If no one begins to to this with an intent now then I doubt anyone will be ready to do it in earnest when it becomes imperative. Making some inroads into the future of space travel is important enough that the normal Slashdot diet of anti-RIAA/Microsoft stuff really seems unimportant in some respects. We're on a tiny island in space, eventually we'll have to leave or else reduce our resources until we're stuck.
We've built condoms, it hasn't helped and condoms produce polution too. Better to get as many people off the planet possible and outfit them with space condoms.
Automobiles, aircraft, trains, and even horses were excessively expensive at some point. The only way to drive down a lot of costs is to let demand create competition. If everyone starts launching themselves into space, people will find a way to make the Yugos and Rolls Royces of space travel. Right now there really isn't that sort of competition except as relics of the US/USSR space race.
And who cares about the pollution if we're leaving? The long term benefits of getting even 1% of the population of the planet heading someplace else besides HERE are bound to offset any short term pollution effects. That's what, 50 million less people a year throwing their trash around? Long term storage options of waste once space travel becomes commonplace could involve anything from shooting it into the sun or just burying it on the moon (sure it's pretty, but I bet Manhattan was too at one time). Placing eligible production in orbit or on the moon could reduce all the nasty pollution down here on the ground.
Face it, spacecraft might produce pollution but PEOPLE make a lot more when they're stuck here. Worse, they have this nasty habit of making more humans. If you want to make the planet green again, send the humans to another planet.
How many people do you know who would work on a factory line in their free time? Now, compare that to amount of people who're putting out their writing for free that they've worked on in their free time with no expectation of pay. The only justifiable reason to support an increase in pay from a factory worker compared with a rock star is that it's easier to train good factory workers than good rock stars. CEOs of record labels and their lawyers are a different animal though, since one is uncommon and elitist enough that no one could probably amass good data on how to be a good CEO of a record label and good lawyers are as much a factor of the wealth and prestige of their client as anything else.
How about: It doesn't matter how much people do it, because ideas have suddenly lost a large portion of their intrinsic value over the past few years thanks to access to technology, saturation, and societal acceptance. It hurts the economy, make money doing something else. It's illegal, change the law. You're stealing from artists, not as much as the artist's representatives have been stealing from me by inflating the value of art.
Look, I'm an artist. Nice as it is to get a check for what I do, I wouldn't stop doing it because I didn't. Getting a job flipping burgers wouldn't be the end of the world, but not being able to create would. If the money is the most important thing, I have simply no sympathy whatsoever.
Except the studios will start adding 20 bucks to ALL the DVDs to screw you for the ability. Everyone's out to make a buck, I don't agree with handing the keys to the MOST evil and greedy just because they own the property.
Oh puh-leeze....If we're ever going to get off this piece of crap we call Earth in a serious way we're going to need taxpayer dollars mailing bums to Mars eventually. The Russians are EXACTLY right, and probably the Chinese too once they get their program up and running. NASA as an institution has got all the know-how, but the American public just doesn't have the guts or ambition to send people into space really. All the other countries have better reasons to engage in their space programs, capital to keep it running and finding a place on Mars for all those horny Chinamen comes to mind.
What do we want with OUR space program? We want to pat ourselves on the back for having the prettiest rockets and things we did 30 years ago. We want our shuttles to be safer than the downtown bus, driven by Tang commercials. We're happy to look at pretty pictures from Hubble while we bomb third world countries, instead of spending the money to actually DO something in space besides add to our comfort level down here on the dirt. NASA's like the kid who never gets up the courage to ask the girl to dance, but gets mad when someone else asks first.
There is nothing that has been invented that hasn't been abused. We need to keep the abuse out, but the technology can be good.
The abuse usually starts when some lawyer gets a good idea, a judge allows it as precedent, and then a bunch of dumbass politicians try to improve it in an amendment to a farm-aid bill though. The guy deserved to go to jail, the technology isn't crap, but a couple more cases like this and Ashcroft will try to sell it as a sweet add-on to TIA or something.
If I support the sort of country where privacy rights are violated willy-nilly by every zealous prosecuter, well-meaning manufacturer of goods, or whatever then I don't need to be raising children in the first place. Trading in our rights for the short term appeal of safety is the worst sort of bargain.
