If they were scanning you passively, I'd say, ya, it's bordering on 1984. But it's passive.
Students have to touch a kiosk screen and then, it can only read your tag at less than 20 inches. So, this makes it just another form of swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard. Having been a teacher, I can tell you this would be wonderful. Automating the roll taking process would save lots of time each class period dealing with absent, late, and excused kids.
Now, in my opinion, they are going a bit overboard with tracking lots of unnecessary information, such as when they boarded the bus. And even with this being just another form of card swiping, all this electronic tracking may still ruffle privacy activists feathers. But one things for sure, it's definitely not 1984.
Re:Misleading story (both wired and slashdot)
on
Reading, Writing, RFID
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Deep down near the end of the article, you see this:
"Intuitek President David M. Straitiff said his company built privacy protections into the school's RFID system, including limiting the reading range of the kiosks to less than 20 inches and making students touch the kiosk screen instead of passively being scanned by it. He pooh-poohed the notion that the system would be abused.
(It's) the same as swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard, both of which are commonplace occurrences," Straitiff said."
Kinda takes the steam out of the story. Since whoever wrote this story left out or hid gigantic facts, I'm going to continue to call many privacy activists paranoid.
It seems those who are influential enough in government to fund quicker security at airports are the same ones who'd receive these ID cards.
So, you let all the influential people slide by quickly, and they'll never realize there's a real problem. I say let the influential people deal with the wait the same way we do, and then hopefully they'll do something about it.
Oh yeah, and why is the push pin marker on the wrong side of the street 80% of the time?
I'm betting they look if the house number is even or odd, and try to guess what side its on from that value.
I dunno about other states, but many Utah addresses follow a strict numbering guide. For example, in my county, any odd numbered houses are always south or west of the road. So the mapping services place the house on the correct side almost 100% of the time.
I'm betting you probably live in an area that doesn't follow such strict odd/even house number guidelines.
Slashdot is supposed to be a news site. Not an unprofessional editorial ranting page.
Generally, most of the Slashdot editors keep their political biases in check when submitting stories. CmdrTaco and Timothy are both liberal, but do pretty well in keeping the stories more moderate than they'd personally like. (It must be pretty hard rejecting biased stories they want people to see to keep things fair.)
Since nobody here reads the damn articles anyway, I think it was quite useful of him to do so. I didn't know that state laws existed mandating the Pledge in classrooms, and I'm glad he pointed that out.
His comments belong in the comments section, not on the front page. There you can agree with it, mod it up if you'd like, or whatever. If you and michael still disagree, then Slashdot should change their motto to "Editorials for liberals, stuff to rant about."
Why can't michael leave the comments for the comment section? I guess michael's opinions are more important than the readers, right?
Exactly. Whether its modding down whole threads or posting editorial liberal stories...michael has frequently abuses his powers because to satisy his annoying activist needs.
Acidic Diarrhea, you've become the only person to ever move from my foes list straight to my friends list.
And you didn't read the note re the article being changed after posting to refer to port 135 instead of port 80. It kind of takes some of the credibility value out of the Slashdot poster.
You idiot. Check the times, my post was made before the re was put in there. To add to this, when I discovered the error, I also emailed michael about it. After 10 minutes of my email, the Re: note appeared.
Maybe you should think things through before painting someone as an idiot.
It kind of takes some of the shock value out of the Slashdot story. It's a good idea to block outisde communication over port 135. Inside your network is another story...
Another anti-Bush, anti-government article...approved my michael. Why am I not surprised?
Not that I'm saying this story is without merit, I'm just saying michael's a pathetic editor because he shoves honesty aside by frequently approving opinionated and exaggerated stories. It seems michael could care less about protraying the truth when he's got an activist bone to pick.
In this case article writer decided to spin story by saying "policy of intimidation against scientists by the Bush administration". Never did the article mention Bush...why throw him in there? He also selects one overexaggerated quote from the article, while ignoring the nobel prize winner's main focus of just protesting his perceived loss of academic freedoms.
The article was spinned well and michael loved it. Gotta love the Slashdot science section. Science and truth takes a backseat for heresay and opinion.
I like your l33t name there m0rhp3us0. It's almost as mature as the thoughts in your post.
I'm amazed at how much ignorance you crammed into one post:
I dont live in the US nor frankly care - Funny how often you'll hear Palestianians or Iranians talk about how they want to live in America for its opportunities, even though they hate its politics... democratic theocracy - Where the hell did this come from, because Bush is religious? America is pretty anal retentive on seperating church and state. Lets compare this to other countries...say...Italy with their full support of Catholicism. The sooner the US falls - You think the world would be better without the US? Wow! America only helped shape global world politics 3 times last century, WWI, WWII, and the cold war. If America's influence wasn't there, we all know it would have been worse. Amazingly, even the French strongly agree (accoring from recent polls at least) that the world is a better place because of Americas influence than without it. americans are unwilling to pay minor costs associated with social services but are willing to pay huge costs associated with running the worlds largest prison population.
