The Express Pass monitors single tags through a controlled point... To monitor the movements of "everybody everywhere" (the seemingly obvious goal of "effectively 'track' someone") would require a simply staggering number of readers.
Not at all. Put scanners at airport checkins and you can't travel anywhere without the government knowing about it.
Put one at a few major intersections, or on every bridge, and you can't drive without being tracked.
Put one at the entrance (or carry one through) a politcal rally and the government knows the identities of all the opposition.
Put one in a van scanning the sidewalk outside the union hall, or the abortion clinic or the right to life office, or outside mosques or Southern Baptist churches to identify all the terrorist, or outside the...well you get the point.
Do you really think the government that has the resources to monitor every single telephone call in the world via Echelon would have any trouble at all setting up a few hundred thousand automatic montoring and logging points across the country? Even a million monitoring points at $1,000 each is only a billion dollars - chicken feed to the NSA. I think it would be a piece of cake for them.
This actually will be an EXCELLENT development if it gains widespread usage, assuming it is distributed over the whole market. The reason being is that you could finally, and knowingly, know for sure that a product that you are about to buy over the internet is 100% for sure in stock.
...and the government would know "100% for sure" where every citizen went, who they were with, what politcal rallies they attended, what organizations they belong to, and every associate of every person on every FBI, CIA, NSA, Presidential, and DHS "suspicious person" list. Yeah...EXCELLENT development for sure.
"The range on the devices is pathetic (on the order of inches or centimeters, not feet or meters), so the number of readers required to effectively 'track' someone would be astounding, even for government.
Think before you post.
Then exactly how does the Express Pass on my car window manage to be interrogated by the toll booth scanner? I do not drive by the toll booth an inch away. Or how about those shoplifting scanners that detect tags on items leaving the store? Just because your particular security card is designed to be swiped an inch from the scanner doesn't mean that is all there is.
The year is 2015. Every citizen carries a Personal Identification Document with an RFID embedded. Every streetcorner in every city has an RFID reader. So does every airport and every highway. Big Brother can find out where Citizen X is/was by searching the Citizen Locator database.
You won't even have to have an ID card. The government can track you by the RFID tags in your clothing, put there by retailers. Plus, by detecting which tags are near your tags they know who you hang around with and where. They know what political rallies you and/or your friends and "known associates" attend.
RFID has the potential to be the greatest threat to a free society ever conceived.
You should reread my post a couple times, and then you might figure out I was asking...as you will note from his reply, the parent actually understood what I was saying where as you didn't.
Hmmm. I detect a pattern here. If someone says something you don't agree with you call them liars or dumb and their ideas uninteresting. Do you even realize that your reply to the original poster had absolutely no information or thoughts about the topic under discussion - it was simply a smarmy insult to the writer. You stated that that his ideas were uninteresting because he did not cite the USAPA, while I found them quite interesting without citations. You used sarcasm to imply his ideas were worthless or he was a liar because he had not read the entire USAPA [which he had never claimed to have done]. Now you imply I am too dumb to understand your post without reading it several times, and don't grasp the importance of clarity. Ironic, isn't it?.
Apparently you did not get it that I was calling you on your sarcastic ad hominem style of attacking the person and not his ideas. I said that if you didn't agree with his ideas YOU should do the citation search to prove him wrong, not put the work back on the person you just insulted.
You got called on your own ad hominem sarcastic bullshit, buddy. No amount of name-calling, no matter how sarcastically done, is going to change that.
i don't think he ever said he read the entire Act, so what is your point except to try and attack his position ad hominem? The Act says what it says, not what people want to pretend it says. That is an important point.
Also his points are not worthless or uninteresting just because he didn't do your work for you. You don't believe him...then do the searches of the Act he suggests and THEN reply that he is wrong.
It should be clear to anyone that the anti-terrorism laws are out of control and expand police power too far. Did you know that having a sawed-off shotgun, previously just possession of an illegal weapon, now officially makes you a terrorist in possession of a WMD? Thank you USAPA.
anecdotal evidence is not really indicitive of large scale trends" and coorelation does not imply causation.
It is always disheartening to see people call other people ignorant and then use completely bogus "logic" to prove it.
Notwithstanding your contention that anecdotal evidence is not indicative of large scale trends, anecdotal evidence may very well identify trends (and often does). I think what you really wanted to say was that one cannot prove or disprove a hypothesis using anecdotal information.
Along the same line, correlation does indeed *imply* causation (that's the problem). Again, I think what you wanted to say was that correlation does not prove causation.
