I live next to a retired farmer. he still keeps bees. he was old fashioned in that his farm had its own bee hive. He said this bee problem never touched him and doesn't today. The people he knows don't think there is a bee problem; but they are non industrial bee keepers and are more natural about it. He thinks organic farming also helps with these GM crops and chemicals just adding to the list of things attacking the bees. Bees are tough and self managed better than anything except ants; if they have problems its most likely something we are doing.
Speaking of which, I grew up with finches all over; gradually they went away and I didn't notice-- but I remember lots of them and the noise they made come spring-- now its not even comparable. I wonder what we've done to lower that population as well... Plus the butterflies are lower too... Climate change is still minor over here (but the extremes are getting so common, it doesn't mean anything when we break a record) so it hard to believe a few decades of those changes would be the cause...
Just look into local disasters; especially those not in a major city. Katrina was that states major city and they didn't get jack except from a tiny local station that was more of a hobby project of a few people which they eventually allowed to up the radio power.
Remote controlled stations owned by corps not even in the city (or country) with nobody paying attention... If you are in a smaller area you don't even get noticed and just take feeds from the bigger place near bye-- the only thing customized is some of the advertizing; maybe. Local laws may make things better or maybe some corp put in some effort to handle such things for various reasons but unless forced or split up in to smaller businesses it is rather pointless.
Not to mention when you quantify something using a system (no matter how complex) people will evolve hacks for that system -- perhaps you've heard of hacking of metrics? aka "juking the stats" so any programmed system for management of humans is going to fail. All one can do is have good management staff; which is something business people haven't been figuring out in the "real world...." Plus education is NOT like anything else, when will people STOP likening it to everything else.
ALSO, just because you've been to the dentist doesn't mean you are a dentist or are fit to critique them. A professional educated and experienced educator has to put up with all kinds of crap questioning them; in a field that will NEVER be well understood until we figure out the human brain.
People to care? people are ignorant. You can't care if you do not know. The whole issue is INFORMING people in a system which fails time after time to properly inform the public. WTF? How can you think that gaming the system to INFORM is turning it into something other than what it is??
Often it requires DEPTH to understand it and get properly upset about it. If the corruption leaks for Tunisia were simple short headlines about US corrupting their government, it may not be enough to motivate people already fed up-- it wasn't new; they knew the system was broken already; what was needed was enough to push past a threshold so something would be done about it--- it contributed to the outrage and possibly wouldn't have met the threshold to get a sustainable democracy movement. It had an international focus put upon it. I don't know jack about Tunisia but when the leak came out I heard mention of it; it had coverage -- when I'd probably not have heard about it otherwise. Hell, in many places the news is limited or restricted so getting outside coverage is the best way to reach some people.
Then we have situations where the better states (northern) have to bail out the poor states (southern) in a Greece like situation. I'm generalizing, but most the states are wellfare states and if they must do more internally not only will it suck even more but they can't afford to do even basic services in many states.
The idealism just doesn't work out which is why most end up compromising their idealism-- say the Texas reps are all idealists like him-- they get voted out as their state crashes and burns (its burning already and its economy is a subsidized joke.) So the Texas reps make deals with the other states to get some money in exchange for something the other reps want to pass. Its how representative politics works.
The corporate media and the fickle public will NEVER digest a huge leak -- it has to be slowly leaked out over time so if we hear anything we hear the SAME bit of leak information at the same time everywhere and not too much that it gets skipped over.
If you dump it all out on a friday, you'll only hear about some diplomat screwing some presidents wife for the next few weeks and maybe a couple things the station doesn't mind reporting. Then the whole thing dies down and they don't talk about the rest of it anymore. Something like that happens all the time; especially on friday media dumps. (most people don't read the paper; tv, radio are not watched friday night or much on the weekend either.)
Intellectual property is a PR (aka propaganda; you don't think they'd keep such a negative job title?)
It makes no sense. ideas can't be stopped; they are not tangible and can not be property. Maintaining the illusion is a group exercise in shared agreement with no more to it than how we uphold the importance of curse words.
I'm surprised that a/. poster would compare physical theft with duplication as if there were no difference.
The copyright and patent laws are a social contracts where by our society sets up rules to reward those who share great ideas; it is merely a reward system vs a non-system where grateful people simply donate to the author or the author exploits their creator advantage. Mankind progressed greatly without a rigidly defined contract; arguably the existence of a known set of rules did provide benefits for some during a long period of time, but many things would have come about without that system or a multitude of alternative systems the society could have designed (some may prove better.)
Music, TV, and Film are NOT important. Its sad we waste so much time on that shit. Again, mankind made more progress without those. Oh, I suppose you are thinking of music, plays, and books that impacted and defined cultures throughout history? Those occurred without todays system or even any system at all; the social contract is not required; even relying upon donations in an anarchist situation is not required. People create such things naturally... or they used to when they were creative and had hobbies... now we are mindless consumers.
