offer them at a discount (e.g., 100 dollar coins for $99).
Oh, that'll go over well.
Customer: Here's $99. Please give me $100 in dollar coins. Bank: Here you go, sir. [Customer pockets one coin, pushes the rest back across the counter] Customer: Here's $99. Please give me $100 in dollar coins. etc...
Personally, I keep my money in my pocket, not my wallet. I might get my wallet pick-pocketed, but no one will ever get their hands in my front pants pocket without me noticing.
Q: Are there any plans to remove the one-cent coin (more popularly known as the "penny") from circulation?
A: You may be interested to know that the penny is the most widely used denomination currently in circulation and it remains profitable to make. Significantly, it is Congress that determines the denominations of coins that the Mint must produce and put into circulation. Each penny costs.81 of a cent to make, but the United States Mint collects one cent for it. The profit goes to help fund the operation of the United States Mint and to help pay the public debt. In 2000, this profit added up to about $24 million. As the United States Mint produces the coins that Congress mandates, it does not have the authority to abolish a unit of currency. If directed to do so by legislation enacted by the Congress and signed by the President, the Treasury Department would again study phasing out the penny. Because the demand exists and the Federal Reserve Banks require inventories to meet the demand, the United States Mint is committed to producing the penny.
The point I was trying to make is that two dollar bills have been around for decades, and people are STILL ignorant of them.
And again, simple ignorance about one subject does not equal "fanatical opposition to being educated".
How often do you have 20 singles in your pocket? (And strip clubs don't count.)
Quite often. You see, ATMs give out $20 bills. Take out, say $100 and then use a $20 to pay for $5.99 purchase, and get $14 back, usually as a 10 and 4 ones. Repeat 5 times, and viola- $20 in singles.
Besides I didn't say "$20 in singles", I said "$20 in bills".
Stupid people need to be protected from themselves.
That is most often said by those who a)don't see themselves as stupid, and b)think they'd be the perfect ones to do the "protecting".
I can do it with ease. The 'Sacci' is a different size and weight from a quarter, has a different edge, and I can tell the different feel to the front/back.
Resistance from the vending machine industry (machines would need to be retooled to accept a coin significantly different from the ones currently in use)
I've seen plenty of machines that take dollar coins. The coin acceptor is a swappable unit in all the machines I've seen, meaning changing to accepting dollar coins is trivial- just swap the coin acceptor.
The perception by the great unwashed that coins aren't "real money",
Huh? Coins certainly ARE money. They just aren't worth that much.:-)
lack of education about the new currency (think of the oft-repeated Taco Bell two dollar bill story);
Are you saying that, if you had never seen or heard of a two-dollar bill, you would not have thought it was fake??
this goes hand in hand with Americans' fanatical opposition to being educated.
Ignorance about a rarely used bill does not equal "fanatical opposition to being educated".
The real reason dollar coins are not popular?? No one in America WANTS dollar coins. $20 in bills fits easily and comfortably in your pants pocket. $20 in dollar coins creates a lump in your pocket and weighs you down, swinging and bumping against your leg. Who wants that??
Gummi bears (Brach's Wild N' Fruity variety) were next. I melted them... carefully spooned liquid gummi (avoiding air bubbles) into my ceramic molds to produce yet another batch of fake fingertips.
The Defcon Authenticator's capacitive sensor, clearly recognizing that the object was a former Ursus gummius, failed to log in my fake print. The on-screen image of a fingertip did register a portion of the print, faintly--but that was as far as I got. I moved on to the U.are.U reader. Bingo! After I enrolled my thumb, the optical reader accepted the gummi bear imitation as my Windows log-in. It didn't get every gummi fingerprint; and the ones it did read, it didn't see clearly every time. But the gummi print worked, over and over again. I also managed to enroll a lime-green gummi as a user, and then used my thumb to log on. Gummi and thumb were interchangeable for log-on purposes, though my thumb wasn't nearly as delicious.
And that's just some Schmoe with a handful of candy. Imagine someone who actually puts a few hundred dollars of preparation into it. Thin latex molds so his natural body heat 'shows' thru. Special compounds that react electrically like skin, etc.
