I'm also fine with "fake meat" as long as it is tested and safe, and I realize this was not GM in this case. I was just making the point that lobbying interests and governments are ramming GM foods onto the market with the safety of the public being secondary. If these foods are safe and wholesome, what is the problem with labelling them? Why genetically modify the most important grains and foods first where if problems later show, we possibly have destroyed our most important foodstuffs? Does that seem wise?
I realize that if all meat was synthetic, there would be no need to label it as such. I was just referencing the fact that in Pennsylvania and other states, there was a market for milk from cows not being given growth hormone. In Pennsylvania, the secretary of agriculture was set to disallow the labelling of milk as being free of growth hormone. There was enough pushback from those wanting to buy growth hormone-free milk and those just wanting to know what they were drinking to force the secretary to backtrack on the order. I was angry and still am angry that a state official was comfortable hiding what was in our food for the sake of lobbying interests. I was just trying to make the point that we are being force-fed GM foods, and in most cases, there have been no long term studies as to safety. I was trying to make humorously the point that GM foods are being rammed down our throats whether we like it our not, and regardless of safety concerns. Call me crazy, but I still want to make my own life choices, and not have the government and corporations make them for me. Just for the record, in food, "you won't notice the difference" does not equate to safe to eat. Safe to eat is actually the most important part of "mission accomplished".
Monsanto will patent it, claim real meat infringes, then make us all eat it. No labelling of fake meat will be allowed, so we won't know what we are eating. At that time maybe I'll try the frankensalmon.
I'd go even further. Why does a supermarket need customer data in the first place? There needs to be an attitude change. Our personal data is ours, and no store deserves to have it given to them in order to give us the sale prices that they have always used as marketing tools. It never ends, and now I must give out SSN to get a fishing license. Tell me that's not an accident waiting to happen.
I find it interesting that the lower Marion school district investigation over student's laptop surveillance ended with the FBI pressing no charges, claiming that there was no criminal intent, thus no crime. Remember that surveillance at the student's home was done claiming the software was for recovering laptops that were stolen. I grew up in a time when '1984' was scary. Now, people accept more onerous control over every aspect of their lives without blinking an eye. If we intend to retain any resemblance of freedom, this trend must be reversed. (I couldn't believe people accepted supermarket loyalty cards. Think about it for a moment. You're allowing your every purchase to be logged and tracked, and the data bought and sold for a few cents off on sale items. The same items would have been on sale without the cards, but you would be purchasing them anonymously as God intended.) My fear is that all this control over devices that we purchase will spill over to general purpose computers. Oops, too late. The powers that be tell me I can't play a dvd I bought on my linux box. The scariest thing though, is that nearly all things now have a camera, a mic, and gps.
When the whole subject of net neutrality came up, it was obvious that neutrality of packet delivery needed to be preserved in order for the internet to continue to exist as a space where innovation runs rampant. Now it seems that in order to assure neutral packet delivery, we must accept regulation by the FCC. Historically, FCC regulation has often become overbearing. We could see the internet turn into glorified TV where the FCC starts to regulate content. So, either we get packet delivery by extortion from the ISPs, or we get a regulated internet with no idea where further regulation will take us. Like so much of life lately, it looks like another lose, lose for the citizenry.
I am less interested in evading Big Brother tech, than I am interested in the ceasing of these intrusions in our lives. We should modify our appearances to avoid being tracked in everything we do? Those who are old enough in the US surely remember being told over and over again that part of what made the US system superior to the soviet system was that US citizens were free to live their lives without constant government scrutiny. We did not have to "show our papers". Now, everything that was shown to us as abuses of the soviet system against its citizens exists here now on steroids and with technology no one would have dreamed possible back then. Let us not get in the mindset that we should try to avoid these technologies, but rather let us work to roll attitudes back to the point where we are free to live without constant government oversight. Can anyone deny "we are being watched" is the new norm, and the new norm is swiftly crossing over into tyranny? Still, I am heartened by the fact that many see facial recognition for what it is, and at least have the attitude that they should be free to thwart it. Of course, understand, at some point there will be laws prohibiting you from painting your face in order to defeat the software. It will be your duty as a citizen to allow yourself to be scrutinized by the government every second of every day. That will then be "the new norm".
How is this for an assumption: Even though we are out in public, we should be allowed to be left alone. I don't exist in order to be tracked, thus adding to your income stream. The assumption that we all must be tracked in order to catch a minority deadbeats is flawed. In the US, you cannot even go fishing without giving out your SSN for a fishing license. This was sold as a way to track down deadbeat dads. Now my SSN is in a fish commission database that can be accessed by little machines in all outlets that sell the licenses. How long do you think it will be before the database is hacked, and someone will be buying lunch in Russia with a credit card using my SSN while i"m fishing in the US? But, hey, that's the price we must pay for catching a few deadbeats.
