Ya I totally agree, the parent has probably never been to NYC if he thinks the taxis would actually take some effort to avoid hitting people. Actually I see taxis make more of an effort to cut people off than to avoid accidents. The only times I see taxis swerve in NYC is when I turn on my blinker, they'll usually swerve into that space I'm trying to get to. That's probably one of my favorite times to have a 5.0 (1990 mustang with a 5.0L V8, I'd hate living in manhatten with one but it's nice being from Staten Island and occasionally driving thru the city with it.) They never make it into the spot before me, it's dangerous for me and I should probably let them take the spot (even though I do turn on my signal, they're just waiting for someone to point out a spot for them that's slightly ahead to help them make a slightly better time to their destination.) But someone has to spank these taxis and show them they're not all that lol.
Anyway, ya that's way off topic. Also, I like how this takes place in the village, the only place I know of where it isn't weird to run around the streets in a pacman costume being chased by some ghosts.
Congressman John Dingell was made to strip down to his underwear. So much for your silly "I am strip searched... I have to take off my boots" story. Or maybe now Congressmen are crazies too, making up stories.
All of these I could reply with this, you did not mention names, the extent of the strip searching, any details on how the events took place. Just some general things that could be very very bad, or just annoying. I really am strip searched, taking off your boots is being strip searched, it's not as bad as stripping down to your underwear, but you did not mention that before, you just said strip searched.
Ok you shouldn't even mention the congressman being asked to strip down to his underwear, he wasn't on a list he was just setting off a metal detector with his hip replacement.
What they did to Barbara Olshansky is really messed up, I won't argue with that, really really messed up. And I think she's in the middle of a lawsuit, I'm sure she'll win and they'll eventually clear her from the list or give her a large amount of money.
About Doug Stuber, a lot of articles have mentioned he commented that "George Bush is dumb as a rock" some say he screamed it out loud. And I'm sure he did scream it out loud because all the articles mention the cop that pulled him aside said to go to Greensboro (or some town name like that) and to not mention politics (which would imply the officer heard him talking about politics which could have included screaming "george bush is as dumb as a rock.") Sure he's just excersizing his right to free speech, but they didn't arrest him for saying that, they just questioned him before allowing him to continue boarding a flight. I'm pretty sure we don't have a right to free air travel.
Also, I didn't say names of people, if you have a list of organizations to be on the lookout for, you wouldn't have some trademarked logo, you'd have a list of names of the organizations. Ok maybe you'd have a logo along with a name (so you can spot members of these organizations wearing a button or pin or something) but you'd deffinitely have the name. And I read a few articles on this case, some said the secret service showed him a paper from the justice department with greenpeace listed as an organization with possible terrorist members. Others mentioned the open binder. None of the ones that I found said anything about a secret service agent confirming this but even as you say, Asked about the list of organizations observed by Stuber, the Secret Service source speculated that those organizations might be on a list of organizations that the service, which is assigned the task of protecting the president, might need to monitor as part of its security responsibility. he doens't say "Oh yeah we all have that list, it's quite possible that he saw it." He just says "That might have been a list of organizations that we might be watching" like he doesn't know (or you can turn it around and say he does know but has to deny it.) And the articles all list it as fact that he was questioned, purchased a ticket for like $2,600, and was told to try other airports after being questioned. None can verify the document actually existing (most of them say "...he claims that he caught a glimpse..." claims being the key word.)
Those are all the lowest level data structures in systems that would need that information (automatic toll payment, some stuff for commercial vehicle driver identity verification, commercial vehicle tracking, downloading new maps to your GPS thru a pay system, emergency vehicle route planning) all of those systems require that information (not all of it at the same time, but each one of those systems is using at least one of those data structures.) And the traveler_identity sounds like a username, probably to log onto some navigation system, so you can use the cars automated toll payment system thru your credit card.
Or detained for hours, like a Milwaukee nun along with 20 young students. They were finally permitted to go to their Peace Conference the next day.
They weren't held in a jail cell, they were led to a seperate area (I assume some sort of room with like a computer and a desk) and questioned. Ok it took too long and made them miss the flight but I'm sure the airport covered the cost of a hotel. And if they wanted to they could get the money back on the tickets. Should we be less strict on people because they travel with a nun? And they were only flagged because the database uses some sort of old method of changing peoples names slightly (remove the vowels I think and change like sounding letters.) So if your name was Asama Nudem it might match Osama Bin Laden. And you'd have a red flag.
The rest I didn't care enough to look up information on but I would like to add that every time I go to the airport I am strip searched because I wear boots, it's slightly irritating but I don't think it violates any of my rights. I have to take off my boots and run them thru the x-ray machine (by deffinition that is being strip searched since I am removing an article of clothing.) Also, I'm sure that the person caught a glimpse of a binder with a list of names from greenpeace and all that. That sounds like total BS, if there was such a binder that he glimpsed, it would be opened to some relevant page to himself, a picture (or series of pictures) and detailed criminal record and other types of information (DOB, height, eye color, sex, all the stuff you'd find on a liscense.) Not some organized list of names that are large enough to easily be read quickly from a distance (unless this guy happened to examine this binder very closely)
The lucky ones who are merely screened, not only do they get extensively screened every flight, they often go through it on every segment of a flight.
And apparently one of the best ways to get on the list or otherwise harrased is for purely political reasons. Peace activists, civil rights advocates, people that criticize Bush. American citizens who have never been arrested for anything.
Actually I think it's only where you pickup your tickets, as this is the only place where there is a computer to check your name against a database (the other places MIGHT bother you since after getting flagged you get a big *S* circled in red on your ticket.) And the easiest way to get on this list is to be born with a name similar to that of a terrorists. Lets say there was a terrorist "Joe Bob" out there. If your name was "Jay Dod" that would be a close enough match to be red flagged. This way, someone with a name similar to yours has to do something bad, and you do NOTHING, I'm pretty sure it's easy to do nothing. The other way (be very anti-something, like anti-bush) you'd actually have to make yourself known to the people who maintain this list, which isn't as easy as you'd think. So between doing nothing, and doing something, I think I'd go with doing nothing as being an easier way to get on this list. And if there are any real damages (like money lost since you couldn't make a deadline or something like that) the people being bothered could sue for those damages. I don't see this as being bad, just annoying.
That item contains your identity, route, and tons more data. Comprehensive traveler data of every interaction with the system.
While it does contain a ton of data, I have seen nothing in there that says it contains your Identity. It keeps track of things like, where did you go, what tolls did you pay, what places did you get directions to? It stores that database so when they design roads, tolls, signs, stuff like that, they know how to design the roads (have access to the most popular destinations), the tolls (see which tolls are worth keeping, or find better places to put them), place signs in the best areas (if people request a lot of directions to Nowheresville when they're travelling a specific route, the
It depends on the game, I dunno if I was the only person watching the Final Fantasy movie thinking "This should be a video game" there was too much in the movie to be explained in that short time frame of a movie. I'm sure any good video game turned into a movie will probably be bad since we're expecting too much of it. And they'd try to make a blockbuster, not a movie that's true to the game. But then again Final Fantasy Avant Children is coming out, that seems like it's true to the story of Final Fantasy and not just trying to be some movie that just happens to have the name of a popular video game in it when having almost nothing to do with the game itself (Mario Brothers.)
Or is this picture a little creepy? The american astronaut looks like a serial killer or something and the russian looks like he's afraid because the american looks like a killer...
I was just reading some PDFs on the system. Proposed layout ranges from one scanner every 1000 feet in urban areas to one scanner every 5 miles in rural areas. The data communication backbone is a signifigant issue for remote rural units. They are considering creative solutions such as having roadside scanners deposit their data in each passing car. The car itself become a mobile packet. The data then passes from the car to any scanner it later passes. You just keep resending the data, sooner or later it eventually gets to the destination scanner or onto the main backbone. Eventually the scanner gets confirmation it's data arrived and quits resending.
I read a bunch of the stuff on this system and I found nothing like that, I found some stuff where the cars will communicate with each other (to detect collisions and braking and stuff like that.) And they're not designing it so it can function as a tracking system.
The government already has 13 million people on it's terrorism watch-list. 13 million! Obviously most of the people on that list are not terrorists. There are already countless reports of peace activists, civil rights attorneys, and even nuns being detained by police, security, and even by the FBI, simply because a computer flagged them as being on a watch list.
And? That's completely irrelavent, so they're on the terrorist watch list, the government isn't going to break into their house and kidnap the person when they sleep. At most, when they try to board an airplane they'll be stopped and questioned. You might think the questioning is intrussive but if you're boarding an airplane, that's not a public place, you have as much right to be there as the airline wants to give you.