Good fingerprint readers have heartbeat and heat sensors... So that doesn't work.
ANd heat sensors don't work if it's winter and you forgot your gloves 'cuz you're in a hurry to get some medicine for your kid. So, the ATM denies you the cash, the Debit terminal at the pharmacy denies you, too.
Great system. I give it one winter before banks/etc have enough complaints to remove the 'aliveness sensors'.
Oh, yeah. The thief will just take the severed finger into the grocery store and use it right in front of the clerk. That'll work real well.
Like the cleark is going to watch you. Every time I use my debit card at a store, the clerk is never watching that closely.
Seriously, though, there are biometric devices that confirm whether the finger is the correct temperature.
"I just ran down to the drugstore to buy something, and forgot my gloves. The scanner rejected my fingers because they were "too cold"! That's outrageous! I demand to see the manager!! I want the number to your corporate offices..." etc,etc.
The end result may be the same, but the delivery method isn't.,/i>
Where is the line drawn?
1) I tape a tv show, and then make a digital recording of the tape.
2) I tape a tv show, send the tape to a friend, and he makes the digital recording, and sends it and the tape back to me.
3) I tape the show, but ask my friend (who also tapes it) to make a digital copy of HIS tape (which is theoreticaly identical to MY tape), and send me the digital recording.
4) #3, but I ask a stranger to do it.
5) #4, but I don't ask, I just take a copy of the digital recording that the stranger is handing out.
All of these scenarios result inthe same exact thing: I have a tape of a tv show, and a digital recording of said show. Why does it matter if the digital copy was made from my actual tape, or a (theoretically identical) different tape? Why does it matter if _I_ made the copy, or my friend did, or a stranger did? I am still allowed by Fair Use to 'time shift', and by extention, 'format shift' TV shows. WHat does it matter if I am the one that makes the digital copy or not?
I just haven't heard of anyone's rights being limited. I still see war protests happening. I still see people speaking freely about whatever political views they have.... I still see people getting due process
The march was then diverted onto 16th Street..... At the intersection of 16th and Irving Place, I saw what the police had done. They had cleverly parked all of their Vespas across the street so that nobody could get by. Of course, a rampaging mob would have had no trouble at all tossing those little Italian scooters to the ground and continuing on their way. But this was a slow moving, orderly procession. They simply turned around and started to head back towards the park. That's when the realization of what had just happened hit. The road had been blocked on both ends. Everyone was now trapped.
I think trapping people and not letting them go is a Violation of their Right to Peacably Assemble.
I heard a cop nearby saying that press could leave. I decided to go for it. "Back in," he growled before I could even show him any press ID. "You're not press," he said conclusively. I wondered what gave it away - the recorder, the video camera, maybe the hair? I had all kinds of witty retorts in mind but I chose instead to go to someone who seemed a little less pissed off with the world. I said I was with the press and he asked who I worked for. I told him: WBAI and Indymedia, both of which I had identification from. "Do you have an NYPD press card?" he asked. "No," I said, incredulously. NYPD press cards are only given to corporate media types, full time reporters who have beats and retirement plans. You also have to have a proven need to get behind police lines, which I didn't have any interest in doing. And what I was covering here wasn't even behind a police line. It was in the middle of a police circle. "Sorry," he said. I was apparently out of luck because I wasn't a full time, paid reporter at a big media outlet. Since I was a part time volunteer with a non commercial station who could never qualify for that magic NYPD card, I was now going to be treated as a criminal.
Denying the Freedom of the Press.
As my tape ran out in the remaining half hour or so of sitting on the street, I was able to capture... the ignored pleas of a woman whose handcuffs were on way too tight. You could see that it was cutting off her circulation but the pleasant cops didn't let that detract them from their job.
Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
As for "Due Process", check out the part where the cops hold them for over 33 hours before releasing them, a clear violation of the law, which says they can only hold you for 24 hours.