Exactly. Since there are other less privacy intrusive means then shouldn't those be the ones that law enforcement uses? It would be quicker to create a massive database of all people in the country with DNA samples on hand, fingerprints, etc. but we don't do it because it would start intruding on the 5th amendment and it has a potential for abuse. Quicker results simply aren't a good enough reason, even if the guy plowed through a crowded mall at light speed.
"In this case"
I don't even worry about this case, it is such a stupidly extreme case (ridiculous speeds, death) that it basically only matters as it sets precedent and procedure. I think any lack of over-reaction on privacy matters sets the bad example of saying that intrusions into privacy are OK. Everyone agrees that putting people behind bars in this case is a good thing, I think it is worth bitching about this BEFORE people are getting their airbag computers queried at traffic stops.
If I install a device on my vehicle, ask to have it put on my vehicle, and it is clearly spelled out that this may be used as a tool for law enforcement then it is one thing. If there is a little chip that might one day be used by traffic cops to query my car to see how fast I was going and I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS IN THERE, then it is a problem. I'd have the same "kneejerk" reaction if someone installed bomb sniffing hardware in my new suitcases, even while it is well meaning it's a violation of my expectations of privacy. Raise your hands, how many people are sure they don't have this little device in their cars? Now that it has been used in this one case successfully, who doesn't think that it has the potential to be used in many more? Speeding? Stop signs?
The problem is that the devices are there in the first place, that they can be used that way at all, and within the vehicle. Bumpers are visible from the road, if I shoot someone in my front yard I have no expectation of privacy it is a completely different animal from someone installing cameras to be used to see who shot who inside my house - no matter how well meaning they may be. That they inspect my car is a given, that my car is collecting data on me is not. Discerning data is not the same as having a machine recording the goings on inside your car and then reporting on you. I don't agree with things like this even if they could be used to exonerate myself, unless I installed them myself.
It's akin to having a backdoor track to violating the 5th amendment. If I install a wiretap on my phone and make it public then I have only myself to blame but if the police wiretap me without a warrant then it's w-r-o-n-g. No recognizable difference can be made from this than backdoors into encryption methods for law enforcement, the government has the greater potential for misuse than the private individual (even if they're driving like madmen in the suburb) and therefore it shouldn't be available for the government to misuse.
I'm glad he's off the streets as well, but I'm appalled at the technology being used this way. As for the manufacturers and accident investigators with some sort of interest in this sort of data...well screw 'em. There's nothing in the constitution that says it's my job to make another guy's job easier, even if I'm dead. I hate to use the term slippery slope because we all throw it around all the time here on Slashdot, but I don't see how this is any different from the TIA initiatives. Sure they can be used for good uses, but that doesn't mean that acquiring data on citizens is a good thing. If I want to find out if my kids are running around the house I try to catch them in the act, I don't place electronics in their pants to tattle on them - even if it might prevent accidents or make it easier to muddle through sequences of events when something gets broken.
Aren't all the drunken tourists in Tallinn Fins though? Where Estonia's services originate really doesn't mean much though does it? For what its worth Estonia seems to be fairly in line with technology out of proportion to the size of the place, better off than the boonies in Mississippi or something.
Shouldn't we focus more resources on developing cures for heart disease or cancer? Both afflictions take advantage of millions more than terrorists ever dreamed of, and fixing those problems would actually improve the quality of life in the world instead of institutionalizing fear so that we can destroy the principles of democracy that we built the country on in the first place.
But would you believe that designing a national name recognition software based upon the theory that only rednecks are named Bubba or have hyphens in their names (Lula-Mae) would actually prevent rednecks from getting on the roads?
Screening for terrorists by name is a nice idea, and maybe eventually it will pop up one or two dumb ass terrorists travelling around the country by plane in a nation that's so paranoid that they're willing to sign away their most basic freedoms they've enjoyed for 200+ years. I think it's pretty stupid to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Before 9/11 we had Timothy McVeigh and no one was hollering that rednecks shouldn't be allowed to drive trucks. So a terrorist gets on a plane, hopefully he'll be going home. If just make sure that the planes have security in place like police, cockpit doors, and some common sense I'm sure we'll all breath easier than if we've got Big Brother and his faulty software deciding who is a threat to society.
