Precisely. Therefore, this is nothing new with regard to the green card holders or applicants.
I agree (from what little I know about immigration procedures), but the headline just sounded so much more impressive, "DHS to Grab Biometric Data from Green Card Holders." My understanding is that they've been fingerprinting immigrants (and potential immigrants) for a long time now. As a citizen, if they start insisting on taking my prints, or that of my girlfriend (who is naturalized) I'd feel differently. The less I have on file with such people the happier I am: I just don't trust them to administrate such databases wisely (or legally, for that matter.)
There are lots of services and gadgets around to do VHS to Digital. These guys sell something like that, I think.
Yes indeed, but the question is... what happens in ten years or so? With nobody selling blanks and nobody selling recorders, and nobody selling pre-recorded tapes, the market is going to consist solely of people that want to convert older recordings. Is there enough money in that, to make it worth manufacturing consumer-level equipment that will basically only get used once?
Probably not, although there will probably still be paid services available than can convert them to digital media.
Unless it's a major-studio pre-recorded VHS tape that hasn't been rereleased on DVD, such as the PAL release of Disney's Song of the South. These paid services will likely refuse such a transfer request on copyright grounds unless perhaps your name is Bob Iger.
Yeah, or Jack Valenti. Oh, I know he's technically deceased but I always figured he wasn't, you know, all the way dead. Seriously though, you're right, at least here in the U.S. and probably most of Europe.
Don't most store security systems use VHS tapes for their security cameras?
If they switch to non-erasable DVD, there's going to be a metric ton of these that just go to waste every day.
Nah... they'll just go on hard disk. They just put in a bunch of security cameras at work (all IP-based) and I'm sure the feeds are going to some hard drive array somewhere.
I recently had the challenge of trying to find a VHS player in a retail store. I couldn't find one, so in that sense the format has been dead a long time. Now that no major manufacturer is producing new media, I wonder in how many years the last playable VHS cassette will wear out. 20? 50? Will there even be an operable player at that time, that can output video into a then-standard format?
Probably not, although there will probably still be paid services available than can convert them to digital media. Anyone with a VHS collection who still has a working VCR had best get a good framegrabber board and start digitizing them before it's too late. I have a couple of VCRs (although I haven't used them for a long time) and for a mere $100 per tape hour I'll be happy to put them on DVD for you.
Sure, that's ridiculous... but wait a few years. People will be paying big money to have little Tommy's graduation video converted.
I have a somewhat different reason for opposing punitive taxation of smokers. First, taxation for behavior control is a terrible idea in itself; it's not the place of the government to command us. Secondly, the more money government gets by whatever means, the more government we'll have.
Either way, it's best not to give them too much authority, because they'll misuse it.
As PJ O'Rourke put it, giving money to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to adolescents.
-jcr
I agree: we're talking about social engineering, and that rarely works out well, no matter how well-intentioned. And frankly, as an American I don't want to live in an engineered society.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Federal Government not only has the car keys, but the entire liquor cabinet as well. The situation has only worsened in that regard since the recent Federal takeover of a substantial part of the financial sector. Now, maybe that was a necessary move, and maybe it wasn't... time will tell. But nevertheless the Feds now wield unprecedented power. It's more than a little unnerving.
The name "FBI" appeared on the fingerprint card. So the question still stands, why can't they digitize them?
They probably are. Probably already have been. If they have a set of prints on file from your original resident alien application, and you leave the country and return, they'll compare the old vs. the new. If the prints from your re-entry to the U.S. are different... well, now there's a potential problem. If in fact you're using someone else's prints, it just means that if you leave you better not come back.
The lesson here is that if you are collecting a lot of data, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are collecting the right (and useful) data.
And that even if you are collecting the most valuable data, if you swamp your facilities for rapidly analyzing said data, you might as well not bother collecting it. Granted, the U.S. Federal Government has far, far more powerful analytical capabilities than the East German government ever had... but they're also collecting data on a vast scale without, it would seem, much thought as to what they're collecting or why. Furthermore, even mass quantities of relevant data can be subject to errors in interpretation and algorithmic/statistical failures of one kind or another. Patterns can appear in the data that aren't really there... when law enforcement efforts are based upon such analyses, innocent people get hurt.
Of course, the current thinking seems to be "well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs". Personally, I'm not interested in being an egg.
Sounds like a good way to poison your monitoring database.