Al Gore's 100 ft. houseboat: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gore-hits-the-waves-with-a-massive-new-houseboat/
my boat:
cheap 8 ft. kayak
Yet, he gets to lecture me about carbon usage. Gore is a lightening rod of bad PR for everything he touches. That alone should make the Apple stockholders wary for electing him to the board. Making energy so expensive that the poor cannot afford it, while allowing the wealthy to use as much as they want through "carbon offsets" is one of the most despicable scams ever floated. Mr. Gore, if the planet is in such danger, then lead by example. Put on Gandi's loincloth first before telling the rest of us that we are wearing too much clothing. If we must use less energy, so be it. Then ration it. Then, if I have enough to last all month, Mr. Gore will be in the dark in his freezing cold home for three and a half weeks. By the way, Mr. Gore, the science is not settled simply because you say that it is. The bottom line: 1. don't lecture me 2. Stop trying to take money out of my pocket and putting it in yours.
I feel the same way. Yes, they may not really compare to Hubble's, and others may have done better, still, the man used what is not a small amount of his own time, money, and effort to produce something worthwhile in the true tradition of the amateur, that is out of love of the work. To complain that the results are not good enough always reminds me of the crabs in a bucket syndrome where when one crab expends the effort to climb halfway out of the bucket, the other crabs drag him back down. Is it too much to ask to praise someone who has achieved something, rather than to say that he didn't do enough?
'India does value free speech and political speech. But they are weighing the harm of free speech against violence in their streets.'
Governments have been using that sort of argument for thousands of years. All speech is just data, and our knowledge, wisdom, and moral sense are the filters we use to weigh that data. We don't need nor do we desire governments to filter the data for us, or only allow us access to a subset of data that they deem appropriate. Indeed, only having access to all the data allows us to see the big picture, and thus make wise decisions. The 'climategate' scandal is a good example. When some views are suppressed, and some data is 'tweaked', the whole model becomes suspect. The wise say, "Give us all the data. Let all voices be heard. Only then can we begin to approach the truth that we are seeking." The google spokesperson could have said "India is weighing the good of free speech against the harm of violence in their streets.", but they chose to phrase it as: 'the harm of free speech'. Think about that mindset the next time you need to trust any authority, whether it be government, google, or carbon-taxing zealots.
I kept reading posts hoping someone would point out the difference between selective breeding and cross species gene splicing. That is where the danger lies, as no one knows what Pandora's box of crap might be unleashed by putting flounder dna in strawberries, so thank you for bringing it to the discussion.
Once the government gains the power to grant a license, it has the power to take away the license. Then, people start censoring themselves. (if I say the wrong thing on the internet, they'll take away my license.) I have to give my SSN every year just to get a license to fish, and the little machine checks into a state database before it will print out the license. It sure leaves no doubt as to who is the serf and who is the landed gentry in this relationship. Similar things would happen with an internet license, but worse.
When I lived in Lancaster, I had on average one car window broken out every 12-18 months. Nothing stolen, just vandalism for the fun of it. insurance never paid. Repair always came out of my pocket. I used to call it the vandalism tax. Drive around town early Sunday morning, and you should be able to easily find ten other cars with similar vandalism. Still, I resist this kind of surveillance. Sure, in a public place, there is no expectation of privacy, but 24-7 surveillance is ok only for God, and Santa Claus. It's a matter of trust, really, trust and politeness. Although I've lived here nearly all my life, I've never taken a picture of one of the Amish. They don't want to be photographed, and I am willing to respect their wishes. To be watching all the citizens 24-7 basically says that all are untrustworthy. Some are untrustworthy, but the ones who are trustworthy can be forgiven for resenting the lack of trust. Of course, the founding fathers felt that only a moral society was able to be a free society, as then individuals restrained themselves. This kind of surveillance is always evidence that a society is lacking the moral underpinnings to self-regulate. It can be as simple as the Hippocratic oath statement, "First, do no harm", or the golden rule. Now, instead of self-restraint, and self-discipline, we see narrcissism. I want something, so I steal it. I don't like you, so you must die. So we all end up as prisoners in a zero tolerance prison that used to be a medium sized town.
