couple of which *I* used, and had to get a new debit card). I carry less than $100 at a time. I don't go to high-risk areas usually, and if I do no one bothers me because I don't look or act like a victim and don't do stupid risky things. I don't like having my purchasing habits tracked by anyone for any reason and am tired of using plastic for all the above reasons and more. I'm telling you: YOUR fears are way over-blown; you've drunk the Kool-Aid that credit card companies have been pushing on you, making you believe that cash is unsafe. I'm telling you they're wrong, and relying on plastic only will eventually bite you in the ass, one way or another.
Hah, people think I'm paranoid, but then there's someone like you, who is apparently shaking in their boots the entire time you're out in public, because people are watching you? LOL. You have NO expectation of privacy if you're walking around in public, and that's been a fact for as long as humans have had any sort of settled civilization. On the contrary, you walk around in public hiding your face and acting like you're avoiding being seen? That turns you into a lightning rod for police attention; people will BELIEVE you're up to no good even if you're not. You become a recluse, never leave your house? People come to think you're insane and/or are up to something criminal. Your entire point is pointless.
Try this experiment if you dare: Create a random-sized file full of random 8-bit numbers. Rename it to "TEST.COM" and try to run it. Do this many times. Eventually it'll do something that completely fries your computer, or at least does something Bad. That's what I'm afraid of, encoding miscellaneous things like movies into DNA strands.
Just don't encode any zombie movies into DNA. Just in case.
Give them time. We've been warned for decades now that the full-on Police State is coming, and now I'm starting to think that's what's going to happen. Then all the terrorists in the world will throw a big party, because they will have won.
Apropos of nothing, I see why Humans can never be immortal: After you put up with a hundred years of the continual BULLSHIT that your own species perpetrates on itself, you just don't want to see any more and WISH to die.
What the actual fuck is wrong with these gods-be-damned politicians that they don't understand the simple FACT that if you put a gods-be-damned 'backdoor' into ANY encryption algorithm, that your DESTROY it's ability to keep sensitive data out of the hands of the very people you're trying to 'protect' against!? Does the entire gods-be-damned WORLD have lead in it's drinking water? THIS is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say "People are getting DUMBER". Don't these politicians have techical advisors who are (hopefully!) competent and intelligent, telling them precisely what I said above (and a million times already)?
I guess if you have no concern whatsoever for your privacy, don't mind credit card companies and others knowing what you buy, where, and when, then that's what you do. I like my privacy and like even more depriving nosy people from knowing my business. I'll accept the minimal risk of 'getting mugged', LOL.
You're preaching to the Choir, brother.
If I'm getting the flu from currency, then I have worse problems, namely my immune system being completely borqued.
Can only speak for myself but I like my privacy and cash gives me that, can't track purchasing habits on me if I pay cash. Also no worries about compromised POS terminals or systems. It's worth the minimal risk so far as I'm concerned.
I prefer to not use plastic at all if I can because I like my privacy and don't need to be giving away my spending habits. Cash does that nicely. I'll gladly accept the minimal risk of having up to $100 in my wallet.
If I was going to purchase a vehicle, I wouldn't ever pay in cash anyway, it'd be a cashier's check or a certified check from my bank. I may carry $100 or less with me on any given day, but not thousands, that's just asking for trouble.
Remember: So-called, inaccurately named 'AI' cannot actually 'think'; it's just mimicking us -- or at least some of us. It doesn't have a 'bias' of any kind, because that implies congnition, which is a quality it cannot posess. If your 'deep learning machine' or 'algorithm' is spitting out racist/sexist/ageist data at you, blame humans, not the machine. It's only doing what it was programmed to do, it has no 'free will', it has no 'opinions'.
You think you're smarter than everyone else; that's clear enough. I'm saying you're probably not as smart as you think you are.
Dear Customer,
We've been detecting suspicious traffic on your IP address. We suspect that your computer might have been hacked. Please have a computer professional scan your computer for malware immediately. If you ignore this notice and we continue to see suspicious traffic on your IP address, we'll have no recourse other than to cancel your service.
Have a Nice Day,
Customer Service
Could you please be bothered to READ WHAT SOMEONE WRITES before going off on them!? I SAID: IF IT CAME DOWN TO IT, meaning: IF ALL OTHER AVENUES OF ACTION FAILED. Please don't preach to the choir.
Playing Devils Advocate for a moment: If I were ISPs and everyone did as you say, doing an end-run around my 'tiered walled garden', my response would be to ban all 'unauthorized' encrypted traffic, and threaten disconnection to anyone who violated the ToS that states that. I'd also ban use of Tor on the same grounds, since that's what most people would go to, to try to circumvent my ToS.
If you believe that the Internet is something totally optional, just a luxury, then your assertion that we don't need 'more government' in this case might be correct.
