I agree, but this isn't a matter of being able to "afford" to move. There is no "moving" involved. These guys will simply spend another twenty bucks a year for the.XXX version of their existing domain and point DNS to the existing site. No big deal, and theoretically it will give them even more exposure.
The real question is whether, as you say, we need another stupid specialized domain. Personally, I don't see how this would help at any level. Legislators have this idea that they can simply pass a law, and automatically reality adjusts to follow said law, that all porn sites will immediately jump to.XXX and terminate their existing domains. That's not the way it will work, all they will be doing is providing another avenue for porno sites to be found, and not a single young person will be spared the sight of another human being's private parts. Useless. I wish our elected leaders would find some real problems to solve.
You're confusing simple tradition with the sort of social-control elements that KFG is talking about. Yes, around the world in various cultures some recreational drugs are considered acceptable and others are not (and yes, I consider alcohol a drug for the purposes of this discussion.) The choices different societies make are often different than ours, and as you say, that has more to do with traditional acceptance gained from decades or centuries of popular use than anything else.
However, KFG is correct in stating that the modern War on Drugs (which, after all is said and done, is nothing but thinly-veiled Prohibitionism with a twist of bureaucratic empire-building) has darker motives behind it. That's because we have an arbitrary pseudo-moral force (the government) deciding what is acceptable and what is not, often in direct contravention to the will of the majority. The bureaucrats that run the thing have a vested interest in continuing their moral crusade against the nation's evil potheads because they'd otherwise be out of a job.
The use of illicit drugs is not restricted to any particular race or class, but some races and classes consume far more than others and are the target of much more government "intervention" than others. To say that race has no bearing on the activities of the government's anti-drug compaign would be incorrect. Besides, if you look at the un-Constitutional laws that have been passed in the name of this War, you'd realize that it is much, much more than a mere Prohibition clone.
Besides, if the reason that alcohol is no longer banned is because Prohibition didn't work out very well, one has to ask... why is marijuana still banned? I have news for you: the War on Drugs isn't working out very well either. In the past century our government (eventually) had the good sense to realize that Prohibition was an abject failure and rescinded it. Ask yourself this: given that illicit drugs are readily available to anyone who wants them (much as alcohol remained accessible during Prohibition) is the War on Drugs really worth what we're spending upon it?
Extra-legally you don't have to pay taxes on money that doesn't show up on paper/electronic records.
Extra-legally you do have to pay taxes on under-the-table transactions, it's just that it's harder to catch you and extract the requisite pound of flesh. The IRS expects their cut no matter what.
I'm sorry, but you are trying to use your intuitive sense to argue here. That simply does not work in a real debate. I understand you feel strongly about this, but *rational* arguments will further your opinions more.
I beg your pardon?
Did you go out and actually find this out?
Did you?
My friend has told me, and I have no reason to not believe him, that he spends 20-50% of his or his staff's time handling medical history.
That's nice. Really. However, I don't know your friend and have every reason not to believe him. So far you're 0/0. Keep trying though.
I made no claim either way, I merely expressed my natural concern regarding massive government-sponsored IT projects (mainly because they never work as advertised.) You, on the other hand, are making a specific claim, one based upon mere anecdotal evidence. Put it this way: rational arguments backed by facts go even further when having a debate. I'm glad you have a doctor friend and that you trust his opinion. Really, I am. Just keep in mind that neither I or anyone else have any particular reason to trust your friend: perhaps he is simply inefficient in handling his paperwork compared to other doctors. Maybe he exaggerates. I don't know, and I don't care because that kind of "fact gathering" is of no consequence.
I am sure many doctors feel the same way.
So what? Of what consequence is your feeling to me or anyone else who might want to make an informed decision? Look who's using his intuition now.
Frankly, I don't know the answer to this question and obviously neither do you. A properly-structured study really should be performed to determine just how much time doctors actually spend doing paperwork in order to see if the billions that will be spent on this project are justified. I don't think they are, but I'm not going to accept your word on the subject or that of your "doctor friend", and I certainly won't take any politician's perspective at face value either. If you're wise, neither will you.
And I disagree with you about the magnitude of the problem. Social engineering is probably easier if all you want is records on a single individual. But that's not what we're discussing here. We're talking about an enormous, multinational project designed to put the medical data of millions of people online. The difference between trying to obtain mass quantities of such records from individual doctors offices by social engineering simply does not compare to the relative ease with which those same records could be acquired by cracking a remote database. Yes, it's the same in principle (i.e., illegitimate access to personal data) but in practice it is not, simply because of the sheer scale involved. As I mentioned previously, the financial sector has a terrible track record on information security, and I have no reason to believe that the medical industry will do any better.
