The deciding factor in whether or not something like this will be successful, is how the courts (and supreme court) interpret the freedom of a state to create and practice law widely different than the 49 other states.
Remember that in the constitution, it is stated that no citizen shall be denied equal protection of rights, and importantly, that federal law is supreme when Congress speaks to a question of law (trumping state law). So citizens have an expectation that states will have a bascially consistent set of laws under which they can live. (the supreme court has taken cases which test the ability of states to "pioneer" new kinds of law, and this is contentious I believe)
Therefore, while it might be easy to get some measures passed (ones that no one would conceivably object to), other more controversial measures might be quite difficult. Just look at the medical marijuana thing in CA. The state says that it's ok, but the federal government says it isn't. And what happens? People get arrested for using and distributing it. Federal law has supremacy over local/state law, regardless of how charitable or well-intentioned.
Why is it that when people benefit from a technology, they embrace it and can't love it enough -- then when a government decides to use that technology that they've embraced, but for "evil" purposes (like monitoring traffic, public safety), they're outraged that their actions have measurable consequences?
If you don't like it, turn off your cell phone. Send messages by pigeon, use a cup and string to talk to your friends, be a hermit.
The smart person is the one who manages his/her technology, not the one who gets all bent out of shape and protests whenever a new use if found by someone more clever...
No, my point is not as a red light runner -- what if I don't agree with the police use of cameras, and sit on the street corner shining my laser at it to block *other* people from getting caught? What then??
The police in my area use intersection cameras to record red light runners. these cameras take a snap of you if you go into the intersection during a red light, and you get mailed a ticket later.
Even though the camera is in public view, and you could argue that you have as much right to illuminate it as it has to take a picture of you, I think the police would like to talk to you if you started doing this with a laser, no? What do you think?
geez, sorry if my message came off the wrong way... i'm not like, "fuck the man for shaping our bandwidth and not allowing us to download DVDs". I actually don't use any p2p, and was just curious why things haven't shifted this way...
If people are getting annoyed by these bandwidth shaping restrictions, I'm surprised someone hasn't created a software that employs the http port? How would they restrict traffic then -- Or does this not work for some reason?
The headline being Japan, I figured it would be about a Tivo that would pipe recorded video to your cell phone so you could watch on the subway while going to work! Aren't they supposed to be years ahead of us?:)
How can this possibly be claimed to work with standard drives?
Our dvd players read the optical stream from the disc, and then decode it video out. What is this chip supposed to do -- decrypt on the fly and send a new optical pattern to the read head? I don't think so.
I think someone is trying to push a new kind of dvd drive that requires the discs to have smart cards...
how can you call 80oz a cup? Call it what it is, a pail / small bucket for godsake!
I really get fed up with fast food restaurants trying to get people to buy more and more, by sending the message that they're not buying enough. First they keep asking if we want more, then after giving more, treat it like it's not enough:
"Yes, I'd like the personal pan pizza for dinner." response: "Would you like to make that a MEAL with a drink and fries for only $2 more?" "No, I was under the impression a pizza would constitute a meal for most normal people."
I recall that this technology has also been explored by the military. Last I heard, it was to be used to confuse troops on the other side -- "what's that noise", "where's that coming from?" , and so on.
Why are people so quick to criticize China and so quick to forget America's abuses of "human rights" and "democracy"? This is a country trying to take care of 1 billion people. 1 billion people, can you imagine us doing that? We have 20 guys who decided to crash some planes, and the administration has already curtailed civil rights significantly.
Despite what you may think, the government of the United States is not open to all opinions, and it is hardly a place where rational people are in control. Take a look at this link to see what the requirements are for people entering the US. They're not exactly being welcomed in a freedom-of-speech, tolerating sort of way, now are they?
People seem to love picking on China because it's got the label "Communist" in it's name. I never ceased to be surprised at how much stupidity the word "communism" evokes among supposedly educated, rational people. How about all those countries who are our friends, yet commit far worse human rights abuses? Good for China, that it learned the lesson, "if you make products that people want, they could give a crap about human rights".
If you want to criticize others, I suggest that you first do some cleaning of your own house.
It's interesting how selective some people/companies can be when deciding what things do or don't violate moral principles. Read: "we just decided that we don't want to let you do this, so we're saying it's immoral."
Here's the thing, people -- not everything that is illegal is wrong, and not everything that is wrong is illegal. It's up to rational people to think and make those decisions.