We don't need the roadway system turning into an Orwellian system to track millions of people. If the system is capabable of doing that, then some well intentioned official will go ahead and do it.
Oh please, gimme a break. You know as well as I do there are systems out there that can be used to monitor us at all times, but they aren't used that way. And besides, we can't just not do things because they could be used the wrong way. There are viruses grown in labs all the time, so they can easily test medicine on them (grow them in cultures and you won't have to worry about running low on samples.) And these viruses can be transmitted to people all over the world, it doesn't mean we should stop all growing of them because some person might use them in a bad way. This system will be usefull, and we'll be one step closer to cars that can drive themselves (as bad as it sounds, it really bothers me that it'd be possible and there's always the what if it's malfunctioning, but then again it'd be way less dangerous than driving with some of the people out there.) Just think of all the lives that would be saved with this system. If you don't believe it, just drive across country thru a terrible snow storm and look at all the overturned trucks, and cars that swerved off the road because they were going just a little too fast, then think of all the people that die because they swerved off the road, down a hill and no one found them till it was too late.
Then you have the uses with the unique ID, not as grand as the ones you could get without the ID but they're still pretty nice. EZ Pass would be easier to use, you wouldn't have to slow down at all and it wouldn't be a visible tag to prevent theft (although some new cars have it embedded in the windshield or the liscense plate holder.) If a car is reported stolen there could be some sort of onstar type satellite link that could send a stolen signal to the car, so as it passes a cop, it'll tell them the car is stolen and they could arrest the person and recover the car (you have no idea how good this would be unless you've had a very nice car stolen once before.) Automated ticket system. Police can send a kill signal to cars (like if the person is going way too fast, they can send a signal to that specifi
If that's true then there's absolutely no point in the cars broadcasting an ID code, is there?:)
You couldn't even catch speeders.
Cops would be able to use hand held scanners or imbedded ones in their cars, this system supposedly has 1 mile range (or longer, forgot the exact number.) So cop A sees speeder S, A radios to cop B "Look out there's someone coming your way, liscense plate number H4X0R." B punches into his onboard computers (I'm quite sure all cop cars have one now, I know all the ones I've seen have it) and gets the unique ID put into his scanner, his scanner now searches the road for that one car, detects it a mile away, estimated speed 90MPH, B then goes onto the road and waits for S to speed up to him, then he gets in front and pulls a maneuver to get the guy pulled over (maybe A can follow up to that point, it'd be more effective in a high speed chase than just radioing the cop ahead of time since his scanner can detect the car and give him information like speed and distance all automatically.)
If you are doing anything useful at all, such as communicating road conditions, then there must be some sort of communication network linking to the roadside units. The expensive part is building the roadside units and local network to control them. After that it's trivial and useful to link them at a town or county level. It's trivial and useful to aggregate the county data into a state-wide system. It's trivial and useful to link the states.
All the scanners detect road conditions locally with on board sensors. The only thing they need is power, They have no need for a network so adding one would be trivial. They are designed as stand alone systems with no need at all to track a person, so they would be very bad at it. EZ Pass keeps a database because it needs to (like your phone company keeps records of your phone calls EZ Pass keeps records of your usage so if there are some unknown charges or whatever you can fight them.) This system could tell the police a person is going too fast and the police would keep the record (or they could automate the system to activate a camera as the car passes, and it'll use the picture as evidence with the ticket automatically being sent, which would require unique IDs, it'd pretty much take out the human unless the photo is of the wrong vehicle and the person the ticket was sent to fought it.)
If your chevy had a top speed of 5 miles an hour and your drive to work was 7 miles, I think you'd really enjoy the porsche.
"But I only use the chevy to go to the grocery store."
Yeah but what happens when you want to go on vacation, 300+ miles at 5 miles an hour is quite painfull.
And if your chevy was $15 a month, and a brand new 2004 porsche 911 turbo was $40 a month, which car would you buy (honestly)?
I've switched from dialup to broadband, to nothing then to dialup and back to broadband. I hated that dialup period. Windows update, that was fun "Your computer has security holes, unfortunaltely your computer cannot download patches fast enough to fix them, have a nice day while you're computer gets owned:-D." Did I mention I was using my sisters AOL account? I got an earthlink account after that (much better than AOL but still just as slow.)
And most of the time when people think "Well I only check e-mail and browse some websites" well what if your friend has broadband "Hey check out this cool new website!" sends you some bloated flash site, 3 hours later they call you "Hey did you check out that website! HAH it's so funny" meanwhile you're loading bar just hit 30%. You would be surprised about how much more stuff you do online with broadband, you only check e-mail and go to a few websites because that's all you can do.
Back to the car example, if you had a Chevy Malibu for a while (one of the new ones) you'd probably just use it to drive around town. But lets say you get a corvette, hey now you can take your car to the track, or corvette road track events, or to auto-x. Or if you buy a Silverado, hey now you can go off roading, now you can go to oversand beaches (you drive over the beach, park on the sand, it's very fun for huge families that bring tons of stuff or people with RVs since you're right on the beach you don't have to bring a ton of stuff from the car to the beach since the car's right there.) And if you had an RV you'd be able to do even more stuff (like drive across country going camping all over in your RV.)
I check my Slashdot reply listings pretty much daily. I check my spam ridden e-mail maybe monthly, chuckle.
lol it always felt like I was the only person since people hardly ever continue a discussion on slashdot.
Off-topic, so I'll try to wrap this up. Congress + the president + the supreme court cannot enact an amendment. Congress can merely propose an amendment, but it has to go to the states and get an overwhelming (75%) approval. It's intentionally difficult to do. One amendment took nearly 200 years to enact (restricting congress's power to vote themselves a raise).
But my point was that it's possible, I never said congress alone could do it, just that it is possible. If congress, the supreme court, and the president all agree that an ammendment should pass, I don't think it'd be too hard to convince the states.
The second thing to notice is that a car passing a scanner in NY should not be passing some random scanner in CA 10 seconds later. If you pass a scanner northbound on interstate 1 at mile marker 1, then there is a 99.9% chance that the next scanner event will be northbound interstate 1 mile marker 2. *Poof* we just stored an entire location event in a single bit.
No you didn't. A single bit can either be true or false, 0 or 1, maybe if you just wanted to know two things "Did something happen? Did something not happen?" you could store that in a database but it'd be quite useless, hell I wouldn't mind if the entire planet had access to a database of "Something happened, something didn't happen" with no time, no event, no date, no relevance to anything in a way that could be read. A byte can contain more (up to 256 different states) but that's far from enough (it's hardly enough for the mile marker information.)
The first thing to notice is that you don't need to store coordinate data for the car at all. You only store "events" - when the car crosses a scanner. You just store the scanner number. You can always look up the X,Y,Z location of that scanner.
For 1 mile resolution you'd need over 5.5 million scanners (over 9 million sq km, over 5.5 million sq miles, so a grid of scanners each a mile apart would require over 5.5 million scanners.)
I dunno maybe you forgot computers use binary, but a number as large as 5.5 million would take 23 bits, almost 3 bytes.
Now if all you stored was a mile marker you'd need a code for the state and the road (it'd be useless knowing if someone's at mile marker 1, that could be any state on any highway) 50 states 50 codes, 6 bits (2^6 power = 64) at least. I'm going to say the largest number on a mile marker is only 256 (I know there are some that are waaaaaaaay higher, I've done a lot of highway driving all over the country.) That's exactly one byte or 8 bits, so far you have 14 bits just for the state and a mile marker no higher than 256. How about the road you're on? I know for a fact there are at least 128 highways so lets use 256 as the max (even though there is probably more) that's another 8 bits. You could use 1 bit for direction (north or south, 0 or 1 since I'm pretty sure you can't tell which direction a person is going by just mile markers..) So you have 23 bits so far, about 3 bytes just storing mile markers, highway codes, direction and state. So pretty much by storing either one of these two things (unique id or the other stuff) you use 3 bytes and save, 3 bytes over a co-ordinate based system. But that's with a resolution of 1 mile, with the co-ordinates and that resolution you would use 24 bits (up to 4,096 miles across and the same up and down, 2^12.)
And even if you had this massive database and an awesome way of implementing it so that it's possible to keep track of all this data, the scanners can't SEND THE DATA ANYWHERE (well it could always send it to you, which is their purpose.) They are not connected to some network, they all have built in sensors that detect changing road conditions and stuff like that, they
CONGRESS DOES NOT HAVE THE POWER TO CREATE A LAW INFRINGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Period. Congress only has the powers specificlly granted to them by the constitution, and they cannot do anything forbidden by the constitution. They can pass a bill saying anything they like, but if it violates the constitution then it is an illegal law. It is null and void.
