More importantly there's a physical bottleneck on nukes, the radioactive materials. While you might be able to get your hands on it, it's not like you can shop for it at WalMart and get your weapons-grade nuclear materials while you're shopping for a leaf-blower.
People worry too much about nukes, and not enough about chemical and biological weapons. Really, I just about failed high school chemistry and I'm reasonably sure I could produce a life-threatening chemical weapon with enough incentive. You CAN shop for poisons at WalMart.
It's more character driven than a lot of the other Known Space novels, and the big alien artifact is just interesting scenery to showcase the thinly veiled abstracts of human nature aliens hanging out with humans in glass ships. I just shudder when Hollywood gets hold on science fiction, success stories be damned I still remember Starship Troopers and the various other sci-fi movies that have been completely hacked by people who apparently "can't get" the important bits of what really aren't all that complex bits of fiction. Narnia will probably sidestep any of the growth/morality issues of CS Lewis in favor of jokes from the Badger voice-over of Eddie Murphy. Once they get past that, since they're already in love with PK Dick, I'd like them to do The Man In The High Castle.
That's exactly what happened when they raised the speed limit from 55mph though, stopped the ban on alchohol, started examining segregation, and probably a whole bunch more that my soda blurred brain can't think of right now.
If a minority chooses to do a thing then it's a cancer, if the whole organism begins to act a certain way and the minority are the people who don't...Is it selfish for a society to not act hypocritically? If all of society begins to act a certain way and the left hand chooses not to, should society sit idly as the left hand stabs the right because it's not acting the same as before? Now the question comes, is filesharing the issue and if it is such a prominent component of something that hasn't been identified properly as the issue, then what is that issue? A huge segment of society obviously is chosing to act this way, is it selfishness or consensus?
Maybe editors are just hoping that with enough Slashdot frustration someone will reinvent then internet and solve all of our bandwidth issues forever. So they're not kicking your server in the nuts because they're stupid, they're kicking your server in the nuts because they care.
I wonder what would happen if you designed your "leaky radio" signal on purpose to appear from multiple car radios. Maybe a career of driving in rush hour traffic for some unlucky bastard? Guys driving around town with special getups designed to break the threshold levels of the billboards and turn the adverts to their employer's ads? Ick. It sounds about as fun as artifically inseminating sheep for a living.
A better way: Stop relying on Middle Eastern oil, stop funding their wars of jihad at the gas pumps, and basically marginalize them again. There are plenty of evil bastards in Africa too, but we generally are allowed to not give a shit because there's nothing in Africa we want and Africans can't afford flush toilets much less intermediate range missiles.
So the region is a big mess and we're not getting blown up in the streets while we shop for sodas....this is our problem why? Maybe if the whole region is so messed up that they're in a major land war amongst themselves they'll stop being so pissed off at us. Sounds win-win to me, unless you're an agent of Haliburton.
Yet a lot of devices already seem to naturally converge on the PC and cellphone, and if the divergent devices tend to seek the same feature sets it really doesn't matter if you call your cellphone with a digital camera a cellphone or if you call your digital camera that you can make phone calls on a camera.
Sure, you're still going to have specialized devices and equipment. I'd love to get some specialized speakers and a better soundcard for my PC, an easily portable from my PC system for my car and for taking on walks - but those are still basically wishlists for attaching things to my PC.
I want EVERYTHING to work through my PC. I want to be able to naturally and presumptiously be able to do things like query my car computer for gas mileage over a wireless device, send over my music from my computer over the same connection and use my vehicle and home PC station to port to my cellphone/mp3player/camera.
The uberdevice these guys are seeking really isn't so much a matter of convergence as it is seeking a common state of connection, because who really cares if your devices aren't in the same box when they're all talking to each other and singing the same tune. My stereo and my television are different devices too, but they're controlled by the same remote so they blend together. If ALL my devices blend together that way, and are expected by the public to blend together that way I think it's a good thing.
Obviously it has to be, if you're on the short list of companies owned by Cabinet members, Congress, and the President and Vice President. If there's nothing we want there, including mythical WMDs, then what the fuck are we there for? Just as an exercise to see how many 18 year old GIs we can lose each week while keeping the President popular in the polls?