Does that isp use products assembled by poor exploited workers from 3rd world countries? If so, why don't they declare that wrong? Or would that be too inconvenient for them to stand up for? In my opinion, that's a whole lot more immoral than some file sharing which deprives company executives of revenue.
please, no.
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
While this story isn't really new (we already have flying drones, cameras, etc.), I have to say that I am disturbed by it.
If robots are put to use as our new soldiers, what restraint will there be on those people in the military who are already too eager to send our forces overseas to police/invade/kill others? No one will complain that their sons/daughters are paying with their lives, and it will only make it easier to engage in armed conflicts. This is the nightmare of the future, when everyone sends their robots to fight each other.
There will be those who say, "but anything that saves our boys from dying is good." But this is not a sustainable policy -- it's not ethical for us to want to come up with a force that is only to our benefit, so that we can fight without the consequences of fighting. If everyone took that position, we'd be fighting all the time.
The true sustainable solution would be to work on the real causes of conflict in the world, and spend our billions of dollars to try to educate and help peoples so that we're not the target of violence. I tell you, it's much more efficient than trying to put out the fire once it's started. Why can't people see that long term issue, and work on that, rather than just coming up with new/better ways to kill others in the short term?
I'm kind of surprised that we've come so far, people are forgetting why the calendar and time are the way they are.
It's rather incredible to see that the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Arabs -- with their sophisticated understanding of celestial mechanics -- probably score higher than the average American by several orders of magnitude in their knowledge of these things.
Have you ever wondered why time and calendar systems are so heavily based on highly divisible numbers? Some come naturally, like the number of days in a year being 365 (which is 360 + 5 -- ie. 360 divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 24, 60, etc). Sorry, but that number is not going to change any time soon.
The factors of 360 carry into the hours of the day, minutes, seconds, etc. There's a reason that you see them there, and it's not because someone just chose it arbitrarily. Think about 360 degrees in a circle -- think that's just coincidentally the same number as the number of days in a year? Those old guys spent lots of time trying to understand the significance of these figures and making them work in other areas of science, math, etc.
So don't just go and suggest that we'd be better with a metric time system -- have you thought about it's implications? Sort of like the military and the gradian system (as opposed to radians). It's kind of a metric system for angles, but who ever uses it?...
Sure, I remember that film. It's the one where the camera travels across the galaxy in a couple of seconds, and then zooms out to show you the structure of the universe, right?
I would like a camera like that -- one that could move many (thousand) orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light... !
One of my favorites is Newton's experiment which is as simple as a ball on a track. Noting that gravity was apparently a force to be considered, Newton showed that since the ball accelerates if the track is tilted down and deccelerates if tilted up, that objects under no force (track perpendicular to gravity gradient) should neither accelerate or deccelerate.
Also, the related experiment using wires spaces n^2 distances apart, and listening for the resulting equal times between "clicks", which shows that the distance covered is proportional to the square of the time!
And then, how about Newton's extrapolation of the laws of gravity (observed by simple things like falling bodies) to the laws governing celestial bodies under the influence of gravity? This is pretty impressive, I think, to be able to predict successfully something that has no (near) physical equivalent that you were able to test beforehand!
I think that the state of US science education is more than just an embarassment or sad situation -- it is actually an insult to the rest of the world.
For here you have the world's "greatest" and most affluent country, whose citizens have more resources than any other country in the world, and they choose not to open their minds to science and rational thought. Yes, they choose not to. Because it's not as if there isn't access to education. It's because they choose to believe in what is easy and pleasurable instead of what is logical and reasonable.
And all the while other children in poorer countries feel lucky when they receive a pencil just to write with! How can we claim to be a civilized society and squander our resources this way? We should be ashamed.
Sorry for my complete unfamiliarity with overseas phone systems -- Is this a phone that you could take abroad and use then?
How does that work? I've heard that pretty much everyone else in the world uses GSM. Is that enough to use your phone on their networks? How do they bill you?
Slashdot Mirror
If only the link to this story would also stop asking me for 10 cookies to track me...
The deciding factor in whether or not something like this will be successful, is how the courts (and supreme court) interpret the freedom of a state to create and practice law widely different than the 49 other states.
