Agreed, I thought that was a little of an odd line of reasoning. The talk of the use of cell phones for emergency purposes makes sense. However, to me, it is indeed strange that they wish to make cell phone outages secret, while keeping landline outages public. All emergency services are landline-based. If a landline outage occurs, it's far more of a 'terrorist blueprint' than a cell phone outage.
And CNN reports that the huge multinational conglomerate phone companies are *so concerned* for all our safety that they think Homeland Security is dead on. At least CNN does a good job of ripping that to shreds:
"What 9/11 produced for them is a windfall opportunity to rebake all of their old bogus arguments as to why we shouldn't have any of these (outage reports)," Moir said. "They've morphed all of their comments into post-9/11-ese."
Who needs P2P software when people leave movies
unprotected on their websites all the time? Click on any website on this google search, see what movies they have, and leech em.
But seriously, though - your source should go to your primary recorder, then out to any other inline devices, then to your tv. That way you get the best signal into the recorder.
Once they make a hack to record from this puppy, this *will* be your primary recorder!
I agree. His article in my opinion amounts to a rant. He has no concept of how user friendly things actually are and how much time and effort has been put into making them that way. Keep in mind this guy is almost assuredly using Windows.
His arguments don't even make that much sense, and instead of being logical appeals, are meant really to 'blow off steam' and stir feelings of brotherhood among the other similarly non-technologically inclined folk.
He offers no real insight into UI design at all. He merely bitches and whines about how his chess program was too complicated (Why didn't he buy a simple one then?). He doesn't even make generalizations, all his cases are specific. If you were to ask him, "well, how would you design it?" he would be at a loss for never having thought about how to creatively include all the features everyone wants in a interface that won't confuse people.
Even worse, he'd create a complicated interface, and because he would then understand all the features, he'd call it simple and not understand why people were ranting about it and calling it complicated.
A while ago, after reading a newspaper article about some hideous unsolved crime, I mentioned to a friend that we should start putting radiotags on criminals. Man, he hit the roof! Wow. He used a variety of terms to describe this idea, the one that I remember most was 'Nazi'.
Radio tagging people has its merits and can certainly make the world a 'Better Place'(tm), but it is simply too prone to abuse/misuse.
I think that your friends' reaction to your suggestion was based on the potential 'abuse/misuse' you cite.
I don't think anyone thinks this kind of thing is bad, except for the potential 'misuse' (a concept which varies from person to person, slippery slope, etc).
I'm curious about the security in these RFID security schemes. In reference to using RFID tags for banking/shopping/door keys, what is to prevent someone from making devices which read the RFID device ID, and play them back to the legitimate devices which read them? One time pads?
Pickpocketing sounds much easier when you only have to get within a meter or two of the victim.
Hehe, indeed, the day they force RFID on me is the day I declare the sovereignty of my mountain stronghold.
I believe that the U.S., despite what anyone says, is a country that has freedom and rights so engrained into its psyche and persona, that the populace would just never go for forcible RFID implants. Even though the U.S. can be shown to be not the most "free" country in the world, it's reputation as such among its populace (me included) prevents the populace from voting for measures which so obviously have Orwellian implications. As with most politics, it's about marketability.
As technology advances, one day, perhaps we will have satellites which are able to track every human on earth.
I'm not scared about RFID, I'm scared about what's coming *after* RFID!
Technology, not just the implementation of it, but the *knowledge* of it, doesn't always equal
"progress." I think this is a lesson which we will learn more and more in the coming decades.
You cite the fact that we can filter content by technology, but that's exactly the problem.
Broadcast television can be picked up by any TV out there -- kids could buy TVs from thrift stores for $2.00.
Now, this is annoying and I hate it. In a perfect world, I'd say "broadcast anything" too. But I feel that this is an imperfect world, and I feel that it is necessary to prevent certain things from being broadcast for the public good. I think there's a real tendency to simply cry to 'tear down the wall' without any good engineering plans to prevent the falling bricks from killing people.
