The answers could have remained private (as in remained within the Government), but the Japanese-Americans still rounded up.
But that wasn't the only misuse of the census.
-during the civil war, Sherman was aided in his march to the sea by the census, one of the earlier modern examples of total war -the IRS used the census all the way back in 1983 to catch probable tax evaders, said the technology would only get better as computers did (1989 WSJ article) -local governments used census data to see who was likely breaking zoning laws, mostly homes split among 2 families
Saying that the data is protected by law only reaches as far as the next "crisis" where Congress decides to change the law. So, not very far at all.
I'm not sure why Slashdot is so afraid of this. You don't have a right to be anonymous to your employer. You don't have a right to avoid taxes. You just got the right to healthcare, but do you really want that going to illegal immigrants?
Healthcare already goes to illegals, hospitals can't turn a person away, especially if they call 911 and arrive by ambulance. A card won't change that policy.
We already drive around with standardized (yet customizable non-materially) license plates on our cars. You already need proof of government permission and proof somebody's going to pay if you hit something to drive a car.
While traveling is a right, driving is something you choose to exercise. If you don't drive, you don't need a license.
Can you choose not to exist as to avoid this card?
You aren't supposed to be able to get on a plane anonymously...
Last I heard, you could, but you would have to show up early to get the full pat down and they would try to dissaude such behavior. It might have changed in the meantime.
Let's not think of the things we'd be able to get away with with a fake id... and start thinking how we can make sure somebody else can't fake their ID for our mutual protection.
I have a problem with this attituted, "be able to get away with a fake id". You're automatic assumption is that someone with ID is the norm and anybody without ID is suspicious.
I had a friend in Europe who lock himself out of his house once, he was just going to the local store to get a drink. As he was climbing into the window, police stopped him and asked for ID. He explained his situation, they checked the name on the house with his story and other things, and helped him in with the condition that he had to provide ID once inside. He did that, and before they left, they ticketed him a fine for not having ID (at first). I don't want to live like that.
As far as I know, reaffirmed by the Hiibel case, when police ask, you do have to identify yourself but you don't need ID.
And I'm not confident in the government's ability to make a unfakeable ID.
A good % of people's priorities in buying is the price tag. Sure, consumer A may buy a Mac (or other perceived premium brand) in consideration of the service or other desirable feature, but at the same time they'll be willing to settle for the cheapest broom/plates and other commodities like the rest of the population. "Capitalists"/Business_Owners usually cut the costs they can so they can provide stuff as cheap as possible, especially with competition around. As for providing benefits, they like keeping the status quo (or cheaper) unless forced to otherwise.
It's not the business owners that are the sole bad guys. They all didn't move to China at once. Business owner A saw that he could make his product cheaper in China, so he moved his factory there. He made more sales at the expense of business owners B, C, D, and E. Now B, C, D, and E have to reconsider their strategy and possibly make the same move.
If the people, many of whom are also regular working folks, stuck with the products of business owners B, C, D, and E -- they wouldn't be supporting the strategies of A and would retain more jobs here. So placing the blame on the business owners alone is quite wrong.
China was not the first move to a global marketplace. After the war, Germany and Japan were our Chinas. Then Hong Kong and Taiwan and Singapore later on as the first two became too expensive. Now it's China and India. Maybe the African countries will be next.
Unless the government starts putting some type of tariff on Chinese originated goods, though, this will continue until their standard of living or income is roughly comparable to ours or 1/2 of that or some significant fraction.
The problem is that the population of India and China are so huge... compared to Japan, Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong.... that we may well go broke before that happens. Even if we don't, they'll consume such resources, and the world is becoming so small, that there will be another resource race before long.
The older ones should be treated as young adults, but 13, 14 & 15 y/o's need supervision (and some even older). If you want to increase the levels of tardiness & absenteeism, and speed the overall decline of adolescent maturation, you just leave teens to supervise themselves and get themselves out of bed and to school.
Holy crap, I wasn't supervised after 10, until after 6pm.
There is an easy solution - if the student has more than 3 or 5 (or X) amount of absenses that year, make it school policy to call the parent's work number to verify that it is a legit reason. Then said parent can go to the house and whap their kid over the head.