Which isn't really much different from the usual "Microsoft Copies Idea, Then Patents It" methodology which they've been using for decades. Lather, rinse and repeat over and over again until you've made as many billions as you need.
This would increase efficiency and reduce costs in the already over-priced health field.
This might increase efficiency (yet to be proven) but if it does it will only increase profits in the already bloated health field. This is the medical industry we're talking about. When did you last know a medical operation to lower prices because their own costs went down?
Besides, social engineering (eg. calling a person's doctor and asking for medical history) is probably possible as it is.
Sure... but so what. We are talking oodles and oodles of orders of magnitude difference here. The danger in storing hundreds of millions of medical records on a multi-national distributed database is that, when security is eventually compromised (and it will be, you know that, since this stuff is worth money), confidential data on millions of people will suddenly find itself on the open market. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise, given that this happens to data concentrators in the financial sector with monotonous regularity (e.g. Choicepoint, among others.)
Few kinds of records are more important to us than our health histories: accuracy and confidentiality are crucial to their continued utility. The problem is that concentrated data stores are dangerous as Hell, if they contain highly-confidential or vital information. So far as accuracy is concerned, you only have to look at the major credit bureaus in the United States to see how badly that can go.
No doubt this will get rammed down our throats with laws that require records to be uploaded by our physicians, whether we want them to or not.
No thanks. I'd rather my doctor walk over to a filing cabinet and pull my history. Much safer that way.
These data are already insecured, I see this initiative as a step in the right direction.
Not when viewed with the proper perspective. The problem with massive network-aware projects is that they make data widely available even when it doesn't need to be. The records your doctor maintains are accessible only to a few individuals, and then only on a physical basis: an effective means of security through obscurity. If someone else needs to see them, he can fax or mail them. However, once said records are replicated across thousands of servers on a multinational basis I don't how you can possibly consider it "secure" anymore. There's also the issue of keeping those records accurate and up to date, which is arguably even more important.
Even if these people used military-grade security (and they won't!), hired the best possible people to manage it (and they won't), once those records are online they will be effectively made public once that security is breached. And it will be. Either legally by insurance companies and/or employers wanting to know employee medical histories (even if said employees moved to another country) or by other even less-savory types. This is a bad idea, and like most government ideas creates a massive new problem in order to "solve" a much smaller problem. Then, of course the new problem requires solving, at even greater expense. It never ends.
There are plenty of other ways to spend tax dollars employing people other than posting extremely confidential information online, because that's what this amounts to doing. I have the same issues with what the U.S. and European governments are doing with antiterrorism measures involving massive amounts of data sharing with multiple law-enforcement agencies. It's very dangerous to spread that kind of data all over the place, because not all those who end up with it will use it in ways to our liking.
If you trust your government not to screw this up then by all means encourage them. Personally, I don't believe that my government can be trusted to keep my secrets. It's not their job now, and it shouldn't ever be.
It has everything to do with private ownership. Cows can't comprehend what the Founding Fathers were trying to accomplish, but people can. READ what Jefferson and Franklin wrote. PUT the Second Amendment and the rest of the Constitution into context. It makes a lot more sense that way and is a darn sight more relevant to the modern world when it isn't being twisted out of shape by gun control advocates and those interested in further extension of government power.
To put it in engineering terms, this is what is called "negative feedback". Smaller corrections have traditionally been applied using the vote, but in recent decades that has proven insufficient. The day may come when larger corrections will require the application of smokeless powder and large caliber projectiles. That is our right, that is our heritage: that's the legacy the Founders left us, codified in the Supreme Law of the land. Deny that if you wish, but you won't change a thing, and when the rest of us are forced to take steps you can sit back and watch.
Yes, I was hoping they'd make a sequel that would get back to Heinleins' vision... and they did make a sequel and it was a double-crapfest. Too bad Heinlein himself wasn't around to keep them on track. They blew it with The Puppet Masters as well, for that matter.
Fortunately, there are a metric ton of other good Heinlein stories: maybe some of them will be made into quality movies.
Fortunately it was fairly simple to go in and delete the credit info.
Remember the Iran Contra hearings. Don't you know that just "deleting" something doesn't necessarily make it go away? Particularly in the case of a Google, which replicates data continuously to multiple datacenters.
Starship Troopers, here we come. I remember being very disappointed in the movie version of Heinlein's book, because I was hoping and expecting the Mobile Infantry to have Powered Suits, and really wanted to see what a modern special-effects team could do with the idea. As described by Juan "Johnny" Rico's character from the novel (source: Wikipedia):
Our suits give us better eyes, better ears, stronger backs (to carry heavier weapons and more ammo), better legs, more intelligence (in the military meaning...), more firepower, greater endurance, less vulnerability.
