If you think someone's following you, start taking photos. Get a friend to follow you at a discreet distance with a video camera. Place that friend on a street corner, then walk/drive past while your friend films everyone behind you. If you see common faces in the photos/movies, call the police on your "stalker"... Tell 'em you feel threatened, that you think the "stalker" might be armed.
Or, more passively, lay in a lot of supplies, then hole up at home for a week or more. Don't leave the house, keep the curtains closed, don't even use lights visible to the outside. The watchers will at least get very, very bored, possibly to the extent that they'll quit, or get sloppy enough to fall for phase 2. Get a few friends to come over, the more the better. All immediately exit the house dressed identically and scatter in all directions. Arrange for several look-alikes to leave town.
If that kind of thing were to become common, it would create a whole new profession - unimpeachable witness. Fine upstanding members of the community would become extremely popular, and find themselves invited to attend all kinds of events.
Police: OK, confess! Your DNA places you at the scene of the crime!
Suspect: How can that be?!? I was hosting a dinner for your Captain and a bunch of friends!
Police: Damn!
Yeah, I'd say that's "fresh" in the sense that "we didn't have it before".
Re:Privacy implications are nill
on
Twist on DNA Privacy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
An example of "that devious mind" came up in an episode of "Law & Order" recently. A woman claimed she was beaten up and raped by this guy. DNA analysis showed it was definitely that guy who had had sex with her, and she definitely had been beaten up. However, the lab eventually decided that the semen found had been frozen. The detectives realized that the woman had previously saved semen from a condom, then at a later date arranged to be beaten up by someone else and put the now-thawed-out semen back inside herself to incriminate the wrong guy.
I figure, if the scriptwriters can think of it, it won't be long before that kind of thing happens for real, if it hasn't already. I have the same feeling about news reporters and "terrorist scares" - sure, terrorists may have thought about poisoning water supplies, blowing up public buildings, etc, but if they haven't you just gave them some hints. Way to go, guys... Besides which, they can sit in their safe-houses and watch the nation scare itself to death without lifting a finger, and also pick a couple of things to try once the public gets over the scare...
If I was on the jury, I'd be wanting to hear an expert witness from the testing lab say that it was absolutely positively a perfect match. Anything less than that would be leaning towards "reasonable doubt".
Mind you, I'm not likely to be on a jury because I'm British - apparently that makes more of a difference than living 1000 miles away from the court that calls on you, as my daughter found out recently...
Well, if the existing travelator were to become the "slow lane" in a Heinlein Road, that would still work. The initial accelerating lead-in would get you up to 9Km/h, then stroll sideways to a faster strip.
20 page or 200 pages, my solution still stands - put the magazines behind a counter with an assistant to pull them off the shelf for potential buyers. This maintains overt surveillance of the magazines.
I knew there was some reason for the Bussard not to be immediately useful, though I do seem to remember (in some Science Fiction story) that bottled hydrogen might be used to jump start the ramjet. Once you get up to cruising velocity, it might even be possible to divert some of the incoming fuel to the bottle for insystem maneuvering and future jump starts. If so, and if anyone works out the fiddlng details of powering the field, it would be pretty close to a perpetual motion machine...
I think you have to completely discount the problem of getting the ship to orbit. Assume it's boosted to orbit in easy-to-assemble kit form - either manufactured sections or raw materials to process. There's obviously no way for a light sail to even deploy effectively in either atmosphere or planetary gravity, let alone lift a ship to orbit.
As for creating limitless mass from heat, how about the Bussard ramjet? Big electromagnetic fields that funnel free hydrogen (solar wind) into a "pinch" where fusion takes place to provide thrust.
Not necessarily. Magazine articles generally run to maybe 4 or 5 pages, and there may be 4 or 5 articles of immediate interest to any given reader. I'm assuming you're not scouring the ad pages...
The speed may be constant, but the wavelength is not... Suppose the sail is moving slowly due to unfurling - light impinging on the sail will bounce back with higher or lower frequency depending on which way that particular fragment of sail is moving. Simple Doppler effect...
The problem with any kind of mass-expelling propulsion method is that eventually you run out of mass to expel. For the most part this is arranged to happen after the vehicle either reaches its destination or has a chance to refuel.