The bottom line, NY wants more money. "It's for your own good" is crap. Anyone who has worked in a manufacturing job has gotten to work with every and any random toxic substance known to man, but an extra soda is so bad for you that you must be punished for drinking it. NY, just be honest and say that you think you need more money, and so you are taxing soda. When was it decided that our life decisions must be subordinated to the maximization of insurance company bottom lines. If I am a slave of the state, at least tell me. If I am a free man, allow me to live my life as I see fit.
"I think I would draw the line at anonymous monetary transactions, as these have too much potential for abuse. That is not to say that all monetary transactions should be in the public domain, but that I have no objections to record-keeping requirements for monetary transactions, and making them subject to a reasonable discovery process."
I pay with cash for everyhing but electric, phone, etcetera. I use no "loyalty cards" at the supermarket. Why do I do this? It is because it is nobody's business what I buy. I'm just a little weird that way.
I visited a fishing gear site last week, and a few days later I was surprised to be served an ad on a non fishing site for fishing rods from the first site. I always delete my history etc., so I was curious to see from where this was served. I hovered over what I thought was an image used as a link, and nothing showed on the status bar, so I right clicked on it and saw it was an embedded flash player. That was when I started searching through the.macromedia directory and finding the.sol files. The bottom line... can Flash cookies be used to serve targeted ads? Yes they can. What else... who knows.
Well put. This is something I did not consider. My congressman voted for this, and now I will demand the telcos testify at hearings, or congressman doesn't get my vote. I am to the point of voting every elected official I can out of office who does not consider the reaffirming of our constitutional rights to be job one. And by the way, I can't respect any government that condones torture for any reason.
No amount of intelligence will ever make you "safe". Warrantless wiretaps will, however, make you a slave to self-censorship. When the first time comes to you when you hold your tongue, because the government may be listening, warrantless wiretaps will no longer seem like a good idea. Freedom means that you can live your life unscrutinized until there is actionable cause to suspect you have committed a crime. Then it's time to get a warrant and investigate, not before the fact. Freedom does not mean spy on everyone all the time to keep them honest. Now, do you want to live in freedom or not? Whatever your answer is, do not presume to tell me that I should live in fear and repression so you might be "safe". That decision is not yours to make.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. That is the exact reason I don't get store loyalty cards using a false name. The moral high ground always trumps expediency.
Excellent point. We all know that is what would happen.
I'm also fine with "fake meat" as long as it is tested and safe, and I realize this was not GM in this case. I was just making the point that lobbying interests and governments are ramming GM foods onto the market with the safety of the public being secondary. If these foods are safe and wholesome, what is the problem with labelling them? Why genetically modify the most important grains and foods first where if problems later show, we possibly have destroyed our most important foodstuffs? Does that seem wise?
I realize that if all meat was synthetic, there would be no need to label it as such. I was just referencing the fact that in Pennsylvania and other states, there was a market for milk from cows not being given growth hormone. In Pennsylvania, the secretary of agriculture was set to disallow the labelling of milk as being free of growth hormone. There was enough pushback from those wanting to buy growth hormone-free milk and those just wanting to know what they were drinking to force the secretary to backtrack on the order. I was angry and still am angry that a state official was comfortable hiding what was in our food for the sake of lobbying interests. I was just trying to make the point that we are being force-fed GM foods, and in most cases, there have been no long term studies as to safety. I was trying to make humorously the point that GM foods are being rammed down our throats whether we like it our not, and regardless of safety concerns. Call me crazy, but I still want to make my own life choices, and not have the government and corporations make them for me. Just for the record, in food, "you won't notice the difference" does not equate to safe to eat. Safe to eat is actually the most important part of "mission accomplished".
Monsanto will patent it, claim real meat infringes, then make us all eat it. No labelling of fake meat will be allowed, so we won't know what we are eating. At that time maybe I'll try the frankensalmon.
I'd go even further. Why does a supermarket need customer data in the first place? There needs to be an attitude change. Our personal data is ours, and no store deserves to have it given to them in order to give us the sale prices that they have always used as marketing tools. It never ends, and now I must give out SSN to get a fishing license. Tell me that's not an accident waiting to happen.
Yes, you've spoken well.
Yes, you've said it all, and once the whole "privilege" concept is accepted, the hoops to be jumped through become endless.
