You'll need a hell of a lot of "other men" to make up for the usual 50%-or-so probability that murderers are usually close friends or relatives of the victim.
Score, -1, misinformative.
According to the 2006 uniform crime reports, of 14990 homicide victims: 6750 relationships were unknown 3465 the victim and killer were acquaintances but not friends or relatives 1905 the victim and killer were strangers 1483 the victim was a parent, child, spouse, or sibling of the killer
450 the victim was the killer's girlfriend
339 the victim was friends with the killer (the UCR does not distinguish close friends)
298 the victim was other family of the killer
150 the victim was the killer's boyfriend
127 the victim and the killer were neighbors
13 the victim was the killer's employee
10 the victim was the killer's employer
IMO, it's not such a good thing it's being done out in the open. When it was secret, the government had to restrict the methods to high-value targets (mobsters, terrorists, political enemies, though perhaps not in that order), and even then often had to confirm (and appear to discover) the information through legal sources before moving against them, to avoid tipping off the other side. With this tracking being done openly, anyone can be a target -- and without a probable cause requirement, for any reason or no reason.
Free software is, as far as the whole of society is concerned, much cheaper than proprietary software, because society only has to pay to solve (the software portion of) a particular problem once.
Careful, a similar argument was once used (and occasionally still is) to claim that communism with its central planning was superior economically because the competition of capitalism involved wasteful duplication of effort. The claim proved a bit flawed when put to the test.
(note: I am not comparing free or open source software to communism. Just the arguments to arguments supporting communism)
This story reminds me of another paradox: the anonymous paradox, where people feel like it is more "anonymous" to order online stuff that they don't want people to know about. But actually, if you really want this hardcore XXX movie but you don't want people to know about it, you should go physically to the adult store and pay cash instead of leaving an electronic paper trail. (Same rule applies to the purchase of Celine Dion's latest album!).
That's only irrational if you're trying to protect privacy absolutely, rather than just keep secrets from certain people. In the case of the adult bookstore, you might run into someone you know (whether inside or outside) who you don't want to know about your porn habit. (or worse, you might run into your grandmother and you probably don't want to know about HER porn habit). But you might reasonably not care if the FBI, NSA, Amazon, and Mastercard all know about it.
As for Ms Dion's album... it makes a lousy clay pigeon, but works well as a stationary target. The idea was to shoot out the middle without hitting the CD, but I think people were missing on purpose. And Bob with the shotgun must have had that choke set JUST right...
Re:Out of sight, Out of Mind
on
The Privacy Paradox
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Rule #1 -- everything you do on the Internet is discoverable.
Not quite everything. For instance, any YouTube videos that I watched at work (assuming from the moment that I regularly clear cookies) could have been watched by anyone else at the same office; no one has the data to distinguish them, as the office router doesn't keep NAT logs and YouTube sees only the one address. Anything done on a sanitized account used on an open wireless access point is going to be extremely hard to tie to you, particularly if you're careful to always use bogus MAC addresses.
But the point in general is true. Once your data is out on the Internet, you can't trust any intermediary and you can rarely trust the other party. Encryption solves the problem of the intermediaries for the content (presuming the other party will use it too), but doesn't prevent traffic analysis. The only way to ensure it what you are doing NOT discoverable is to enter the internet at a point where you cannot be identified, and make sure you give away no identifying information during the session.
What is the point of paying taxes to fund law enforcement if anybody who is the victim of a crime has to mount their own investigation and civil prosecution.
You don't pay taxes to fund law enforcement so they'll investigate people who commit crimes against you. You pay taxes to fund law enforcement so they don't come and take your property away and/or throw you in jail. It's a protection racket, nothing more.
Asteroid mining for gold, silver, or other relatively common materials will always be a ridiculous proposal. Asteroid mining for trace materials which are in ridiculously small supply on Earth, but also extremely valuable, is another story.