But even I think that the Internet is now too thoroughly integrated into everything to call it a 'luxury' anymore, not much more so than electricity, water service, and sewer service.
If the Internet is NOT a luxury, then ISPs should not be allowed to fuck us over as if it WERE a luxury. Otherwise it starts approaching the jackassery of Mylan and their gouging people for Epi Pens.
I'm serious when I say that if it came right down to it, I'd dump the Internet, and I'm fully cognizant of how much it would suck to do so. But if it came down to that, it would suck less to dump the Internet than it would to be fucked over by ISPs. If you can't get the government to step in and regulate bad behavior by private companies, then that may be the only avenue left to you to protest being fucked over.
Impromptu poll:
How many of you would be willing to abandon the Internet entirely, if it came down to that being the only form of protest against this bullshit that was left to you?
For my part, it would suck but I'd be willing if that's what it took to get the message across.
Of course I'm holding out hope in two areas: One, that there will always be companies that see profit in doing what's right, attracting customers who won't tolerate being jerked around like the Comcasts and AT&T's of the world jerk you around. Two, that Trump won't be in office for more than 1 term (if even that long, the way things are going) and the next POTUS will, hopefully, repair this and other damage being done to the country.
Of course, actually paying decent wages to most teachers would require school budgets not being devoted to failing sports programs.
No, it's all going to administrators, most of which have no teaching credentials and have never set foot in a classroom since they were students. Kick their asses out and give that money to decent teachers.
Good luck trying to tell people they can't make more babies. Remember you're talking about one item on a very, very short list of hardwired insticts that all living things have. Trying to institute population control in humans is the stuff that wars are started over. No one would abide by it, especially when you have religious types that insist on their wives being perpetually pregnant, even if they can't afford to take care of the litter of kids they already have.
If this doesn't turn out to be junk science, here's what I think will happen: as things get more and more desperate, humans will do more and more desperate things to survive, as a race, regardless of how pointless it increasingly becomes obvious it is. This will accelerate the destruction of the Earths biosphere. By the time humans can do nothing more to try to survive, the planet will have sustained so much damage and runaway greenhouse effect that even long after humans are dead and gone as a species, the Earth won't recover. In a million years it'll look like Venus.
I'm not even going to worry about it, much. I'll be dead in less than 50 years, things likely won't be too desperate by then, and quite frankly there's nothing I, as an individual, can do about it. If there's any chance at all of reversing the trend, it'll defiinitely have to be a top-down solution; those of us here at the bottom can't do enough to make any sort of difference, other than maybe start civil wars over the subject to force our governments to change -- and I don't even see enough popular support to even get people to complain, let alone be willing to fight over it. Not yet, anyway. The common citizen is 'concerned' on an intellectual level, passingly at least, but not enough. They'll have to be in panic mode before any real drastic changes are acceptable, and it'll probably be way too late by then.
...there will be an encrypted version of the internet available on another level.
Rest assured of it.
..and if they ban or otherwise succeed in destroying encyption, there will always be someone who creates unsullied encryption to power it. Viva la revolución! You can't stop the signal!
Know what I think is utterly rediculous? Having to enable gods-be-damned javascript for a site JUST TO READ THE TEXT! This shit has to STOP.
..and so on. Coffee is on a long list of things that almost literally every week they flip-flop on whether it's good for you or bad for you.
You want my advice? Ignore all of it and just do what you like. The list of things that will eventually kill you is even longer. Be as healthy as you can without paying attention to all the hype, and enjoy life while you can.
Nor smartphones, personal music players, handheld game consoles, and so on.
What we need in schools are talented teachers.
Also, as a sidebar: This is one area where so-called 'AI' will never do; humans need to teach young humans, ideally giving personalized attention where needed, to help them reach their intellectual potential.
Someoine manages to map out how human brains are conscious, cognizant, reasoning, and so on, so we can build TRUE 'AI'? Then that might change. The current level of not-as-smart-as-a-dog? Never.
The problem is when the media and the general public conflate 'machine learning' and the other things that are the more technically correct terms for what they're creating right now, with walking, talking, thinking, reasoning, self-aware, fully 'conscious' androids, like something from an Isaac Asimov novel, which is what's going on now. I'm fully convinced that there are is a sizable group of people out there that really believe that their so-called 'self driving car' is going to have full-on conversations with them as it drives them places. Nothing could be further from the truth. We currently have no idea how 'consciousness' or 'self-awareness' works therefore we can't write code for it. What we do have isn't even as smart as a dog.
Okay. :-) We aren't 'agreeing to disagree', then, we're 'agreeing that we're both right, for different reasons, and agreeing with one another on that basis'. I'm perfectly happy with that outcome. ;-) I haven't set up my home theatre receiver again since I moved, but I keep thinking about it because even watching OTA televison is so much better with 5.1 surround sound than it is with the built-in stereo speakers.