Well since we're public official's employers I think it's not so bad, when the government wants to spy on the public it's tantamount to insisting on installing a camera in the bosses lavatory because you're afraid he might not be screwing the secretary.
"1) No. Only ones that the spouse feels may be a problem. It would be their choice to toss them in the database."
Right. We might as well invite people to enter prospective Commies and Witches into the datatbase as well, right there along with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, heavy metal bands, and a comprehensive set of flags that might show someone as "trashy looking" or "wrong color". The public can't be trusted to enter flags into a database like this much more than the government, since we're not dictated as much in our behavior by law we're almost always more prone to fits of hysteria. Think about it, would you like the database open to the public and someone start flagging "jewish noses"? After all, the estranged husband hadn't committed a crime yet either until he yanked her from school. We already live in a culture that focusses on appearance, what about muslim females or people wearing scarves? Suddenly they become people with something to hide? No, it's a bad idea all around unless you've got a very specific security criteria - if you want to allow access to a building to only your employees then it's nothing worse than a key, not a faulty privacy invasive net.
If you're a kid wherever this guy lives, don't shake it too long, or else YOU could be sexually assaulting a child too. Yay! Goooooo Government!!!!!!!!!
We spend all this time organizing our entire culture to protect children and what does it gain us? Adults who feel that it's okay to trample sense and rights in order to feel protected? The whole sex offender thing is bullshit anyways, I'd just as soon have "mugs people a lot" registry or "beats up people while drunk" registry. At least that would be more concrete than "sex offender" - which covers an awful lot of ground, and would be something more practical since you could use "beats people while drunk" registries to avoid the people in bar. What are you supposed to do with sex offender registries anyways, besides take the law in your own hands and burn the person's house down so that they move into someone else's neighborhood?
This in essence would kill the entertainment industry. Making and distributing movies, music and books isn't cheap.
As technology progresses though, the only cost involved will be time and services. If you don't print a book the only cost is bandwidth. If your PC or mobile phone is advanced enough then studio time is superfluous. Even movies drop lower in the equation than local theatre once you get cheap, natural looking CG and software that's easy enough for your average director or screenwriter to remove the actor from the equation. People are already doing some of this with Flash on a smaller scale. In essence, technology is already killing the entertainment industry. What we're experiencing now is the thrashing corpse, it is merely a matter of time and to what purpose we pursue trying to revive the beast I don't know. You really can't put the technology back into the bag and ignore it, nor can you legislate away the natural progression. Are we just hoping that suddenly an upper limit on technology, a ceiling of advancement might fall into our laps? You might even argue that entertainment in it's current form is already at it's own repetitive ceiling at least in music, what loss of culture are we really going to suffer by shaking the tree that tries to sell the current rash of artists as innovative?
Music books and other art could possibly survive without copyright but film is a whole other story.
I really think you're underestimating the future of technology and the way creativity moves to fill voids. Any ass with a camcorder and some effort could make a reality TV show. The same effects that were dazzling in the 80s are almost effortless to do today. It only gets easier to use as long as you're still striving for a technological activity. The idea might still be hard, but actually writing a book or a song or even putting together a film production is already getting easier and more effortless. Lowering effort and increasing ease of use not only decreases cost, but decreases worth. The idea itself should be worthwhile, it doesn't naturally follow that the distribution is so.
"Why is that every argument against what I've said chooses to take a childish hyperbolic extreme interpretation?"
Perhaps it's your own childish notion that things like capability determines usage. A bus would make a better bomb than a tank, does that make the bus more dangerous? How can you stretch your definition of weapon enough to include an unarmed aircraft? Even intent isn't enough to move a man from merely murderous to being a murderer, nor is a criminal thought enough to make one a criminal. If Simpson had instructed more on than the aircraft then I might see your point, or if he'd advocating building the missiles for some nefarious purpose. Instead he outlined several legitimate usages and statements, one of which was the _pursuit of revenue to pay off his taxes_.