I have the feeling there's more noise than signal in there already anyways. If you're collecting data that is ostensibly this important (I mean, what's more important that stopping terrorists?) then you tend towards a myopic, packrat-like view... don't throw anything away, don't get too selective, because you might miss something, might not be able to bring up some important factoid on command. So, these guys just squirrel away anything and everything and don't worry too much about filtering.
Matter of fact, that's not the only resemblance they have to squirrels. But we won't go into that right now.
I disagree. Tolerating routine violations of privacy for one class of people desensitizes us to routine violations of privacy for everyone.
I would go a little further and say that systematic abuse of any class of individuals, no matter how unpopular, is something worthy of caution. Take punitive taxation of smokers, just to pick an example. I've never smoked, never will smoke, think it's a spectacularly bad idea... but I still disagree with heavy taxes applied to cigarette sales. Why? Because if we tolerate governmental mistreatment of one group (no matter what the justification) the odds are they'll eventually do something that hits closer to home. Keep firmly in mind that a significant fraction of our leadership and senior bureaucrats are either sociopaths or have a few well-intentioned screws loose. Either way, it's best not to give them too much authority, because they'll misuse it.
it is possible for people who are blinded because of damage to the visual (striate) cortex can navigate by "blindsight", through which they can detect things in their vicinity without being aware of seeing them."
Makes me ashamed that I used one of their handheld models as the configuration tool for an industrial data acquisition system I used to sell. Lawyers are going to get this civilization so wrapped up in red tape that progress is impossible.
It seems we have a candidate that has passed the Turing test. This work was judged as being of human origin by a panel of experts, to the point of invitation. Is this a failure of academia, the test or humanity in general?
I think the answer, in this case, is clearly "academia."
Slashdot Mirror
Precisely. Therefore, this is nothing new with regard to the green card holders or applicants.
I agree (from what little I know about immigration procedures), but the headline just sounded so much more impressive, "DHS to Grab Biometric Data from Green Card Holders." My understanding is that they've been fingerprinting immigrants (and potential immigrants) for a long time now. As a citizen, if they start insisting on taking my prints, or that of my girlfriend (who is naturalized) I'd feel differently. The less I have on file with such people the happier I am: I just don't trust them to administrate such databases wisely (or legally, for that matter.)
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/digital-conversion/
There are lots of services and gadgets around to do VHS to Digital. These guys sell something like that, I think.
Yes indeed, but the question is ... what happens in ten years or so? With nobody selling blanks and nobody selling recorders, and nobody selling pre-recorded tapes, the market is going to consist solely of people that want to convert older recordings. Is there enough money in that, to make it worth manufacturing consumer-level equipment that will basically only get used once?
Probably not, although there will probably still be paid services available than can convert them to digital media.
Unless it's a major-studio pre-recorded VHS tape that hasn't been rereleased on DVD, such as the PAL release of Disney's Song of the South. These paid services will likely refuse such a transfer request on copyright grounds unless perhaps your name is Bob Iger.
Yeah, or Jack Valenti. Oh, I know he's technically deceased but I always figured he wasn't, you know, all the way dead. Seriously though, you're right, at least here in the U.S. and probably most of Europe.
Don't most store security systems use VHS tapes for their security cameras?
If they switch to non-erasable DVD, there's going to be a metric ton of these that just go to waste every day.
Nah ... they'll just go on hard disk. They just put in a bunch of security cameras at work (all IP-based) and I'm sure the feeds are going to some hard drive array somewhere.
I recently had the challenge of trying to find a VHS player in a retail store. I couldn't find one, so in that sense the format has been dead a long time. Now that no major manufacturer is producing new media, I wonder in how many years the last playable VHS cassette will wear out. 20? 50? Will there even be an operable player at that time, that can output video into a then-standard format?
Probably not, although there will probably still be paid services available than can convert them to digital media. Anyone with a VHS collection who still has a working VCR had best get a good framegrabber board and start digitizing them before it's too late. I have a couple of VCRs (although I haven't used them for a long time) and for a mere $100 per tape hour I'll be happy to put them on DVD for you.
... but wait a few years. People will be paying big money to have little Tommy's graduation video converted.
Sure, that's ridiculous
I have a somewhat different reason for opposing punitive taxation of smokers. First, taxation for behavior control is a terrible idea in itself; it's not the place of the government to command us. Secondly, the more money government gets by whatever means, the more government we'll have.
Either way, it's best not to give them too much authority, because they'll misuse it.
As PJ O'Rourke put it, giving money to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to adolescents.
-jcr
I agree: we're talking about social engineering, and that rarely works out well, no matter how well-intentioned. And frankly, as an American I don't want to live in an engineered society.