Now engineering...sciences... that is another topic and one that is far more important to mankind than "new" stories or songs. The whole point as mentioned in the constitution is to try to encourage disclosure for the benefit of mankind by providing some temporary rights. Say, anybody know how copywrite extension is constitutional?
1) only filtering software would read the meta data
2) filtering software could BLOCK all unrated information; creating motivation for ratings rather than shrink your user base. The more people using such software the greater the motivation to provide self made ratings. All public schools would be a good starting point. Anybody targeting them would be quick to adapt.
3) diverse rating options; self-ratings + 3rd party ratings (either signed onsite or offsite) 1 such service would be a black hole server which just blocks media which fails to properly classify itself. Such as showing porn to small children by rating it safe would get you in the black hole. IFF the law can touch them then action can be taken; otherwise, yes they can't be stopped.
4) This DOES mean that the government could list people they'd like to prosecute; you could choose to use them as a black hole service. This is a better solution to screwing up DNS and doing other big brother moves to control the internet -- if it is China, they maybe could let up and instead require all software to use the rating system with the government ban list (they already oppose software that gets around their network tampering, so it is just a sideways move.)
5) this could be part of HTTP or other protocols not necessarily in file meta data; which would allow ratings to be added by a server or proxy without the user configuring a 3rd party service; which is not ideal etc. but again, it is not the tech it is the policy makers at fault. Would be nice to set a webserver to mark up all your website instead of you doing it on each file... which may not support such meta data.
Literal classification is less open to debate and it is easier to automate. software could eventually ID people and scan their bodies frame to frame to see how exposed they are and rate it accordingly. Who is to say it has to be a long list of options? A hierarchy makes more sense. Start with broad things and eventually with man power or software it can get more detailed.
If you don't want nudity for your kids then it blocks the stuff for your localization as well as the generic higher level classifications; something as broad as "rated XXX" would then apply even though it may contain minutes of safe scenes. So humans do the broad simple standards but machines or people with free time could do the detail work. Which is why I mentioned peer to peer; so a wikipedia style system could be used as a data source.
The point is to define an open flexible standard with at least some agreed upon general categories and let time decide the specifics going forward. Sure, somewhere they may have an issues with showing knees maybe they never get input or a rating for it-- they'll just have to settle for the more broad things or go to a localized rating data service which classifies it as something else either more broad or purposely misclassified.
I say scientists; but I really mean academics because they are well suited to creating justified abstract models; plus less likely to be biased in silly or corrupt ways as our "moral" leaders or politicians or diplomats.
Lets just talk budgeting: These programs are TINY; NASA costs more. Even NASA is cheap compared to our stupid military spending which is more than the world combined; it was idiotic during the cold war.... the cold war ended and spending still increased. I'm not even talking about the wars.
I remember when we were talking about removing the base in Greenland-- Why didn't it happen? It helped the local economy! Free USA money to subsidize other economies... Then we have the bases in South Dakota and other states where they are the primary basis for the state's economy!
I'm just talking about budgeting priories on a TWO topics because frankly, most people here seem to struggle grasping more than the budgeting problems.
There is a range of other issues like how the government revenue is almost entirely based upon the economy! DUH! how can people be so stupid?? bad economy = bad tax revenue! Fix the economy = restored tax revenue. Remember, since Clinton left it has all been downhill... then we applied Reaganomics and it got worse...again... Now the solution from the GOP is Reaganomics... again... oh! but it'll work this time we just need to do it longer than a decade so it can turn around! morons...
Any one of the following short list cost MORE money: New massive tax loopholes (corp, rich, investments.) Huge shifts in the tax burden. Bad policies (see Bankruptcy, drug war or war on terrzm.) Privatized monetary policy (Ron Paul nails this issue.) Private contractor overhead (even when not defrauding) - especially egregious when monopolies. GIVING AWAY public property free or cheaply or even paying them to take our property! (mineral rights, airwaves) FARM SUBSIDIZES (rural welfare) The conversion of the economy from REAL business to CASINO games which are hardly taxed. (Not only does this wreak the economy but it removes tax revenue. You profit more from investment gambling than providing capital to real businesses; the big justification for the investment market.) National Laboratories -- as in, the long term cost of NOT properly funding them. 1.2 million green jobs (today) which could be boosted much higher resulting in a net gain; instead we've always undermined it to support the 80,000 coal workers...
Government is not business; its just currently run by business interests. Its also not your household. Anybody claiming it should be run like either lacks fundamental understanding is trying to fool people.
Parent post would be funny; I'd normally moderate it as such but I'm skipping moderating it to say that the situation in the stupid USA is beyond despair so there is no longer any humor in such statements; its just depressingly sad and horrible - perhaps if you are on the outside you are removed or ignorant enough to enjoy such humor but being here and watching the self-inflicted implosion is another matter.
Functionally, in areas where corporate interests dictate policy it is no longer your government. "Let them vote for cake" is where things are headed; serious self government is being removed gradually; like boiling a frog.