A suit isn't a space suit - although it can serve as one. it is not primarily armor - although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are. It isn't a tank - but a single M.I. [Mobile Infantry] private could take on a squadron of those things and knock them off unassisted...
...Suited up, you look like a big steel gorilla, armed with gorilla-sized weapons.
The real genius in the design is that you don't have to control the suit; you just wear it, like your clothes, like skin.
The secret lies in negative feedback and amplification.
Actually, the question is valid: what is a human life worth? The answer is usually simple: a lot less that we would like to think.
Resources, even in a wealthy nation, are limited... we can't just throw money at every nifty-sounding idea (although that is pretty much what we're doing post 9/11.) In all such cases, a proper cost-vs-benefit analysis must be performed, and the results acted upon. That's a cold-blooded business, sure... but in the long run, keeping childish emotions (and political aspirations) out of the picture and spending the money where it does the most good saves more lives. So we spend x-million dollars installing cameras and the communications infrastructure to service them. Then we recorded y-crimes and caught z criminals. That's great, so far as it goes but, had those funds been spent improving hospital facilities or providing weapons training to civilians, hiring more beat cops, or some other more direct measure taken, odds are more lives would have been saved. The claim that surveillance saves lives is disingenuous at best: what it does is (maybe) make it easier to find a perpetrator after the fact, but the crime still happened and the victim is still a victim.
Advanced surveillance has not, in general, ever made an ROI approaching the claims made by its proponents. Crooks are still caught by good police work and crimes are prevented by potential victims not by police, and all the cameras in the world won't change that.
Slashdot Mirror
Access is everything to the porn industry.
.XXX version of their existing domain and point DNS to the existing site. No big deal, and theoretically it will give them even more exposure.
.XXX and terminate their existing domains. That's not the way it will work, all they will be doing is providing another avenue for porno sites to be found, and not a single young person will be spared the sight of another human being's private parts. Useless. I wish our elected leaders would find some real problems to solve.
I agree, but this isn't a matter of being able to "afford" to move. There is no "moving" involved. These guys will simply spend another twenty bucks a year for the
The real question is whether, as you say, we need another stupid specialized domain. Personally, I don't see how this would help at any level. Legislators have this idea that they can simply pass a law, and automatically reality adjusts to follow said law, that all porn sites will immediately jump to
No.
... why is marijuana still banned? I have news for you: the War on Drugs isn't working out very well either. In the past century our government (eventually) had the good sense to realize that Prohibition was an abject failure and rescinded it. Ask yourself this: given that illicit drugs are readily available to anyone who wants them (much as alcohol remained accessible during Prohibition) is the War on Drugs really worth what we're spending upon it?
You're confusing simple tradition with the sort of social-control elements that KFG is talking about. Yes, around the world in various cultures some recreational drugs are considered acceptable and others are not (and yes, I consider alcohol a drug for the purposes of this discussion.) The choices different societies make are often different than ours, and as you say, that has more to do with traditional acceptance gained from decades or centuries of popular use than anything else.
However, KFG is correct in stating that the modern War on Drugs (which, after all is said and done, is nothing but thinly-veiled Prohibitionism with a twist of bureaucratic empire-building) has darker motives behind it. That's because we have an arbitrary pseudo-moral force (the government) deciding what is acceptable and what is not, often in direct contravention to the will of the majority. The bureaucrats that run the thing have a vested interest in continuing their moral crusade against the nation's evil potheads because they'd otherwise be out of a job.
The use of illicit drugs is not restricted to any particular race or class, but some races and classes consume far more than others and are the target of much more government "intervention" than others. To say that race has no bearing on the activities of the government's anti-drug compaign would be incorrect. Besides, if you look at the un-Constitutional laws that have been passed in the name of this War, you'd realize that it is much, much more than a mere Prohibition clone.
Besides, if the reason that alcohol is no longer banned is because Prohibition didn't work out very well, one has to ask
Ultimately, it's the people who claim to speak for all of us rationalizing their hypocrisy.
Extra-legally you don't have to pay taxes on money that doesn't show up on paper/electronic records.
Extra-legally you do have to pay taxes on under-the-table transactions, it's just that it's harder to catch you and extract the requisite pound of flesh. The IRS expects their cut no matter what.
Besides, "fair" is relative.
this might be a good time to put some money into your local Hafnium mine.