Dude please just continue this in e-mail or something, anyway.
The important part "If it violates the constitution then it is an illegal law." Have you read the constitution? The supreme court determines if a law violates the constitution, the constitution doesn't explain itself, we don't go to philadelphia and pray to the constitution and ask if something violates it. We send it to the supreme court and they interpret the constitution. If they feel something is not unconstitutional it can pass and become law. And I'm pretty sure the president can try to veto it but then I think it goes to senate and they need to vote on it. Too lazy to go look it up, anyway congress CAN limit your freedom of speech, it'd be VERY hard to do (since they'd actually have to try and justify it but then again they could just use the word terrorist and I'm sure it'll pass.) Now it doesn't mean it's ok, but if you were arrested for merely posting to a website plans on making a bomb, and appealed your case to the supreme court, there is a snowballs chance in hell that they would still find you guilty and send you to jail. They could always just say "Well it says freedom of speech but what they really meant was freedom of speech as long as it causes no harm and since your act indirectly caused harm to someone it is illegal." Now please keep in mind I THINK IT WOULD BE REALLY FUCKED UP FOR THIS TO HAPPEN! If the laws here became that extreme I'd so totally be on your side and try to fight this, I am just saying, IT COULD HAPPEN. Just keep in mind all the rights the constitution gives you are not set in stone, they can be always be interpreted differently and ammended (which is why we have 3 branches of government, to make it really hard to do this with checks and balances).
Also, It would take way more than 1 byte of data for your location at ANY time, there would probably be 3 co-ordinates (elevation, longitude and latitude.) And I'm sure they would include speed too, but if they don't you still can't do it in 1 byte of data.
I think your accuracy would be way off with just one byte of data and 2 co-ordinates. "He's either in a gay bar in utah, or a church in nevada." As you need 2 co-ordinates (bare minimum, you could always be on a mountain, in a tunnel, on a bridge, higher and lower all the time and that would take 3), you would need 2 bytes of data for that and that'd give you 2 seperate co-ordinates but they'd still be inaccurate. If you want accurate results you'd need to be dealing with yards at most, not miles. If you wanted an accuracy of 1 meter (about 3 feet) you'd need at least 6 bytes of data (US is like 9 million sq km, which is like 3,000km * 3,000km which is like 3,000,000 meters up and down and then 3,000,000 meters left and right, to store a number as high as 3,000,000 you'd need a little over 2 bytes, so 3 is a good choice, then two co-ordinates, so 6 bytes is needed.) 9 if you want to include height (tunnels, mountains, land and roads aren't flat.) Then there's the date, lets say you want to keep it small, a good idea would be to store it as 01011990 or if you want to have it really small 010101 (but then there's an issue in 2100 so 01011990 is way better in the long run.) That's gonna add another 3 bytes. Then there's also the fact that a database is meant to have QUICK access, and they add huge amounts of stuff for quick indexing and all that other stuff. Since I'm not much of a database expert (never had to optimize a database for storage space.) Lets just say the database adds 3x the data for every update (that sounds like a lot but I don't think it really is since I've worked with a database that turn
In 30 years we'll hear stories...
on
SimChurch
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
...of altar boys that were virtually molested but were too afraid to come out and say something when it happened.
Perhaps I'm just unfamiliar with the lingo being used here, but the words conclusive and possibility don't quite seem to make sense when both used in reference to the same evidence.
Ok there are two things to prove, A and B. Evidence C is conclusive evidence that A happened but also might have caused C.
The rock was conclusive evidence of martian meteorites on earth, which possibly led to cross-seeding.
Think of it this way, someone breaks into a store, shoots a clerk in the leg, and steals all the money from the registers. A security tape shows the person shooting the clerk holding an empty bag, then they're off camera, then they run past the camera with the empty bag now full. It's conclusive evidence that the person shot a clerk, but only hints at them stealing them money.
Your statement is not only wrong, I find it an appalling mindset. God forbid some innocent person ever gets stuck with you on the jury. If the police ran him through their database, "he must have done something bad". If the police arrested him, "he must have done something bad". If the district attorney pressed charges, "he must have done something bad". If the grandjury indited on those charges, "he must have done something bad". If he's here in court wearing handcuffs and being tried for a crime, "he must have done something bad".
Ok just replace bad with suspicious, generally I think of things that would be suspicious as bad so I tend to not do them. If you haven't done something suspicious the authorities aren't going to check up on you, and if you're innocent but have done some suspicious stuff, they'll check up on you and find nothing.
The government is a good thing. It's there to protect us and for our benefit. But the government is far more dangerous than any criminals could ever be. The police always want more and more power, and for good reason. It helps them catch criminals. But if that power is not kept in check then you end up in a police state, then police become the criminals.
And how does having an RFID system give the police more power? There is nothing about this that will give them more power, they will have more data available, but they will still have to go thru the old processes to get at it. Just because the information is easier to find since it's on a computer doesn't mean it's more legal for the police to randomly check up on people and see where they're going.
I don't post the nitroglycerine receipe to draw the government's attention. I do it because it is a powerful argument to make a powerful point. Not only is posting that not criminal, but congress CAN'T pass a law making it a crime. The point I am usually making is that if congress cannot restrict bomb-making speech then obviously congress cannot restrict [some other speech]. They do not have the power. That concept - that congress does not have the power - it comes as a complete shock to many people.
That doesn't make any sense. How does posting this stuff prove anything? It's not powerfull, anyone can do it. I don't know anyone who would be shocked that they have free speach and it can't be taken away, and if you took any classes in US History and Government you know what congress can or cannot do.
That is a pretty profound aspect of the US system - my rights override and restrict congress's power.
Your rights are given to you buy congress' power, along with the power of the supreme court and the president, all 3 can give and take power away but only if they agree on an issue (I'm sure if congress wanted to pass a bill making the first amendment invalid it'd get vettoed by the president and considered unconstitutional by the supreme court but it doesn't mean it can't possibly happen.) Anyway I don't understand your point, you talk about protecting rights and then you talk about congress not being able to take them away. If congress can't take them away you don't need to protect them. Congress CAN take your rights away but they can only do it with permission from the other 2 branches of government, it's very very unlikely this will happen though but it's possible.
As a law abiding citizen, the government should not be 'red flagging' me and invading my privacy and potentially harrassing me (hasn't happened to me, but it certainly has happened to others) simply because I excercized my free speech rights by posting nitroglycerine, or criticizing certain laws, or criticizing certain government policies, or for calling the president a moron.
I like putting that with -
If they have probable cause that I commited a crime, or that I intend to commit a crime (nothing I lised above is probable cause), then they can ask a judge for a search warrant or wire tap, or to place a tracking bug in my car.
The cliche example is McCarthy, but the examples of abuses are almost endless.
And which huge database did he search thru? What kind of RFID tags did he put in peoples shoes to track their movements? And besides how far did McCarthy get? Is the world free of communism? Is there a secret police in the US that will go to your house and drag you out in the night and shoot you for being communist? I'm free to go to the white house and say "HEY! I'M A COMMUNIST!" and no bad will come of it, I won't be arrested, a mysterious van won't come from around the corner to pick me up, helicopters won't come from the sky and shoot me where I stand while my body is absorbed into the asphault to hide the evidence.
MAYBE I might have a red flag set for being a public nuisance in front of the white house (could be crazy, you wouldn't want me to get inside the white house) but I deserve that for standing in front of the white house and screaming.
It's not exactly unheard of for perfectly innocent people and groups to fall under investigation simply for having unpopular political beliefs, for promoting "subversive" causes.
So? Please, explain what happens after you're investigated and found to be a safe sane person and in no way a threat to anything or anyone. But what happens when a person who is out to cause harm gets thru investigation? Well people get harmed... how can you stop criminals if you don't know who they are? Are we supposed to wait for everyone to commit a crime before we stop them? Shouldn't we be able to have a warning system setup so we know "This person is probably going to do something bad, if they're ready to do it, we can stop them, if they're never going to do it, well we don't have to do anything and they can just live out their lives."
