It is obviously in microsofts financial interest to deliberately slow software down, to perpetuate the cycle of hardware and software upgrade. Corporations primary goal is to maximize profits. Therefore no improvement is seen in 15 years because improvement would interfere with Microsofts profits.
Well, the voting machine companies are all owned by extreme rightwing conservatives. So the rigged voting machines benefit conservatives and corporate insiders, regardless of the party in power.
Uhh, no. There is a big difference between losing your privacy because you are under PUBLIC scrutiny like in a park, and losing your privacy because you are under PRIVATE scrutiny, like the privately-owned cameras that would be on airplanes. One is PUBLIC and shared by all, and another is PRIVATE, controlled by relatively few people, and could potentially be abused and used as an instrument of oppression. Just say NO to ubiquitous cameras.
This really sounds just horrible. One argument people have used in favor of it is that airline companies are privately owned and therefore have every right to put cameras in their planes. After all you could choose to fly a different airline, or not fly at all. This argument is flawed, for many reasons. First, without knowing who owns the airlines and how they are connected financially, it is possible that the airline industry could comprise an abusive monopoly. In today's political climate, it is obvious that the supposedly publically accountable federal government has not been vigorously engaged in trust-busting lately, to say the least. In this case, the airlines could ALL put cameras on their planes at the same time, without fear that customers would migrate to competing airlines. Second, we don't know how the images taken by the cameras will be used, or why they need to keep them for so long. The companies have logs of who occupies which seats -- this could be used to create a privately owned database of facial feature information on the public. God only knows how this could be abused. Given this unpleasantness, it would come down to a choice between flying and getting monitored and possible having your face captured and logged into a privately owned database etc., or not flying at all. But of course, as stated so eloquently in the Matrix Reloaded, choice is so often simply an illusion created between those with power and those without. The choice of whether to fly or not is most certainly such a choice. The questions are then WHO is calling the shots here, i.e. who has the power, and WHY there is such a need for this monitoring, which as many people pointed out will have little obvious impact on safety. I have a feeling it has nothing at all to do with safety, and everything to do with the creation of a high-tech fascist nightmare.
The idea that RFID will help with product returns is a big joke too. Like product returns are so difficult. People have only been successfully returning products for say the last 50-100 years now.
Privacy concerns are not overrated. Not in a world where the Pentagon proposed a program called 'total information awareness', which is still going forward (though with a cosmetic name change). In response to your specific points, I don't think there is any incentive to kill the tags at all. The detection is realtively short-range. That allows tracking by detectors at building enterences etc., but precludes detection from a van in the parking lot. (They could always put their warehouse in a screened room if they were terribly worried about white vans their parking lot! A Cheap mesh screen should suffice.) The RFID tags could have a write only memory that is set to SOLD at the time of sale, so that shoplifing prevention AND customer tracking could be done. Even if this simple technologival solution isn't implemented, other shoplifting prevention techniques could used concurrently. They don't really NEED the number to check for shoplifting, that's not how the current alarms at store entrances work now (RIGHT!?). Furthermore, it has been reported that Michelin plans to put RFID in tires. Will this be used to track who dives where, and when? The potential for abuse of this technology is staggering, and when we find from leaked documents PR firms describing how they need to 'pacify' consumers who are concerned about RFID abuses, the spectre of Big Brother looms large indeed.
You know why? Because America is only a de jure democracy. De facto it's a fascist state run by corporations and billionaires -- it always has been. That's why we are getting this nazi-esqe bullshit -- our cherished "democracy" is nothing but a myth. The mass media focuses heavily on this mythology, keeping the masses bamboozled into thinking they have some voice, but in truth they do not.
The ability to SPAM places the power of the mass media in the hands of the individual. Although SPAM can be extrememly annoying, I think the price to pay is well worth it because it can be used as a powerful force for the democritization of information. By quashing SPAM, the common person is cut off from the ability to reach a mass audience (they could start a web page but people must be AWARE of it in order that their message gets out). In other words, quashing SPAM has the effect of helping to silence dissent. Then the power of the mass media is held only by the corporate elite.
I am concerned that the debate about SPAM provides cover for a covert attempt to install corporate censorware. SPAM blocking should be done at the level of the individual recipient, by blocking options they choose. If it is done further upstream then this simply trasfers control of a very powerful apparatus of censorship to the upper echelons of corporate hierarchy. Can we really trust them to block ONLY SPAM and nothing else?
As a scientist, reading this article in the New York Times is rather troubling. The "text" produced by the science is an incredibly accurate rendition of the truth of the universe we live in. As further experiments and exploration continues, our understanding becomes ever richer and more detailed. This is the basis for a fascinating intellectual persuit. But also, the understanding produced by the social enterprise of science, as influenced by experiments, has led directly to important technological advances that shape our society. Ignore the arcane musings of physicists as you will, but it is difficult to ignore their impact!
Finally, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard has written extensively about the fact that humans communicate through symbols and images that are essentially simulacra removed from objective truth. This leaves in his words, the "desert of the real".
As far as I am concerned, say what you will about other academic subjects, but you can consider science to be an oasis, firmly rooted in the desert of the real. You post-modernist punks can take that to the bank!:-)
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It is obviously in microsofts financial interest to deliberately slow software down, to perpetuate the cycle of hardware and software upgrade. Corporations primary goal is to maximize profits. Therefore no improvement is seen in 15 years because improvement would interfere with Microsofts profits.