I'll leave off with a quote from the article:
I'm not one of these people who believe we live in a fascist regime. I think that's an insult to the many millions who have suffered under true oppression and horrors that we can only imagine. That said, the technology and mindset that I was witnessing being implemented all around us would be such an asset to any society where freedom was the enemy.
....You would now be doing 15 years for 'subversive language,' assuming you wouldn't simply be beaten to death in some back alley.
Not at all. You see, by letting people have a certain amount of Freedom, you accomplish 2 things:
1) You provide a needed 'safety valve', which allows the people who see their freedoms being taken away a chance to vent (which calms them down), identifying them so they can be watched.
2) You have a perfect rufutation to their claims. "Look, if we were oppressing you and taking away your freedoms, you wouldn't be allowed to tell anyone. But you are free to speak, so there's no oppression here. Move on." Sometimes, you can get other, blinder, citizens to use that argument againt the protester on their own.
The broadcast may be free to WATCH and RECIEVE, but not to REDISTRIBUTE. By downloading the show, you have circumvented the prescribed method of distribution allowed by the copyright holder. That is breaking the law.
Now, if you were to record the show onto your harddrive YOURSELF and then watch it, you have made a backup of information for personal use. IANAL, but I believe this was dealt with when VCR's came about.
There is (theoretically) no technological difference between:
-My recording a tv program
-Someone else recording it, and me downloading it.
The result of either case is the same- I end up with a copy of the tv show on my hard drive. So, why is one legal, and the other not, if the resuilts are the same??
it is theft of bandwidth. You are using a finite amount of the bandwidth on that connection
Well, considering home users are usually not guaranteed a certain amount of bandwidth (companies sell up to a certain speed), what's the difference to the homeowner between: 1) Someone using 5% of their bandwidth, or 2) a bad cable/wire splice causing a 5% loss of bandwidth? And since the phone/cable company can't be brought up on charges for the 5% loss, why should the stranger be for using 5%??
Your neighbor just bought a cordless phone setup. You go out and buy a replacement handset and set it to the same frequency as his. Are you then morally or legally allowed to make calls on his phone? I say no.
And I say "Yes". As long as you do it from your property (or public property). You see, their phone system is broadcasting radio waves off their property, onto yours. I think you have the right to listen to the EM radiation they are broadcasting at you. This is naturally so, otherwise you'd need written permission to tune your radio to a radio station and listen to them.
Besides, just because the AP says it's OK to connect does NOT mean that the AP's OWNER says it is.
The only evidence you have of the owners intent is how the system is set up. If it only accepts certain MACs, or is encrypted, then it can be assumed they only want certain systems (the ones with the allowed MACs, or the WEP key) to connect. In the absence of any security measures, it must be assumed that the owner is NOT limiting the use of the WAP.
...the SSID broadcast told the wardriver was that the AP itself was open. It didn't tell him if the AP's owner knowingly and explicitly intended for the AP to be open
So, you go around leaving your front door open unknowingly and implicitly?
BTW- do you know (for SURE!) that every web site you connect to was put there "knowingly and explicitly" for YOU to connect?? Or do you just assume that, since the site is there, and you are not blocked or asked for a password, that it's okay?
If the court case proceeds, and she can't show that astrology works - given some pretty damn big incentive - then perhaps less people will be inclined to believe in astrology.
Hasn't worked with James Randi and his Challenge.
Then again, he's only been offering a Million dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
offer them at a discount (e.g., 100 dollar coins for $99).
Oh, that'll go over well.
Customer: Here's $99. Please give me $100 in dollar coins.
Bank: Here you go, sir.
[Customer pockets one coin, pushes the rest back across the counter]
Customer: Here's $99. Please give me $100 in dollar coins.
etc...
I just pulled out my wallet and checked.
Personally, I keep my money in my pocket, not my wallet. I might get my wallet pick-pocketed, but no one will ever get their hands in my front pants pocket without me noticing.
From ustreas.gov:
.81 of a cent to make, but the United States Mint collects one cent for it. The profit goes to help fund the operation of the United States Mint and to help pay the public debt. In 2000, this profit added up to about $24 million. As the United States Mint produces the coins that Congress mandates, it does not have the authority to abolish a unit of currency. If directed to do so by legislation enacted by the Congress and signed by the President, the Treasury Department would again study phasing out the penny. Because the demand exists and the Federal Reserve Banks require inventories to meet the demand, the United States Mint is committed to producing the penny.