A determined kid can ditch school regardless when it starts. By looking like he going to the bus stop but walking right past it, or after getting dropped off, looking like he's headed to the parking lot or wherever and leaving school grounds, or a million other ways.
What is the reality of the "real world"? There are shifts at all hours of the day. Making everything 9-5, 8-4, etcetera doesn't even make sense traffic wise. And how will work-from-home affect things?
Now, I can agree that many kids will eventually work office jobs, but hardly all of them. And shouldn't the school day be structured in the way best times for them? I mean, it is said schools were once structured around the realities of factory life, things like hearing a period bell and shuffling to the next station and what not - but is the reality for most adults factory work anymore either?
The real-world changes. Often times because of a new generation with different ways of thinking.
Schools should be structured to teach effectively. Not to emulate the current workplace in superficial ways for no real good reason.
That's the thing, I wish for these devices to become simpler, not more capable. If I wanted capabilities, I would rather have a central hub that has the smarts, and keep the TV as a dumb terminal.
WTF is with every device getting smarter and at the same time adding complexity in operating it? Just a few years back, I wondered why the damn TV couldn't be made so it automatically picks up the live input and runs with it, instead I still have to select the input source everytime I play a game or DVD, inevitably flipping through 8 things, 5 of them with no actual inputs in them just because the TV can't even detect connections automagically. And god forbid my parents change the channel on their actual TV instead of on the Set-Top Box one day, they'll be out of TV for however long until I come to visit. It's 2010, where the hell are the standards for this most basic of crap already, making these things simpler and foolproof for the majority of the population?
I was looking at those thin LED TVs at costco, and one was really cool, with no physical buttons but if your hand went near the bottom left, it would pop up onto the screen automatically. But then I clicked something accidentally, and this whole menu came up and all the things it could do (like displaying pictures from a memory card)...
Which is really cool until you realize that a techie can and already does have a computer than can do that and most likely will never use the TV that way, the average person won't figure it out or care, and in the end, for 99 out of 100 people, you're adding complexity to way the machine handles to get features that get used once in a blue moon.
I miss the days where an appliance was an appliance, and making it easier to use was an aspiration rather than add to the feature list that really doesn't get used. I don't need yet another desktop. Please.
Namely that it's marketed to get you good at a language but even if you go through all three levels, you may have attained 15% fluency. I used it only a few hours - does anybody have more experience?
it is unamerican, because it is feudal. it gives control of the intellectual life over to a few. the needs of the few coming before the needs of the many,
Youtube videos are now a need? I think the word "need" is getting greatly watered down...
Remember when that Hulk film from 2003 blamed the internet and texting for ruining opening it's weekend?
Will movie studios now ask for opening weekend injunctions on news sites too from reporting on plot/story and whether it sucks or not, before most theater-goers had a chance to watch it?
I mean, while we limit freedom of press for business concerns, we might as well see what other industries would like.
The project uses a high speed camera... so if a camera from a handy is going to be used, they are going to have to get a lot better.
I assume you could use a regular camera and just get more regular rates of speed, but without breaking the spine which is pretty much the point of the lasers.
Or for speed, take the binding/glue off, and use a Fujistu Scansnap. 50 pages per minute IIRC.
So if you have, say, 1000 open processes, that means your computer is wasting 11 MB of RAM. Such inefficiency!
When even modern processors have single megabytes of L3 cache, and less L2/L1 cache - it will make a difference if you're swapping from that to RAM constantly.
I think chargers where you have to hook it up manually everytime would be laborious. It would be cool if in middle of the engine compartment would drop down some type of charging unit, perhaps working by induction (if that can deliver), everytime you park. There would be some type of identification so that if the car isn't authorized, the mat wouldn't charge it.
Morever, public parking spots could use the identification to bill the appropriate party and everytime you park, you could be recharged. Or something with those benefits.
I don't care what the courts say. I'm not usually a defender of the "let the market sort everything out" mentality; but by the time the court ruled, Linux already had some pretty useable desktops, and OS X was not far behind.