I'm sorry, but you are trying to use your intuitive sense to argue here. That simply does not work in a real debate. I understand you feel strongly about this, but *rational* arguments will further your opinions more.
I beg your pardon?
Did you go out and actually find this out?
Did you?
My friend has told me, and I have no reason to not believe him, that he spends 20-50% of his or his staff's time handling medical history.
That's nice. Really. However, I don't know your friend and have every reason not to believe him. So far you're 0/0. Keep trying though.
I made no claim either way, I merely expressed my natural concern regarding massive government-sponsored IT projects (mainly because they never work as advertised.) You, on the other hand, are making a specific claim, one based upon mere anecdotal evidence. Put it this way: rational arguments backed by facts go even further when having a debate. I'm glad you have a doctor friend and that you trust his opinion. Really, I am. Just keep in mind that neither I or anyone else have any particular reason to trust your friend: perhaps he is simply inefficient in handling his paperwork compared to other doctors. Maybe he exaggerates. I don't know, and I don't care because that kind of "fact gathering" is of no consequence.
I am sure many doctors feel the same way.
So what? Of what consequence is your feeling to me or anyone else who might want to make an informed decision? Look who's using his intuition now.
Frankly, I don't know the answer to this question and obviously neither do you. A properly-structured study really should be performed to determine just how much time doctors actually spend doing paperwork in order to see if the billions that will be spent on this project are justified. I don't think they are, but I'm not going to accept your word on the subject or that of your "doctor friend", and I certainly won't take any politician's perspective at face value either. If you're wise, neither will you.
And I disagree with you about the magnitude of the problem. Social engineering is probably easier if all you want is records on a single individual. But that's not what we're discussing here. We're talking about an enormous, multinational project designed to put the medical data of millions of people online. The difference between trying to obtain mass quantities of such records from individual doctors offices by social engineering simply does not compare to the relative ease with which those same records could be acquired by cracking a remote database. Yes, it's the same in principle (i.e., illegitimate access to personal data) but in practice it is not, simply because of the sheer scale involved. As I mentioned previously, the financial sector has a terrible track record on information security, and I have no reason to believe that the medical industry will do any better.
Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It
Which isn't really much different from the usual "Microsoft Copies Idea, Then Patents It" methodology which they've been using for decades. Lather, rinse and repeat over and over again until you've made as many billions as you need.
This would increase efficiency and reduce costs in the already over-priced health field.
... but so what. We are talking oodles and oodles of orders of magnitude difference here. The danger in storing hundreds of millions of medical records on a multi-national distributed database is that, when security is eventually compromised (and it will be, you know that, since this stuff is worth money), confidential data on millions of people will suddenly find itself on the open market. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise, given that this happens to data concentrators in the financial sector with monotonous regularity (e.g. Choicepoint, among others.)
This might increase efficiency (yet to be proven) but if it does it will only increase profits in the already bloated health field. This is the medical industry we're talking about. When did you last know a medical operation to lower prices because their own costs went down?
Besides, social engineering (eg. calling a person's doctor and asking for medical history) is probably possible as it is.
Sure
Few kinds of records are more important to us than our health histories: accuracy and confidentiality are crucial to their continued utility. The problem is that concentrated data stores are dangerous as Hell, if they contain highly-confidential or vital information. So far as accuracy is concerned, you only have to look at the major credit bureaus in the United States to see how badly that can go.
No doubt this will get rammed down our throats with laws that require records to be uploaded by our physicians, whether we want them to or not.
No thanks. I'd rather my doctor walk over to a filing cabinet and pull my history. Much safer that way.
These data are already insecured, I see this initiative as a step in the right direction.
Not when viewed with the proper perspective. The problem with massive network-aware projects is that they make data widely available even when it doesn't need to be. The records your doctor maintains are accessible only to a few individuals, and then only on a physical basis: an effective means of security through obscurity. If someone else needs to see them, he can fax or mail them. However, once said records are replicated across thousands of servers on a multinational basis I don't how you can possibly consider it "secure" anymore. There's also the issue of keeping those records accurate and up to date, which is arguably even more important.
Even if these people used military-grade security (and they won't!), hired the best possible people to manage it (and they won't), once those records are online they will be effectively made public once that security is breached. And it will be. Either legally by insurance companies and/or employers wanting to know employee medical histories (even if said employees moved to another country) or by other even less-savory types. This is a bad idea, and like most government ideas creates a massive new problem in order to "solve" a much smaller problem. Then, of course the new problem requires solving, at even greater expense. It never ends.