However, I will agree with your other statement: "Jeez, no wonder we have the reputation of being horrible at math" [and logic].
There have been several successful shuttle missions that have serviced the Hubble in the past so there's no reason to think that this particular type of mission is more dangerous than any other.
I fully support using the STS to service Hubble, but the logic you use to support that position is faulty. Just because you may manage to jaywalk actoss a busy street a few times without getting killed is not evidence that doing so is just as safe as walking on the sidewalk. Another analogy would be that surviving three rounds of Russian-roulette does not mean it is just as safe as target shooting. Similarly, just because there have been a few successful Hubble servicing missions it does not follow that "there's no reason to think that this particular type of mission is more dangerous than any other."
My understanding of the safety considerations involved in deciding to cancel or keep the HST servicing mission is: 1) because a servicing mission requires several multi-astronaut EVAs and multiple STS maneuvers very close to a large object it is significantly more hazardous than a standard orbital mission, and 2) since all STS missions are hazardous on-the-face the decision to eliminate optional missions is valid from a safety perspective.
The question has really been whether the HST is a low-value property not worth the risk to shuttle and crew, or a high-value property worthy of the mission.
No, if you had read the patent you would know that the patent is on the COMBINATION of lighting and a processor. Its not just a light in a container.
I can think of several valuable uses for a technology of this kind - such as changing the lighting in a refrigerator that holds temperature sensitive materials after a temperature spike. Or by causing individual medicine or food containers that had become dated, spoiled, contaminated, recalled, mishandled or tampered with to glow red.
The problem I have with it is that this patent now effectively stifles all innovation in the area. I'm no patent lawyer, but I always thought that you could not patent an idea, and this just seems to be an idea that one COULD light things selectively using a processor. This patent clearly seems to be aimed at getting royalties from anyone who comes up with a real product.
as too all this research and product development into 3D displays. It didnt work in the cinema and personally I cant think of a compelling mainstream requirement for 3D on the desktop.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Before this gets modded Troll, the point is that the same thing was said about the automobile, the airplane, and the Popiel Pocket Fisherman. I'm not saying that this technology is on par with those, but frankly, who knows? If you had given some specific reasons the technology would not be worthwhile other than just "I can't think of anything", your post would have been a lot more valuable.
It's actually a myth that voter turnout has declined in recent years. The key point being that the census bureau reports it in terms of % of voting age population. This includes people that can't vote, i.e., non-citizens. If you look at the % of people voting who actually are able to vote, the rates have remained relatively constant for the last 50 years
Frankly I find this unbelievable (in the original sense of the phrase meaning I don't believe you). Besides, what is the census bureau doing counting voter turnout? I suspect what you mean is that someone has taken inapropriate census data and incorrectly applied it to voter turnout. Also, every legitimate poll I saw during the last election always defined the voter turnout as "percent of eligible voters". This on its face indicates that calculations of percent voter turnout did not include ineligible voters as you claim.
Usually I would go find proof that the census bureau isn't so stupid as to define % voters this way, but this nihilist thread makes me not want to make the effort. Given the thrust of this thread about the futility and frustration of constantly fighting for what is right I'm not going to bother. Like you, I do not believe voter turnout has decreased recently, but your reasons for saying that are just wrong. So there!
In this sense, I think the Internet is not "public communication" because it is listener initiated.
That is an absurd position. By your logic newspapers and TV are not public communication because the paper is bought by the reader and the TV is turned on by the listener.
Your conclusion is valid, but your supporting argument is not valid.
First, generally the demonstrators did not "have their own people recording the whole thing." The exculpating videos that cleared them were taken by journalists and documentary makers, not the demonstrators themselves. Secondly, it is not true that the police did not bring their own videos to the courtroom - they did, but they were selectively chosen and edited to make the protestors look more guilty than they actually were.
Again I agree with your conclusion that it is important to guard your own rights, but the "evidence" that you used to connect the events in NYC with Mann's antics are just as biased and bogus as the "evidence" the police used to try and convict the demosntrators.
As for the comments on safety, rest assured the rail industry has thought a bit about safety.
Except of course at those pesky railway crossings where they decided to skip paying the money to keep the crossing signals working properly. Very recent investigations have shown that for decades they have just been paying off the accident investigators to SAY the crossing signals were working at the time of the accident - thereby laying the blame on the victims and saving all that lawsuit money AND signal repair money. [Recent stories in NYTimes and other major newspapers]
If the traditional railroads have thought a bit about safety it has been almost exclusively about the safety of their trains.