There is no dilution of a trademark if it is used to identify the item covered by it. LVHM succeeded in getting eBay sanctioned for allowing users to sell _real_ handbags made by LVHM, not just fakes. From the SUMMARY:
1) eBay illegally allowed legitimately purchased and owned products made by LVHM to be resold on its website by 3rd parties not under the control of LVHM,
The old joke was that if Communists ran the desert, there'd be a sand shortage. Now we know that when environmentalists run it, there's a sun shortage.
it's illegal here to pay the tax on behalf of the buyer.
you MUST COLLECT or face penalties or fines.
So if you charge someone $99.64 and pay the state $5.64 (assuming 6% tax), they're going to come after you for paying the tax on behalf of the buyer? Money is too fungible for that.
Why couldn't one record a GPS signal in a buffer and rebroadcast it nanoseconds latter?
Because you can't even receive the high precision GPS signal without the encryption key. It's not the data which is encrypted, it's the spreading code.
You could build a giant array of solar panels over area covered by grass. With no sunlight, the grass dies, the rains wash away the soil, havoc commences, etc.
So, could one rebroadcast the time signal advanced or retarded a few nanoseconds to confuse the GPS. Is this how the jammers work, or do they just jam the signal with garbage?
Sending a stronger, fake GPS signal is called spoofing, and is one of the reasons the precise GPS signal is encrypted (it's even called A/S for anti-spoof). Jamming just means making the real signal unreceivable.
The USA has many faults, no denying it...but there's no denying the USA has also done (and continues to do) far far more good for far more countries than any other country on the planet in all of history.
Sorry dude, but Fox isn't hiring at the moment. Try again in the fall.
Apparently Stevens needs to learn how to read. Of course the framers wanted to reserve the tools for revolution to the people.
If you think so, read the majority decision. Scalia spends quite a few paragraphs viciously cutting Stevens's arguments to little tiny pieces. Scalia is often that vicious, but usually in dissent.
It's a lot of work to find a job which only requires to show up to work 40 weeks (particularly as I have neither the aptitude for nor interest in teaching). I'm too lazy to do it. But if one just happens to drop into my lap...
I'm lazy (hence posting on slashdot) , but my employer still expects me to show up about 49 weeks a year. Taking a week to get somewhere and a week to get back leaves me a week there, which is a pretty poor vacation.
Re:Back in the day...
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Take a train, take a boat, take some TIME and enjoy it - getting there is supposed to be half the fun.
Whoever said that never traveled through the midwest or the great plains. Or across an ocean.
My time is a severely limited quantity; taking a week for a trip which would take a day (on both ends) by air means a lot less time at my destination. Taking a boat across the Atlantic or Pacific is right out; even when there was still regular passenger service, it took more than a month to cross the Atlantic.
The article is utter nonsense. But it's such a rambling mess it's hard to know where to start picking it apart. Perhaps the best is when he presents as an example of this new "model-free" approach with a program which includes "simulations of the brain and the nervous system". Uh, hello... a simulation IS a model.
Or if you suddenly start eating less, you're body can go "Oh crap, I'm starving" and drop your metabolism to compensate.
It can only compensate so much, and you can reduce food intake below the level it can compensate for. The body isn't a _simple_ machine, but it is a machine, and there are certain constraints it cannot violate.
Slashdot Mirror
Score, -1, misinformative.
According to the 2006 uniform crime reports, of 14990 homicide victims:
6750 relationships were unknown
3465 the victim and killer were acquaintances but not friends or relatives
1905 the victim and killer were strangers
1483 the victim was a parent, child, spouse, or sibling of the killer
450 the victim was the killer's girlfriend
339 the victim was friends with the killer (the UCR does not distinguish close friends)
298 the victim was other family of the killer
150 the victim was the killer's boyfriend
127 the victim and the killer were neighbors
13 the victim was the killer's employee
10 the victim was the killer's employer
IMO, it's not such a good thing it's being done out in the open. When it was secret, the government had to restrict the methods to high-value targets (mobsters, terrorists, political enemies, though perhaps not in that order), and even then often had to confirm (and appear to discover) the information through legal sources before moving against them, to avoid tipping off the other side. With this tracking being done openly, anyone can be a target -- and without a probable cause requirement, for any reason or no reason.
Careful, a similar argument was once used (and occasionally still is) to claim that communism with its central planning was superior economically because the competition of capitalism involved wasteful duplication of effort. The claim proved a bit flawed when put to the test.