Please. OS X was 2 years after the first finding of fact. And the first real usable Linux desktop probably wasn't until Ubuntu released in 2004. And in the first few releases when you put in a CD, you had to mount it on the command line.
Besides the dying Mac of the mid-late 1990s, what OS could you get from any of the major OEMs other than Windows?
Yeah, there is building your own computer, but for many people, it wasn't much of an option.
The fact was that Microsoft was able to leverage it's position in the market to make other product dominant by default - like IE over Netscape.
And yes, a hardware monopoly would be more disastrous. We were probably much closer to one with intel than we like to imagine years back...
Not only is it a walled garden, but everybody seems to forget that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing...
Microsoft was and is a monopoly. This is apparent in marketshare and the fact that many application are Windows-only without a good Mac/Linux counterpart (for instance, no good comprehensive ebay listing software equivalent to blackthorne).
It has alleviated the past years, seen by how no longer are many websites IE-only, but it's still entrenched in many areas. Basically, Windows had a monopoly on its API.
Apple has no such monopoly. Music Players? You can get many alternatives in the very same windows Walmart showcases iPods. Itunes? Amazon sells tracks, along with many other vendors. Smartphone, droid. Does the iPhone have a monopoly on smartphone apps? I don't think it does but may be wrong.
I don't think Apple is the nicest company around, but they dickish moves have much less impact than Microsoft did in the 1990s.
Apple hasn't and can't patent an idea, which multitouch is. They have a specific implementation implemented, via buying up Fingerworks years ago which was started by two University of Delaware professors.
I have no clue if the implementation touches on prior art, but it's like saying engines have been designed many times before, hence an engine can't be patented. The idea of an engine can't be, but it could be a fundamentally new design that executes things different and perhaps better.
According to most Jews' interpretation of Jewish law, saving lives takes priority over nearly everything else. This is why, for example, taking pig insulin is perfectly okay.
Rome also placed "installations" all around Europe during its height and had to pull back eventually. We do the same thing. We might not have officially expanded territory but we are definitely protecting resources.
On top of that, it's even worse because we are essentially paying for the other countries protection out of our own pockets without them contributing taxes like a territory would have done. They will have lower taxes in their home countries, which enables their workers to have a lower cost of living, making them more competitive than our workers, etcetera. And for all that protection, we don't even have a monopoly on the resources such as oil we are guarding, it goes to our competitors like China (most of our oil comes from Canada).
Slashdot Mirror
But that wasn't the only misuse of the census.
-during the civil war, Sherman was aided in his march to the sea by the census, one of the earlier modern examples of total war
-the IRS used the census all the way back in 1983 to catch probable tax evaders, said the technology would only get better as computers did (1989 WSJ article)
-local governments used census data to see who was likely breaking zoning laws, mostly homes split among 2 families
Saying that the data is protected by law only reaches as far as the next "crisis" where Congress decides to change the law. So, not very far at all.
Which only became a problem with the invention of patents in the first place and keeps getting worse.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm
Having an ID on me at all times. It would be a hassle.
Since I don't drink nor drive nor smoke, I usually have no reason to carry an ID. I'd rather just have a $20 on me than an entire wallet.
Getting fined for that is ridiculous.
Healthcare already goes to illegals, hospitals can't turn a person away, especially if they call 911 and arrive by ambulance. A card won't change that policy.
While traveling is a right, driving is something you choose to exercise. If you don't drive, you don't need a license.
Can you choose not to exist as to avoid this card?
Last I heard, you could, but you would have to show up early to get the full pat down and they would try to dissaude such behavior. It might have changed in the meantime.
I have a problem with this attituted, "be able to get away with a fake id". You're automatic assumption is that someone with ID is the norm and anybody without ID is suspicious.
I had a friend in Europe who lock himself out of his house once, he was just going to the local store to get a drink. As he was climbing into the window, police stopped him and asked for ID. He explained his situation, they checked the name on the house with his story and other things, and helped him in with the condition that he had to provide ID once inside. He did that, and before they left, they ticketed him a fine for not having ID (at first). I don't want to live like that.