Sound can almost give away keys pressed. the sound on the desk is likely to work better than pickup from the air since solids conduct sound. Add vibration and you've got plenty of data to extract from! I somehow doubt the acceleration is precise enough to come close to a microphone; I wonder if an image from the camera (if in focus) could in some cases indicate more vibration than the accelerometer... SOUND ALONE could do it much better. use the microphone.
It is a government problem, industry can't solve it cheaply or likely any better.
A cheap solution would be for sites to publish their rating (meta tag) or setup something like the cert authorities for it but allow self rating. Maybe have some laws for badly rated websites so porn can't label itself for elementary children without a fine. Verification authorities would merely allow a backdoor to non profits, businesses, or peer to peer to go above the self-rating system.
Schools, parents can then BAN all sites who are not rated. To optionally go further they could require the verification of the rating by a trusted party or peer 2 peer system. The base system would work MOST the time as any legit site would put ratings on itself as huge numbers of people blocked them if they did not - it would be cheap and easy to self rate. As long as the rules for rating are not too crazy to solve everything it would be ok... until idiot lawyers try to make laws to do everything...but that is another problem: legal "feature creep".
The peer 2 peer system could be like wikipedia for verifying ratings of sites or to services with paid reviewers-- or governments like China (where the system could be abused and there is no point in trying to make it not work for their purposes - they'll do what they want anyhow, it likely wouldn't do enough for their needs.)
I've said it before, we need a global standard rating scheme created by scientists not industry monkeys.
AVERAGE is a pretty meaningless statistic; don't take it too seriously. The biggest impacts on averages are the freak numbers that skew the number.
1 person lives to 100 and they bring up the average a huge amount compared to the impact of individuals in the middle.
A HUGE MASSIVE change during childbirth caused the infant mortality rate to go down dramatically in many nations in the last 100 years as well as protecting the lives of the mothers-- both of which were big pulls on the average statistics given how young they are. Plus mothers were younger, had more children, and later life complications largely amplified by child birthing have been largely solved and lowered due to smaller family size. Now don't forget the infants who are not even half a year old-- being averaged in the death rate at an age value approaching zero! A lot more of them than people reaching 100. Then you had tougher living and weaker medicine for children - personally, I probably would have died a couple times given how much I got sick as a kid. All this being said, we should consider sterilization of people who would have naturally died; I probably shouldn't be having children, if nature had its way I'd not have lived long enough. It should be obvious that our adversarial position with nature is going to cause us problems (which we claim we can beat if we just keep fighting and reverse engineer some more... will we win before our tech kills us or makes life hell? or will we lose against nature?)
24 hour clocks. That is the 1st step. Everybody can count to 24 now and digital clocks are in the majority.
Not that many use analog clocks anyhow. I was shocked to hear of college students who didn't know how to read an analog clock! they don't teach that in school anymore... I remembered when I learned it but still... I would have figured it out without having it in school... I was surprised by how many managed to not learn it; just shows how uncommon analog clocks are.
So the sun would rise at 0 for me, in the summer. Since the seasons greatly alter my sun time and daylight savings BS creates an instant hour shift twice a year I don't think having different points on the clock mean different things would matter--- ONLY if you moved to another place. Somebody who travels frequently would probably adapt and like the universal time; jet lag would still be a problem. As far as work-- my lunch break is mid-day and on my day off that time still feels like mid-day doesn't matter what the sun is doing or what number is repetitiously pounded into my brain each work day.
Food riots are coming. bad weather all over is causing food problems along with rising oil prices (since most the food production and distribution is HEAVILY oil based) are going to cause bad situations to get worse and likely worse than the places last time where riots broke out due to oil prices.
In the USA we merely are losing our middle class; which relative to each group is enough to spark some kind of actions - the starving may end up in riots and the middle class may not start riots until they lose their Cable TV. Its all relative thresholds.
What is with all the corporate sheeple posting all the negative personal attacks against a worldwide movement of people? Front what I've seen these groups are far too diverse to be summed up so simplistically.
Capitalism should not be a religion but it sure has become one over the years. You can attack god more easily than the mighty mammon. Some of these TV bastards seem to have combined the two into 1 god.
Class warfare is something that never stopped and probably never will - anybody who acts like it isn't going on is either waging it or not competent enough to listen to. Many of these issues are the same age old ones just with newer details.
Mid-evil church with old traditions... actually, far far older than that!
Arranged marriages starting at 12 years old were totally acceptable and normal and old men were probably never unusual (hell, its a stereotype today with rich old men... at least in the past it was not as extreme because of life expectancy!)
History is actually on their side and they are quite strongly tied to the past, what can one expect?? I'm sure the other ancient religions have similar issues but lack the massive organizational hierarchy (which may or may not increase incidents; it may only make them leak out more...despite policies to cover things up.)
Then you have the nutty OLD policies that came from a fanatic group in charge of the church that removed all sex from clergy and made the whole thing even more 'evil' than it was previously... and this was old enough to be inherited by later off shoots. Brilliant power play by the organization back in the day; I'm surprised they didn't make breathing a sin to which they were the only path to salvation.