Check out this flamingly liberal site http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm.
It's devoted to spinning numbers to show how little America pays on social services. Social services get anywhere from 34% to 55% of the budget, while military gets 17.5-47%, and prison costs, well, its far too small to even merit it's own category. These numbers kind of fly in the face of your statement, doesn't it?
In short, it's may be exciting to be a 14 year old anti-US activist...but m0rph3us0, you have to grow up a little.
Sheesh... a few of flashes of insight in there, but it's mostly bitter, sarcastic, angst-ridden despair... quite depressing read, actually. Notice how he blames it on everyone else, as if some puppetmaster controls his destiny? (evil corporations, GW Bush, supervisors and managers).
I agree, and I can see why he's unemployed. Why would any company want a to hire high maintenance anti-capitalist whiner like that guy? His views kind of clash with want businesses need. He blames capitalism from idealogical viewpoints, and yet wants no-nosense business to glady hire him with a healthy salary.
I know unemployment must suck like hell, but if he really wanted a job, the first step is to become a potentially useful employee. If he becomes qualified, and still can't get a job, then he has grounds to blame society.
1) Is it possible to upgrade your existing Thunderbird 0.1 settings into 0.2? I know Thunderbird is not an installer, its just an unzip and go application. So I worry about upgrading.
2) Does Thunderbird bounce mail? Unfortunately, I have no clue what bouncing mail means, although it has something to do with stopping spam with SpamAssassin. My brother says he'll only switch from Eudora as soon as it can bounce email.
And of course...someone has to mod my last post overrated. They could have modded it
offtopic, but they wanted to avoid the Meta-Moderation, so they played it safe.
Hahaha, you ultra liberals crack me up. Your group always supports free speech, except when it's a conservative viewpoint. Then its either ripped apart (as in the anonymous Iranian internet plan), or a conservative comment (then it's modded down -1, without caring if the comment matches the flamebait or overrated description).
Ya, I get a kick out of Slashdot's mainly left leaning users. The main parent in this thread rips on America, says this freedom of speech plan is horrible, and yet, gets an immediate +5 Insightful. I comment on the irony, and I get a -1 Flamebait.
I find responses from these kind of stories hilarious. Normally Slashdot is generally in agreement that everyone needs freedom of speech and privacy. But the moment politics get involved, people are split into left and right camps...all sorts of odd, hypocritical things happen.
I won't be impressed until they can make a healthy human male yearn for a nice healthy vegan dinner.
That would be *very* impressive, seeing how a vegan lifestyle is more of a liberal political statement than a sincere attempt at a healthy balanced lifestyle.
I mean, try and imagine a Carls Jr. commercial for vegans. It begins with some unshaved buff construction worker ordering the new Six Dollar Salad. He salivates as he picks up the 3 lb. vegetable delight complete with peas, broccoli, cauliflower, and various Chinese herbs. After taking a huge bite, he wipes away lots of 0% fat ranch dressing from his chin. The commerical ends with Carls Jr.'s new slogan "If it came from an animal, it doesn't belong in your face."
michael, save your liberal/flamebait articles for http://yro.slashdot.org. You and science mix like oil and water.
I'm on a 56K V.90 connection (connected at 46.6), and I downloaded it at a steady 12.0 KB/s! How in the world is that possible? This.mpg file is basically already compressed right? The previous max I've seen was somewhere around 7 or so. Any clues why I'm suddenly getting such a high rate?
I guarantee you that if a power outage happened anywhere OTHER than New York City, the mass media outlets would barely be covering this event at ALL.
A few years back, the Western US's power grid went down. If I remember correctly, the blackout covered 11 states, 2 Canadian provinces, and parts of Mexico. It got news coverage, top story on NBC news I think, but nothing like how they're covering it now. However, that situation was a bit different, because in most areas, the power was only off for a few minutes, while others had their power off for hours.
But I'm sure that if the major news network HQ's were located out west, it would have been breaking news major headline stuff. "We're reporting live from outside our window, where you can see...it's...umm...daylight...but the power is OUT! There is potential for problems!"
Slashdot Mirror
If they were scanning you passively, I'd say, ya, it's bordering on 1984. But it's passive.
Students have to touch a kiosk screen and then, it can only read your tag at less than 20 inches. So, this makes it just another form of swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard. Having been a teacher, I can tell you this would be wonderful. Automating the roll taking process would save lots of time each class period dealing with absent, late, and excused kids.
Now, in my opinion, they are going a bit overboard with tracking lots of unnecessary information, such as when they boarded the bus. And even with this being just another form of card swiping, all this electronic tracking may still ruffle privacy activists feathers. But one things for sure, it's definitely not 1984.