Q: Are there any plans to remove the one-cent coin (more popularly known as the "penny") from circulation?
A: You may be interested to know that the penny is the most widely used denomination currently in circulation and it remains profitable to make. Significantly, it is Congress that determines the denominations of coins that the Mint must produce and put into circulation. Each penny costs
The point I was trying to make is that two dollar bills have been around for decades, and people are STILL ignorant of them.
And again, simple ignorance about one subject does not equal "fanatical opposition to being educated".
How often do you have 20 singles in your pocket? (And strip clubs don't count.)
Quite often. You see, ATMs give out $20 bills. Take out, say $100 and then use a $20 to pay for $5.99 purchase, and get $14 back, usually as a 10 and 4 ones. Repeat 5 times, and viola- $20 in singles.
Besides I didn't say "$20 in singles", I said "$20 in bills".
Stupid people need to be protected from themselves.
That is most often said by those who a)don't see themselves as stupid, and b)think they'd be the perfect ones to do the "protecting".
They are usually wrong on both counts.
I can do it with ease. The 'Sacci' is a different size and weight from a quarter, has a different edge, and I can tell the different feel to the front/back.
If you can't, too bad.
Poor design of the coins themselves (too easily mistaken for a quarter, etc).
_ coin/index.cfm?flash=yes&action=golden_dollar_spec s
:-)
Um, the new dollar coin, the Sacagawea, cannot be mistaken for a quarter at all:
http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/golden_dollar
Resistance from the vending machine industry (machines would need to be retooled to accept a coin significantly different from the ones currently in use)
I've seen plenty of machines that take dollar coins. The coin acceptor is a swappable unit in all the machines I've seen, meaning changing to accepting dollar coins is trivial- just swap the coin acceptor.
The perception by the great unwashed that coins aren't "real money",
Huh? Coins certainly ARE money. They just aren't worth that much.
lack of education about the new currency (think of the oft-repeated Taco Bell two dollar bill story);
Are you saying that, if you had never seen or heard of a two-dollar bill, you would not have thought it was fake??
this goes hand in hand with Americans' fanatical opposition to being educated.
Ignorance about a rarely used bill does not equal "fanatical opposition to being educated".
The real reason dollar coins are not popular?? No one in America WANTS dollar coins. $20 in bills fits easily and comfortably in your pants pocket. $20 in dollar coins creates a lump in your pocket and weighs you down, swinging and bumping against your leg. Who wants that??
Now you might be able to overwhelm the DSP's with enough gunshots, but as another poster said,
How about a string of those little firecrackers? Set a slow fuse, circle around your target, shoot as the noise starts.
Bester! Is that You?!?
fingerprint biometric companies are working hard at creating methods of inhibiting entry with anything but live human skin:
7 3,pg,5,00.asp
... carefully spooned liquid gummi (avoiding air bubbles) into my ceramic molds to produce yet another batch of fake fingertips.
IS that why an average Joe was able to fool one fingerprint scanner (out of two he tried) with Gummi Bears??
http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,1165
Gummi bears (Brach's Wild N' Fruity variety) were next. I melted them
The Defcon Authenticator's capacitive sensor, clearly recognizing that the object was a former Ursus gummius, failed to log in my fake print. The on-screen image of a fingertip did register a portion of the print, faintly--but that was as far as I got. I moved on to the U.are.U reader. Bingo! After I enrolled my thumb, the optical reader accepted the gummi bear imitation as my Windows log-in. It didn't get every gummi fingerprint; and the ones it did read, it didn't see clearly every time. But the gummi print worked, over and over again. I also managed to enroll a lime-green gummi as a user, and then used my thumb to log on. Gummi and thumb were interchangeable for log-on purposes, though my thumb wasn't nearly as delicious.