Perhaps the church should have defended marriage at 12 and allowed sex to be natural and let their officials have spouses? I bet the incidence rate and how it is handled would be quite different than today (or not necessarily better... but it is kind of a magnet to people with problems in the area, don't you think?)
All this having been said, people should realize that the stats for them are actually better than a lot of other institutions... high schools for example are worse; the #1 place for pedophiles: friends and family.
The KEY is that it is unlocked. They can take the knife from your pocket without permission and check any blood it may have on it. Also, "reasonable" is subjective. A digital pocket holding digital items of interest is what we are dealing with here.
If you lock it poorly and they get in without warrants then what is "reasonable" comes into play in a totally different way. You have the "expectation of" privacy/security clearly indicated when it is locked so then it should be unreasonable to search it. What is locked? is a PIN to unlock the phone enough? full encryption?
From slavery to sexism exercising traditions unquestioningly has no justification. Appeal to tradition is a logical fallacy as well.
If people want to attack you because you are breaking their silly traditions, forget them- they are not acting rationally!
I hate it when people only speak well of the dead, even when they are bastards. Its not as if you are protesting against civil rights at funerals in the face of the people trying to morn... Being unkind to those who feel bad is a different matter. People who are touchy shouldn't be digging around the internet to find people they do not know saying things they do not like and condemning them for allowing somebody to hunt for it... or to shame them for disregarding their silly beliefs.
Mostly its psychological not biological; not likely to find much info that can be used today-- perhaps his genetics help but its not the major factor. We all unfortunately develop mental blocks etc. that hold us back and don't luck out in our environment so our natural strengths (predispositions) can be fully utilized. Some people win the lottery on all fronts, asperger's (likely) + the right conditions let this child shine. Could be he is being harmed in other ways; like children who have parents training them to be a sports legend at birth-- and again, he won the lottery in that his parents efforts worked out like Tiger Wood's did.
People differ so much that finding the perfect conditions for each child is going to be impossible. You can only slightly increase the odds-- besides, it would be better if you boosted performance across the board than added 1 more prodigy out of millions. Remember, people get massive brain damage and retrain their brain to huge extents to recover-- the brain can adapt far more than we give it credit! We just don't know how do to it that well.
The best one can do with such a child is CONTINUE with whatever was being done to keep the winning streak going as long as possible; professional aid in maintaining this isn't a bad idea-- but putting him among other groups of people of any age is always a risk. You never know what somebody may do to hinder them. As a teen, its likely to be shaken up and something has to be done... Downside to a highly controlled environment is that it can't continue forever without being like a prison and once outside the child will not have the experiences to cope... which is why many think it more important to rob potential for the child's own long term happiness. Being the top/best is not important in the end. (its not like they'll save the world or anything - maybe be famious inventing something that can be turned into a weapon... getting society to evolve does more good.)
He admitted the mistake and turned it around after investing a great deal in his blunder. Most CEOs today do not give in so easily to reason, they will continue down the foolish path they set CONFIDENT they will be vindicated later (and still feel good after they leave with a huge bonus and their plans "not performing to expectations" and blame external forces like "bad economy" or something about the timing implying it was a great idea ahead or behind the current market climate.)
The Government is our democratic institution FOR AND BY THE PEOPLE and until people realize that and defend it instead of hating democracy it'll die and only represent the powerful (and those they sucker,) as it does today. If you hate government conceptually (as is a popular thing to do today) then you hate democracy. If you hate our corrupt government which is no longer a functioning democracy that is a different matter; too many people get confused.
Public land is the basis for our roads, phone, cable, sewer, water, gas, and power lines.
Government roads serve society quite well despite all our bitching about them and the occasional foolish management (hey, we put them there-- its not like HP hiring 2 horrible CEOs was a public decision...happens everywhere.)
Why we must have private corps build/design new infrastructure POORLY when we have a long history of successful government efforts defies reason! Its not like these private efforts don't bribe some government subsidizes at our expense then pad their profit margins pulling every trick in the book. Their management is always biased towards maximum profit not the public good. Trying to regulate the beasts without being bitten is always foolish in the long term; its like playing with fire. (fire has many good uses but also has many downsides.)
Government should run all the lines that go over our public land. It is done NON-PROFIT. I have cable AND phone lines over here which DOUBLE the cost as two monopolies maintain their mildly subsidized lines... running on the power company's subsidized poles. We have old gas lines which need replacing and every year we have a few explosions ("accidents") because the corp is too greedy to invest in a system upgrade so they only insure themselves and fix messes... A government system would have been slowly upgrading the system already and investing in something that would LAST LONG TERM (something MBAs can't comprehend.)
Internet is a perfect technology for sharing services. Many DSL companies are forced to allow other ISPs share their network. Just as ROADs provide the MARKETPLACE for businesses to run upon it. Wireless can't compete with a huge singular network that digitally splits services vs the current analog bandwidth splits we do now (which lower capacity each time we sell off another bandwidth monopoly.)