(note: I am not comparing free or open source software to communism. Just the arguments to arguments supporting communism)
INTERCAL has nothing on APL. Or even on Stroustroup's parody of C, which people actually think you're supposed to use.
That's only irrational if you're trying to protect privacy absolutely, rather than just keep secrets from certain people. In the case of the adult bookstore, you might run into someone you know (whether inside or outside) who you don't want to know about your porn habit. (or worse, you might run into your grandmother and you probably don't want to know about HER porn habit). But you might reasonably not care if the FBI, NSA, Amazon, and Mastercard all know about it.
As for Ms Dion's album... it makes a lousy clay pigeon, but works well as a stationary target. The idea was to shoot out the middle without hitting the CD, but I think people were missing on purpose. And Bob with the shotgun must have had that choke set JUST right...
Not quite everything. For instance, any YouTube videos that I watched at work (assuming from the moment that I regularly clear cookies) could have been watched by anyone else at the same office; no one has the data to distinguish them, as the office router doesn't keep NAT logs and YouTube sees only the one address. Anything done on a sanitized account used on an open wireless access point is going to be extremely hard to tie to you, particularly if you're careful to always use bogus MAC addresses.
But the point in general is true. Once your data is out on the Internet, you can't trust any intermediary and you can rarely trust the other party. Encryption solves the problem of the intermediaries for the content (presuming the other party will use it too), but doesn't prevent traffic analysis. The only way to ensure it what you are doing NOT discoverable is to enter the internet at a point where you cannot be identified, and make sure you give away no identifying information during the session.
You don't pay taxes to fund law enforcement so they'll investigate people who commit crimes against you. You pay taxes to fund law enforcement so they don't come and take your property away and/or throw you in jail. It's a protection racket, nothing more.
They're still not going to actually _approve_ any of these applications. Instead, they'll just let them pile up while they "study" the issue.
If the Department of the Interior were in control of Saudi Arabia there wouldn't be a drop of oil coming out of it...
Asteroid mining for gold, silver, or other relatively common materials will always be a ridiculous proposal. Asteroid mining for trace materials which are in ridiculously small supply on Earth, but also extremely valuable, is another story.
Preferably with torches and pitchforks in hand.
Yes, use of DDT and other insecticides would be included in public health (as distinct from medicine).
Tropical diseases were once common in the southern US. It wasn't climate change which made them rare; it was public health and medicine.
The old joke was that if Communists ran the desert, there'd be a sand shortage. Now we know that when environmentalists run it, there's a sun shortage.
So if you charge someone $99.64 and pay the state $5.64 (assuming 6% tax), they're going to come after you for paying the tax on behalf of the buyer? Money is too fungible for that.
Because you can't even receive the high precision GPS signal without the encryption key. It's not the data which is encrypted, it's the spreading code.
You haven't seen the desert southwest, have you?
Sending a stronger, fake GPS signal is called spoofing, and is one of the reasons the precise GPS signal is encrypted (it's even called A/S for anti-spoof). Jamming just means making the real signal unreceivable.
Sorry dude, but Fox isn't hiring at the moment. Try again in the fall.
Thanks,
Rupert Murdoch
It's a lot of work to find a job which only requires to show up to work 40 weeks (particularly as I have neither the aptitude for nor interest in teaching). I'm too lazy to do it. But if one just happens to drop into my lap...
I'm lazy (hence posting on slashdot) , but my employer still expects me to show up about 49 weeks a year. Taking a week to get somewhere and a week to get back leaves me a week there, which is a pretty poor vacation.
Whoever said that never traveled through the midwest or the great plains. Or across an ocean.
My time is a severely limited quantity; taking a week for a trip which would take a day (on both ends) by air means a lot less time at my destination. Taking a boat across the Atlantic or Pacific is right out; even when there was still regular passenger service, it took more than a month to cross the Atlantic.
The article is utter nonsense. But it's such a rambling mess it's hard to know where to start picking it apart. Perhaps the best is when he presents as an example of this new "model-free" approach with a program which includes "simulations of the brain and the nervous system". Uh, hello... a simulation IS a model.