And that's just some Schmoe with a handful of candy. Imagine someone who actually puts a few hundred dollars of preparation into it. Thin latex molds so his natural body heat 'shows' thru. Special compounds that react electrically like skin, etc.
Good fingerprint readers have heartbeat and heat sensors... So that doesn't work.
ANd heat sensors don't work if it's winter and you forgot your gloves 'cuz you're in a hurry to get some medicine for your kid. So, the ATM denies you the cash, the Debit terminal at the pharmacy denies you, too.
Great system. I give it one winter before banks/etc have enough complaints to remove the 'aliveness sensors'.
Oh, yeah. The thief will just take the severed finger into the grocery store and use it right in front of the clerk. That'll work real well.
Like the cleark is going to watch you. Every time I use my debit card at a store, the clerk is never watching that closely.
Seriously, though, there are biometric devices that confirm whether the finger is the correct temperature.
"I just ran down to the drugstore to buy something, and forgot my gloves. The scanner rejected my fingers because they were "too cold"! That's outrageous! I demand to see the manager!! I want the number to your corporate offices..." etc,etc.
The end result may be the same, but the delivery method isn't.,/i>
Where is the line drawn?
1) I tape a tv show, and then make a digital recording of the tape.
2) I tape a tv show, send the tape to a friend, and he makes the digital recording, and sends it and the tape back to me.
3) I tape the show, but ask my friend (who also tapes it) to make a digital copy of HIS tape (which is theoreticaly identical to MY tape), and send me the digital recording.
4) #3, but I ask a stranger to do it.
5) #4, but I don't ask, I just take a copy of the digital recording that the stranger is handing out.
All of these scenarios result inthe same exact thing: I have a tape of a tv show, and a digital recording of said show. Why does it matter if the digital copy was made from my actual tape, or a (theoretically identical) different tape? Why does it matter if _I_ made the copy, or my friend did, or a stranger did? I am still allowed by Fair Use to 'time shift', and by extention, 'format shift' TV shows. WHat does it matter if I am the one that makes the digital copy or not?
Why run?
Where would the USA be now, if the Founding Fathers decided to just leave the 13 colonies instead of makign a stand?
I just haven't heard of anyone's rights being limited. I still see war protests happening. I still see people speaking freely about whatever political views they have. ... I still see people getting due process
... the ignored pleas of a woman whose handcuffs were on way too tight. You could see that it was cutting off her circulation but the pleasant cops didn't let that detract them from their job.
I think I got all of those covered right here:
http://www.2600.com/rnc2004/
Read the whole thing, and you'll see:
The march was then diverted onto 16th Street.....
At the intersection of 16th and Irving Place, I saw what the police had done. They had cleverly parked all of their Vespas across the street so that nobody could get by. Of course, a rampaging mob would have had no trouble at all tossing those little Italian scooters to the ground and continuing on their way. But this was a slow moving, orderly procession. They simply turned around and started to head back towards the park. That's when the realization of what had just happened hit. The road had been blocked on both ends. Everyone was now trapped.
I think trapping people and not letting them go is a Violation of their Right to Peacably Assemble.
I heard a cop nearby saying that press could leave. I decided to go for it. "Back in," he growled before I could even show him any press ID. "You're not press," he said conclusively. I wondered what gave it away - the recorder, the video camera, maybe the hair? I had all kinds of witty retorts in mind but I chose instead to go to someone who seemed a little less pissed off with the world. I said I was with the press and he asked who I worked for. I told him: WBAI and Indymedia, both of which I had identification from. "Do you have an NYPD press card?" he asked. "No," I said, incredulously. NYPD press cards are only given to corporate media types, full time reporters who have beats and retirement plans. You also have to have a proven need to get behind police lines, which I didn't have any interest in doing. And what I was covering here wasn't even behind a police line. It was in the middle of a police circle. "Sorry," he said. I was apparently out of luck because I wasn't a full time, paid reporter at a big media outlet. Since I was a part time volunteer with a non commercial station who could never qualify for that magic NYPD card, I was now going to be treated as a criminal.
Denying the Freedom of the Press.