Remember that in the constitution, it is stated that no citizen shall be denied equal protection of rights, and importantly, that federal law is supreme when Congress speaks to a question of law (trumping state law). So citizens have an expectation that states will have a bascially consistent set of laws under which they can live. (the supreme court has taken cases which test the ability of states to "pioneer" new kinds of law, and this is contentious I believe)
Therefore, while it might be easy to get some measures passed (ones that no one would conceivably object to), other more controversial measures might be quite difficult.
Just look at the medical marijuana thing in CA. The state says that it's ok, but the federal government says it isn't. And what happens? People get arrested for using and distributing it. Federal law has supremacy over local/state law, regardless of how charitable or well-intentioned.
Why is it that when people benefit from a technology, they embrace it and can't love it enough -- then when a government decides to use that technology that they've embraced, but for "evil" purposes (like monitoring traffic, public safety), they're outraged that their actions have measurable consequences?
If you don't like it, turn off your cell phone. Send messages by pigeon, use a cup and string to talk to your friends, be a hermit.
The smart person is the one who manages his/her technology, not the one who gets all bent out of shape and protests whenever a new use if found by someone more clever...
No, my point is not as a red light runner -- what if I don't agree with the police use of cameras, and sit on the street corner shining my laser at it to block *other* people from getting caught? What then??
The police in my area use intersection cameras to record red light runners. these cameras take a snap of you if you go into the intersection during a red light, and you get mailed a ticket later.
Even though the camera is in public view, and you could argue that you have as much right to illuminate it as it has to take a picture of you, I think the police would like to talk to you if you started doing this with a laser, no? What do you think?
11 megapixel may be nice, but it sure is a pain to have to buy a new hard drive for each photo album...
geez, sorry if my message came off the wrong way... i'm not like, "fuck the man for shaping our bandwidth and not allowing us to download DVDs". I actually don't use any p2p, and was just curious why things haven't shifted this way...
If people are getting annoyed by these bandwidth shaping restrictions, I'm surprised someone hasn't created a software that employs the http port? How would they restrict traffic then -- Or does this not work for some reason?
What? Just a story about a new Tivo? Old news.
:)
The headline being Japan, I figured it would be about a Tivo that would pipe recorded video to your cell phone so you could watch on the subway while going to work! Aren't they supposed to be years ahead of us?
Apparently, only 4 months. The Most Beautiful Experiments in Physics
How can this possibly be claimed to work with standard drives?
Our dvd players read the optical stream from the disc, and then decode it video out. What is this chip supposed to do -- decrypt on the fly and send a new optical pattern to the read head? I don't think so.
I think someone is trying to push a new kind of dvd drive that requires the discs to have smart cards...
how can you call 80oz a cup? Call it what it is, a pail / small bucket for godsake!
I really get fed up with fast food restaurants trying to get people to buy more and more, by sending the message that they're not buying enough. First they keep asking if we want more, then after giving more, treat it like it's not enough:
"Yes, I'd like the personal pan pizza for dinner."
response: "Would you like to make that a MEAL with a drink and fries for only $2 more?"
"No, I was under the impression a pizza would constitute a meal for most normal people."
I recall that this technology has also been explored by the military. Last I heard, it was to be used to confuse troops on the other side -- "what's that noise", "where's that coming from?" , and so on.
Here's the link I use: link
It's got driver info, compatibility tables, how-tos, etc. And useful message boards.
Sweet! I'm going to make a ton of money selling people a hitech piece of cardboard to slip over the bottom of their tv...
1. fashion piece of cardboard
2. ?
3. profit
Why are people so quick to criticize China and so quick to forget America's abuses of "human rights" and "democracy"? This is a country trying to take care of 1 billion people. 1 billion people, can you imagine us doing that? We have 20 guys who decided to crash some planes, and the administration has already curtailed civil rights significantly.
Despite what you may think, the government of the United States is not open to all opinions, and it is hardly a place where rational people are in control. Take a look at this link to see what the requirements are for people entering the US. They're not exactly being welcomed in a freedom-of-speech, tolerating sort of way, now are they?
People seem to love picking on China because it's got the label "Communist" in it's name. I never ceased to be surprised at how much stupidity the word "communism" evokes among supposedly educated, rational people. How about all those countries who are our friends, yet commit far worse human rights abuses? Good for China, that it learned the lesson, "if you make products that people want, they could give a crap about human rights".
If you want to criticize others, I suggest that you first do some cleaning of your own house.
I figured it would have been Finland (link) cutting the Microsoft handcuffs first! Home of Linus Torvalds, no?