While we're at it let's get rid of the one cent coin. It's nothing but a worthless time waster when making change. Labor costs being what they are, it would probably save businesses money not to have to pay people to count out pennies to make change. Also think how much easier it would be to calculate change if everything was in nickel increments. Price everyting in 5-cent increments, rounding up or down as needed.
Ubiquitous RFID tags are the greatest threat to individual freedom ever devised.
When RFID tags become ubiquitous in clothing government agents will be able to easily track anyone's movements and associations by simply placing scanners on city streets and sidewalks. The insidious part is that any known RFID tag "infects" any other tag near it. The Feds will be able to associate anyone you walk down the street with or ride in a car with as a "known associate". When your clothing tags are associated with the tags in your car's tires the government will be able to tell where you drive. But that isn't even necessary - as soon as you get out of your car and walk into a shopping center the government will know where you are because your RFID tags are there.
Simply by walking through an opposition political rally with a portable logger/scanner agents will be able to identify everyone in the group and their "known associates". Anonymously participating in protest marches will be a thing of the past.
The potential abuses of RFID tags by a security-minded government are more than can be listed here. There wil be no such thing as anonymity - the government will know EVERYTHING about you including what kind of toothpaste you buy.
And don't think you will be protected by the shear amount of information collected - any government that can monitor every telephone conversation *on the planet* with Echelon can easily keep track of its citizens.
Interesting you should say that. I was once sent a legal notice of eviction via the mail that required me to go to the post office to pick it up. It was addressed to "John Doe" at my address. (It was from the landlord of my apartment building who knew everyone's addresses he wanted to evict, but didn't think it worth the effort to look up the tenants' actual names). The postal clerk at the desk asked me "Is your name John Doe?" He knew it wasn't. He told me I did not have to accept the letter if I did not want to and if not the Post Office would send it back as undeliverable. In the back and forth landlord/tenant battles of New York City, this kind of information was invaluable.
The point is that if someone tries to give you a legal notice from Microsoft or anyone else filled out to John Doe, it isn't really yours until you accept it and admit to being John Doe. IANAL.
Mesothelioma is a very specific type of lung cancer that is caused by asbestos exposure. It isn't, as you implied, that the person gets any cancer and they want to blame it on asbestos exposure to make a buck. If you have mesothelioma it is pretty certain you got it from asbestos exposure.
There is a "bunch of money" to be made, eh? I tell you what - I'll give you a million dollars if sometime over the next 20 years you will have to start breathing constantly through a thick towel so that every breath is an effort, allow yourself to be constantly and painfully tortured for a year, and then let someone kill you. Think any amount of money is worth it?
The individual settlements in the W. R. Grace asbestos lawsuits were, by the way, a *lot* less than a million dollars each. But you better believe that the heads of Grace (and a lot of other companies that did the same thing) are living like princes today with their millions of dollars in retirement bonuses. They should be rotting in prison, because the KNEW what asbestos would do and they exposed employees anyway because THEY were the ones making a "bunch of money".
Birds too, I believe, cannot see things that do not move, and birds are believed to be whats left of dinosours as they evolved to today.
Well you believe wrong. Pigeons, chickens and other ground-browsing birds feed by pecking at spots on the ground on the chance that they may be seeds. These spots definately do not move.
I've read that if it were possible for a human to control the natural eye jitteriness and just focus absolutely still, the image you see would fade away to nothing. The eye needs constant movement to be able to keep updating what you are seeing.
No, no, no... I suspect you are half-remembering the old experiment where if you keep your eyes perfectly still you can detect the blind spot where the optic nerve connects with the rear of the eyeball. Normally the brain interpolates data to fill this area in but stops doing so after the eyes are kept still for a period of time. That is totally different from stating that all vision requires movement to work.
As a final point, most people here seem to be confusing "seeing" with "recognizing as prey". The example previously mentioned [lizards that can't see prey unless it is moving] would more correctly be stated that the lizards just don't recognize unmoving prey as being prey. Thus in Micheal Crieghton's fictional work, the T-Rex would not DETECT you, but would definately SEE you.
I'd consider pay-as-you-go without some stupid limit placed upon how soon I need to use up my time or artificial wallet robbing schemes
I know what you mean. I used to get $45-50 bills on my so-called $29.99 plan from Sprint. I cancelled and switched to the pre-paid plan at Virgin Mobil. Sure, you have to buy $20 of minutes every three months, but if you don't happen to use all those minutes in one quarter the unused minutes do not expire and are carried forward.