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I live next to a retired farmer. he still keeps bees. he was old fashioned in that his farm had its own bee hive. He said this bee problem never touched him and doesn't today. The people he knows don't think there is a bee problem; but they are non industrial bee keepers and are more natural about it. He thinks organic farming also helps with these GM crops and chemicals just adding to the list of things attacking the bees. Bees are tough and self managed better than anything except ants; if they have problems its most likely something we are doing.
Speaking of which, I grew up with finches all over; gradually they went away and I didn't notice-- but I remember lots of them and the noise they made come spring-- now its not even comparable. I wonder what we've done to lower that population as well... Plus the butterflies are lower too... Climate change is still minor over here (but the extremes are getting so common, it doesn't mean anything when we break a record) so it hard to believe a few decades of those changes would be the cause...
Just look into local disasters; especially those not in a major city. Katrina was that states major city and they didn't get jack except from a tiny local station that was more of a hobby project of a few people which they eventually allowed to up the radio power.
Remote controlled stations owned by corps not even in the city (or country) with nobody paying attention... If you are in a smaller area you don't even get noticed and just take feeds from the bigger place near bye-- the only thing customized is some of the advertizing; maybe. Local laws may make things better or maybe some corp put in some effort to handle such things for various reasons but unless forced or split up in to smaller businesses it is rather pointless.
Not to mention when you quantify something using a system (no matter how complex) people will evolve hacks for that system -- perhaps you've heard of hacking of metrics? aka "juking the stats" so any programmed system for management of humans is going to fail. All one can do is have good management staff; which is something business people haven't been figuring out in the "real world...." Plus education is NOT like anything else, when will people STOP likening it to everything else.
ALSO, just because you've been to the dentist doesn't mean you are a dentist or are fit to critique them. A professional educated and experienced educator has to put up with all kinds of crap questioning them; in a field that will NEVER be well understood until we figure out the human brain.
People to care? people are ignorant. You can't care if you do not know. The whole issue is INFORMING people in a system which fails time after time to properly inform the public. WTF? How can you think that gaming the system to INFORM is turning it into something other than what it is??
Often it requires DEPTH to understand it and get properly upset about it. If the corruption leaks for Tunisia were simple short headlines about US corrupting their government, it may not be enough to motivate people already fed up-- it wasn't new; they knew the system was broken already; what was needed was enough to push past a threshold so something would be done about it--- it contributed to the outrage and possibly wouldn't have met the threshold to get a sustainable democracy movement. It had an international focus put upon it. I don't know jack about Tunisia but when the leak came out I heard mention of it; it had coverage -- when I'd probably not have heard about it otherwise. Hell, in many places the news is limited or restricted so getting outside coverage is the best way to reach some people.
Then we have situations where the better states (northern) have to bail out the poor states (southern) in a Greece like situation. I'm generalizing, but most the states are wellfare states and if they must do more internally not only will it suck even more but they can't afford to do even basic services in many states.
The idealism just doesn't work out which is why most end up compromising their idealism-- say the Texas reps are all idealists like him-- they get voted out as their state crashes and burns (its burning already and its economy is a subsidized joke.) So the Texas reps make deals with the other states to get some money in exchange for something the other reps want to pass. Its how representative politics works.
The corporate media and the fickle public will NEVER digest a huge leak -- it has to be slowly leaked out over time so if we hear anything we hear the SAME bit of leak information at the same time everywhere and not too much that it gets skipped over.
If you dump it all out on a friday, you'll only hear about some diplomat screwing some presidents wife for the next few weeks and maybe a couple things the station doesn't mind reporting. Then the whole thing dies down and they don't talk about the rest of it anymore. Something like that happens all the time; especially on friday media dumps. (most people don't read the paper; tv, radio are not watched friday night or much on the weekend either.)
Intellectual property is a PR (aka propaganda; you don't think they'd keep such a negative job title?)
It makes no sense. ideas can't be stopped; they are not tangible and can not be property. Maintaining the illusion is a group exercise in shared agreement with no more to it than how we uphold the importance of curse words.
I'm surprised that a /. poster would compare physical theft with duplication as if there were no difference.
The copyright and patent laws are a social contracts where by our society sets up rules to reward those who share great ideas; it is merely a reward system vs a non-system where grateful people simply donate to the author or the author exploits their creator advantage. Mankind progressed greatly without a rigidly defined contract; arguably the existence of a known set of rules did provide benefits for some during a long period of time, but many things would have come about without that system or a multitude of alternative systems the society could have designed (some may prove better.)
Music, TV, and Film are NOT important. Its sad we waste so much time on that shit. Again, mankind made more progress without those. Oh, I suppose you are thinking of music, plays, and books that impacted and defined cultures throughout history? Those occurred without todays system or even any system at all; the social contract is not required; even relying upon donations in an anarchist situation is not required. People create such things naturally... or they used to when they were creative and had hobbies... now we are mindless consumers.