Heck, there's a guy on death row with the exact same name as me out there somewhere...I'd hate for this great idea of the government to lead to my law abiding ass getting thrown in jail even "just in case"
When the alternative is spending the millions of dollars per soldier in training, feeding, housing, dependents, medical, and pension benefits it's no wonder that the modern military is running to designs that can handle single operators managing multiple platforms safely from a distance. Not only is it safer for the guys who are expected to fight for us, but it's cheaper than spending a ton of cash on a pilot who doesn't have any long term plans to stay in the service. Human error causes more troubles than computer error usually still, that might be a case of not giving the machines time enough to catch up in the idiot process but I think it is more likely that the human machines we're dependent on aren't the most reliable things in the first place. After all, if they worked perfectly then we might not have battlefields at all.
Since when did the creators of a work have ultimate say so on the legality of a work once a corporate lawyer got involved? I'd say that Spielberg might give them all ice cream, but if the lawyers sniff trademark infringement they'll act faster that you can say crack o'the whip to send someone to seize all the copies. It isn't right and it isn't the way it should be, but it stands a pretty good chance of being the way things lay down.
Just because you have an inflated sense of worth about your work doesn't mean that everyone else needs to share it either. The public domain exists to protect the public from intellectual property aristocracies JUST AS YOU'RE DESCRIBING. How many people actually set down an work on something that gets passed down as an inheritance to their grandchildren in the way that you're describing? If you want to pass something of value on, then by all means, write something of genius and put the monies you make on it into a savings fund. If you don't make that money in your lifetime then there shouldn't be some sort of lock to prevent people who come across your work in a 100 years from publishing it just because they can't find your heirs. The public domain is so important that I can't even begin to stress how much I fail to sympathize with you. As an artist and writer myself, I can't imagine how anyone could hope to indulge in the profession at all without having free access to the works of people who came before them. Perhaps your work is truly and profoundly groundbreaking, but that makes it even more crucial and important that eventually your work pass into the control of the public.
Since when have we ever seen a system that isn't exploited in some way?
"As long.." is a great justification for things like handing over your privacy, the problem is that it is hardly ever long enough to justify it in the first place. Next you'll have terrorists and criminals hacking the system to identify couriers or evade the police, then the system will get beefed up and more aggressive...I just don't see how it is worth it. Ever.
Slashdot Mirror
If no one begins to to this with an intent now then I doubt anyone will be ready to do it in earnest when it becomes imperative. Making some inroads into the future of space travel is important enough that the normal Slashdot diet of anti-RIAA/Microsoft stuff really seems unimportant in some respects. We're on a tiny island in space, eventually we'll have to leave or else reduce our resources until we're stuck.
We've built condoms, it hasn't helped and condoms produce polution too. Better to get as many people off the planet possible and outfit them with space condoms.
Automobiles, aircraft, trains, and even horses were excessively expensive at some point. The only way to drive down a lot of costs is to let demand create competition. If everyone starts launching themselves into space, people will find a way to make the Yugos and Rolls Royces of space travel. Right now there really isn't that sort of competition except as relics of the US/USSR space race.
And who cares about the pollution if we're leaving? The long term benefits of getting even 1% of the population of the planet heading someplace else besides HERE are bound to offset any short term pollution effects. That's what, 50 million less people a year throwing their trash around? Long term storage options of waste once space travel becomes commonplace could involve anything from shooting it into the sun or just burying it on the moon (sure it's pretty, but I bet Manhattan was too at one time). Placing eligible production in orbit or on the moon could reduce all the nasty pollution down here on the ground.
Face it, spacecraft might produce pollution but PEOPLE make a lot more when they're stuck here. Worse, they have this nasty habit of making more humans. If you want to make the planet green again, send the humans to another planet.
How many people do you know who would work on a factory line in their free time? Now, compare that to amount of people who're putting out their writing for free that they've worked on in their free time with no expectation of pay. The only justifiable reason to support an increase in pay from a factory worker compared with a rock star is that it's easier to train good factory workers than good rock stars. CEOs of record labels and their lawyers are a different animal though, since one is uncommon and elitist enough that no one could probably amass good data on how to be a good CEO of a record label and good lawyers are as much a factor of the wealth and prestige of their client as anything else.
How about: It doesn't matter how much people do it, because ideas have suddenly lost a large portion of their intrinsic value over the past few years thanks to access to technology, saturation, and societal acceptance. It hurts the economy, make money doing something else. It's illegal, change the law. You're stealing from artists, not as much as the artist's representatives have been stealing from me by inflating the value of art.