There are no other charges - no taxes, nothing - just $20 every quarter. Incoming email and voice mail are free. This works out to be cell phone service for $6.65 per month, period! If you talk a lot on your cell phone this is not for you, but if you use it occasionally this is a great deal.
A few years ago, if you had asked me if I would die for my country, I would have said, yes, as long as it was for a nobel cause. Now, I would have to say; "Hell no!" Because I now realize, I don't even know what the issues are. I wouldn't have a clue whether my government was doing the right thing or not.
We should never confuse "country" with "government", nor for that matter "government" with "administration". In a monarchy the country is the king, but unlike a monarchy our government does not rule us. Unfortunately people in the US tend to think of the government as the ruling body (even though they may not use the word), and our elected officials tend to take the ruling role.
For example Bill Frist recently refused to put out his cigar in a public restaurant and when the owner told him it was a government rule, Frist laughed and said "I AM the government." and kept on smoking.
Given the advances in communication, propoganda, public relations, and other tools used to manipulate public perception, our elected officials have become far more powerful than the Founding Fathers ever could have envisioned. Rather than expressing the will of the people officials today are more concerned with bending the will of the people for their own benefit. Cases in point are all the propaganda fake news reports put out by the current administration, and the consistent omission of inconvenient facts whenever the current administration wants its way.
We need a way to make these officials answerable more directly to the people once elected so they will be forced to revert back to the public servant role - away fom the ruling class role they have assumed. One of the necessary steps will be to open up government to full view as you say, but we must also limit the government's ability to artificially sway public opinion in favor of any current administration. No more fake news, no more secretly paid journalists supporting any administration's policies, and no more government "public relations" projects designed to distort reality in favor of an administraton's policies.
I would also like to say that if it is slower than IE on your computer, just take a little time to 'tune' your ff.
I am so frustrated with FF taking 10-15 seconds to open many web pages that I am ready to go back to Opera. I've spent hours going through the support user group and making the recommended changes to this or that obscure setting in FF, but to no effect. Given the number of users that have asked for help with this issue slowness seems to be a big FF problem - one that no one really seems interested in solving or even admitting exists.
If I had migrated from IE, Firefox's incredible slowness wouldn't be enough to send me back (IE is THAT bad), but its easy to go back to Opera.
Say what you want about the traditional development process, but no browser with 10 second load times on broadband would ever have shipped.
It's like when everyone was trying to pass a law making it illegal to burn the American flag. Of COURSE this would get shot down by the Courts, yet it looks great when re-election comes back around and they get to say "see, I was all for a ban on blah blah blah".
Say what you will on how the Supreme Court will change and then it will start passing these laws, but so far, even the conservative judges can see how un-constitutional these idiot laws are.
Don't be complacent. This country has already gone further in torture, secret imprisonments and cancellation of civil rights than I ever thought it could. I remember from my early school days being told "The thing that makes America different is that citizens can never be imprisoned by the government without trial, nor can our Constitutional rights ever be cancelled by anyone." How far we have fallen in the past four years.
You may say now that "of course" these laws will be ruled unconstitutional, but at one time I said, "Of course people will never be imprisoned without trial in America." How naive I was.
It isn't a big deal. Instead of "Mars Rovers Have Incorrect Instruments Installed", a better headline would have been "Mars Rover Data Analyzed With Incorrect Calibration Data Files"
What are you, a PR professional? Blaming the error on using the wrong calibration file is an example of the Public Relations Spin monster that has this country by the throat. "ECONOMY CREATES 220,000 JOBS IN JANUARY!" shouts Fox News and the administration, and that sounds good - but they leave out that the economy *lost* 275,000 jobs in the same month. How to lie by telling the truth. I've seen Dick Cheney brag about how 2 million [entry-level] jobs were created in 2004, while leaving out that we *lost* 3 million high tech jobs. "FDA SAYS BEEF SUPPLY SAFE because Mad Cow Disease only found in brains and blood", but conveniently forgets that meat is infused with blood. FDA says ONLY ONE COW WITH MCD, but forgets to clarify that they only *found* one cow with MCD, hundreds of thousands were never even tested. "PFIZER SAYS STUDIES SHOW BEXTRA AND CELEBREX SAFE" while omitting results from two independent studies that show significant increase in heart attacks among Bextra/Celebrex users. These are just examples, but they illustrate that it is very easy to never utter a lie and still lie through the teeth. WRONG CALIBRATION FILES USED FOR ROVER DATA you say? - yeah, right, sure.