As my tape ran out in the remaining half hour or so of sitting on the street, I was able to capture
Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
As for "Due Process", check out the part where the cops hold them for over 33 hours before releasing them, a clear violation of the law, which says they can only hold you for 24 hours.
I'll leave off with a quote from the article:
I'm not one of these people who believe we live in a fascist regime. I think that's an insult to the many millions who have suffered under true oppression and horrors that we can only imagine. That said, the technology and mindset that I was witnessing being implemented all around us would be such an asset to any society where freedom was the enemy.
....You would now be doing 15 years for 'subversive language,' assuming you wouldn't simply be beaten to death in some back alley.
Not at all. You see, by letting people have a certain amount of Freedom, you accomplish 2 things:
1) You provide a needed 'safety valve', which allows the people who see their freedoms being taken away a chance to vent (which calms them down), identifying them so they can be watched.
2) You have a perfect rufutation to their claims. "Look, if we were oppressing you and taking away your freedoms, you wouldn't be allowed to tell anyone. But you are free to speak, so there's no oppression here. Move on." Sometimes, you can get other, blinder, citizens to use that argument againt the protester on their own.
Don't worry, the plan is working perfectly.
The broadcast may be free to WATCH and RECIEVE, but not to REDISTRIBUTE. By downloading the show, you have circumvented the prescribed method of distribution allowed by the copyright holder. That is breaking the law.
Now, if you were to record the show onto your harddrive YOURSELF and then watch it, you have made a backup of information for personal use. IANAL, but I believe this was dealt with when VCR's came about.
There is (theoretically) no technological difference between:
-My recording a tv program
-Someone else recording it, and me downloading it.
The result of either case is the same- I end up with a copy of the tv show on my hard drive. So, why is one legal, and the other not, if the resuilts are the same??
Three:
o Outer end
o Geo-Stationary station
o Earth
The looters have no where to store their loot...
You DO realize that the looting was/is mostly taking place in the parts of the city that were evacuated, but are not underwater, right?
Roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the city is still dry. The people who live in those dry homes have plenty of space to store their loot.
The whole point of targeted advertising is not NOT piss you off with ads about things you have no interest in.
Where do I sign up? I'm not interested in ads for anything.
Death Certificate.
it is theft of bandwidth. You are using a finite amount of the bandwidth on that connection
Well, considering home users are usually not guaranteed a certain amount of bandwidth (companies sell up to a certain speed), what's the difference to the homeowner between: 1) Someone using 5% of their bandwidth, or 2) a bad cable/wire splice causing a 5% loss of bandwidth? And since the phone/cable company can't be brought up on charges for the 5% loss, why should the stranger be for using 5%??
Your neighbor just bought a cordless phone setup. You go out and buy a replacement handset and set it to the same frequency as his. Are you then morally or legally allowed to make calls on his phone? I say no.
And I say "Yes". As long as you do it from your property (or public property). You see, their phone system is broadcasting radio waves off their property, onto yours. I think you have the right to listen to the EM radiation they are broadcasting at you. This is naturally so, otherwise you'd need written permission to tune your radio to a radio station and listen to them.
Besides, just because the AP says it's OK to connect does NOT mean that the AP's OWNER says it is.
The only evidence you have of the owners intent is how the system is set up. If it only accepts certain MACs, or is encrypted, then it can be assumed they only want certain systems (the ones with the allowed MACs, or the WEP key) to connect. In the absence of any security measures, it must be assumed that the owner is NOT limiting the use of the WAP.
...the SSID broadcast told the wardriver was that the AP itself was open. It didn't tell him if the AP's owner knowingly and explicitly intended for the AP to be open
So, you go around leaving your front door open unknowingly and implicitly?
BTW- do you know (for SURE!) that every web site you connect to was put there "knowingly and explicitly" for YOU to connect?? Or do you just assume that, since the site is there, and you are not blocked or asked for a password, that it's okay?
If the court case proceeds, and she can't show that astrology works - given some pretty damn big incentive - then perhaps less people will be inclined to believe in astrology.
Hasn't worked with James Randi and his Challenge.
Then again, he's only been offering a Million dollars.