No,they're talking about magazine pages, not book pages. There could be, what?, 20 interesting pages in a magazine? 20 snapshots later you're walking away with the content.
Rather than a cellphone patdown, the solution would be for the bookstore to place the magazines behind a counter with a cash register and an assistant. You want "PC World", you ask for it, pay for it, take it away. Or possibly you ask for it, flip through it briefly to see if there's anything interesting, then pay for it or hand it back. At no time would you be far enough away from the counter to be snapping photos.
Or the ultimate solution - the bookstores simply stop stocking the magazines. After all, if they're not "selling", there's no point in holding them...
They could get around it the same way that I used to avoid reserved words in programming - use all swears. Instead of "Spam Arrest" they could just change their names to "Fuck Shitters" or "Explosive Ass Mansion" (I am fully aware that the second example only had one swear in it, and two non-swear words - but I thought it sounded like a good company name - or a new ride at Disney).
In fact, the phrase Explosive Ass Mansion contains one swear, one word used by the monied, oppressive classes, and one that would get you a jail cell if uttered in an airport...
Look at it from another point of view - Amazon are currently stocking a number of Microsoft products. I don't suppose it would hurt Microsoft much if Amazon dropped those products. In fact, it would probably hurt Amazon more. But wouldn't it be nice if Amazon were to show Bill the finger and quit selling Microsoft stuff...
Getting a bit off-topic, but I thought that Latin was regarded as a 'dead' language, because nobody actually really speaks it anymore. Sure, it's used in certain religious ceremonies, various professions, etc, but it's no longer evolving because it's not being used to deal with everyday life in, say, a village or town.
Agreed. However, Microsoft did at least buy a SCO license "to avoid future problems" with SCO. On the other hand, unless Sun's prospects improve soon, they might find themselves belonging to someone else...
A certain online travel booking company is switching from SGI to Linux. Plans are for somewhere in excess of 200 identical servers. Fairly mission critical, I'd say, for a company with 38million members.
I'd love to be able to say that it's Expedia, but it's not. I don't think Bill would stand for one of his drone companies defecting to the enemy.
I think it might be best to do it on a totally-provably licence compliant Windows system. Arrghhh, I can't believe I said that... Never mind. The idea being that SCO can't get it shut down for copyright or IP violations. Or pick some other OS that's absolutely not related to Unix.
I've been told that cell phone numbers are supposed to be confidential in Canada (in other words: Foobar inc. won't be able to find your cell number (unless you write/say it everywhere to everyone, of course))
...and that's really gonna work when they're stepping through the list - 0001, 0002, 0003...9997, 9998, 9999
On my AT&T phone, I had to enable text messages (for no extra charge), but that was a year or more ago. Unless things have changed, I should be able to go back to the AT&T website and turn it off again.
If so, I sure hope it disables acceptance of messages, rather than stacking them up until I turn it back on again...
If it turns out that I can't disable text messaging, I'll be calling and/or emailing AT&T to let them know exactly why I'm switching to a different service...
So, I can bitch about every message I get, even the legitimate ones, and expect to get a refund? As long as the phone company isn't going to block senders you bitch about, they stand to lose as much money as they'd lose if you just turn the phone off.
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Or, more passively, lay in a lot of supplies, then hole up at home for a week or more. Don't leave the house, keep the curtains closed, don't even use lights visible to the outside. The watchers will at least get very, very bored, possibly to the extent that they'll quit, or get sloppy enough to fall for phase 2. Get a few friends to come over, the more the better. All immediately exit the house dressed identically and scatter in all directions. Arrange for several look-alikes to leave town.
On the other hand, how long before it's mirrored outside the USA? Probably is already - Iran, Syria, Libya, places like that...
Police: OK, confess! Your DNA places you at the scene of the crime!
Suspect: How can that be?!? I was hosting a dinner for your Captain and a bunch of friends!
Police: Damn!
Yeah, I'd say that's "fresh" in the sense that "we didn't have it before".
I figure, if the scriptwriters can think of it, it won't be long before that kind of thing happens for real, if it hasn't already. I have the same feeling about news reporters and "terrorist scares" - sure, terrorists may have thought about poisoning water supplies, blowing up public buildings, etc, but if they haven't you just gave them some hints. Way to go, guys... Besides which, they can sit in their safe-houses and watch the nation scare itself to death without lifting a finger, and also pick a couple of things to try once the public gets over the scare...
