From TFA, it looks like some people in the Pentagon really thought they could develop mind control RF beams. For those who didn't read it, it is about generating pulses of electromagnetic waves directionally (hence the abuse of the word "lasers") in order to make some part of the skull vibrate (to produce sound) or even to trigger neurons in some parts of the brain, mainly to cause spasms and unconsciousness.
I for one am afraid of the military (and police) potential for these, but I am clearly interested to see applications in the civilian market ! If one could trigger very localized parts of the brain, this could give us the feedback loop that is missing in most of the brain-to-computer interfaces made today.
With regular equipment, you cannot spot a satellite in visual spectrum during the day. The atmosphere is too bright for that. It is very hard to spot a satellite in earth's shadow cone as it is not naturally bright, you would have to spot star occlusions. In the case of geo-synchronous satellites, you don't even have that option. The only easy way to spot a satellite is when you are located in the night part of earth while the satellite is still lighted by the sun. That's a short frame of time on a specific location on earth.
If you could make a satellite completely non-reflective (i.e. completely black or at least with no spherical parts) it would be impossible to spot using amateur equipment. You would have to track transit occlusions, that requires more heavy stuff, from the little I know about astronomy. Oh, and I Am Not An Astronomer, of course.
Think of the people that LOSE money from patents. Think of all the companies that have been patent-blackmailed. Think about their lawyers spending months trying to get over some silly litigations. It really looks like a brake to innovation and business. I surely hope some part of the government will finally see it this way.
Saying that all lawyers support patent laws is a bit like saying that all programmers support buggy software because it gives them more work.
That the chance of a star to have planets is one in a million. Doesn't seem impossible, does it?
The survey of the closest stars around our solar system seem to contradict this. I don't have exact numbers, but too many planets were discovered within a 50 light-years radius to conclude that only one star in a million has a planet.
Of course the Earth could be located in a statistical anomaly within the Milky Way, but if you posit a uniform repartition of planets, there has to be more.
I am just nit-picking however. I fully agree with the rest of your post.
Come on, Vista is quite recent, give some time to spyware/adware/popup developers to adapt !
Re:Copyright or corruption as his platform?
on
Lessig For Congress?
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· Score: 1
I think I remember reading that he turned toward anti-corruption because he saw it as a sort of root problem that spawned the crazy set of copyright law America is trying to force the rest of the world to accept (resist, EU parliament! resist !). So I would say that as a congressman he would try to address the biggest problem he perceives he can tackle.
The Shuttle has always been considered a civilian program. In fact my question was more rhetorical, I had an answer in mind : it is not military secrets but commercial secrets from Boeing that were stolen. I was merely pointing to the fact that the NASA didn't require its contractors to publish its specs, transforming public research funding into corporate private R&D funding. I think this is abnormal.
I think you would be afraid to have a diner with ten judges, in private.
Re:The difference between IT and other professions
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
I'll have to fall back on my unfair excuse : I am not a native speaker:-)
I'm eager to learn anyway, can you point out my mistake ?
Re:The difference between IT and other professions
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
Is it? Employer drug tests are legal in many states. The employer can probably get all the info they want from the insurance company anyway, like which employees cost a lot. I have reserves about this, but why not, taking drugs is a voluntary and illegal act. Having terminal cancer is something you not necessarily want to share with your employer. And I doubt that it is legal for a doctor to transmit this information without explicit consent. I am almost sure it is forbidden here in France.
Now, if upper management is browsing gay websites and ordering viagra online, that's something you might want to file away for future use during the next round of IT outsourcing. Just in case:) Well, that is another example. In this case it is blackmail so I believe in most country it is criminal. It has however been recognized in some countries that corporate internet access can be used for personal uses. Companies are free to forbid the practice and take measures to prevent this but they should not breach the privacy of users while doing this.
Ethics in IT is a gray zone : some things are allowed, other are forbidden, other are mandatory and differs from country to country. Retention of IP logs for instance is mandatory in some cases and some countries but requires authorization in some (EU) countries. A guideline would really help.