As far as I know, reaffirmed by the Hiibel case, when police ask, you do have to identify yourself but you don't need ID.
And I'm not confident in the government's ability to make a unfakeable ID.
A good % of people's priorities in buying is the price tag. Sure, consumer A may buy a Mac (or other perceived premium brand) in consideration of the service or other desirable feature, but at the same time they'll be willing to settle for the cheapest broom/plates and other commodities like the rest of the population. "Capitalists"/Business_Owners usually cut the costs they can so they can provide stuff as cheap as possible, especially with competition around. As for providing benefits, they like keeping the status quo (or cheaper) unless forced to otherwise.
It's not the business owners that are the sole bad guys. They all didn't move to China at once. Business owner A saw that he could make his product cheaper in China, so he moved his factory there. He made more sales at the expense of business owners B, C, D, and E. Now B, C, D, and E have to reconsider their strategy and possibly make the same move.
If the people, many of whom are also regular working folks, stuck with the products of business owners B, C, D, and E -- they wouldn't be supporting the strategies of A and would retain more jobs here. So placing the blame on the business owners alone is quite wrong.
China was not the first move to a global marketplace. After the war, Germany and Japan were our Chinas. Then Hong Kong and Taiwan and Singapore later on as the first two became too expensive. Now it's China and India. Maybe the African countries will be next.
Unless the government starts putting some type of tariff on Chinese originated goods, though, this will continue until their standard of living or income is roughly comparable to ours or 1/2 of that or some significant fraction.
The problem is that the population of India and China are so huge... compared to Japan, Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong.... that we may well go broke before that happens. Even if we don't, they'll consume such resources, and the world is becoming so small, that there will be another resource race before long.
Wouldn't that question apply to the Internet in general?
Holy crap, I wasn't supervised after 10, until after 6pm.
There is an easy solution - if the student has more than 3 or 5 (or X) amount of absenses that year, make it school policy to call the parent's work number to verify that it is a legit reason. Then said parent can go to the house and whap their kid over the head.
A determined kid can ditch school regardless when it starts. By looking like he going to the bus stop but walking right past it, or after getting dropped off, looking like he's headed to the parking lot or wherever and leaving school grounds, or a million other ways.
What is the reality of the "real world"? There are shifts at all hours of the day. Making everything 9-5, 8-4, etcetera doesn't even make sense traffic wise. And how will work-from-home affect things?
Now, I can agree that many kids will eventually work office jobs, but hardly all of them. And shouldn't the school day be structured in the way best times for them? I mean, it is said schools were once structured around the realities of factory life, things like hearing a period bell and shuffling to the next station and what not - but is the reality for most adults factory work anymore either?
The real-world changes. Often times because of a new generation with different ways of thinking.
Schools should be structured to teach effectively. Not to emulate the current workplace in superficial ways for no real good reason.
That's the thing, I wish for these devices to become simpler, not more capable. If I wanted capabilities, I would rather have a central hub that has the smarts, and keep the TV as a dumb terminal.
WTF is with every device getting smarter and at the same time adding complexity in operating it? Just a few years back, I wondered why the damn TV couldn't be made so it automatically picks up the live input and runs with it, instead I still have to select the input source everytime I play a game or DVD, inevitably flipping through 8 things, 5 of them with no actual inputs in them just because the TV can't even detect connections automagically. And god forbid my parents change the channel on their actual TV instead of on the Set-Top Box one day, they'll be out of TV for however long until I come to visit. It's 2010, where the hell are the standards for this most basic of crap already, making these things simpler and foolproof for the majority of the population?
I was looking at those thin LED TVs at costco, and one was really cool, with no physical buttons but if your hand went near the bottom left, it would pop up onto the screen automatically. But then I clicked something accidentally, and this whole menu came up and all the things it could do (like displaying pictures from a memory card)...
Which is really cool until you realize that a techie can and already does have a computer than can do that and most likely will never use the TV that way, the average person won't figure it out or care, and in the end, for 99 out of 100 people, you're adding complexity to way the machine handles to get features that get used once in a blue moon.
I miss the days where an appliance was an appliance, and making it easier to use was an aspiration rather than add to the feature list that really doesn't get used. I don't need yet another desktop. Please.