Just the other day I was driving around Tempe (Arizona) at like 1:30 in the morning. I stopped in some parking lot to setup my camera (was just filming the car ride and stuff) and a few minutes later a cop pulled up to me with the search light in my face, asked me to put my hands out the window, and questioned me. YES it WAS annoying, but I wasn't doing anything wrong, so he just let me go. He asked me what I was doing, I had a good answer (messing with my camera) he asked why so late I had another good answer (I'm a night person, I work the night shift at my job so I'm always awake at night and I was bored and cold with the AC in my apartment on, couldn't turn it off cause my friend wanted it on, so I went out for a ride.) My life wasn't ruined, I wasn't thrown in jail for being suspicious, I wasn't labeled a terrorist, the CIA (as far as I know but that's not very far) doesn't have a file on me, nothing happened. But what if I was a drug dealer? Or (what he was probably looking for) a street racer? If the cop stopping to question me will stop one street racer, or one drug dealer (I don't care much about the drug dealers, but the street racers kill innocent people, and even themselves) then it's all worth it. Later that night I saw two cop cars talking with a few people behind some fast food place in the parking lot. I'm sure they were going to race later that night, but if they weren't they'd have some sort of reason for being their. And if they had a reason the cop might make a note "Look out for these guys blah blah blah" (dunno what they do with those but I've had a note like that on me once after getting pulled over, like after the cop gave me a warning he made a note just in case I got pulled over again) but if they do nothing wrong then the note will mean nothing. If they do something wrong, the note will mean a stricter penalty because they have been warned before.
Anyway my point there was that being investigated isn't so bad, it might be annoying but if you're doing nothing wrong nothing bad will come of it.
Most people do. I'm sure if I had soch a data base on you tehre would be something in there that would in some way embarass or inconvience you if I revealed it to the police
Once it's recorded in a database it's simply a matter of someone feeling like running a scan on that database to find out anything they like. Not only where you go and when, but you can correlate that with the rest of the database to see who you tend to meet where and when.
And?
But I do NOT want my phone broadcasting that data at any other time, especially since they may do so silently and invisibly either continuously or whenever they receive such a request.
Why not?
I hate conspiracy posts on slashdot, you just post something like "What if they keep a database of all these statistics!?!?!?!" and a bunch of other garbage "What if they know my position all the time!?!?!?!" And what if they do? You just leave it to us to think of all these crazy things and since we're thinking about that crazy stuff and nothing else, we aren't thinking about how crazy and stupid those things really are.
Well what if they had a huge database and could find out where you go and how often and know your exact location at every time of the day? Who cares? If the government cares enough about you to actually check this information you must have done something bad, otherwise they don't give a shit. Don't be so full of yourself, there's a whole buttload of stuff you'd have to do to piss off the government enough for them to actually use their resources to track you.
And besides, databases aren't that scary, slashdot has a database and you post on slashdot so it knows your IP (in some huge log probably) the time you post, and where you post from (IP.)
Once it's recorded in a database it's simply a matter of someone feeling like running a scan on that database to find out anything they like. Not only where you post from and when, but you can correlate that with the rest of the database to see who you tend to post replies to or who will post replies to you, where the replies are posted from and when. There's an entire feild of study on building up social network maps based on those sorts of correlataions.
What happens when the government agencies that don't care so much about your rights--CIA, FBI, NSA, police, whatever--decide that this system can be very useful for them?
I don't know? What happens? They catch criminals faster? They can track the movement of a car that they were chasing down the highway at 140 mph without following it putting civilians at risk? They can follow a bus load of heroin without putting any agents in imediate danger by having them follow it? They can check the movements of a suspected killer's vehicle (keeping track cause he was on parole or something like that) for the day of the alleged murder and see that the killer was near the location the body was found and have a stronger case against the suspected killer?
Please, I'd really like to know, what will these agencies use the technology to do?
YEAH! Exactly! You're so right, we should never send humans to mars cause since the second they step outside the space craft they will contaminate the whole planet. And don't give me any nonsense about them using sterile suits (like those make believe bunny suits the Intel guys wear, we all know they're really working on that stuff completely naked!) How would you even manage to get a suit on an astronaut, that's immpossible. And how would you seal it so no contaminents get out? You'd need some kind of air tight suit for space, we can call it a space suit. And we all know those don't exist so we should deffinitely hold off on human exploration of mars till we can invent "space suits."
Ahem, to quote the Daily Show "That's a stupid thing to say, and you're a stupid person for saying it."
You're an idiot... They're going to use this in places where you shouldn't have a cell phone on in the first place. Like a theater, ok sure a beeper is fine but it better be on vibrate (can't answer a beeper, and you would be forced to go outside and use a payphone or maybe use your cell.) If you're in a doctors office, they wouldn't block cell phones (doctors use 'em too, no one in a play or a band should have one while performing and the audience shouldn't have one on while listening or watching.) If you're in a bank, they wouldn't block cell phones (why would they? What's the point? It's just a bank you're only in there for a few minutes and it's nothing that requires your full attention or complete silence.) Highway 101, well I can see why blocking cell phone usage on a highway is good (in the time it takes you to answer your phone you could have traveled well over a couple hundred feet, cell phone's are dangerous while driving but it also depends on the driver and where you're driving.) Flower shop and supermarkets, dude they have no reasons to block cell phones in any of the places you listed EXCEPT the highway and they wouldn't even do that since you could always use a handsfree unit.
Next they will do something so you can't listen to your mp3 player because someone doesnt' want to see you bopping your head to the beat.
Dude, you're comparing two different things. That's like comparing a ban on automatic rifles to a ban on spitballs and straws "Next they will do something so you can't fire spitballs at people cause the projectiles are too wet." Cell phones are annoying in certain places (LIKE A THEATER WHEN YOU'RE WATCHING A PERFORMANCE AND SOMEONES PHONE RINGS!!!!) I don't know why you don't understand that this is the only place the technology would really be used (unless your employer absolutely does not want you to have any type of cell phone in the office at all, but then you're in the office anyway and can use the work phones.) Besides there were methods of getting to a child birth before the cell phone was invented (ever think, hey my wife is due in 3 days, well now if I go out it better be someplace important or someplace I can be contacted quick and easily like at work, unless it's such a total emergency in which case I have to miss the birth anyway.)
You wouldn't watch Pulp Fiction on this, you'd watch The Matrix. I don't know if there's much cursing but if you took out all the violence, you'd have a boring movie but you'd be able to understand it (none of the story progresses through the violence, or the sex scene in revolutions, they're just in the movie to look cool.) Or if you wanted to watch other movies like that (no story is actually needs violence and none of the dialog really needs cursing for the movie to make sense.)
Pulp Fiction is a movie you wouldn't want your young kids to watch (and a movie they wouldn't care enough to want to watch) but with all the matrix merchandise out there how can you keep an 8 year old from not wanting to watch the movie. At least with this you can let the child see it without the violence, sex, and language. And would you rather them just release the movies with a cleaner version? Movies are sometimes released way cleaner than they should be just so they can get a PG-13 rating (otherwise they lose the entire target audience) at least with this the movies can be released however they want to be and parents can let their kids watch the clean version on their special DVD player without screwing up my DVD copies. I've actually bought a CD from kmart where they took out the f-word, it was annoying as hell because it said nothing about it being censored (that I saw on the wrapper), and it was only one word, replaced with a long beep, sounds like there's something wrong with the CD player. I'd rather own an unedited version and people with special CD players should be able to block it.
Apparently only those wealthy enough can afford to be saved while the rest of the 1500 people a year that croak because of drowsy driving have to suffer.
They usually have technology like this in luxury cars first, then when it's perfected and made cheaper, they put it in more cars and it eventually just becomes standard features.
I can see this just bothering rich drivers, since they're pretty much beta testing this system.
Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm expressed skepticism, and suggested the Canadian music biz find a way to live with file-sharers.
"Whether people download or not, as long as they're listening to music," he said.
"I think it's a challenge for the industry, to try and find a new way to survive."
Wow I've never heard that from someone outside of slashdot, now we just need american idol singers to say that, and maybe nsync and britney spears, then MAYBE (doubtfull) people would listen.
What really kills me is that Bill Mahr (I think he's really funny and I love his show on HBO) calls downloading music stealing just like tons and tons of other people. It isn't stealing, you can't steal something by copying it, I wish more people would understand that. It's copyright infringment, not stealing.
Real soon was always within the decade, that's no time at all, you go from being 35 to 45 in 10 years (or from 0-10.) It might seem long to you because you're used to some new processor coming out real soon as in a few months, but 10 years is a short time.
Slashdot Mirror
Did the full review include testing the device as a web server? I really wanted to see this too I'm in the market for a new PDA :-(
Taxis swerve for lots of unknown reasons.