The difference between IT and other professions
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 5, Interesting
One of the key difference between IT-related ethics and other fields like medicine or law is that there is no official body emitting guidelines and no rights and duties recognized by the law.
When a doctor is asked by an employer to give him medical informations about his employees, he can point out that this would be illegal.
When a sysadmin is asked by his company to monitor users' web access, there are a lot of privacy issues that are raised but never addressed in the law. I mean, it can be part of the sysadmin job to prevent company computers from accessing porn sites but knowing which users access gay websites and which are ordering viagra online is something that should never be forwarded to upper management. He cannont prevent knowing this, but there should be something akin to medical secret regarding these data.
Most people here want the world to become a better place. And we talk about Microsoft instead of GM because this is a computer geek forum, not a car geek forum. It may be standard business practice that MS is using, it is bad anyway. It makes a perfect sense for them to do that in order to maximize their profit, it makes a perfect sense for users to oppose it.
Create a sharia-compliant version of the wikipedia. Along with a kosher version of it. And a Vatican 0, Vatican 1.0, Vatican 2.0 version, a King James version, a baptist version.
The content's licence allows such a thing. After all, Wikipedia is one giant pool of knowledge but has a scientific, secular, americano-centrist bias (only my feeling, it is debatable but it has, to some people, some bias) so it is unavoidable that some other pools spawn from the main one.
Can they copy cellphone contacts ? That is a private, and sometimes valuable, information !
Also, can they copy data I have the copyright on ?
I am a programmer, I sometimes carry source code with me, supposing I didn't encrypt them, could they copy it ? Knowing that my job contract makes me responsible in case I provide valuable company IP to someone without authorization, am I liable for this ?
If there is an old copy of the anarchist cookbook on my hard drive (hey, I've been young and silly once upon a time!), can I be charged with terrorism ?
If the code is abandonware, tell your company that you are willing to maintain support on your free time if you can get the copyright on this obsolete code. IANAL but if you get the copyright, I believe it gives you the right to change the license and it may be easier to agree on than an open source licence that most IP people ignore or dislike.
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From TFA, it looks like some people in the Pentagon really thought they could develop mind control RF beams. For those who didn't read it, it is about generating pulses of electromagnetic waves directionally (hence the abuse of the word "lasers") in order to make some part of the skull vibrate (to produce sound) or even to trigger neurons in some parts of the brain, mainly to cause spasms and unconsciousness.
I for one am afraid of the military (and police) potential for these, but I am clearly interested to see applications in the civilian market ! If one could trigger very localized parts of the brain, this could give us the feedback loop that is missing in most of the brain-to-computer interfaces made today.
With regular equipment, you cannot spot a satellite in visual spectrum during the day. The atmosphere is too bright for that. It is very hard to spot a satellite in earth's shadow cone as it is not naturally bright, you would have to spot star occlusions. In the case of geo-synchronous satellites, you don't even have that option. The only easy way to spot a satellite is when you are located in the night part of earth while the satellite is still lighted by the sun. That's a short frame of time on a specific location on earth.
If you could make a satellite completely non-reflective (i.e. completely black or at least with no spherical parts) it would be impossible to spot using amateur equipment. You would have to track transit occlusions, that requires more heavy stuff, from the little I know about astronomy. Oh, and I Am Not An Astronomer, of course.
Think of the people that LOSE money from patents. Think of all the companies that have been patent-blackmailed. Think about their lawyers spending months trying to get over some silly litigations. It really looks like a brake to innovation and business. I surely hope some part of the government will finally see it this way.
Saying that all lawyers support patent laws is a bit like saying that all programmers support buggy software because it gives them more work.
That the chance of a star to have planets is one in a million. Doesn't seem impossible, does it? The survey of the closest stars around our solar system seem to contradict this. I don't have exact numbers, but too many planets were discovered within a 50 light-years radius to conclude that only one star in a million has a planet.
Of course the Earth could be located in a statistical anomaly within the Milky Way, but if you posit a uniform repartition of planets, there has to be more.