Now engineering...sciences... that is another topic and one that is far more important to mankind than "new" stories or songs. The whole point as mentioned in the constitution is to try to encourage disclosure for the benefit of mankind by providing some temporary rights. Say, anybody know how copywrite extension is constitutional?
1) only filtering software would read the meta data
2) filtering software could BLOCK all unrated information; creating motivation for ratings rather than shrink your user base. The more people using such software the greater the motivation to provide self made ratings. All public schools would be a good starting point. Anybody targeting them would be quick to adapt.
3) diverse rating options; self-ratings + 3rd party ratings (either signed onsite or offsite) 1 such service would be a black hole server which just blocks media which fails to properly classify itself. Such as showing porn to small children by rating it safe would get you in the black hole. IFF the law can touch them then action can be taken; otherwise, yes they can't be stopped.
4) This DOES mean that the government could list people they'd like to prosecute; you could choose to use them as a black hole service. This is a better solution to screwing up DNS and doing other big brother moves to control the internet -- if it is China, they maybe could let up and instead require all software to use the rating system with the government ban list (they already oppose software that gets around their network tampering, so it is just a sideways move.)
5) this could be part of HTTP or other protocols not necessarily in file meta data; which would allow ratings to be added by a server or proxy without the user configuring a 3rd party service; which is not ideal etc. but again, it is not the tech it is the policy makers at fault. Would be nice to set a webserver to mark up all your website instead of you doing it on each file... which may not support such meta data.
Literal classification is less open to debate and it is easier to automate. software could eventually ID people and scan their bodies frame to frame to see how exposed they are and rate it accordingly. Who is to say it has to be a long list of options? A hierarchy makes more sense. Start with broad things and eventually with man power or software it can get more detailed.
If you don't want nudity for your kids then it blocks the stuff for your localization as well as the generic higher level classifications; something as broad as "rated XXX" would then apply even though it may contain minutes of safe scenes. So humans do the broad simple standards but machines or people with free time could do the detail work. Which is why I mentioned peer to peer; so a wikipedia style system could be used as a data source.
The point is to define an open flexible standard with at least some agreed upon general categories and let time decide the specifics going forward. Sure, somewhere they may have an issues with showing knees maybe they never get input or a rating for it-- they'll just have to settle for the more broad things or go to a localized rating data service which classifies it as something else either more broad or purposely misclassified.
I say scientists; but I really mean academics because they are well suited to creating justified abstract models; plus less likely to be biased in silly or corrupt ways as our "moral" leaders or politicians or diplomats.
Lets just talk budgeting:
These programs are TINY; NASA costs more. Even NASA is cheap compared to our stupid military spending which is more than the world combined; it was idiotic during the cold war.... the cold war ended and spending still increased. I'm not even talking about the wars.
I remember when we were talking about removing the base in Greenland-- Why didn't it happen? It helped the local economy! Free USA money to subsidize other economies... Then we have the bases in South Dakota and other states where they are the primary basis for the state's economy!
I'm just talking about budgeting priories on a TWO topics because frankly, most people here seem to struggle grasping more than the budgeting problems.
There is a range of other issues like how the government revenue is almost entirely based upon the economy! DUH! how can people be so stupid?? bad economy = bad tax revenue! Fix the economy = restored tax revenue. Remember, since Clinton left it has all been downhill... then we applied Reaganomics and it got worse...again... Now the solution from the GOP is Reaganomics... again... oh! but it'll work this time we just need to do it longer than a decade so it can turn around! morons...
Any one of the following short list cost MORE money:
New massive tax loopholes (corp, rich, investments.) Huge shifts in the tax burden. Bad policies (see Bankruptcy, drug war or war on terrzm.) Privatized monetary policy (Ron Paul nails this issue.) Private contractor overhead (even when not defrauding) - especially egregious when monopolies. GIVING AWAY public property free or cheaply or even paying them to take our property! (mineral rights, airwaves) FARM SUBSIDIZES (rural welfare) The conversion of the economy from REAL business to CASINO games which are hardly taxed. (Not only does this wreak the economy but it removes tax revenue. You profit more from investment gambling than providing capital to real businesses; the big justification for the investment market.) National Laboratories -- as in, the long term cost of NOT properly funding them. 1.2 million green jobs (today) which could be boosted much higher resulting in a net gain; instead we've always undermined it to support the 80,000 coal workers...
Government is not business; its just currently run by business interests. Its also not your household. Anybody claiming it should be run like either lacks fundamental understanding is trying to fool people.
Parent post would be funny; I'd normally moderate it as such but I'm skipping moderating it to say that the situation in the stupid USA is beyond despair so there is no longer any humor in such statements; its just depressingly sad and horrible - perhaps if you are on the outside you are removed or ignorant enough to enjoy such humor but being here and watching the self-inflicted implosion is another matter.
Functionally, in areas where corporate interests dictate policy it is no longer your government. "Let them vote for cake" is where things are headed; serious self government is being removed gradually; like boiling a frog.