... time will tell. But nevertheless the Feds now wield unprecedented power. It's more than a little unnerving.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Federal Government not only has the car keys, but the entire liquor cabinet as well. The situation has only worsened in that regard since the recent Federal takeover of a substantial part of the financial sector. Now, maybe that was a necessary move, and maybe it wasn't
edumucation system
Sounds ... sticky, somehow.
The name "FBI" appeared on the fingerprint card. So the question still stands, why can't they digitize them?
They probably are. Probably already have been. If they have a set of prints on file from your original resident alien application, and you leave the country and return, they'll compare the old vs. the new. If the prints from your re-entry to the U.S. are different ... well, now there's a potential problem. If in fact you're using someone else's prints, it just means that if you leave you better not come back.
The lesson here is that if you are collecting a lot of data, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are collecting the right (and useful) data.
And that even if you are collecting the most valuable data, if you swamp your facilities for rapidly analyzing said data, you might as well not bother collecting it. Granted, the U.S. Federal Government has far, far more powerful analytical capabilities than the East German government ever had ... but they're also collecting data on a vast scale without, it would seem, much thought as to what they're collecting or why. Furthermore, even mass quantities of relevant data can be subject to errors in interpretation and algorithmic/statistical failures of one kind or another. Patterns can appear in the data that aren't really there ... when law enforcement efforts are based upon such analyses, innocent people get hurt.
Of course, the current thinking seems to be "well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs". Personally, I'm not interested in being an egg.
Sounds like a good way to poison your monitoring database.
I have the feeling there's more noise than signal in there already anyways. If you're collecting data that is ostensibly this important (I mean, what's more important that stopping terrorists?) then you tend towards a myopic, packrat-like view ... don't throw anything away, don't get too selective, because you might miss something, might not be able to bring up some important factoid on command. So, these guys just squirrel away anything and everything and don't worry too much about filtering.
Matter of fact, that's not the only resemblance they have to squirrels. But we won't go into that right now.
about this topic to say if it's "Stuff That Matters", but it's definitely "News For Nerds."
I disagree. Tolerating routine violations of privacy for one class of people desensitizes us to routine violations of privacy for everyone.
I would go a little further and say that systematic abuse of any class of individuals, no matter how unpopular, is something worthy of caution. Take punitive taxation of smokers, just to pick an example. I've never smoked, never will smoke, think it's a spectacularly bad idea ... but I still disagree with heavy taxes applied to cigarette sales. Why? Because if we tolerate governmental mistreatment of one group (no matter what the justification) the odds are they'll eventually do something that hits closer to home. Keep firmly in mind that a significant fraction of our leadership and senior bureaucrats are either sociopaths or have a few well-intentioned screws loose. Either way, it's best not to give them too much authority, because they'll misuse it.
Since these light laptops aren't using NNTP or FTP, why not just call them "web-books"?
Nah. Make it protocol agnostic ... call them "Interbooks".
Anyone remember the 'slow glass' in stories by Robert Shaw.
For anyone who's interested, here's one of them
Yes, I do. Those were interesting stories, actually. It's been many years since I read them.
Oh yeah, and reverse the phase and amplify by one to the fourth.
And then use a verteron pulse to regenerate the waveform at fixed intervals.
So will this tech be able to build a stronger chess computer? Will I ever be able to win?
Forget chess. We've already beaten grandmasters with computers. The next AI challenge is programming a decent Go player.
And then after that will be making computers behave like they do in movies.
it is possible for people who are blinded because of damage to the visual (striate) cortex can navigate by "blindsight", through which they can detect things in their vicinity without being aware of seeing them."
Yeah okay ... that's kind of creepy.
... about the biggest impact broadband for the masses will have is to expand the porn industry.
Now, I actually have no problem with that.
and the employees enslaved.
Nah ... too much work. Just line 'em up against the wall and shoot 'em.
Plamtops or Subnotebooks.
Would they be running PlamOS?
Read that again. This time with emphasis on the words jerk and knee.
Yeah ok. Too much Bailey's in my coffee (hey it is Christmas Eve here.)
Maybe ... but I didn't call you any bad names. So I guess this qualifies you for jerkhood as well.
Makes me ashamed that I used one of their handheld models as the configuration tool for an industrial data acquisition system I used to sell. Lawyers are going to get this civilization so wrapped up in red tape that progress is impossible.
It seems we have a candidate that has passed the Turing test. This work was judged as being of human origin by a panel of experts, to the point of invitation. Is this a failure of academia, the test or humanity in general?
I think the answer, in this case, is clearly "academia."