Namely that it's marketed to get you good at a language but even if you go through all three levels, you may have attained 15% fluency. I used it only a few hours - does anybody have more experience?
Not everyone here is from the same timezone... or even America.
Youtube videos are now a need? I think the word "need" is getting greatly watered down...
Remember when that Hulk film from 2003 blamed the internet and texting for ruining opening it's weekend?
Will movie studios now ask for opening weekend injunctions on news sites too from reporting on plot/story and whether it sucks or not, before most theater-goers had a chance to watch it?
I mean, while we limit freedom of press for business concerns, we might as well see what other industries would like.
Does Apple have a patent on this already?
I assume you could use a regular camera and just get more regular rates of speed, but without breaking the spine which is pretty much the point of the lasers.
Or for speed, take the binding/glue off, and use a Fujistu Scansnap. 50 pages per minute IIRC.
When even modern processors have single megabytes of L3 cache, and less L2/L1 cache - it will make a difference if you're swapping from that to RAM constantly.
I think chargers where you have to hook it up manually everytime would be laborious. It would be cool if in middle of the engine compartment would drop down some type of charging unit, perhaps working by induction (if that can deliver), everytime you park. There would be some type of identification so that if the car isn't authorized, the mat wouldn't charge it.
Morever, public parking spots could use the identification to bill the appropriate party and everytime you park, you could be recharged. Or something with those benefits.
Please. OS X was 2 years after the first finding of fact. And the first real usable Linux desktop probably wasn't until Ubuntu released in 2004. And in the first few releases when you put in a CD, you had to mount it on the command line.
Besides the dying Mac of the mid-late 1990s, what OS could you get from any of the major OEMs other than Windows?
Yeah, there is building your own computer, but for many people, it wasn't much of an option.
The fact was that Microsoft was able to leverage it's position in the market to make other product dominant by default - like IE over Netscape.
And yes, a hardware monopoly would be more disastrous. We were probably much closer to one with intel than we like to imagine years back...
Microsoft was and is a monopoly. This is apparent in marketshare and the fact that many application are Windows-only without a good Mac/Linux counterpart (for instance, no good comprehensive ebay listing software equivalent to blackthorne).
It has alleviated the past years, seen by how no longer are many websites IE-only, but it's still entrenched in many areas. Basically, Windows had a monopoly on its API.
Apple has no such monopoly. Music Players? You can get many alternatives in the very same windows Walmart showcases iPods. Itunes? Amazon sells tracks, along with many other vendors. Smartphone, droid. Does the iPhone have a monopoly on smartphone apps? I don't think it does but may be wrong.
I don't think Apple is the nicest company around, but they dickish moves have much less impact than Microsoft did in the 1990s.
Apple hasn't and can't patent an idea, which multitouch is. They have a specific implementation implemented, via buying up Fingerworks years ago which was started by two University of Delaware professors.
I have no clue if the implementation touches on prior art, but it's like saying engines have been designed many times before, hence an engine can't be patented. The idea of an engine can't be, but it could be a fundamentally new design that executes things different and perhaps better.
And yet, being an organ donor isn't.
It's apparent their time is out, why are the orthodox trying to subvert god's will? Don't they want to go to heaven?
The wii controller can be turnd on its side and used as a gamepad -- so what are you complaint about?
for the developers to really develop for it?
How about the 835 installations located throughout the world?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces#Overseas
What about the billion dollar embassies being built in Baghdad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States_in_Baghdad
Or being built now in London?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States_in_London#Future
Rome also placed "installations" all around Europe during its height and had to pull back eventually. We do the same thing. We might not have officially expanded territory but we are definitely protecting resources.
On top of that, it's even worse because we are essentially paying for the other countries protection out of our own pockets without them contributing taxes like a territory would have done. They will have lower taxes in their home countries, which enables their workers to have a lower cost of living, making them more competitive than our workers, etcetera. And for all that protection, we don't even have a monopoly on the resources such as oil we are guarding, it goes to our competitors like China (most of our oil comes from Canada).
Lots of bad effects for dubious return.