Mind you, I'm not likely to be on a jury because I'm British - apparently that makes more of a difference than living 1000 miles away from the court that calls on you, as my daughter found out recently...
Well, if the existing travelator were to become the "slow lane" in a Heinlein Road, that would still work. The initial accelerating lead-in would get you up to 9Km/h, then stroll sideways to a faster strip.
Apart from that, just how good is the camera phone resolution? Would a snap of a letter-sized page of text be readable?
20 page or 200 pages, my solution still stands - put the magazines behind a counter with an assistant to pull them off the shelf for potential buyers. This maintains overt surveillance of the magazines.
I knew there was some reason for the Bussard not to be immediately useful, though I do seem to remember (in some Science Fiction story) that bottled hydrogen might be used to jump start the ramjet. Once you get up to cruising velocity, it might even be possible to divert some of the incoming fuel to the bottle for insystem maneuvering and future jump starts. If so, and if anyone works out the fiddlng details of powering the field, it would be pretty close to a perpetual motion machine...
Some of those people who work for the "Center for Radophysics" would argue that photons can be treated as both waves and particles.
As for creating limitless mass from heat, how about the Bussard ramjet? Big electromagnetic fields that funnel free hydrogen (solar wind) into a "pinch" where fusion takes place to provide thrust.
Not necessarily. Magazine articles generally run to maybe 4 or 5 pages, and there may be 4 or 5 articles of immediate interest to any given reader. I'm assuming you're not scouring the ad pages...
The speed may be constant, but the wavelength is not... Suppose the sail is moving slowly due to unfurling - light impinging on the sail will bounce back with higher or lower frequency depending on which way that particular fragment of sail is moving. Simple Doppler effect...
The problem with any kind of mass-expelling propulsion method is that eventually you run out of mass to expel. For the most part this is arranged to happen after the vehicle either reaches its destination or has a chance to refuel.
Rather than a cellphone patdown, the solution would be for the bookstore to place the magazines behind a counter with a cash register and an assistant. You want "PC World", you ask for it, pay for it, take it away. Or possibly you ask for it, flip through it briefly to see if there's anything interesting, then pay for it or hand it back. At no time would you be far enough away from the counter to be snapping photos.
Or the ultimate solution - the bookstores simply stop stocking the magazines. After all, if they're not "selling", there's no point in holding them...
In fact, the phrase Explosive Ass Mansion contains one swear, one word used by the monied, oppressive classes, and one that would get you a jail cell if uttered in an airport...
Look at it from another point of view - Amazon are currently stocking a number of Microsoft products. I don't suppose it would hurt Microsoft much if Amazon dropped those products. In fact, it would probably hurt Amazon more. But wouldn't it be nice if Amazon were to show Bill the finger and quit selling Microsoft stuff...
Getting a bit off-topic, but I thought that Latin was regarded as a 'dead' language, because nobody actually really speaks it anymore. Sure, it's used in certain religious ceremonies, various professions, etc, but it's no longer evolving because it's not being used to deal with everyday life in, say, a village or town.
Agreed. However, Microsoft did at least buy a SCO license "to avoid future problems" with SCO. On the other hand, unless Sun's prospects improve soon, they might find themselves belonging to someone else...
I'd love to be able to say that it's Expedia, but it's not. I don't think Bill would stand for one of his drone companies defecting to the enemy.
I think it might be best to do it on a totally-provably licence compliant Windows system. Arrghhh, I can't believe I said that... Never mind. The idea being that SCO can't get it shut down for copyright or IP violations. Or pick some other OS that's absolutely not related to Unix.
...and that's really gonna work when they're stepping through the list - 0001, 0002, 0003...9997, 9998, 9999
If so, I sure hope it disables acceptance of messages, rather than stacking them up until I turn it back on again...
If it turns out that I can't disable text messaging, I'll be calling and/or emailing AT&T to let them know exactly why I'm switching to a different service...
So, I can bitch about every message I get, even the legitimate ones, and expect to get a refund? As long as the phone company isn't going to block senders you bitch about, they stand to lose as much money as they'd lose if you just turn the phone off.