But back to the Rover mix-up: Why this particular mix-up is important is that this could have been ANY error, not one that was easily corrected. Any competent person would look at two identical looking instruments on the table with two identical looking rovers and think "I better not get these mixed up." What if they had installed the wrong guidance computers or the wrong antenna aiming software? I know those don't exist, but you get the point.
Slashdot Mirror
The Express Pass monitors single tags through a controlled point... To monitor the movements of "everybody everywhere" (the seemingly obvious goal of "effectively 'track' someone") would require a simply staggering number of readers.
Not at all. Put scanners at airport checkins and you can't travel anywhere without the government knowing about it.
Put one at a few major intersections, or on every bridge, and you can't drive without being tracked.
Put one at the entrance (or carry one through) a politcal rally and the government knows the identities of all the opposition.
Put one in a van scanning the sidewalk outside the union hall, or the abortion clinic or the right to life office, or outside mosques or Southern Baptist churches to identify all the terrorist, or outside the...well you get the point.
Do you really think the government that has the resources to monitor every single telephone call in the world via Echelon would have any trouble at all setting up a few hundred thousand automatic montoring and logging points across the country? Even a million monitoring points at $1,000 each is only a billion dollars - chicken feed to the NSA. I think it would be a piece of cake for them.
"The range on the devices is pathetic (on the order of inches or centimeters, not feet or meters), so the number of readers required to effectively 'track' someone would be astounding, even for government.
Think before you post.
Then exactly how does the Express Pass on my car window manage to be interrogated by the toll booth scanner? I do not drive by the toll booth an inch away. Or how about those shoplifting scanners that detect tags on items leaving the store? Just because your particular security card is designed to be swiped an inch from the scanner doesn't mean that is all there is.
The year is 2015. Every citizen carries a Personal Identification Document with an RFID embedded. Every streetcorner in every city has an RFID reader. So does every airport and every highway. Big Brother can find out where Citizen X is/was by searching the Citizen Locator database.
You won't even have to have an ID card. The government can track you by the RFID tags in your clothing, put there by retailers. Plus, by detecting which tags are near your tags they know who you hang around with and where. They know what political rallies you and/or your friends and "known associates" attend.
RFID has the potential to be the greatest threat to a free society ever conceived.
very informative, thanks.
You should reread my post a couple times, and then you might figure out I was asking...as you will note from his reply, the parent actually understood what I was saying where as you didn't.
Hmmm. I detect a pattern here. If someone says something you don't agree with you call them liars or dumb and their ideas uninteresting. Do you even realize that your reply to the original poster had absolutely no information or thoughts about the topic under discussion - it was simply a smarmy insult to the writer. You stated that that his ideas were uninteresting because he did not cite the USAPA, while I found them quite interesting without citations. You used sarcasm to imply his ideas were worthless or he was a liar because he had not read the entire USAPA [which he had never claimed to have done]. Now you imply I am too dumb to understand your post without reading it several times, and don't grasp the importance of clarity. Ironic, isn't it?.
Apparently you did not get it that I was calling you on your sarcastic ad hominem style of attacking the person and not his ideas. I said that if you didn't agree with his ideas YOU should do the citation search to prove him wrong, not put the work back on the person you just insulted.
You got called on your own ad hominem sarcastic bullshit, buddy. No amount of name-calling, no matter how sarcastically done, is going to change that.
i don't think he ever said he read the entire Act, so what is your point except to try and attack his position ad hominem? The Act says what it says, not what people want to pretend it says. That is an important point.
Also his points are not worthless or uninteresting just because he didn't do your work for you. You don't believe him...then do the searches of the Act he suggests and THEN reply that he is wrong.
It should be clear to anyone that the anti-terrorism laws are out of control and expand police power too far. Did you know that having a sawed-off shotgun, previously just possession of an illegal weapon, now officially makes you a terrorist in possession of a WMD? Thank you USAPA.
anecdotal evidence is not really indicitive of large scale trends" and coorelation does not imply causation.
It is always disheartening to see people call other people ignorant and then use completely bogus "logic" to prove it.
Notwithstanding your contention that anecdotal evidence is not indicative of large scale trends, anecdotal evidence may very well identify trends (and often does). I think what you really wanted to say was that one cannot prove or disprove a hypothesis using anecdotal information.
Along the same line, correlation does indeed *imply* causation (that's the problem). Again, I think what you wanted to say was that correlation does not prove causation.
However, I will agree with your other statement: "Jeez, no wonder we have the reputation of being horrible at math" [and logic].
There have been several successful shuttle missions that have serviced the Hubble in the past so there's no reason to think that this particular type of mission is more dangerous than any other.