I agree that this censorship was hypocritical, but the post I was originally replying to referred to censoring political messages, not sex talk. I made the argument that there are no cases where a political message has been explicitly censored. Just because Howard Stern is singled out doesn't mean that the FCC is trying to change my political opinion.
However, it's an interesting link, this is indeed ridiculous censorship, and the entire Howard Stern thing left a bad taste in my mouth as I expressed in my original article.
Now, if he was violating FCC broadcast regulations, then I am angry that they did not censor Oprah, not that they censored Howard Stern. I am not angry that they censored Stern, I am angry that they selectively enforced the law. I don't care who the target was. Like I said in my original post, legal coersion like this is just wrong. You gotta wonder what was said behind closed doors between the FCC and Clear Channel.
Do you think that there should be publicly broadcast pornography? Or publicly broadcast videos showing how to make bombs?
There is a market for these things, and in your definition of 'free speech' (completely
unregulated), we should see this kind of thing everywhere.
In my opinion, the concept of public broadcasting requires certain regulations. If you don't believe so, then I guess we should be debating that issue, not cutting each other off over definitions of the words "free speech".
What recent censorship acts in general lead you to believe that these things are following a political trend? Howard Stern / Clear Channel being fined? Janet Jackson's boobs? I feel that both of these actions were justified.
I think that many people feel that they haven't "done anything" about this yet because there's no particularly alarming censorship taking place. When they start censoring political messages (like yours) then I'll start "doing something" about it.
Seriously though, Clear Channel was stupid to drop Howard Stern. That smells like a reaction to coersion by the feds to 'do something or else'. That kinda legal extortion is certainly to be frowned upon.. but that isn't a free speech matter. Is Howard still on the air somewhere? Did that selfish bastard allow people to stream him online yet? That was a problem with his Clear Channel contract--No streaming.
Yeah, I don't really understand the issue either. Since when does PBS broadcast 'fuck' or 'shit'? This is a public television broadcast, the laws prohibiting the use of those words in publicly broadcasted TV have been on the books for god knows how long.
As for "Blow Job".. Maybe maybe maybe this is something that PBS didn't want to air because like the article said, they don't have money to fight the FCC. (And if they did, I get the feeling they would censor it anyway).
From what I read, I think maybe you are jumping the gun saying that they are blaming the Bush administration, or Republicans/Conservatives.
If you read the wording of the article it sounds like Richard Dreyfuss, and his Cop Shop friends are trying to get attention, not PBS.
If you haven't had visual hallucinations on LSD, you just werent doing enough to cause them. I used to complain of the same thing, until that one special time(s).
When is the Linux release date? Does it say anywhere whether they are doing a concurrent Linux/Windows release? Will there be a nice free demo, as is ID's habit?
What if we created a foundation which did nothing but apply for patents which were incredibly obvious like this. Two scenarios:
If our patents were declined because of prior art, or because they are too obvious (which they probably would be since we aren't Microsoft), then we would be able to use the fact that this patent was declined to fight any patent awarded in the same field later.
If our patents were accepted, we would just do whatever it takes to make sure that royalties are never ever ever demanded on the 'patented' technology.
Anyone know why we (the OSS/Free Software people) haven't done this already? How much does a patent application cost?
I am also on the 6000/600 package, I think I pay $39 (I got one of those year contract deals). I am crying however, because I am moving soon, and they do not offer DSL service in the area I'm moving to. I hope that this push for faster speeds doesn't hamper their attempts to provide service to more rural areas. In the meantime, I'm going to miss my 500kb/s
Ohhh. Wow. Yeah I actually saw the IRL race at the california speedway last september-ish. First race of that scale I'd ever been to. I had a real good time. Only reason I have no clue what is going on in motorsports is that I have no cable TV at the moment.
Not to mention the stucco wall they are standing in front of, and nicely mowed lawn. How many research facilities have stucco walls? Looks like the back yard of any tract home in Southern California. Probably his parents' place.