Sound can almost give away keys pressed. the sound on the desk is likely to work better than pickup from the air since solids conduct sound. Add vibration and you've got plenty of data to extract from! I somehow doubt the acceleration is precise enough to come close to a microphone; I wonder if an image from the camera (if in focus) could in some cases indicate more vibration than the accelerometer...
SOUND ALONE could do it much better. use the microphone.
It is a government problem, industry can't solve it cheaply or likely any better.
A cheap solution would be for sites to publish their rating (meta tag) or setup something like the cert authorities for it but allow self rating. Maybe have some laws for badly rated websites so porn can't label itself for elementary children without a fine. Verification authorities would merely allow a backdoor to non profits, businesses, or peer to peer to go above the self-rating system.
Schools, parents can then BAN all sites who are not rated. To optionally go further they could require the verification of the rating by a trusted party or peer 2 peer system. The base system would work MOST the time as any legit site would put ratings on itself as huge numbers of people blocked them if they did not - it would be cheap and easy to self rate. As long as the rules for rating are not too crazy to solve everything it would be ok... until idiot lawyers try to make laws to do everything...but that is another problem: legal "feature creep".
The peer 2 peer system could be like wikipedia for verifying ratings of sites or to services with paid reviewers-- or governments like China (where the system could be abused and there is no point in trying to make it not work for their purposes - they'll do what they want anyhow, it likely wouldn't do enough for their needs.)
I've said it before, we need a global standard rating scheme created by scientists not industry monkeys.
AVERAGE is a pretty meaningless statistic; don't take it too seriously. The biggest impacts on averages are the freak numbers that skew the number.
1 person lives to 100 and they bring up the average a huge amount compared to the impact of individuals in the middle.
A HUGE MASSIVE change during childbirth caused the infant mortality rate to go down dramatically in many nations in the last 100 years as well as protecting the lives of the mothers-- both of which were big pulls on the average statistics given how young they are. Plus mothers were younger, had more children, and later life complications largely amplified by child birthing have been largely solved and lowered due to smaller family size. Now don't forget the infants who are not even half a year old-- being averaged in the death rate at an age value approaching zero! A lot more of them than people reaching 100. Then you had tougher living and weaker medicine for children - personally, I probably would have died a couple times given how much I got sick as a kid. All this being said, we should consider sterilization of people who would have naturally died; I probably shouldn't be having children, if nature had its way I'd not have lived long enough. It should be obvious that our adversarial position with nature is going to cause us problems (which we claim we can beat if we just keep fighting and reverse engineer some more... will we win before our tech kills us or makes life hell? or will we lose against nature?)
24 hour clocks. That is the 1st step. Everybody can count to 24 now and digital clocks are in the majority.
Not that many use analog clocks anyhow. I was shocked to hear of college students who didn't know how to read an analog clock! they don't teach that in school anymore... I remembered when I learned it but still... I would have figured it out without having it in school... I was surprised by how many managed to not learn it; just shows how uncommon analog clocks are.
So the sun would rise at 0 for me, in the summer. Since the seasons greatly alter my sun time and daylight savings BS creates an instant hour shift twice a year I don't think having different points on the clock mean different things would matter--- ONLY if you moved to another place. Somebody who travels frequently would probably adapt and like the universal time; jet lag would still be a problem. As far as work-- my lunch break is mid-day and on my day off that time still feels like mid-day doesn't matter what the sun is doing or what number is repetitiously pounded into my brain each work day.
Food riots are coming. bad weather all over is causing food problems along with rising oil prices (since most the food production and distribution is HEAVILY oil based) are going to cause bad situations to get worse and likely worse than the places last time where riots broke out due to oil prices.
In the USA we merely are losing our middle class; which relative to each group is enough to spark some kind of actions - the starving may end up in riots and the middle class may not start riots until they lose their Cable TV. Its all relative thresholds.
What is with all the corporate sheeple posting all the negative personal attacks against a worldwide movement of people? Front what I've seen these groups are far too diverse to be summed up so simplistically.
Capitalism should not be a religion but it sure has become one over the years. You can attack god more easily than the mighty mammon. Some of these TV bastards seem to have combined the two into 1 god.
Class warfare is something that never stopped and probably never will - anybody who acts like it isn't going on is either waging it or not competent enough to listen to. Many of these issues are the same age old ones just with newer details.
Mid-evil church with old traditions... actually, far far older than that!
Arranged marriages starting at 12 years old were totally acceptable and normal and old men were probably never unusual (hell, its a stereotype today with rich old men... at least in the past it was not as extreme because of life expectancy!)
History is actually on their side and they are quite strongly tied to the past, what can one expect?? I'm sure the other ancient religions have similar issues but lack the massive organizational hierarchy (which may or may not increase incidents; it may only make them leak out more...despite policies to cover things up.)
Then you have the nutty OLD policies that came from a fanatic group in charge of the church that removed all sex from clergy and made the whole thing even more 'evil' than it was previously... and this was old enough to be inherited by later off shoots. Brilliant power play by the organization back in the day; I'm surprised they didn't make breathing a sin to which they were the only path to salvation.