Look, I'm an artist. Nice as it is to get a check for what I do, I wouldn't stop doing it because I didn't. Getting a job flipping burgers wouldn't be the end of the world, but not being able to create would. If the money is the most important thing, I have simply no sympathy whatsoever.
Except the studios will start adding 20 bucks to ALL the DVDs to screw you for the ability. Everyone's out to make a buck, I don't agree with handing the keys to the MOST evil and greedy just because they own the property.
Oh puh-leeze....If we're ever going to get off this piece of crap we call Earth in a serious way we're going to need taxpayer dollars mailing bums to Mars eventually. The Russians are EXACTLY right, and probably the Chinese too once they get their program up and running. NASA as an institution has got all the know-how, but the American public just doesn't have the guts or ambition to send people into space really. All the other countries have better reasons to engage in their space programs, capital to keep it running and finding a place on Mars for all those horny Chinamen comes to mind.
What do we want with OUR space program? We want to pat ourselves on the back for having the prettiest rockets and things we did 30 years ago. We want our shuttles to be safer than the downtown bus, driven by Tang commercials. We're happy to look at pretty pictures from Hubble while we bomb third world countries, instead of spending the money to actually DO something in space besides add to our comfort level down here on the dirt. NASA's like the kid who never gets up the courage to ask the girl to dance, but gets mad when someone else asks first.
Principles aren't and shouldn't be something that we casually toss aside for safety or comfort.
The abuse usually starts when some lawyer gets a good idea, a judge allows it as precedent, and then a bunch of dumbass politicians try to improve it in an amendment to a farm-aid bill though. The guy deserved to go to jail, the technology isn't crap, but a couple more cases like this and Ashcroft will try to sell it as a sweet add-on to TIA or something.
That comment alone was enough to let me know you'd posted AC.
If I support the sort of country where privacy rights are violated willy-nilly by every zealous prosecuter, well-meaning manufacturer of goods, or whatever then I don't need to be raising children in the first place. Trading in our rights for the short term appeal of safety is the worst sort of bargain.
Exactly. Since there are other less privacy intrusive means then shouldn't those be the ones that law enforcement uses? It would be quicker to create a massive database of all people in the country with DNA samples on hand, fingerprints, etc. but we don't do it because it would start intruding on the 5th amendment and it has a potential for abuse. Quicker results simply aren't a good enough reason, even if the guy plowed through a crowded mall at light speed.
"In this case" I don't even worry about this case, it is such a stupidly extreme case (ridiculous speeds, death) that it basically only matters as it sets precedent and procedure. I think any lack of over-reaction on privacy matters sets the bad example of saying that intrusions into privacy are OK. Everyone agrees that putting people behind bars in this case is a good thing, I think it is worth bitching about this BEFORE people are getting their airbag computers queried at traffic stops.
If I install a device on my vehicle, ask to have it put on my vehicle, and it is clearly spelled out that this may be used as a tool for law enforcement then it is one thing. If there is a little chip that might one day be used by traffic cops to query my car to see how fast I was going and I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS IN THERE, then it is a problem. I'd have the same "kneejerk" reaction if someone installed bomb sniffing hardware in my new suitcases, even while it is well meaning it's a violation of my expectations of privacy. Raise your hands, how many people are sure they don't have this little device in their cars? Now that it has been used in this one case successfully, who doesn't think that it has the potential to be used in many more? Speeding? Stop signs?
The problem is that the devices are there in the first place, that they can be used that way at all, and within the vehicle. Bumpers are visible from the road, if I shoot someone in my front yard I have no expectation of privacy it is a completely different animal from someone installing cameras to be used to see who shot who inside my house - no matter how well meaning they may be. That they inspect my car is a given, that my car is collecting data on me is not. Discerning data is not the same as having a machine recording the goings on inside your car and then reporting on you. I don't agree with things like this even if they could be used to exonerate myself, unless I installed them myself.
It's akin to having a backdoor track to violating the 5th amendment. If I install a wiretap on my phone and make it public then I have only myself to blame but if the police wiretap me without a warrant then it's w-r-o-n-g. No recognizable difference can be made from this than backdoors into encryption methods for law enforcement, the government has the greater potential for misuse than the private individual (even if they're driving like madmen in the suburb) and therefore it shouldn't be available for the government to misuse.