Their cars are only designed to turn left? *cough*.. that must be a real problem on all the road courses in the CART/IRL circuits. Long Beach, Mid Ohio, Laguna Seca, Vancouver.. lots of others. I haven't followed indycar stuff in a while, but they certainly turn right.
I'm not understanding why you couldn't solve the "You would not know if the particle had been observed by Earth yet" by having agreed-upon times by each party in the communication line when particles are read, set and when waits take place.
If each party read the particle's state during one time period, then set the particle to a known value during the next time period, then waited 2 time periods for the other end to do the same, and this action was kept up synchronously, couldn't you transmit information?
Obviously I didn't just blow the lid of quantum mechanics. Is there somewhere I can see a better description of what the 'rules' are beyond 'Reading a particle's state affects the state of the particle'?
I have SBC DSL, and I pay for their "Plus" package. I have speeds of 6Mbps down, 600 kbps up. I think it's only $10 more a month. The service is advertised as 3Mbps down, 300 kbps up, but my DSL modem/router is configured for 6000/600. I'm not complaining.
Slashdot Mirror
And CNN reports that the huge multinational conglomerate phone companies are *so concerned* for all our safety that they think Homeland Security is dead on. At least CNN does a good job of ripping that to shreds:
Who needs P2P software when people leave movies unprotected on their websites all the time? Click on any website on this google search, see what movies they have, and leech em.
His arguments don't even make that much sense, and instead of being logical appeals, are meant really to 'blow off steam' and stir feelings of brotherhood among the other similarly non-technologically inclined folk.
He offers no real insight into UI design at all. He merely bitches and whines about how his chess program was too complicated (Why didn't he buy a simple one then?). He doesn't even make generalizations, all his cases are specific. If you were to ask him, "well, how would you design it?" he would be at a loss for never having thought about how to creatively include all the features everyone wants in a interface that won't confuse people.
Even worse, he'd create a complicated interface, and because he would then understand all the features, he'd call it simple and not understand why people were ranting about it and calling it complicated.
I don't think anyone thinks this kind of thing is bad, except for the potential 'misuse' (a concept which varies from person to person, slippery slope, etc).
Pickpocketing sounds much easier when you only have to get within a meter or two of the victim.
I believe that the U.S., despite what anyone says, is a country that has freedom and rights so engrained into its psyche and persona, that the populace would just never go for forcible RFID implants. Even though the U.S. can be shown to be not the most "free" country in the world, it's reputation as such among its populace (me included) prevents the populace from voting for measures which so obviously have Orwellian implications. As with most politics, it's about marketability.
Sounds like a pretty weak bill of rights you got there.
*duck*
I'm not scared about RFID, I'm scared about what's coming *after* RFID!
Technology, not just the implementation of it, but the *knowledge* of it, doesn't always equal "progress." I think this is a lesson which we will learn more and more in the coming decades.
Children cannot work. Children cannot vote. Children are legally bound to their parents.
Voting is a privilege? Work is a privilege? Emancipation is a privilege?
Broadcast television can be picked up by any TV out there -- kids could buy TVs from thrift stores for $2.00.
Now, this is annoying and I hate it. In a perfect world, I'd say "broadcast anything" too. But I feel that this is an imperfect world, and I feel that it is necessary to prevent certain things from being broadcast for the public good. I think there's a real tendency to simply cry to 'tear down the wall' without any good engineering plans to prevent the falling bricks from killing people.
However, it's an interesting link, this is indeed ridiculous censorship, and the entire Howard Stern thing left a bad taste in my mouth as I expressed in my original article.
Now, if he was violating FCC broadcast regulations, then I am angry that they did not censor Oprah, not that they censored Howard Stern. I am not angry that they censored Stern, I am angry that they selectively enforced the law. I don't care who the target was. Like I said in my original post, legal coersion like this is just wrong. You gotta wonder what was said behind closed doors between the FCC and Clear Channel.
Do you think that there should be publicly broadcast pornography? Or publicly broadcast videos showing how to make bombs?