A cruise missile is just a remotely guided vehicle of a certain configuration. You could load Sarin gas into a RC plane and get a weapon. As far as I know this device was built with a payload specification but not a payload. By your criteria of concern we'd have to now consider all passenger aircraft for their weapons use only.
If you'd read his site he's stated that in addition to pointing out his concerns for use of the device as a cruise missile, he'd also considered the project for promoting his engine designs and as possible reconfigurations for use in search and rescue missions. Sending out low cost recoverable aircraft with built-in guidance and payloads would probably be cheaper than sending out manned aircraft and with the jet engine design cover more territory than most current commercial RC aircraft. The things weigh ~70kg too, that's light enough to consider as a low cost/lightweight equipment for FA controllers I think and artillery observers that might for whatever reason need jet speed more than slow stealth. Then there's low cost entertainment uses I suppose, cheap enough to make for a throwaway camera shot or vicarious thrill nosecone racing. The thing isn't a cruise missile in the sense that people want to portray it as, anymore than a bus is a tank just because they're both large vehicles with horrible gas mileage and diesel engines. His main sin here seems to be in labelling his device in a way that was meant to provocate, which isn't a crime in the US and I don't believe is a crime in NZ.
So what makes them think this was for gaming? Given the religious significance of regular polyhedra in the classical era -- including but not limited to the Pythagoreans -- it's much more likely that this was either a divination tool or a model representing someone's cosmological theory.
Buddy, I hate to break it to you but that's how a lot of gamers use them now. There is nothing more frightening than watching someone annoint their d20 with "holy water", enshrine them in their basement complete with icons of "hot chicks that did Daredevil" all over the walls, or worst - have no life whatsoever beyond their d20s, proving the correctness of the dice as their personal cosmology. Scary.
If they're someone you want to protect your family against by the simple definition of their crime though, why are we bothering to release these people back into society? Manson gets parole hearings too, what makes the serial rapist more likely to get out enough that we have to create a new subset of vigilantism as punishment for them?
Let's just say that other criminals are out of prison and able to live normal lives without the right to vote, job restrictions, money, and scarlet letters on their chest daring the neighborhood lynch mobs to come throw molotov cocktails through their windows at night. Going to prison comes with enough bad effects that encouraging the community to freak out and commit crimes against the criminals once they've gotten out is just a bit much. Sex offenses are offensive, but not in such a blanket manner as the registries suggest and seem to serve no real purpose except to stroke the community into a froth anyways.
How many serial indecent exposure cases do you know about though? Those are sex offenders too. That date you had with the sixteen year old girl when you were eighteen could mean a lifetime of trouble in some states, when you could probably have married them legally without a hiccup. The problem isn't completely in the invasiveness of the registries, it's in the fact that they're listed uneven offenses on even grounds.
On the other hand I doubt that your "all rapists are serial rapists' statement is based on any sort of real study. The simple fact is that people are varied enough and justice blind enough that absolutes just don't figure into the statistics. You can't even make the blanket statement that "all convicted criminals commit crimes" thanks to some humdingers of prosecutorial injustice over the years. I guess it's a good thing you posted AC.
There is a higher rate of recidivism with poor criminals and minorities, should registries be made for poor minority criminals as well? How many times does your average criminal prosecuted for indecent exposure and statutory rape while they were under the age of 24 repeat? They're still on the books as sexual criminals on the same pages as the guys with 24 counts of sexual assault on kids under the age of 12. I'm all for punishing criminals, but punishment should be dealt out reasonably by lawfully enlisted servants of the state rather than a bunch of drunk neighbors with an axe to grind. Publishing these registries is expectant of nothing else.
If recividism is absolute then sentence them absolutely, don't release them to the public with the implicit expectation of punishment and encouragement of illegal vigilantism.
Slashdot Mirror
People worry too much about nukes, and not enough about chemical and biological weapons. Really, I just about failed high school chemistry and I'm reasonably sure I could produce a life-threatening chemical weapon with enough incentive. You CAN shop for poisons at WalMart.