If it's a meteorite, then where is the crater?
Well, the voting machine companies are all owned by extreme rightwing conservatives. So the rigged voting machines benefit conservatives and corporate insiders, regardless of the party in power.
How much money does it take to allow mergers, i.e. do nothing? Not sure if budgeting zero really matters.
Uhh, no. There is a big difference between losing your privacy because you are under PUBLIC scrutiny like in a park, and losing your privacy because you are under PRIVATE scrutiny, like the privately-owned cameras that would be on airplanes. One is PUBLIC and shared by all, and another is PRIVATE, controlled by relatively few people, and could potentially be abused and used as an instrument of oppression. Just say NO to ubiquitous cameras.
This really sounds just horrible. One argument people have used in favor of it is that airline companies are privately owned and therefore have every right to put cameras in their planes. After all you could choose to fly a different airline, or not fly at all. This argument is flawed, for many reasons. First, without knowing who owns the airlines and how they are connected financially, it is possible that the airline industry could comprise an abusive monopoly. In today's political climate, it is obvious that the supposedly publically accountable federal government has not been vigorously engaged in trust-busting lately, to say the least. In this case, the airlines could ALL put cameras on their planes at the same time, without fear that customers would migrate to competing airlines. Second, we don't know how the images taken by the cameras will be used, or why they need to keep them for so long. The companies have logs of who occupies which seats -- this could be used to create a privately owned database of facial feature information on the public. God only knows how this could be abused. Given this unpleasantness, it would come down to a choice between flying and getting monitored and possible having your face captured and logged into a privately owned database etc., or not flying at all. But of course, as stated so eloquently in the Matrix Reloaded, choice is so often simply an illusion created between those with power and those without. The choice of whether to fly or not is most certainly such a choice. The questions are then WHO is calling the shots here, i.e. who has the power, and WHY there is such a need for this monitoring, which as many people pointed out will have little obvious impact on safety. I have a feeling it has nothing at all to do with safety, and everything to do with the creation of a high-tech fascist nightmare.
The idea that RFID will help with product returns is a big joke too. Like product returns are so difficult. People have only been successfully returning products for say the last 50-100 years now.
Privacy concerns are not overrated. Not in a world where the Pentagon proposed a program called 'total information awareness', which is still going forward (though with a cosmetic name change). In response to your specific points, I don't think there is any incentive to kill the tags at all. The detection is realtively short-range. That allows tracking by detectors at building enterences etc., but precludes detection from a van in the parking lot. (They could always put their warehouse in a screened room if they were terribly worried about white vans their parking lot! A Cheap mesh screen should suffice.) The RFID tags could have a write only memory that is set to SOLD at the time of sale, so that shoplifing prevention AND customer tracking could be done. Even if this simple technologival solution isn't implemented, other shoplifting prevention techniques could used concurrently. They don't really NEED the number to check for shoplifting, that's not how the current alarms at store entrances work now (RIGHT!?). Furthermore, it has been reported that Michelin plans to put RFID in tires. Will this be used to track who dives where, and when? The potential for abuse of this technology is staggering, and when we find from leaked documents PR firms describing how they need to 'pacify' consumers who are concerned about RFID abuses, the spectre of Big Brother looms large indeed.
You know why? Because America is only a de jure democracy. De facto it's a fascist state run by corporations and billionaires -- it always has been. That's why we are getting this nazi-esqe bullshit -- our cherished "democracy" is nothing but a myth. The mass media focuses heavily on this mythology, keeping the masses bamboozled into thinking they have some voice, but in truth they do not.
The ability to SPAM places the power of the mass media in the hands of the individual. Although SPAM can be extrememly annoying, I think the price to pay is well worth it because it can be used as a powerful force for the democritization of information. By quashing SPAM, the common person is cut off from the ability to reach a mass audience (they could start a web page but people must be AWARE of it in order that their message gets out). In other words, quashing SPAM has the effect of helping to silence dissent. Then the power of the mass media is held only by the corporate elite.
I am concerned that the debate about SPAM provides cover for a covert attempt to install corporate censorware. SPAM blocking should be done at the level of the individual recipient, by blocking options they choose. If it is done further upstream then this simply trasfers control of a very powerful apparatus of censorship to the upper echelons of corporate hierarchy. Can we really trust them to block ONLY SPAM and nothing else?
As a scientist, reading this article in the New York Times is rather troubling. The "text" produced by the science is an incredibly accurate rendition of the truth of the universe we live in. As further experiments and exploration continues, our understanding becomes ever richer and more detailed. This is the basis for a fascinating intellectual persuit. But also, the understanding produced by the social enterprise of science, as influenced by experiments, has led directly to important technological advances that shape our society. Ignore the arcane musings of physicists as you will, but it is difficult to ignore their impact! Finally, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard has written extensively about the fact that humans communicate through symbols and images that are essentially simulacra removed from objective truth. This leaves in his words, the "desert of the real". As far as I am concerned, say what you will about other academic subjects, but you can consider science to be an oasis, firmly rooted in the desert of the real. You post-modernist punks can take that to the bank! :-)