Perhaps the church should have defended marriage at 12 and allowed sex to be natural and let their officials have spouses? I bet the incidence rate and how it is handled would be quite different than today (or not necessarily better... but it is kind of a magnet to people with problems in the area, don't you think?)
All this having been said, people should realize that the stats for them are actually better than a lot of other institutions... high schools for example are worse; the #1 place for pedophiles: friends and family.
The KEY is that it is unlocked. They can take the knife from your pocket without permission and check any blood it may have on it. Also, "reasonable" is subjective. A digital pocket holding digital items of interest is what we are dealing with here.
If you lock it poorly and they get in without warrants then what is "reasonable" comes into play in a totally different way. You have the "expectation of" privacy/security clearly indicated when it is locked so then it should be unreasonable to search it. What is locked? is a PIN to unlock the phone enough? full encryption?
From slavery to sexism exercising traditions unquestioningly has no justification. Appeal to tradition is a logical fallacy as well.
If people want to attack you because you are breaking their silly traditions, forget them- they are not acting rationally!
I hate it when people only speak well of the dead, even when they are bastards. Its not as if you are protesting against civil rights at funerals in the face of the people trying to morn... Being unkind to those who feel bad is a different matter. People who are touchy shouldn't be digging around the internet to find people they do not know saying things they do not like and condemning them for allowing somebody to hunt for it... or to shame them for disregarding their silly beliefs.
Mostly its psychological not biological; not likely to find much info that can be used today-- perhaps his genetics help but its not the major factor. We all unfortunately develop mental blocks etc. that hold us back and don't luck out in our environment so our natural strengths (predispositions) can be fully utilized. Some people win the lottery on all fronts, asperger's (likely) + the right conditions let this child shine. Could be he is being harmed in other ways; like children who have parents training them to be a sports legend at birth-- and again, he won the lottery in that his parents efforts worked out like Tiger Wood's did.
People differ so much that finding the perfect conditions for each child is going to be impossible. You can only slightly increase the odds-- besides, it would be better if you boosted performance across the board than added 1 more prodigy out of millions. Remember, people get massive brain damage and retrain their brain to huge extents to recover-- the brain can adapt far more than we give it credit! We just don't know how do to it that well.
The best one can do with such a child is CONTINUE with whatever was being done to keep the winning streak going as long as possible; professional aid in maintaining this isn't a bad idea-- but putting him among other groups of people of any age is always a risk. You never know what somebody may do to hinder them. As a teen, its likely to be shaken up and something has to be done... Downside to a highly controlled environment is that it can't continue forever without being like a prison and once outside the child will not have the experiences to cope... which is why many think it more important to rob potential for the child's own long term happiness. Being the top/best is not important in the end. (its not like they'll save the world or anything - maybe be famious inventing something that can be turned into a weapon... getting society to evolve does more good.)
Gates was not an ideas man; except perhaps for business ideas.
He admitted the mistake and turned it around after investing a great deal in his blunder. Most CEOs today do not give in so easily to reason, they will continue down the foolish path they set CONFIDENT they will be vindicated later (and still feel good after they leave with a huge bonus and their plans "not performing to expectations" and blame external forces like "bad economy" or something about the timing implying it was a great idea ahead or behind the current market climate.)
The Government is our democratic institution FOR AND BY THE PEOPLE and until people realize that and defend it instead of hating democracy it'll die and only represent the powerful (and those they sucker,) as it does today. If you hate government conceptually (as is a popular thing to do today) then you hate democracy. If you hate our corrupt government which is no longer a functioning democracy that is a different matter; too many people get confused.
Public land is the basis for our roads, phone, cable, sewer, water, gas, and power lines.
Government roads serve society quite well despite all our bitching about them and the occasional foolish management (hey, we put them there-- its not like HP hiring 2 horrible CEOs was a public decision...happens everywhere.)
Why we must have private corps build/design new infrastructure POORLY when we have a long history of successful government efforts defies reason! Its not like these private efforts don't bribe some government subsidizes at our expense then pad their profit margins pulling every trick in the book. Their management is always biased towards maximum profit not the public good. Trying to regulate the beasts without being bitten is always foolish in the long term; its like playing with fire. (fire has many good uses but also has many downsides.)
Government should run all the lines that go over our public land. It is done NON-PROFIT. I have cable AND phone lines over here which DOUBLE the cost as two monopolies maintain their mildly subsidized lines... running on the power company's subsidized poles. We have old gas lines which need replacing and every year we have a few explosions ("accidents") because the corp is too greedy to invest in a system upgrade so they only insure themselves and fix messes... A government system would have been slowly upgrading the system already and investing in something that would LAST LONG TERM (something MBAs can't comprehend.)
Internet is a perfect technology for sharing services. Many DSL companies are forced to allow other ISPs share their network. Just as ROADs provide the MARKETPLACE for businesses to run upon it. Wireless can't compete with a huge singular network that digitally splits services vs the current analog bandwidth splits we do now (which lower capacity each time we sell off another bandwidth monopoly.)