Deep down near the end of the article, you see this:
"Intuitek President David M. Straitiff said his company built privacy protections into the school's RFID system, including limiting the reading range of the kiosks to less than 20 inches and making students touch the kiosk screen instead of passively being scanned by it. He pooh-poohed the notion that the system would be abused.
(It's) the same as swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard, both of which are commonplace occurrences," Straitiff said."
Kinda takes the steam out of the story. Since whoever wrote this story left out or hid gigantic facts, I'm going to continue to call many privacy activists paranoid.
Heh, if you stole their identity, it may end up like Minority Report. You scan your card, a voice says "Thank you Mr. Kenji Yamamoto."
I guess then you'll just have wave to the guard and act all cool like nothing was wrong.
It seems those who are influential enough in government to fund quicker security at airports are the same ones who'd receive these ID cards.
So, you let all the influential people slide by quickly, and they'll never realize there's a real problem. I say let the influential people deal with the wait the same way we do, and then hopefully they'll do something about it.
Timothy caught the article's error too
this-trumps-capitalism-how-exactly dept.
Oh yeah, and why is the push pin marker on the wrong side of the street 80% of the time?
I'm betting they look if the house number is even or odd, and try to guess what side its on from that value.
I dunno about other states, but many Utah addresses follow a strict numbering guide. For example, in my county, any odd numbered houses are always south or west of the road. So the mapping services place the house on the correct side almost 100% of the time.
I'm betting you probably live in an area that doesn't follow such strict odd/even house number guidelines.
Gates: "I can't think of desktop applications where you would need more than 4 gigabytes of physical memory."
Heh, so, 20 years from now, will we laugh at that like we do with the old quote "640K ought to be enough for anybody"?
Here's hoping to yes =)
heh, forgot to close the link tag =)
Slashdot is supposed to be a news site. Not an unprofessional editorial ranting page.
Generally, most of the Slashdot editors keep their political biases in check when submitting stories. CmdrTaco and Timothy are both liberal, but do pretty well in keeping the stories more moderate than they'd personally like. (It must be pretty hard rejecting biased stories they want people to see to keep things fair.)
Michael on the other hand, frequently abuses his status...any long term slashdotter knows that. He has no problem He posts biased story after baised story. He claims to be a free thinking liberal, out to check any story that "is grossly misleading, almost propagandistic." Yet ironically, he stoops to the same misleading, propagandistic means to fight against what he thinks is wrong.
Since nobody here reads the damn articles anyway, I think it was quite useful of him to do so. I didn't know that state laws existed mandating the Pledge in classrooms, and I'm glad he pointed that out.
His comments belong in the comments section, not on the front page. There you can agree with it, mod it up if you'd like, or whatever. If you and michael still disagree, then Slashdot should change their motto to "Editorials for liberals, stuff to rant about."
Why can't michael leave the comments for the comment section? I guess michael's opinions are more important than the readers, right?
Exactly. Whether its modding down whole threads or posting editorial liberal stories...michael has frequently abuses his powers because to satisy his annoying activist needs.
Acidic Diarrhea, you've become the only person to ever move from my foes list straight to my friends list.
Gee michael.
I guess there's nothing left to comment on, since the story was more of a long editorial rant than a newspiece.
And you didn't read the note re the article being changed after posting to refer to port 135 instead of port 80. It kind of takes some of the credibility value out of the Slashdot poster.
You idiot. Check the times, my post was made before the re was put in there. To add to this, when I discovered the error, I also emailed michael about it. After 10 minutes of my email, the Re: note appeared.
Maybe you should think things through before painting someone as an idiot.
I saw the same thing.
It kind of takes some of the shock value out of the Slashdot story. It's a good idea to block outisde communication over port 135. Inside your network is another story...
Another anti-Bush, anti-government article...approved my michael. Why am I not surprised?
Not that I'm saying this story is without merit, I'm just saying michael's a pathetic editor because he shoves honesty aside by frequently approving opinionated and exaggerated stories. It seems michael could care less about protraying the truth when he's got an activist bone to pick.
In this case article writer decided to spin story by saying "policy of intimidation against scientists by the Bush administration". Never did the article mention Bush...why throw him in there? He also selects one overexaggerated quote from the article, while ignoring the nobel prize winner's main focus of just protesting his perceived loss of academic freedoms.
The article was spinned well and michael loved it. Gotta love the Slashdot science section. Science and truth takes a backseat for heresay and opinion.
I like your l33t name there m0rhp3us0. It's almost as mature as the thoughts in your post.
I'm amazed at how much ignorance you crammed into one post:
I dont live in the US nor frankly care - Funny how often you'll hear Palestianians or Iranians talk about how they want to live in America for its opportunities, even though they hate its politics...
democratic theocracy - Where the hell did this come from, because Bush is religious? America is pretty anal retentive on seperating church and state. Lets compare this to other countries...say...Italy with their full support of Catholicism.