It's more character driven than a lot of the other Known Space novels, and the big alien artifact is just interesting scenery to showcase the thinly veiled abstracts of human nature aliens hanging out with humans in glass ships. I just shudder when Hollywood gets hold on science fiction, success stories be damned I still remember Starship Troopers and the various other sci-fi movies that have been completely hacked by people who apparently "can't get" the important bits of what really aren't all that complex bits of fiction. Narnia will probably sidestep any of the growth/morality issues of CS Lewis in favor of jokes from the Badger voice-over of Eddie Murphy. Once they get past that, since they're already in love with PK Dick, I'd like them to do The Man In The High Castle.
That's exactly what happened when they raised the speed limit from 55mph though, stopped the ban on alchohol, started examining segregation, and probably a whole bunch more that my soda blurred brain can't think of right now. If a minority chooses to do a thing then it's a cancer, if the whole organism begins to act a certain way and the minority are the people who don't...Is it selfish for a society to not act hypocritically? If all of society begins to act a certain way and the left hand chooses not to, should society sit idly as the left hand stabs the right because it's not acting the same as before? Now the question comes, is filesharing the issue and if it is such a prominent component of something that hasn't been identified properly as the issue, then what is that issue? A huge segment of society obviously is chosing to act this way, is it selfishness or consensus?
Maybe editors are just hoping that with enough Slashdot frustration someone will reinvent then internet and solve all of our bandwidth issues forever. So they're not kicking your server in the nuts because they're stupid, they're kicking your server in the nuts because they care .
1. You do not talk about Open Source Fight Club.
I wonder what would happen if you designed your "leaky radio" signal on purpose to appear from multiple car radios. Maybe a career of driving in rush hour traffic for some unlucky bastard? Guys driving around town with special getups designed to break the threshold levels of the billboards and turn the adverts to their employer's ads? Ick. It sounds about as fun as artifically inseminating sheep for a living.
A better way: Stop relying on Middle Eastern oil, stop funding their wars of jihad at the gas pumps, and basically marginalize them again. There are plenty of evil bastards in Africa too, but we generally are allowed to not give a shit because there's nothing in Africa we want and Africans can't afford flush toilets much less intermediate range missiles.
So the region is a big mess and we're not getting blown up in the streets while we shop for sodas....this is our problem why? Maybe if the whole region is so messed up that they're in a major land war amongst themselves they'll stop being so pissed off at us. Sounds win-win to me, unless you're an agent of Haliburton.
Sure, you're still going to have specialized devices and equipment. I'd love to get some specialized speakers and a better soundcard for my PC, an easily portable from my PC system for my car and for taking on walks - but those are still basically wishlists for attaching things to my PC.
I want EVERYTHING to work through my PC. I want to be able to naturally and presumptiously be able to do things like query my car computer for gas mileage over a wireless device, send over my music from my computer over the same connection and use my vehicle and home PC station to port to my cellphone/mp3player/camera.
The uberdevice these guys are seeking really isn't so much a matter of convergence as it is seeking a common state of connection, because who really cares if your devices aren't in the same box when they're all talking to each other and singing the same tune. My stereo and my television are different devices too, but they're controlled by the same remote so they blend together. If ALL my devices blend together that way, and are expected by the public to blend together that way I think it's a good thing.
George said it better, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't all try ;)
Obviously it has to be, if you're on the short list of companies owned by Cabinet members, Congress, and the President and Vice President. If there's nothing we want there, including mythical WMDs, then what the fuck are we there for? Just as an exercise to see how many 18 year old GIs we can lose each week while keeping the President popular in the polls?
Well since we're public official's employers I think it's not so bad, when the government wants to spy on the public it's tantamount to insisting on installing a camera in the bosses lavatory because you're afraid he might not be screwing the secretary.
Right. We might as well invite people to enter prospective Commies and Witches into the datatbase as well, right there along with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, heavy metal bands, and a comprehensive set of flags that might show someone as "trashy looking" or "wrong color". The public can't be trusted to enter flags into a database like this much more than the government, since we're not dictated as much in our behavior by law we're almost always more prone to fits of hysteria. Think about it, would you like the database open to the public and someone start flagging "jewish noses"? After all, the estranged husband hadn't committed a crime yet either until he yanked her from school. We already live in a culture that focusses on appearance, what about muslim females or people wearing scarves? Suddenly they become people with something to hide? No, it's a bad idea all around unless you've got a very specific security criteria - if you want to allow access to a building to only your employees then it's nothing worse than a key, not a faulty privacy invasive net.