I'm glad he's off the streets as well, but I'm appalled at the technology being used this way. As for the manufacturers and accident investigators with some sort of interest in this sort of data...well screw 'em. There's nothing in the constitution that says it's my job to make another guy's job easier, even if I'm dead. I hate to use the term slippery slope because we all throw it around all the time here on Slashdot, but I don't see how this is any different from the TIA initiatives. Sure they can be used for good uses, but that doesn't mean that acquiring data on citizens is a good thing. If I want to find out if my kids are running around the house I try to catch them in the act, I don't place electronics in their pants to tattle on them - even if it might prevent accidents or make it easier to muddle through sequences of events when something gets broken.
Aren't all the drunken tourists in Tallinn Fins though? Where Estonia's services originate really doesn't mean much though does it? For what its worth Estonia seems to be fairly in line with technology out of proportion to the size of the place, better off than the boonies in Mississippi or something.
Stalinists probably thought that the purges were necessary to security as well.
Shouldn't we focus more resources on developing cures for heart disease or cancer? Both afflictions take advantage of millions more than terrorists ever dreamed of, and fixing those problems would actually improve the quality of life in the world instead of institutionalizing fear so that we can destroy the principles of democracy that we built the country on in the first place.
But would you believe that designing a national name recognition software based upon the theory that only rednecks are named Bubba or have hyphens in their names (Lula-Mae) would actually prevent rednecks from getting on the roads?
Screening for terrorists by name is a nice idea, and maybe eventually it will pop up one or two dumb ass terrorists travelling around the country by plane in a nation that's so paranoid that they're willing to sign away their most basic freedoms they've enjoyed for 200+ years. I think it's pretty stupid to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Before 9/11 we had Timothy McVeigh and no one was hollering that rednecks shouldn't be allowed to drive trucks. So a terrorist gets on a plane, hopefully he'll be going home. If just make sure that the planes have security in place like police, cockpit doors, and some common sense I'm sure we'll all breath easier than if we've got Big Brother and his faulty software deciding who is a threat to society.
Heck, there's a guy on death row with the exact same name as me out there somewhere...I'd hate for this great idea of the government to lead to my law abiding ass getting thrown in jail even "just in case"
When the alternative is spending the millions of dollars per soldier in training, feeding, housing, dependents, medical, and pension benefits it's no wonder that the modern military is running to designs that can handle single operators managing multiple platforms safely from a distance. Not only is it safer for the guys who are expected to fight for us, but it's cheaper than spending a ton of cash on a pilot who doesn't have any long term plans to stay in the service. Human error causes more troubles than computer error usually still, that might be a case of not giving the machines time enough to catch up in the idiot process but I think it is more likely that the human machines we're dependent on aren't the most reliable things in the first place. After all, if they worked perfectly then we might not have battlefields at all.
Since when did the creators of a work have ultimate say so on the legality of a work once a corporate lawyer got involved? I'd say that Spielberg might give them all ice cream, but if the lawyers sniff trademark infringement they'll act faster that you can say crack o'the whip to send someone to seize all the copies. It isn't right and it isn't the way it should be, but it stands a pretty good chance of being the way things lay down.
Just because you have an inflated sense of worth about your work doesn't mean that everyone else needs to share it either. The public domain exists to protect the public from intellectual property aristocracies JUST AS YOU'RE DESCRIBING. How many people actually set down an work on something that gets passed down as an inheritance to their grandchildren in the way that you're describing? If you want to pass something of value on, then by all means, write something of genius and put the monies you make on it into a savings fund. If you don't make that money in your lifetime then there shouldn't be some sort of lock to prevent people who come across your work in a 100 years from publishing it just because they can't find your heirs. The public domain is so important that I can't even begin to stress how much I fail to sympathize with you. As an artist and writer myself, I can't imagine how anyone could hope to indulge in the profession at all without having free access to the works of people who came before them. Perhaps your work is truly and profoundly groundbreaking, but that makes it even more crucial and important that eventually your work pass into the control of the public.
Since when have we ever seen a system that isn't exploited in some way? "As long.." is a great justification for things like handing over your privacy, the problem is that it is hardly ever long enough to justify it in the first place. Next you'll have terrorists and criminals hacking the system to identify couriers or evade the police, then the system will get beefed up and more aggressive...I just don't see how it is worth it. Ever.