I find it interesting that the lower Marion school district investigation over student's laptop surveillance ended with the FBI pressing no charges, claiming that there was no criminal intent, thus no crime. Remember that surveillance at the student's home was done claiming the software was for recovering laptops that were stolen. I grew up in a time when '1984' was scary. Now, people accept more onerous control over every aspect of their lives without blinking an eye. If we intend to retain any resemblance of freedom, this trend must be reversed. (I couldn't believe people accepted supermarket loyalty cards. Think about it for a moment. You're allowing your every purchase to be logged and tracked, and the data bought and sold for a few cents off on sale items. The same items would have been on sale without the cards, but you would be purchasing them anonymously as God intended.) My fear is that all this control over devices that we purchase will spill over to general purpose computers. Oops, too late. The powers that be tell me I can't play a dvd I bought on my linux box. The scariest thing though, is that nearly all things now have a camera, a mic, and gps.
When the whole subject of net neutrality came up, it was obvious that neutrality of packet delivery needed to be preserved in order for the internet to continue to exist as a space where innovation runs rampant. Now it seems that in order to assure neutral packet delivery, we must accept regulation by the FCC. Historically, FCC regulation has often become overbearing. We could see the internet turn into glorified TV where the FCC starts to regulate content. So, either we get packet delivery by extortion from the ISPs, or we get a regulated internet with no idea where further regulation will take us. Like so much of life lately, it looks like another lose, lose for the citizenry.
I am less interested in evading Big Brother tech, than I am interested in the ceasing of these intrusions in our lives. We should modify our appearances to avoid being tracked in everything we do? Those who are old enough in the US surely remember being told over and over again that part of what made the US system superior to the soviet system was that US citizens were free to live their lives without constant government scrutiny. We did not have to "show our papers". Now, everything that was shown to us as abuses of the soviet system against its citizens exists here now on steroids and with technology no one would have dreamed possible back then. Let us not get in the mindset that we should try to avoid these technologies, but rather let us work to roll attitudes back to the point where we are free to live without constant government oversight. Can anyone deny "we are being watched" is the new norm, and the new norm is swiftly crossing over into tyranny? Still, I am heartened by the fact that many see facial recognition for what it is, and at least have the attitude that they should be free to thwart it. Of course, understand, at some point there will be laws prohibiting you from painting your face in order to defeat the software. It will be your duty as a citizen to allow yourself to be scrutinized by the government every second of every day. That will then be "the new norm".
How is this for an assumption: Even though we are out in public, we should be allowed to be left alone. I don't exist in order to be tracked, thus adding to your income stream. The assumption that we all must be tracked in order to catch a minority deadbeats is flawed. In the US, you cannot even go fishing without giving out your SSN for a fishing license. This was sold as a way to track down deadbeat dads. Now my SSN is in a fish commission database that can be accessed by little machines in all outlets that sell the licenses. How long do you think it will be before the database is hacked, and someone will be buying lunch in Russia with a credit card using my SSN while i"m fishing in the US? But, hey, that's the price we must pay for catching a few deadbeats.
Al Gore's 100 ft. houseboat:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gore-hits-the-waves-with-a-massive-new-houseboat/
my boat:
cheap 8 ft. kayak
Yet, he gets to lecture me about carbon usage. Gore is a lightening rod of bad PR for everything he touches. That alone should make the Apple stockholders wary for electing him to the board. Making energy so expensive that the poor cannot afford it, while allowing the wealthy to use as much as they want through "carbon offsets" is one of the most despicable scams ever floated. Mr. Gore, if the planet is in such danger, then lead by example. Put on Gandi's loincloth first before telling the rest of us that we are wearing too much clothing. If we must use less energy, so be it. Then ration it. Then, if I have enough to last all month, Mr. Gore will be in the dark in his freezing cold home for three and a half weeks. By the way, Mr. Gore, the science is not settled simply because you say that it is. The bottom line: 1. don't lecture me 2. Stop trying to take money out of my pocket and putting it in yours.
I feel the same way. Yes, they may not really compare to Hubble's, and others may have done better, still, the man used what is not a small amount of his own time, money, and effort to produce something worthwhile in the true tradition of the amateur, that is out of love of the work. To complain that the results are not good enough always reminds me of the crabs in a bucket syndrome where when one crab expends the effort to climb halfway out of the bucket, the other crabs drag him back down. Is it too much to ask to praise someone who has achieved something, rather than to say that he didn't do enough?
'India does value free speech and political speech. But they are weighing the harm of free speech against violence in their streets.' Governments have been using that sort of argument for thousands of years. All speech is just data, and our knowledge, wisdom, and moral sense are the filters we use to weigh that data. We don't need nor do we desire governments to filter the data for us, or only allow us access to a subset of data that they deem appropriate. Indeed, only having access to all the data allows us to see the big picture, and thus make wise decisions. The 'climategate' scandal is a good example. When some views are suppressed, and some data is 'tweaked', the whole model becomes suspect. The wise say, "Give us all the data. Let all voices be heard. Only then can we begin to approach the truth that we are seeking." The google spokesperson could have said "India is weighing the good of free speech against the harm of violence in their streets.", but they chose to phrase it as: 'the harm of free speech'. Think about that mindset the next time you need to trust any authority, whether it be government, google, or carbon-taxing zealots.