I fully support using the STS to service Hubble, but the logic you use to support that position is faulty. Just because you may manage to jaywalk actoss a busy street a few times without getting killed is not evidence that doing so is just as safe as walking on the sidewalk. Another analogy would be that surviving three rounds of Russian-roulette does not mean it is just as safe as target shooting. Similarly, just because there have been a few successful Hubble servicing missions it does not follow that "there's no reason to think that this particular type of mission is more dangerous than any other."
My understanding of the safety considerations involved in deciding to cancel or keep the HST servicing mission is: 1) because a servicing mission requires several multi-astronaut EVAs and multiple STS maneuvers very close to a large object it is significantly more hazardous than a standard orbital mission, and 2) since all STS missions are hazardous on-the-face the decision to eliminate optional missions is valid from a safety perspective.
The question has really been whether the HST is a low-value property not worth the risk to shuttle and crew, or a high-value property worthy of the mission.
No, if you had read the patent you would know that the patent is on the COMBINATION of lighting and a processor. Its not just a light in a container.
I can think of several valuable uses for a technology of this kind - such as changing the lighting in a refrigerator that holds temperature sensitive materials after a temperature spike. Or by causing individual medicine or food containers that had become dated, spoiled, contaminated, recalled, mishandled or tampered with to glow red.
The problem I have with it is that this patent now effectively stifles all innovation in the area. I'm no patent lawyer, but I always thought that you could not patent an idea, and this just seems to be an idea that one COULD light things selectively using a processor. This patent clearly seems to be aimed at getting royalties from anyone who comes up with a real product.
In my mind that is an abuse of the patent system.
as too all this research and product development into 3D displays. It didnt work in the cinema and personally I cant think of a compelling mainstream requirement for 3D on the desktop.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Before this gets modded Troll, the point is that the same thing was said about the automobile, the airplane, and the Popiel Pocket Fisherman. I'm not saying that this technology is on par with those, but frankly, who knows? If you had given some specific reasons the technology would not be worthwhile other than just "I can't think of anything", your post would have been a lot more valuable.
It's actually a myth that voter turnout has declined in recent years. The key point being that the census bureau reports it in terms of % of voting age population. This includes people that can't vote, i.e., non-citizens. If you look at the % of people voting who actually are able to vote, the rates have remained relatively constant for the last 50 years
Frankly I find this unbelievable (in the original sense of the phrase meaning I don't believe you). Besides, what is the census bureau doing counting voter turnout? I suspect what you mean is that someone has taken inapropriate census data and incorrectly applied it to voter turnout. Also, every legitimate poll I saw during the last election always defined the voter turnout as "percent of eligible voters". This on its face indicates that calculations of percent voter turnout did not include ineligible voters as you claim.
Usually I would go find proof that the census bureau isn't so stupid as to define % voters this way, but this nihilist thread makes me not want to make the effort. Given the thrust of this thread about the futility and frustration of constantly fighting for what is right I'm not going to bother. Like you, I do not believe voter turnout has decreased recently, but your reasons for saying that are just wrong. So there!
In this sense, I think the Internet is not "public communication" because it is listener initiated.
That is an absurd position. By your logic newspapers and TV are not public communication because the paper is bought by the reader and the TV is turned on by the listener.
Your conclusion is valid, but your supporting argument is not valid.
First, generally the demonstrators did not "have their own people recording the whole thing." The exculpating videos that cleared them were taken by journalists and documentary makers, not the demonstrators themselves. Secondly, it is not true that the police did not bring their own videos to the courtroom - they did, but they were selectively chosen and edited to make the protestors look more guilty than they actually were.
Again I agree with your conclusion that it is important to guard your own rights, but the "evidence" that you used to connect the events in NYC with Mann's antics are just as biased and bogus as the "evidence" the police used to try and convict the demosntrators.
As for the comments on safety, rest assured the rail industry has thought a bit about safety.
Except of course at those pesky railway crossings where they decided to skip paying the money to keep the crossing signals working properly. Very recent investigations have shown that for decades they have just been paying off the accident investigators to SAY the crossing signals were working at the time of the accident - thereby laying the blame on the victims and saving all that lawsuit money AND signal repair money. [Recent stories in NYTimes and other major newspapers]
If the traditional railroads have thought a bit about safety it has been almost exclusively about the safety of their trains.
While we're at it let's get rid of the one cent coin. It's nothing but a worthless time waster when making change. Labor costs being what they are, it would probably save businesses money not to have to pay people to count out pennies to make change. Also think how much easier it would be to calculate change if everything was in nickel increments. Price everyting in 5-cent increments, rounding up or down as needed.