Ya I totally agree, the parent has probably never been to NYC if he thinks the taxis would actually take some effort to avoid hitting people. Actually I see taxis make more of an effort to cut people off than to avoid accidents. The only times I see taxis swerve in NYC is when I turn on my blinker, they'll usually swerve into that space I'm trying to get to. That's probably one of my favorite times to have a 5.0 (1990 mustang with a 5.0L V8, I'd hate living in manhatten with one but it's nice being from Staten Island and occasionally driving thru the city with it.) They never make it into the spot before me, it's dangerous for me and I should probably let them take the spot (even though I do turn on my signal, they're just waiting for someone to point out a spot for them that's slightly ahead to help them make a slightly better time to their destination.) But someone has to spank these taxis and show them they're not all that lol.
Anyway, ya that's way off topic. Also, I like how this takes place in the village, the only place I know of where it isn't weird to run around the streets in a pacman costume being chased by some ghosts.
Congressman John Dingell was made to strip down to his underwear. So much for your silly "I am strip searched... I have to take off my boots" story. Or maybe now Congressmen are crazies too, making up stories.
All of these I could reply with this, you did not mention names, the extent of the strip searching, any details on how the events took place. Just some general things that could be very very bad, or just annoying. I really am strip searched, taking off your boots is being strip searched, it's not as bad as stripping down to your underwear, but you did not mention that before, you just said strip searched.
Ok you shouldn't even mention the congressman being asked to strip down to his underwear, he wasn't on a list he was just setting off a metal detector with his hip replacement.
What they did to Barbara Olshansky is really messed up, I won't argue with that, really really messed up. And I think she's in the middle of a lawsuit, I'm sure she'll win and they'll eventually clear her from the list or give her a large amount of money.
About Doug Stuber, a lot of articles have mentioned he commented that "George Bush is dumb as a rock" some say he screamed it out loud. And I'm sure he did scream it out loud because all the articles mention the cop that pulled him aside said to go to Greensboro (or some town name like that) and to not mention politics (which would imply the officer heard him talking about politics which could have included screaming "george bush is as dumb as a rock.") Sure he's just excersizing his right to free speech, but they didn't arrest him for saying that, they just questioned him before allowing him to continue boarding a flight. I'm pretty sure we don't have a right to free air travel.
Also, I didn't say names of people, if you have a list of organizations to be on the lookout for, you wouldn't have some trademarked logo, you'd have a list of names of the organizations. Ok maybe you'd have a logo along with a name (so you can spot members of these organizations wearing a button or pin or something) but you'd deffinitely have the name. And I read a few articles on this case, some said the secret service showed him a paper from the justice department with greenpeace listed as an organization with possible terrorist members. Others mentioned the open binder. None of the ones that I found said anything about a secret service agent confirming this but even as you say, Asked about the list of organizations observed by Stuber, the Secret Service source speculated that those organizations might be on a list of organizations that the service, which is assigned the task of protecting the president, might need to monitor as part of its security responsibility. he doens't say "Oh yeah we all have that list, it's quite possible that he saw it." He just says "That might have been a list of organizations that we might be watching" like he doesn't know (or you can turn it around and say he does know but has to deny it.) And the articles all list it as fact that he was questioned, purchased a ticket for like $2,600, and was told to try other airports after being questioned. None can verify the document actually existing (most of them say "...he claims that he caught a glimpse..." claims being the key word.)
traveler_identity
credit_identity
vehicle_identity
Those are all the lowest level data structures in systems that would need that information (automatic toll payment, some stuff for commercial vehicle driver identity verification, commercial vehicle tracking, downloading new maps to your GPS thru a pay system, emergency vehicle route planning) all of those systems require that information (not all of it at the same time, but each one of those systems is using at least one of those data structures.) And the traveler_identity sounds like a username, probably to log onto some navigation system, so you can use the cars automated toll payment system thru your credit card.
Not every car wil
Or detained for hours, like a Milwaukee nun along with 20 young students. They were finally permitted to go to their Peace Conference the next day.
They weren't held in a jail cell, they were led to a seperate area (I assume some sort of room with like a computer and a desk) and questioned. Ok it took too long and made them miss the flight but I'm sure the airport covered the cost of a hotel. And if they wanted to they could get the money back on the tickets. Should we be less strict on people because they travel with a nun? And they were only flagged because the database uses some sort of old method of changing peoples names slightly (remove the vowels I think and change like sounding letters.) So if your name was Asama Nudem it might match Osama Bin Laden. And you'd have a red flag.
The rest I didn't care enough to look up information on but I would like to add that every time I go to the airport I am strip searched because I wear boots, it's slightly irritating but I don't think it violates any of my rights. I have to take off my boots and run them thru the x-ray machine (by deffinition that is being strip searched since I am removing an article of clothing.) Also, I'm sure that the person caught a glimpse of a binder with a list of names from greenpeace and all that. That sounds like total BS, if there was such a binder that he glimpsed, it would be opened to some relevant page to himself, a picture (or series of pictures) and detailed criminal record and other types of information (DOB, height, eye color, sex, all the stuff you'd find on a liscense.) Not some organized list of names that are large enough to easily be read quickly from a distance (unless this guy happened to examine this binder very closely)
The lucky ones who are merely screened, not only do they get extensively screened every flight, they often go through it on every segment of a flight.
And apparently one of the best ways to get on the list or otherwise harrased is for purely political reasons. Peace activists, civil rights advocates, people that criticize Bush. American citizens who have never been arrested for anything.
Actually I think it's only where you pickup your tickets, as this is the only place where there is a computer to check your name against a database (the other places MIGHT bother you since after getting flagged you get a big *S* circled in red on your ticket.) And the easiest way to get on this list is to be born with a name similar to that of a terrorists. Lets say there was a terrorist "Joe Bob" out there. If your name was "Jay Dod" that would be a close enough match to be red flagged. This way, someone with a name similar to yours has to do something bad, and you do NOTHING, I'm pretty sure it's easy to do nothing. The other way (be very anti-something, like anti-bush) you'd actually have to make yourself known to the people who maintain this list, which isn't as easy as you'd think. So between doing nothing, and doing something, I think I'd go with doing nothing as being an easier way to get on this list. And if there are any real damages (like money lost since you couldn't make a deadline or something like that) the people being bothered could sue for those damages. I don't see this as being bad, just annoying.
That item contains your identity, route, and tons more data. Comprehensive traveler data of every interaction with the system.
While it does contain a ton of data, I have seen nothing in there that says it contains your Identity. It keeps track of things like, where did you go, what tolls did you pay, what places did you get directions to? It stores that database so when they design roads, tolls, signs, stuff like that, they know how to design the roads (have access to the most popular destinations), the tolls (see which tolls are worth keeping, or find better places to put them), place signs in the best areas (if people request a lot of directions to Nowheresville when they're travelling a specific route, the
It depends on the game, I dunno if I was the only person watching the Final Fantasy movie thinking "This should be a video game" there was too much in the movie to be explained in that short time frame of a movie. I'm sure any good video game turned into a movie will probably be bad since we're expecting too much of it. And they'd try to make a blockbuster, not a movie that's true to the game. But then again Final Fantasy Avant Children is coming out, that seems like it's true to the story of Final Fantasy and not just trying to be some movie that just happens to have the name of a popular video game in it when having almost nothing to do with the game itself (Mario Brothers.)
Or is this picture a little creepy? The american astronaut looks like a serial killer or something and the russian looks like he's afraid because the american looks like a killer...
Cool I'm like right near you, when you get yours I'll be sure to hack it and have it drive over to my house.
I was just reading some PDFs on the system. Proposed layout ranges from one scanner every 1000 feet in urban areas to one scanner every 5 miles in rural areas. The data communication backbone is a signifigant issue for remote rural units. They are considering creative solutions such as having roadside scanners deposit their data in each passing car. The car itself become a mobile packet. The data then passes from the car to any scanner it later passes. You just keep resending the data, sooner or later it eventually gets to the destination scanner or onto the main backbone. Eventually the scanner gets confirmation it's data arrived and quits resending.
I read a bunch of the stuff on this system and I found nothing like that, I found some stuff where the cars will communicate with each other (to detect collisions and braking and stuff like that.) And they're not designing it so it can function as a tracking system.
The government already has 13 million people on it's terrorism watch-list. 13 million! Obviously most of the people on that list are not terrorists. There are already countless reports of peace activists, civil rights attorneys, and even nuns being detained by police, security, and even by the FBI, simply because a computer flagged them as being on a watch list.