This will be to real meat as a blow up doll is to a real woman.
I kept reading posts hoping someone would point out the difference between selective breeding and cross species gene splicing. That is where the danger lies, as no one knows what Pandora's box of crap might be unleashed by putting flounder dna in strawberries, so thank you for bringing it to the discussion.
Once the government gains the power to grant a license, it has the power to take away the license. Then, people start censoring themselves. (if I say the wrong thing on the internet, they'll take away my license.) I have to give my SSN every year just to get a license to fish, and the little machine checks into a state database before it will print out the license. It sure leaves no doubt as to who is the serf and who is the landed gentry in this relationship. Similar things would happen with an internet license, but worse.
Got to give SSN to get a fishing license. It's a FEDERAL mandate.
When I lived in Lancaster, I had on average one car window broken out every 12-18 months. Nothing stolen, just vandalism for the fun of it. insurance never paid. Repair always came out of my pocket. I used to call it the vandalism tax. Drive around town early Sunday morning, and you should be able to easily find ten other cars with similar vandalism. Still, I resist this kind of surveillance. Sure, in a public place, there is no expectation of privacy, but 24-7 surveillance is ok only for God, and Santa Claus. It's a matter of trust, really, trust and politeness. Although I've lived here nearly all my life, I've never taken a picture of one of the Amish. They don't want to be photographed, and I am willing to respect their wishes. To be watching all the citizens 24-7 basically says that all are untrustworthy. Some are untrustworthy, but the ones who are trustworthy can be forgiven for resenting the lack of trust. Of course, the founding fathers felt that only a moral society was able to be a free society, as then individuals restrained themselves. This kind of surveillance is always evidence that a society is lacking the moral underpinnings to self-regulate. It can be as simple as the Hippocratic oath statement, "First, do no harm", or the golden rule. Now, instead of self-restraint, and self-discipline, we see narrcissism. I want something, so I steal it. I don't like you, so you must die. So we all end up as prisoners in a zero tolerance prison that used to be a medium sized town.
The bottom line, NY wants more money. "It's for your own good" is crap. Anyone who has worked in a manufacturing job has gotten to work with every and any random toxic substance known to man, but an extra soda is so bad for you that you must be punished for drinking it. NY, just be honest and say that you think you need more money, and so you are taxing soda. When was it decided that our life decisions must be subordinated to the maximization of insurance company bottom lines. If I am a slave of the state, at least tell me. If I am a free man, allow me to live my life as I see fit.
"I think I would draw the line at anonymous monetary transactions, as these have too much potential for abuse. That is not to say that all monetary transactions should be in the public domain, but that I have no objections to record-keeping requirements for monetary transactions, and making them subject to a reasonable discovery process." I pay with cash for everyhing but electric, phone, etcetera. I use no "loyalty cards" at the supermarket. Why do I do this? It is because it is nobody's business what I buy. I'm just a little weird that way.
I visited a fishing gear site last week, and a few days later I was surprised to be served an ad on a non fishing site for fishing rods from the first site. I always delete my history etc., so I was curious to see from where this was served. I hovered over what I thought was an image used as a link, and nothing showed on the status bar, so I right clicked on it and saw it was an embedded flash player. That was when I started searching through the .macromedia directory and finding the .sol files. The bottom line... can Flash cookies be used to serve targeted ads? Yes they can. What else... who knows.
Well put. This is something I did not consider. My congressman voted for this, and now I will demand the telcos testify at hearings, or congressman doesn't get my vote. I am to the point of voting every elected official I can out of office who does not consider the reaffirming of our constitutional rights to be job one. And by the way, I can't respect any government that condones torture for any reason.
No amount of intelligence will ever make you "safe". Warrantless wiretaps will, however, make you a slave to self-censorship. When the first time comes to you when you hold your tongue, because the government may be listening, warrantless wiretaps will no longer seem like a good idea. Freedom means that you can live your life unscrutinized until there is actionable cause to suspect you have committed a crime. Then it's time to get a warrant and investigate, not before the fact. Freedom does not mean spy on everyone all the time to keep them honest. Now, do you want to live in freedom or not? Whatever your answer is, do not presume to tell me that I should live in fear and repression so you might be "safe". That decision is not yours to make.