There is a market for these things, and in your definition of 'free speech' (completely unregulated), we should see this kind of thing everywhere.
In my opinion, the concept of public broadcasting requires certain regulations. If you don't believe so, then I guess we should be debating that issue, not cutting each other off over definitions of the words "free speech".
I think that many people feel that they haven't "done anything" about this yet because there's no particularly alarming censorship taking place. When they start censoring political messages (like yours) then I'll start "doing something" about it.
Seriously though, Clear Channel was stupid to drop Howard Stern. That smells like a reaction to coersion by the feds to 'do something or else'. That kinda legal extortion is certainly to be frowned upon.. but that isn't a free speech matter. Is Howard still on the air somewhere? Did that selfish bastard allow people to stream him online yet? That was a problem with his Clear Channel contract--No streaming.
Yeah, I don't really understand the issue either. Since when does PBS broadcast 'fuck' or 'shit'? This is a public television broadcast, the laws prohibiting the use of those words in publicly broadcasted TV have been on the books for god knows how long. As for "Blow Job".. Maybe maybe maybe this is something that PBS didn't want to air because like the article said, they don't have money to fight the FCC. (And if they did, I get the feeling they would censor it anyway). From what I read, I think maybe you are jumping the gun saying that they are blaming the Bush administration, or Republicans/Conservatives. If you read the wording of the article it sounds like Richard Dreyfuss, and his Cop Shop friends are trying to get attention, not PBS.
Nah. The films are funny all the time. You are just wrong, that's all.
Quoting is hilarious, but mostly because it reminds you of the original bit, IMHO.
If you haven't had visual hallucinations on LSD, you just werent doing enough to cause them. I used to complain of the same thing, until that one special time(s).
Wouldn't touch the shit now though.
When is the Linux release date? Does it say anywhere whether they are doing a concurrent Linux/Windows release? Will there be a nice free demo, as is ID's habit?
If our patents were declined because of prior art, or because they are too obvious (which they probably would be since we aren't Microsoft), then we would be able to use the fact that this patent was declined to fight any patent awarded in the same field later.
If our patents were accepted, we would just do whatever it takes to make sure that royalties are never ever ever demanded on the 'patented' technology.
Anyone know why we (the OSS/Free Software people) haven't done this already? How much does a patent application cost?
Sean
I am also on the 6000/600 package, I think I pay $39 (I got one of those year contract deals). I am crying however, because I am moving soon, and they do not offer DSL service in the area I'm moving to. I hope that this push for faster speeds doesn't hamper their attempts to provide service to more rural areas. In the meantime, I'm going to miss my 500kb/s
Ohhh. Wow. Yeah I actually saw the IRL race at the california speedway last september-ish. First race of that scale I'd ever been to. I had a real good time. Only reason I have no clue what is going on in motorsports is that I have no cable TV at the moment.
Sean
Not to mention the stucco wall they are standing in front of, and nicely mowed lawn. How many research facilities have stucco walls? Looks like the back yard of any tract home in Southern California. Probably his parents' place.
Sean
I'm not understanding why you couldn't solve the "You would not know if the particle had been observed by Earth yet" by having agreed-upon times by each party in the communication line when particles are read, set and when waits take place.
Earth: Set, Wait, Wait, Read,
Spaceship: Wait, Read, Set, Wait
If each party read the particle's state during one time period, then set the particle to a known value during the next time period, then waited 2 time periods for the other end to do the same, and this action was kept up synchronously, couldn't you transmit information?
Obviously I didn't just blow the lid of quantum mechanics. Is there somewhere I can see a better description of what the 'rules' are beyond 'Reading a particle's state affects the state of the particle'?
Sean
I have SBC DSL, and I pay for their "Plus" package. I have speeds of 6Mbps down, 600 kbps up. I think it's only $10 more a month. The service is advertised as 3Mbps down, 300 kbps up, but my DSL modem/router is configured for 6000/600. I'm not complaining.
Sean