And? That's completely irrelavent, so they're on the terrorist watch list, the government isn't going to break into their house and kidnap the person when they sleep. At most, when they try to board an airplane they'll be stopped and questioned. You might think the questioning is intrussive but if you're boarding an airplane, that's not a public place, you have as much right to be there as the airline wants to give you.
We don't need the roadway system turning into an Orwellian system to track millions of people. If the system is capabable of doing that, then some well intentioned official will go ahead and do it.
Oh please, gimme a break. You know as well as I do there are systems out there that can be used to monitor us at all times, but they aren't used that way. And besides, we can't just not do things because they could be used the wrong way. There are viruses grown in labs all the time, so they can easily test medicine on them (grow them in cultures and you won't have to worry about running low on samples.) And these viruses can be transmitted to people all over the world, it doesn't mean we should stop all growing of them because some person might use them in a bad way. This system will be usefull, and we'll be one step closer to cars that can drive themselves (as bad as it sounds, it really bothers me that it'd be possible and there's always the what if it's malfunctioning, but then again it'd be way less dangerous than driving with some of the people out there.) Just think of all the lives that would be saved with this system. If you don't believe it, just drive across country thru a terrible snow storm and look at all the overturned trucks, and cars that swerved off the road because they were going just a little too fast, then think of all the people that die because they swerved off the road, down a hill and no one found them till it was too late.
Then you have the uses with the unique ID, not as grand as the ones you could get without the ID but they're still pretty nice. EZ Pass would be easier to use, you wouldn't have to slow down at all and it wouldn't be a visible tag to prevent theft (although some new cars have it embedded in the windshield or the liscense plate holder.) If a car is reported stolen there could be some sort of onstar type satellite link that could send a stolen signal to the car, so as it passes a cop, it'll tell them the car is stolen and they could arrest the person and recover the car (you have no idea how good this would be unless you've had a very nice car stolen once before.) Automated ticket system. Police can send a kill signal to cars (like if the person is going way too fast, they can send a signal to that specifi
If that's true then there's absolutely no point in the cars broadcasting an ID code, is there? :)
You couldn't even catch speeders.
Cops would be able to use hand held scanners or imbedded ones in their cars, this system supposedly has 1 mile range (or longer, forgot the exact number.) So cop A sees speeder S, A radios to cop B "Look out there's someone coming your way, liscense plate number H4X0R." B punches into his onboard computers (I'm quite sure all cop cars have one now, I know all the ones I've seen have it) and gets the unique ID put into his scanner, his scanner now searches the road for that one car, detects it a mile away, estimated speed 90MPH, B then goes onto the road and waits for S to speed up to him, then he gets in front and pulls a maneuver to get the guy pulled over (maybe A can follow up to that point, it'd be more effective in a high speed chase than just radioing the cop ahead of time since his scanner can detect the car and give him information like speed and distance all automatically.)
If you are doing anything useful at all, such as communicating road conditions, then there must be some sort of communication network linking to the roadside units. The expensive part is building the roadside units and local network to control them. After that it's trivial and useful to link them at a town or county level. It's trivial and useful to aggregate the county data into a state-wide system. It's trivial and useful to link the states.
All the scanners detect road conditions locally with on board sensors. The only thing they need is power, They have no need for a network so adding one would be trivial. They are designed as stand alone systems with no need at all to track a person, so they would be very bad at it. EZ Pass keeps a database because it needs to (like your phone company keeps records of your phone calls EZ Pass keeps records of your usage so if there are some unknown charges or whatever you can fight them.) This system could tell the police a person is going too fast and the police would keep the record (or they could automate the system to activate a camera as the car passes, and it'll use the picture as evidence with the ticket automatically being sent, which would require unique IDs, it'd pretty much take out the human unless the photo is of the wrong vehicle and the person the ticket was sent to fought it.)
If your chevy had a top speed of 5 miles an hour and your drive to work was 7 miles, I think you'd really enjoy the porsche.
:-D." Did I mention I was using my sisters AOL account? I got an earthlink account after that (much better than AOL but still just as slow.)
"But I only use the chevy to go to the grocery store."
Yeah but what happens when you want to go on vacation, 300+ miles at 5 miles an hour is quite painfull.
And if your chevy was $15 a month, and a brand new 2004 porsche 911 turbo was $40 a month, which car would you buy (honestly)?
I've switched from dialup to broadband, to nothing then to dialup and back to broadband. I hated that dialup period. Windows update, that was fun "Your computer has security holes, unfortunaltely your computer cannot download patches fast enough to fix them, have a nice day while you're computer gets owned
And most of the time when people think "Well I only check e-mail and browse some websites" well what if your friend has broadband "Hey check out this cool new website!" sends you some bloated flash site, 3 hours later they call you "Hey did you check out that website! HAH it's so funny" meanwhile you're loading bar just hit 30%. You would be surprised about how much more stuff you do online with broadband, you only check e-mail and go to a few websites because that's all you can do.
Back to the car example, if you had a Chevy Malibu for a while (one of the new ones) you'd probably just use it to drive around town. But lets say you get a corvette, hey now you can take your car to the track, or corvette road track events, or to auto-x. Or if you buy a Silverado, hey now you can go off roading, now you can go to oversand beaches (you drive over the beach, park on the sand, it's very fun for huge families that bring tons of stuff or people with RVs since you're right on the beach you don't have to bring a ton of stuff from the car to the beach since the car's right there.) And if you had an RV you'd be able to do even more stuff (like drive across country going camping all over in your RV.)
I check my Slashdot reply listings pretty much daily. I check my spam ridden e-mail maybe monthly, chuckle.
lol it always felt like I was the only person since people hardly ever continue a discussion on slashdot.
Off-topic, so I'll try to wrap this up. Congress + the president + the supreme court cannot enact an amendment. Congress can merely propose an amendment, but it has to go to the states and get an overwhelming (75%) approval. It's intentionally difficult to do. One amendment took nearly 200 years to enact (restricting congress's power to vote themselves a raise).
But my point was that it's possible, I never said congress alone could do it, just that it is possible. If congress, the supreme court, and the president all agree that an ammendment should pass, I don't think it'd be too hard to convince the states.
The second thing to notice is that a car passing a scanner in NY should not be passing some random scanner in CA 10 seconds later. If you pass a scanner northbound on interstate 1 at mile marker 1, then there is a 99.9% chance that the next scanner event will be northbound interstate 1 mile marker 2. *Poof* we just stored an entire location event in a single bit.
No you didn't. A single bit can either be true or false, 0 or 1, maybe if you just wanted to know two things "Did something happen? Did something not happen?" you could store that in a database but it'd be quite useless, hell I wouldn't mind if the entire planet had access to a database of "Something happened, something didn't happen" with no time, no event, no date, no relevance to anything in a way that could be read. A byte can contain more (up to 256 different states) but that's far from enough (it's hardly enough for the mile marker information.)
The first thing to notice is that you don't need to store coordinate data for the car at all. You only store "events" - when the car crosses a scanner. You just store the scanner number. You can always look up the X,Y,Z location of that scanner.
For 1 mile resolution you'd need over 5.5 million scanners (over 9 million sq km, over 5.5 million sq miles, so a grid of scanners each a mile apart would require over 5.5 million scanners.)
I dunno maybe you forgot computers use binary, but a number as large as 5.5 million would take 23 bits, almost 3 bytes.
Now if all you stored was a mile marker you'd need a code for the state and the road (it'd be useless knowing if someone's at mile marker 1, that could be any state on any highway) 50 states 50 codes, 6 bits (2^6 power = 64) at least. I'm going to say the largest number on a mile marker is only 256 (I know there are some that are waaaaaaaay higher, I've done a lot of highway driving all over the country.) That's exactly one byte or 8 bits, so far you have 14 bits just for the state and a mile marker no higher than 256. How about the road you're on? I know for a fact there are at least 128 highways so lets use 256 as the max (even though there is probably more) that's another 8 bits. You could use 1 bit for direction (north or south, 0 or 1 since I'm pretty sure you can't tell which direction a person is going by just mile markers..) So you have 23 bits so far, about 3 bytes just storing mile markers, highway codes, direction and state. So pretty much by storing either one of these two things (unique id or the other stuff) you use 3 bytes and save, 3 bytes over a co-ordinate based system. But that's with a resolution of 1 mile, with the co-ordinates and that resolution you would use 24 bits (up to 4,096 miles across and the same up and down, 2^12.)