Ubiquitous RFID tags are the greatest threat to individual freedom ever devised.
When RFID tags become ubiquitous in clothing government agents will be able to easily track anyone's movements and associations by simply placing scanners on city streets and sidewalks. The insidious part is that any known RFID tag "infects" any other tag near it. The Feds will be able to associate anyone you walk down the street with or ride in a car with as a "known associate". When your clothing tags are associated with the tags in your car's tires the government will be able to tell where you drive. But that isn't even necessary - as soon as you get out of your car and walk into a shopping center the government will know where you are because your RFID tags are there.
Simply by walking through an opposition political rally with a portable logger/scanner agents will be able to identify everyone in the group and their "known associates". Anonymously participating in protest marches will be a thing of the past.
The potential abuses of RFID tags by a security-minded government are more than can be listed here. There wil be no such thing as anonymity - the government will know EVERYTHING about you including what kind of toothpaste you buy.
And don't think you will be protected by the shear amount of information collected - any government that can monitor every telephone conversation *on the planet* with Echelon can easily keep track of its citizens.
Interesting you should say that. I was once sent a legal notice of eviction via the mail that required me to go to the post office to pick it up. It was addressed to "John Doe" at my address. (It was from the landlord of my apartment building who knew everyone's addresses he wanted to evict, but didn't think it worth the effort to look up the tenants' actual names). The postal clerk at the desk asked me "Is your name John Doe?" He knew it wasn't. He told me I did not have to accept the letter if I did not want to and if not the Post Office would send it back as undeliverable. In the back and forth landlord/tenant battles of New York City, this kind of information was invaluable.
The point is that if someone tries to give you a legal notice from Microsoft or anyone else filled out to John Doe, it isn't really yours until you accept it and admit to being John Doe. IANAL.
Mesothelioma is a very specific type of lung cancer that is caused by asbestos exposure. It isn't, as you implied, that the person gets any cancer and they want to blame it on asbestos exposure to make a buck. If you have mesothelioma it is pretty certain you got it from asbestos exposure.
There is a "bunch of money" to be made, eh? I tell you what - I'll give you a million dollars if sometime over the next 20 years you will have to start breathing constantly through a thick towel so that every breath is an effort, allow yourself to be constantly and painfully tortured for a year, and then let someone kill you. Think any amount of money is worth it?
The individual settlements in the W. R. Grace asbestos lawsuits were, by the way, a *lot* less than a million dollars each. But you better believe that the heads of Grace (and a lot of other companies that did the same thing) are living like princes today with their millions of dollars in retirement bonuses. They should be rotting in prison, because the KNEW what asbestos would do and they exposed employees anyway because THEY were the ones making a "bunch of money".
Birds too, I believe, cannot see things that do not move, and birds are believed to be whats left of dinosours as they evolved to today.
Well you believe wrong. Pigeons, chickens and other ground-browsing birds feed by pecking at spots on the ground on the chance that they may be seeds. These spots definately do not move.
I've read that if it were possible for a human to control the natural eye jitteriness and just focus absolutely still, the image you see would fade away to nothing. The eye needs constant movement to be able to keep updating what you are seeing.
No, no, no... I suspect you are half-remembering the old experiment where if you keep your eyes perfectly still you can detect the blind spot where the optic nerve connects with the rear of the eyeball. Normally the brain interpolates data to fill this area in but stops doing so after the eyes are kept still for a period of time. That is totally different from stating that all vision requires movement to work.
As a final point, most people here seem to be confusing "seeing" with "recognizing as prey". The example previously mentioned [lizards that can't see prey unless it is moving] would more correctly be stated that the lizards just don't recognize unmoving prey as being prey. Thus in Micheal Crieghton's fictional work, the T-Rex would not DETECT you, but would definately SEE you.
I'd consider pay-as-you-go without some stupid limit placed upon how soon I need to use up my time or artificial wallet robbing schemes
I know what you mean. I used to get $45-50 bills on my so-called $29.99 plan from Sprint. I cancelled and switched to the pre-paid plan at Virgin Mobil. Sure, you have to buy $20 of minutes every three months, but if you don't happen to use all those minutes in one quarter the unused minutes do not expire and are carried forward.
There are no other charges - no taxes, nothing - just $20 every quarter. Incoming email and voice mail are free. This works out to be cell phone service for $6.65 per month, period! If you talk a lot on your cell phone this is not for you, but if you use it occasionally this is a great deal.