The sooner the US falls - You think the world would be better without the US? Wow! America only helped shape global world politics 3 times last century, WWI, WWII, and the cold war. If America's influence wasn't there, we all know it would have been worse. Amazingly, even the French strongly agree (accoring from recent polls at least) that the world is a better place because of Americas influence than without it.
americans are unwilling to pay minor costs associated with social services but are willing to pay huge costs associated with running the worlds largest prison population. Check out this flamingly liberal site http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm. It's devoted to spinning numbers to show how little America pays on social services. Social services get anywhere from 34% to 55% of the budget, while military gets 17.5-47%, and prison costs, well, its far too small to even merit it's own category. These numbers kind of fly in the face of your statement, doesn't it?
In short, it's may be exciting to be a 14 year old anti-US activist...but m0rph3us0, you have to grow up a little.
Sheesh... a few of flashes of insight in there, but it's mostly bitter, sarcastic, angst-ridden despair... quite depressing read, actually. Notice how he blames it on everyone else, as if some puppetmaster controls his destiny? (evil corporations, GW Bush, supervisors and managers).
I agree, and I can see why he's unemployed. Why would any company want a to hire high maintenance anti-capitalist whiner like that guy? His views kind of clash with want businesses need. He blames capitalism from idealogical viewpoints, and yet wants no-nosense business to glady hire him with a healthy salary.
I know unemployment must suck like hell, but if he really wanted a job, the first step is to become a potentially useful employee. If he becomes qualified, and still can't get a job, then he has grounds to blame society.
1) Is it possible to upgrade your existing Thunderbird 0.1 settings into 0.2? I know Thunderbird is not an installer, its just an unzip and go application. So I worry about upgrading.
2) Does Thunderbird bounce mail? Unfortunately, I have no clue what bouncing mail means, although it has something to do with stopping spam with SpamAssassin. My brother says he'll only switch from Eudora as soon as it can bounce email.
from the need-a-brane-for-my-master dept.
Heh, ya michael, I do think you need one.
And of course...someone has to mod my last post overrated. They could have modded it offtopic, but they wanted to avoid the Meta-Moderation, so they played it safe.
Hahaha, you ultra liberals crack me up. Your group always supports free speech, except when it's a conservative viewpoint. Then its either ripped apart (as in the anonymous Iranian internet plan), or a conservative comment (then it's modded down -1, without caring if the comment matches the flamebait or overrated description).
Ya, I get a kick out of Slashdot's mainly left leaning users. The main parent in this thread rips on America, says this freedom of speech plan is horrible, and yet, gets an immediate +5 Insightful. I comment on the irony, and I get a -1 Flamebait.
I find responses from these kind of stories hilarious. Normally Slashdot is generally in agreement that everyone needs freedom of speech and privacy. But the moment politics get involved, people are split into left and right camps...all sorts of odd, hypocritical things happen.
Only on Slashdot would someone immediately denounce a plan to give more freedom to oppressed Iranian citizens.
Is it just me, or does SCO's motto "SCO Grows Your Business" sound too much like spam emails?
I won't be impressed until they can make a healthy human male yearn for a nice healthy vegan dinner.
That would be *very* impressive, seeing how a vegan lifestyle is more of a liberal political statement than a sincere attempt at a healthy balanced lifestyle.
I mean, try and imagine a Carls Jr. commercial for vegans. It begins with some unshaved buff construction worker ordering the new Six Dollar Salad. He salivates as he picks up the 3 lb. vegetable delight complete with peas, broccoli, cauliflower, and various Chinese herbs. After taking a huge bite, he wipes away lots of 0% fat ranch dressing from his chin. The commerical ends with Carls Jr.'s new slogan "If it came from an animal, it doesn't belong in your face."
michael, save your liberal/flamebait articles for http://yro.slashdot.org. You and science mix like oil and water.
Whoa!
.mpg file is basically already compressed right? The previous max I've seen was somewhere around 7 or so. Any clues why I'm suddenly getting such a high rate?
I'm on a 56K V.90 connection (connected at 46.6), and I downloaded it at a steady 12.0 KB/s! How in the world is that possible? This
I guarantee you that if a power outage happened anywhere OTHER than New York City, the mass media outlets would barely be covering this event at ALL.
A few years back, the Western US's power grid went down. If I remember correctly, the blackout covered 11 states, 2 Canadian provinces, and parts of Mexico. It got news coverage, top story on NBC news I think, but nothing like how they're covering it now. However, that situation was a bit different, because in most areas, the power was only off for a few minutes, while others had their power off for hours.
But I'm sure that if the major news network HQ's were located out west, it would have been breaking news major headline stuff. "We're reporting live from outside our window, where you can see...it's...umm...daylight...but the power is OUT! There is potential for problems!"