And even if you had this massive database and an awesome way of implementing it so that it's possible to keep track of all this data, the scanners can't SEND THE DATA ANYWHERE (well it could always send it to you, which is their purpose.) They are not connected to some network, they all have built in sensors that detect changing road conditions and stuff like that, they
CONGRESS DOES NOT HAVE THE POWER TO CREATE A LAW INFRINGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Period. Congress only has the powers specificlly granted to them by the constitution, and they cannot do anything forbidden by the constitution. They can pass a bill saying anything they like, but if it violates the constitution then it is an illegal law. It is null and void.
Dude please just continue this in e-mail or something, anyway.
The important part "If it violates the constitution then it is an illegal law." Have you read the constitution? The supreme court determines if a law violates the constitution, the constitution doesn't explain itself, we don't go to philadelphia and pray to the constitution and ask if something violates it. We send it to the supreme court and they interpret the constitution. If they feel something is not unconstitutional it can pass and become law. And I'm pretty sure the president can try to veto it but then I think it goes to senate and they need to vote on it. Too lazy to go look it up, anyway congress CAN limit your freedom of speech, it'd be VERY hard to do (since they'd actually have to try and justify it but then again they could just use the word terrorist and I'm sure it'll pass.) Now it doesn't mean it's ok, but if you were arrested for merely posting to a website plans on making a bomb, and appealed your case to the supreme court, there is a snowballs chance in hell that they would still find you guilty and send you to jail. They could always just say "Well it says freedom of speech but what they really meant was freedom of speech as long as it causes no harm and since your act indirectly caused harm to someone it is illegal." Now please keep in mind I THINK IT WOULD BE REALLY FUCKED UP FOR THIS TO HAPPEN! If the laws here became that extreme I'd so totally be on your side and try to fight this, I am just saying, IT COULD HAPPEN. Just keep in mind all the rights the constitution gives you are not set in stone, they can be always be interpreted differently and ammended (which is why we have 3 branches of government, to make it really hard to do this with checks and balances).
Also, It would take way more than 1 byte of data for your location at ANY time, there would probably be 3 co-ordinates (elevation, longitude and latitude.) And I'm sure they would include speed too, but if they don't you still can't do it in 1 byte of data.
I think your accuracy would be way off with just one byte of data and 2 co-ordinates. "He's either in a gay bar in utah, or a church in nevada." As you need 2 co-ordinates (bare minimum, you could always be on a mountain, in a tunnel, on a bridge, higher and lower all the time and that would take 3), you would need 2 bytes of data for that and that'd give you 2 seperate co-ordinates but they'd still be inaccurate. If you want accurate results you'd need to be dealing with yards at most, not miles. If you wanted an accuracy of 1 meter (about 3 feet) you'd need at least 6 bytes of data (US is like 9 million sq km, which is like 3,000km * 3,000km which is like 3,000,000 meters up and down and then 3,000,000 meters left and right, to store a number as high as 3,000,000 you'd need a little over 2 bytes, so 3 is a good choice, then two co-ordinates, so 6 bytes is needed.) 9 if you want to include height (tunnels, mountains, land and roads aren't flat.) Then there's the date, lets say you want to keep it small, a good idea would be to store it as 01011990 or if you want to have it really small 010101 (but then there's an issue in 2100 so 01011990 is way better in the long run.) That's gonna add another 3 bytes. Then there's also the fact that a database is meant to have QUICK access, and they add huge amounts of stuff for quick indexing and all that other stuff. Since I'm not much of a database expert (never had to optimize a database for storage space.) Lets just say the database adds 3x the data for every update (that sounds like a lot but I don't think it really is since I've worked with a database that turn
...of altar boys that were virtually molested but were too afraid to come out and say something when it happened.
*ducks*
Perhaps I'm just unfamiliar with the lingo being used here, but the words conclusive and possibility don't quite seem to make sense when both used in reference to the same evidence.
Ok there are two things to prove, A and B. Evidence C is conclusive evidence that A happened but also might have caused C.
The rock was conclusive evidence of martian meteorites on earth, which possibly led to cross-seeding.
Think of it this way, someone breaks into a store, shoots a clerk in the leg, and steals all the money from the registers. A security tape shows the person shooting the clerk holding an empty bag, then they're off camera, then they run past the camera with the empty bag now full. It's conclusive evidence that the person shot a clerk, but only hints at them stealing them money.
Your statement is not only wrong, I find it an appalling mindset. God forbid some innocent person ever gets stuck with you on the jury. If the police ran him through their database, "he must have done something bad". If the police arrested him, "he must have done something bad". If the district attorney pressed charges, "he must have done something bad". If the grandjury indited on those charges, "he must have done something bad". If he's here in court wearing handcuffs and being tried for a crime, "he must have done something bad".
Ok just replace bad with suspicious, generally I think of things that would be suspicious as bad so I tend to not do them. If you haven't done something suspicious the authorities aren't going to check up on you, and if you're innocent but have done some suspicious stuff, they'll check up on you and find nothing.
The government is a good thing. It's there to protect us and for our benefit. But the government is far more dangerous than any criminals could ever be. The police always want more and more power, and for good reason. It helps them catch criminals. But if that power is not kept in check then you end up in a police state, then police become the criminals.
And how does having an RFID system give the police more power? There is nothing about this that will give them more power, they will have more data available, but they will still have to go thru the old processes to get at it. Just because the information is easier to find since it's on a computer doesn't mean it's more legal for the police to randomly check up on people and see where they're going.
I don't post the nitroglycerine receipe to draw the government's attention. I do it because it is a powerful argument to make a powerful point. Not only is posting that not criminal, but congress CAN'T pass a law making it a crime. The point I am usually making is that if congress cannot restrict bomb-making speech then obviously congress cannot restrict [some other speech]. They do not have the power. That concept - that congress does not have the power - it comes as a complete shock to many people.
That doesn't make any sense. How does posting this stuff prove anything? It's not powerfull, anyone can do it. I don't know anyone who would be shocked that they have free speach and it can't be taken away, and if you took any classes in US History and Government you know what congress can or cannot do.
That is a pretty profound aspect of the US system - my rights override and restrict congress's power.
Your rights are given to you buy congress' power, along with the power of the supreme court and the president, all 3 can give and take power away but only if they agree on an issue (I'm sure if congress wanted to pass a bill making the first amendment invalid it'd get vettoed by the president and considered unconstitutional by the supreme court but it doesn't mean it can't possibly happen.) Anyway I don't understand your point, you talk about protecting rights and then you talk about congress not being able to take them away. If congress can't take them away you don't need to protect them. Congress CAN take your rights away but they can only do it with permission from the other 2 branches of government, it's very very unlikely this will happen though but it's possible.
As a law abiding citizen, the government should not be 'red flagging' me and invading my privacy and potentially harrassing me (hasn't happened to me, but it certainly has happened to others) simply because I excercized my free speech rights by posting nitroglycerine, or criticizing certain laws, or criticizing certain government policies, or for calling the president a moron.
I like putting that with -
If they have probable cause that I commited a crime, or that I intend to commit a crime (nothing I lised above is probable cause), then they can ask a judge for a search warrant or wire tap, or to place a tracking bug in my car.
The cliche example is McCarthy, but the examples of abuses are almost endless.
And which huge database did he search thru? What kind of RFID tags did he put in peoples shoes to track their movements? And besides how far did McCarthy get? Is the world free of communism? Is there a secret police in the US that will go to your house and drag you out in the night and shoot you for being communist? I'm free to go to the white house and say "HEY! I'M A COMMUNIST!" and no bad will come of it, I won't be arrested, a mysterious van won't come from around the corner to pick me up, helicopters won't come from the sky and shoot me where I stand while my body is absorbed into the asphault to hide the evidence.
MAYBE I might have a red flag set for being a public nuisance in front of the white house (could be crazy, you wouldn't want me to get inside the white house) but I deserve that for standing in front of the white house and screaming.
It's not exactly unheard of for perfectly innocent people and groups to fall under investigation simply for having unpopular political beliefs, for promoting "subversive" causes.
So? Please, explain what happens after you're investigated and found to be a safe sane person and in no way a threat to anything or anyone. But what happens when a person who is out to cause harm gets thru investigation? Well people get harmed... how can you stop criminals if you don't know who they are? Are we supposed to wait for everyone to commit a crime before we stop them? Shouldn't we be able to have a warning system setup so we know "This person is probably going to do something bad, if they're ready to do it, we can stop them, if they're never going to do it, well we don't have to do anything and they can just live out their lives."