A few years ago, if you had asked me if I would die for my country, I would have said, yes, as long as it was for a nobel cause. Now, I would have to say; "Hell no!" Because I now realize, I don't even know what the issues are. I wouldn't have a clue whether my government was doing the right thing or not.
We should never confuse "country" with "government", nor for that matter "government" with "administration". In a monarchy the country is the king, but unlike a monarchy our government does not rule us. Unfortunately people in the US tend to think of the government as the ruling body (even though they may not use the word), and our elected officials tend to take the ruling role.
For example Bill Frist recently refused to put out his cigar in a public restaurant and when the owner told him it was a government rule, Frist laughed and said "I AM the government." and kept on smoking.
Given the advances in communication, propoganda, public relations, and other tools used to manipulate public perception, our elected officials have become far more powerful than the Founding Fathers ever could have envisioned. Rather than expressing the will of the people officials today are more concerned with bending the will of the people for their own benefit. Cases in point are all the propaganda fake news reports put out by the current administration, and the consistent omission of inconvenient facts whenever the current administration wants its way.
We need a way to make these officials answerable more directly to the people once elected so they will be forced to revert back to the public servant role - away fom the ruling class role they have assumed. One of the necessary steps will be to open up government to full view as you say, but we must also limit the government's ability to artificially sway public opinion in favor of any current administration. No more fake news, no more secretly paid journalists supporting any administration's policies, and no more government "public relations" projects designed to distort reality in favor of an administraton's policies.
I would also like to say that if it is slower than IE on your computer, just take a little time to 'tune' your ff.
I am so frustrated with FF taking 10-15 seconds to open many web pages that I am ready to go back to Opera. I've spent hours going through the support user group and making the recommended changes to this or that obscure setting in FF, but to no effect. Given the number of users that have asked for help with this issue slowness seems to be a big FF problem - one that no one really seems interested in solving or even admitting exists.
If I had migrated from IE, Firefox's incredible slowness wouldn't be enough to send me back (IE is THAT bad), but its easy to go back to Opera.
Say what you want about the traditional development process, but no browser with 10 second load times on broadband would ever have shipped.
It's like when everyone was trying to pass a law making it illegal to burn the American flag. Of COURSE this would get shot down by the Courts, yet it looks great when re-election comes back around and they get to say "see, I was all for a ban on blah blah blah".
Say what you will on how the Supreme Court will change and then it will start passing these laws, but so far, even the conservative judges can see how un-constitutional these idiot laws are.
Don't be complacent. This country has already gone further in torture, secret imprisonments and cancellation of civil rights than I ever thought it could. I remember from my early school days being told "The thing that makes America different is that citizens can never be imprisoned by the government without trial, nor can our Constitutional rights ever be cancelled by anyone." How far we have fallen in the past four years.
You may say now that "of course" these laws will be ruled unconstitutional, but at one time I said, "Of course people will never be imprisoned without trial in America." How naive I was.
It isn't a big deal. Instead of "Mars Rovers Have Incorrect Instruments Installed", a better headline would have been "Mars Rover Data Analyzed With Incorrect Calibration Data Files"
What are you, a PR professional? Blaming the error on using the wrong calibration file is an example of the Public Relations Spin monster that has this country by the throat. "ECONOMY CREATES 220,000 JOBS IN JANUARY!" shouts Fox News and the administration, and that sounds good - but they leave out that the economy *lost* 275,000 jobs in the same month. How to lie by telling the truth. I've seen Dick Cheney brag about how 2 million [entry-level] jobs were created in 2004, while leaving out that we *lost* 3 million high tech jobs. "FDA SAYS BEEF SUPPLY SAFE because Mad Cow Disease only found in brains and blood", but conveniently forgets that meat is infused with blood. FDA says ONLY ONE COW WITH MCD, but forgets to clarify that they only *found* one cow with MCD, hundreds of thousands were never even tested. "PFIZER SAYS STUDIES SHOW BEXTRA AND CELEBREX SAFE" while omitting results from two independent studies that show significant increase in heart attacks among Bextra/Celebrex users. These are just examples, but they illustrate that it is very easy to never utter a lie and still lie through the teeth. WRONG CALIBRATION FILES USED FOR ROVER DATA you say? - yeah, right, sure.
But back to the Rover mix-up: Why this particular mix-up is important is that this could have been ANY error, not one that was easily corrected. Any competent person would look at two identical looking instruments on the table with two identical looking rovers and think "I better not get these mixed up." What if they had installed the wrong guidance computers or the wrong antenna aiming software? I know those don't exist, but you get the point.