We spend all this time organizing our entire culture to protect children and what does it gain us? Adults who feel that it's okay to trample sense and rights in order to feel protected? The whole sex offender thing is bullshit anyways, I'd just as soon have "mugs people a lot" registry or "beats up people while drunk" registry. At least that would be more concrete than "sex offender" - which covers an awful lot of ground, and would be something more practical since you could use "beats people while drunk" registries to avoid the people in bar. What are you supposed to do with sex offender registries anyways, besides take the law in your own hands and burn the person's house down so that they move into someone else's neighborhood?
"Why is that every argument against what I've said chooses to take a childish hyperbolic extreme interpretation?" Perhaps it's your own childish notion that things like capability determines usage. A bus would make a better bomb than a tank, does that make the bus more dangerous? How can you stretch your definition of weapon enough to include an unarmed aircraft? Even intent isn't enough to move a man from merely murderous to being a murderer, nor is a criminal thought enough to make one a criminal. If Simpson had instructed more on than the aircraft then I might see your point, or if he'd advocating building the missiles for some nefarious purpose. Instead he outlined several legitimate usages and statements, one of which was the _pursuit of revenue to pay off his taxes_.
A cruise missile is just a remotely guided vehicle of a certain configuration. You could load Sarin gas into a RC plane and get a weapon. As far as I know this device was built with a payload specification but not a payload. By your criteria of concern we'd have to now consider all passenger aircraft for their weapons use only. If you'd read his site he's stated that in addition to pointing out his concerns for use of the device as a cruise missile, he'd also considered the project for promoting his engine designs and as possible reconfigurations for use in search and rescue missions. Sending out low cost recoverable aircraft with built-in guidance and payloads would probably be cheaper than sending out manned aircraft and with the jet engine design cover more territory than most current commercial RC aircraft. The things weigh ~70kg too, that's light enough to consider as a low cost/lightweight equipment for FA controllers I think and artillery observers that might for whatever reason need jet speed more than slow stealth. Then there's low cost entertainment uses I suppose, cheap enough to make for a throwaway camera shot or vicarious thrill nosecone racing. The thing isn't a cruise missile in the sense that people want to portray it as, anymore than a bus is a tank just because they're both large vehicles with horrible gas mileage and diesel engines. His main sin here seems to be in labelling his device in a way that was meant to provocate, which isn't a crime in the US and I don't believe is a crime in NZ.
It possibly means that the Windows brand is out in Finland, since Windex was around for a lot longer than Bill Gates has had pubes IIRC.
I think that would suit the RIAA, ASCAP, and Microsoft just fine.
If they're someone you want to protect your family against by the simple definition of their crime though, why are we bothering to release these people back into society? Manson gets parole hearings too, what makes the serial rapist more likely to get out enough that we have to create a new subset of vigilantism as punishment for them?
Let's just say that other criminals are out of prison and able to live normal lives without the right to vote, job restrictions, money, and scarlet letters on their chest daring the neighborhood lynch mobs to come throw molotov cocktails through their windows at night. Going to prison comes with enough bad effects that encouraging the community to freak out and commit crimes against the criminals once they've gotten out is just a bit much. Sex offenses are offensive, but not in such a blanket manner as the registries suggest and seem to serve no real purpose except to stroke the community into a froth anyways.
On the other hand I doubt that your "all rapists are serial rapists' statement is based on any sort of real study. The simple fact is that people are varied enough and justice blind enough that absolutes just don't figure into the statistics. You can't even make the blanket statement that "all convicted criminals commit crimes" thanks to some humdingers of prosecutorial injustice over the years. I guess it's a good thing you posted AC.
If recividism is absolute then sentence them absolutely, don't release them to the public with the implicit expectation of punishment and encouragement of illegal vigilantism.