Just the other day I was driving around Tempe (Arizona) at like 1:30 in the morning. I stopped in some parking lot to setup my camera (was just filming the car ride and stuff) and a few minutes later a cop pulled up to me with the search light in my face, asked me to put my hands out the window, and questioned me. YES it WAS annoying, but I wasn't doing anything wrong, so he just let me go. He asked me what I was doing, I had a good answer (messing with my camera) he asked why so late I had another good answer (I'm a night person, I work the night shift at my job so I'm always awake at night and I was bored and cold with the AC in my apartment on, couldn't turn it off cause my friend wanted it on, so I went out for a ride.) My life wasn't ruined, I wasn't thrown in jail for being suspicious, I wasn't labeled a terrorist, the CIA (as far as I know but that's not very far) doesn't have a file on me, nothing happened. But what if I was a drug dealer? Or (what he was probably looking for) a street racer? If the cop stopping to question me will stop one street racer, or one drug dealer (I don't care much about the drug dealers, but the street racers kill innocent people, and even themselves) then it's all worth it. Later that night I saw two cop cars talking with a few people behind some fast food place in the parking lot. I'm sure they were going to race later that night, but if they weren't they'd have some sort of reason for being their. And if they had a reason the cop might make a note "Look out for these guys blah blah blah" (dunno what they do with those but I've had a note like that on me once after getting pulled over, like after the cop gave me a warning he made a note just in case I got pulled over again) but if they do nothing wrong then the note will mean nothing. If they do something wrong, the note will mean a stricter penalty because they have been warned before.
Anyway my point there was that being investigated isn't so bad, it might be annoying but if you're doing nothing wrong nothing bad will come of it.
Most people do. I'm sure if I had soch a data base on you tehre would be something in there that would in some way embarass or inconvience you if I revealed it to the police
Once it's recorded in a database it's simply a matter of someone feeling like running a scan on that database to find out anything they like. Not only where you go and when, but you can correlate that with the rest of the database to see who you tend to meet where and when.
And? But I do NOT want my phone broadcasting that data at any other time, especially since they may do so silently and invisibly either continuously or whenever they receive such a request.
Why not?
I hate conspiracy posts on slashdot, you just post something like "What if they keep a database of all these statistics!?!?!?!" and a bunch of other garbage "What if they know my position all the time!?!?!?!" And what if they do? You just leave it to us to think of all these crazy things and since we're thinking about that crazy stuff and nothing else, we aren't thinking about how crazy and stupid those things really are.
Well what if they had a huge database and could find out where you go and how often and know your exact location at every time of the day? Who cares? If the government cares enough about you to actually check this information you must have done something bad, otherwise they don't give a shit. Don't be so full of yourself, there's a whole buttload of stuff you'd have to do to piss off the government enough for them to actually use their resources to track you.
And besides, databases aren't that scary, slashdot has a database and you post on slashdot so it knows your IP (in some huge log probably) the time you post, and where you post from (IP.)
Once it's recorded in a database it's simply a matter of someone feeling like running a scan on that database to find out anything they like. Not only where you post from and when, but you can correlate that with the rest of the database to see who you tend to post replies to or who will post replies to you, where the replies are posted from and when. There's an entire feild of study on building up social network maps based on those sorts of correlataions.
What happens when the government agencies that don't care so much about your rights--CIA, FBI, NSA, police, whatever--decide that this system can be very useful for them?
I don't know? What happens? They catch criminals faster? They can track the movement of a car that they were chasing down the highway at 140 mph without following it putting civilians at risk? They can follow a bus load of heroin without putting any agents in imediate danger by having them follow it? They can check the movements of a suspected killer's vehicle (keeping track cause he was on parole or something like that) for the day of the alleged murder and see that the killer was near the location the body was found and have a stronger case against the suspected killer?
Please, I'd really like to know, what will these agencies use the technology to do?
YEAH! Exactly! You're so right, we should never send humans to mars cause since the second they step outside the space craft they will contaminate the whole planet. And don't give me any nonsense about them using sterile suits (like those make believe bunny suits the Intel guys wear, we all know they're really working on that stuff completely naked!) How would you even manage to get a suit on an astronaut, that's immpossible. And how would you seal it so no contaminents get out? You'd need some kind of air tight suit for space, we can call it a space suit. And we all know those don't exist so we should deffinitely hold off on human exploration of mars till we can invent "space suits."
Ahem, to quote the Daily Show "That's a stupid thing to say, and you're a stupid person for saying it."
You're an idiot... They're going to use this in places where you shouldn't have a cell phone on in the first place. Like a theater, ok sure a beeper is fine but it better be on vibrate (can't answer a beeper, and you would be forced to go outside and use a payphone or maybe use your cell.) If you're in a doctors office, they wouldn't block cell phones (doctors use 'em too, no one in a play or a band should have one while performing and the audience shouldn't have one on while listening or watching.) If you're in a bank, they wouldn't block cell phones (why would they? What's the point? It's just a bank you're only in there for a few minutes and it's nothing that requires your full attention or complete silence.) Highway 101, well I can see why blocking cell phone usage on a highway is good (in the time it takes you to answer your phone you could have traveled well over a couple hundred feet, cell phone's are dangerous while driving but it also depends on the driver and where you're driving.) Flower shop and supermarkets, dude they have no reasons to block cell phones in any of the places you listed EXCEPT the highway and they wouldn't even do that since you could always use a handsfree unit.
Next they will do something so you can't listen to your mp3 player because someone doesnt' want to see you bopping your head to the beat.
Dude, you're comparing two different things. That's like comparing a ban on automatic rifles to a ban on spitballs and straws "Next they will do something so you can't fire spitballs at people cause the projectiles are too wet." Cell phones are annoying in certain places (LIKE A THEATER WHEN YOU'RE WATCHING A PERFORMANCE AND SOMEONES PHONE RINGS!!!!) I don't know why you don't understand that this is the only place the technology would really be used (unless your employer absolutely does not want you to have any type of cell phone in the office at all, but then you're in the office anyway and can use the work phones.) Besides there were methods of getting to a child birth before the cell phone was invented (ever think, hey my wife is due in 3 days, well now if I go out it better be someplace important or someplace I can be contacted quick and easily like at work, unless it's such a total emergency in which case I have to miss the birth anyway.)
You wouldn't watch Pulp Fiction on this, you'd watch The Matrix. I don't know if there's much cursing but if you took out all the violence, you'd have a boring movie but you'd be able to understand it (none of the story progresses through the violence, or the sex scene in revolutions, they're just in the movie to look cool.) Or if you wanted to watch other movies like that (no story is actually needs violence and none of the dialog really needs cursing for the movie to make sense.)
Pulp Fiction is a movie you wouldn't want your young kids to watch (and a movie they wouldn't care enough to want to watch) but with all the matrix merchandise out there how can you keep an 8 year old from not wanting to watch the movie. At least with this you can let the child see it without the violence, sex, and language. And would you rather them just release the movies with a cleaner version? Movies are sometimes released way cleaner than they should be just so they can get a PG-13 rating (otherwise they lose the entire target audience) at least with this the movies can be released however they want to be and parents can let their kids watch the clean version on their special DVD player without screwing up my DVD copies. I've actually bought a CD from kmart where they took out the f-word, it was annoying as hell because it said nothing about it being censored (that I saw on the wrapper), and it was only one word, replaced with a long beep, sounds like there's something wrong with the CD player. I'd rather own an unedited version and people with special CD players should be able to block it.
Apparently only those wealthy enough can afford to be saved while the rest of the 1500 people a year that croak because of drowsy driving have to suffer.
They usually have technology like this in luxury cars first, then when it's perfected and made cheaper, they put it in more cars and it eventually just becomes standard features.
I can see this just bothering rich drivers, since they're pretty much beta testing this system.
Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm expressed skepticism, and suggested the Canadian music biz find a way to live with file-sharers.
"Whether people download or not, as long as they're listening to music," he said.
"I think it's a challenge for the industry, to try and find a new way to survive."
Wow I've never heard that from someone outside of slashdot, now we just need american idol singers to say that, and maybe nsync and britney spears, then MAYBE (doubtfull) people would listen.
What really kills me is that Bill Mahr (I think he's really funny and I love his show on HBO) calls downloading music stealing just like tons and tons of other people. It isn't stealing, you can't steal something by copying it, I wish more people would understand that. It's copyright infringment, not stealing.
Then I can scan it and finally use ghostscript's toilet paper setting, I'd print SCO liscenses for everyone!
Real soon was always within the decade, that's no time at all, you go from being 35 to 45 in 10 years (or from 0-10.) It might seem long to you because you're used to some new processor coming out real soon as in a few months, but 10 years is a short time.