It's interesting how selective some people/companies can be when deciding what things do or don't violate moral principles. Read: "we just decided that we don't want to let you do this, so we're saying it's immoral."
Here's the thing, people -- not everything that is illegal is wrong, and not everything that is wrong is illegal. It's up to rational people to think and make those decisions.
Does that isp use products assembled by poor exploited workers from 3rd world countries? If so, why don't they declare that wrong? Or would that be too inconvenient for them to stand up for? In my opinion, that's a whole lot more immoral than some file sharing which deprives company executives of revenue.
While this story isn't really new (we already have flying drones, cameras, etc.), I have to say that I am disturbed by it.
If robots are put to use as our new soldiers, what restraint will there be on those people in the military who are already too eager to send our forces overseas to police/invade/kill others? No one will complain that their sons/daughters are paying with their lives, and it will only make it easier to engage in armed conflicts. This is the nightmare of the future, when everyone sends their robots to fight each other.
There will be those who say, "but anything that saves our boys from dying is good." But this is not a sustainable policy -- it's not ethical for us to want to come up with a force that is only to our benefit, so that we can fight without the consequences of fighting. If everyone took that position, we'd be fighting all the time.
The true sustainable solution would be to work on the real causes of conflict in the world, and spend our billions of dollars to try to educate and help peoples so that we're not the target of violence. I tell you, it's much more efficient than trying to put out the fire once it's started. Why can't people see that long term issue, and work on that, rather than just coming up with new/better ways to kill others in the short term?
Here's the Honda website on the hybrid civic.
I test drove this model a few weeks back, and it was an absolute pleasure.
The best part? Pulling up to a red light, and sitting there in complete silence, without wasting any gas. Ahh...
I'm kind of surprised that we've come so far, people are forgetting why the calendar and time are the way they are.
...
It's rather incredible to see that the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Arabs -- with their sophisticated understanding of celestial mechanics -- probably score higher than the average American by several orders of magnitude in their knowledge of these things.
Have you ever wondered why time and calendar systems are so heavily based on highly divisible numbers? Some come naturally, like the number of days in a year being 365 (which is 360 + 5 -- ie. 360 divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 24, 60, etc). Sorry, but that number is not going to change any time soon.
The factors of 360 carry into the hours of the day, minutes, seconds, etc. There's a reason that you see them there, and it's not because someone just chose it arbitrarily. Think about 360 degrees in a circle -- think that's just coincidentally the same number as the number of days in a year? Those old guys spent lots of time trying to understand the significance of these figures and making them work in other areas of science, math, etc.
So don't just go and suggest that we'd be better with a metric time system -- have you thought about it's implications? Sort of like the military and the gradian system (as opposed to radians). It's kind of a metric system for angles, but who ever uses it?
Sure, I remember that film. It's the one where the camera travels across the galaxy in a couple of seconds, and then zooms out to show you the structure of the universe, right? I would like a camera like that -- one that could move many (thousand) orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light... !
One of my favorites is Newton's experiment which is as simple as a ball on a track. Noting that gravity was apparently a force to be considered, Newton showed that since the ball accelerates if the track is tilted down and deccelerates if tilted up, that objects under no force (track perpendicular to gravity gradient) should neither accelerate or deccelerate.
Also, the related experiment using wires spaces n^2 distances apart, and listening for the resulting equal times between "clicks", which shows that the distance covered is proportional to the square of the time!
And then, how about Newton's extrapolation of the laws of gravity (observed by simple things like falling bodies) to the laws governing celestial bodies under the influence of gravity? This is pretty impressive, I think, to be able to predict successfully something that has no (near) physical equivalent that you were able to test beforehand!
I think that the state of US science education is more than just an embarassment or sad situation -- it is actually an insult to the rest of the world.
For here you have the world's "greatest" and most affluent country, whose citizens have more resources than any other country in the world, and they choose not to open their minds to science and rational thought. Yes, they choose not to. Because it's not as if there isn't access to education. It's because they choose to believe in what is easy and pleasurable instead of what is logical and reasonable.
And all the while other children in poorer countries feel lucky when they receive a pencil just to write with! How can we claim to be a civilized society and squander our resources this way? We should be ashamed.
Sorry for my complete unfamiliarity with overseas phone systems -- Is this a phone that you could take abroad and use then?
How does that work? I've heard that pretty much everyone else in the world uses GSM. Is that enough to use your phone on their networks? How do they bill you?
Thanks in advance for enlightening me!