There are plenty of other ways to spend tax dollars employing people other than posting extremely confidential information online, because that's what this amounts to doing. I have the same issues with what the U.S. and European governments are doing with antiterrorism measures involving massive amounts of data sharing with multiple law-enforcement agencies. It's very dangerous to spread that kind of data all over the place, because not all those who end up with it will use it in ways to our liking.
If you trust your government not to screw this up then by all means encourage them. Personally, I don't believe that my government can be trusted to keep my secrets. It's not their job now, and it shouldn't ever be.
Ray: Of course you forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration.
Yes, but there were some very large breasts in evidence so it all evens out in the end.
On the other hand, like 10,000 lawyers lining the bottom of the nearest large body of water ... it's a good start.
It's a bandpass filter, and it'll pass anything if you're on the bandwagon.
'deploy pre-release builds into production environments and report back on the results.
That would be funny, if it weren't coming from Microsoft.
It has everything to do with private ownership. Cows can't comprehend what the Founding Fathers were trying to accomplish, but people can. READ what Jefferson and Franklin wrote. PUT the Second Amendment and the rest of the Constitution into context. It makes a lot more sense that way and is a darn sight more relevant to the modern world when it isn't being twisted out of shape by gun control advocates and those interested in further extension of government power.
To put it in engineering terms, this is what is called "negative feedback". Smaller corrections have traditionally been applied using the vote, but in recent decades that has proven insufficient. The day may come when larger corrections will require the application of smokeless powder and large caliber projectiles. That is our right, that is our heritage: that's the legacy the Founders left us, codified in the Supreme Law of the land. Deny that if you wish, but you won't change a thing, and when the rest of us are forced to take steps you can sit back and watch.
The Second Amendment is starting to look better and better all the time.
The bad news: it's Sony.
... after the inclusion of a detonator they've been repurposed as low-cost cluster bombs for the U.S. military.
The news is still good
Well, if the Telcos have their way, we'll all be "serf-ing" the Internet.
Yes, I was hoping they'd make a sequel that would get back to Heinleins' vision ... and they did make a sequel and it was a double-crapfest. Too bad Heinlein himself wasn't around to keep them on track. They blew it with The Puppet Masters as well, for that matter.
Fortunately, there are a metric ton of other good Heinlein stories: maybe some of them will be made into quality movies.
Fortunately it was fairly simple to go in and delete the credit info.
Remember the Iran Contra hearings. Don't you know that just "deleting" something doesn't necessarily make it go away? Particularly in the case of a Google, which replicates data continuously to multiple datacenters.
Happy with the sales ...
I guess their expections were rather on the low side.
Starship Troopers, here we come. I remember being very disappointed in the movie version of Heinlein's book, because I was hoping and expecting the Mobile Infantry to have Powered Suits, and really wanted to see what a modern special-effects team could do with the idea. As described by Juan "Johnny" Rico's character from the novel (source: Wikipedia):
...Suited up, you look like a big steel gorilla, armed with gorilla-sized weapons.
Our suits give us better eyes, better ears, stronger backs (to carry heavier weapons and more ammo), better legs, more intelligence (in the military meaning...), more firepower, greater endurance, less vulnerability.
A suit isn't a space suit - although it can serve as one. it is not primarily armor - although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are. It isn't a tank - but a single M.I. [Mobile Infantry] private could take on a squadron of those things and knock them off unassisted...
The real genius in the design is that you don't have to control the suit; you just wear it, like your clothes, like skin.
The secret lies in negative feedback and amplification.
Thank you ... this thread was getting way too serious.
Actually, the question is valid: what is a human life worth? The answer is usually simple: a lot less that we would like to think.
... we can't just throw money at every nifty-sounding idea (although that is pretty much what we're doing post 9/11.) In all such cases, a proper cost-vs-benefit analysis must be performed, and the results acted upon. That's a cold-blooded business, sure ... but in the long run, keeping childish emotions (and political aspirations) out of the picture and spending the money where it does the most good saves more lives. So we spend x-million dollars installing cameras and the communications infrastructure to service them. Then we recorded y-crimes and caught z criminals. That's great, so far as it goes but, had those funds been spent improving hospital facilities or providing weapons training to civilians, hiring more beat cops, or some other more direct measure taken, odds are more lives would have been saved. The claim that surveillance saves lives is disingenuous at best: what it does is (maybe) make it easier to find a perpetrator after the fact, but the crime still happened and the victim is still a victim.
Resources, even in a wealthy nation, are limited
Advanced surveillance has not, in general, ever made an ROI approaching the claims made by its proponents. Crooks are still caught by good police work and crimes are prevented by potential victims not by police, and all the cameras in the world won't change that.
This is a good start: Gary Kleck