I am just nit-picking however. I fully agree with the rest of your post.
Come on, Vista is quite recent, give some time to spyware/adware/popup developers to adapt !
I think I remember reading that he turned toward anti-corruption because he saw it as a sort of root problem that spawned the crazy set of copyright law America is trying to force the rest of the world to accept (resist, EU parliament! resist !). So I would say that as a congressman he would try to address the biggest problem he perceives he can tackle.
This is the new Piracy. Spammers of the Spanish Main! Yarrrr!
... this was ISPs getting immunity in case of copyright violations from their clients. Silly me.
The Shuttle has always been considered a civilian program. In fact my question was more rhetorical, I had an answer in mind : it is not military secrets but commercial secrets from Boeing that were stolen. I was merely pointing to the fact that the NASA didn't require its contractors to publish its specs, transforming public research funding into corporate private R&D funding. I think this is abnormal.
You'll have to nominatively prove that you are part of Anonymous. That could be a problem.
Weren't these designs financed by public funds ? Why could they not be public ?
I think you would be afraid to have a diner with ten judges, in private.
I'll have to fall back on my unfair excuse : I am not a native speaker :-)
I'm eager to learn anyway, can you point out my mistake ?
Now, if upper management is browsing gay websites and ordering viagra online, that's something you might want to file away for future use during the next round of IT outsourcing. Just in case
Ethics in IT is a gray zone : some things are allowed, other are forbidden, other are mandatory and differs from country to country. Retention of IP logs for instance is mandatory in some cases and some countries but requires authorization in some (EU) countries. A guideline would really help.
One of the key difference between IT-related ethics and other fields like medicine or law is that there is no official body emitting guidelines and no rights and duties recognized by the law.
When a doctor is asked by an employer to give him medical informations about his employees, he can point out that this would be illegal.
When a sysadmin is asked by his company to monitor users' web access, there are a lot of privacy issues that are raised but never addressed in the law. I mean, it can be part of the sysadmin job to prevent company computers from accessing porn sites but knowing which users access gay websites and which are ordering viagra online is something that should never be forwarded to upper management. He cannont prevent knowing this, but there should be something akin to medical secret regarding these data.
Most people here want the world to become a better place. And we talk about Microsoft instead of GM because this is a computer geek forum, not a car geek forum. It may be standard business practice that MS is using, it is bad anyway. It makes a perfect sense for them to do that in order to maximize their profit, it makes a perfect sense for users to oppose it.
I think you are overrated, that you smell of jellyfish and that emacs is better.
And if you mod me troll, you are a nazi.
Create a sharia-compliant version of the wikipedia. Along with a kosher version of it. And a Vatican 0, Vatican 1.0, Vatican 2.0 version, a King James version, a baptist version.
The content's licence allows such a thing. After all, Wikipedia is one giant pool of knowledge but has a scientific, secular, americano-centrist bias (only my feeling, it is debatable but it has, to some people, some bias) so it is unavoidable that some other pools spawn from the main one.
Bah, Google datacenters have the whole Internet on RAM !
Can they copy cellphone contacts ? That is a private, and sometimes valuable, information !
Also, can they copy data I have the copyright on ?
I am a programmer, I sometimes carry source code with me, supposing I didn't encrypt them, could they copy it ? Knowing that my job contract makes me responsible in case I provide valuable company IP to someone without authorization, am I liable for this ?
If there is an old copy of the anarchist cookbook on my hard drive (hey, I've been young and silly once upon a time!), can I be charged with terrorism ?
Or open a .onion server. This is a server only accessible through the EFF-sponsored network Tor.
Now we need to know if any of this arrives through an undersea cable going to Iran or if it goes through a terrestrial link or a satellite link.
If the code is abandonware, tell your company that you are willing to maintain support on your free time if you can get the copyright on this obsolete code. IANAL but if you get the copyright, I believe it gives you the right to change the license and it may be easier to agree on than an open source licence that most IP people ignore or dislike.
It is a joke, right ? they didn't really budget that ?