Well of course a company with a financial interest in this field is arguing for doing this! What do you expect them to say, that this won't work?
The problem is the slippery slope. How would RFID have helped identify those poor victims in the London underground? Only if they had RFID embedded in them in the first place. So in essence that is what they are arguing for. It usually begins, "Just think of the chiiiiildren!" with visions of kidnapping scares. Nowadays it's the "but what about terrorism???" scare.
Yes, embedding RFID in every person on earth would aid law enforcement quite a bit. It would help you keep track of your kids, and you could Lojack them if they were ever kidnapped. On the other hand, just think how nice it would be for the government to track everyone they view as a dissident, or an environmentalist, or a Democrat (oh wait, it hasn't reached that point...yet). Just think how marketers would love to be able to track your movement so as to show you an ad as you approached their kiosk or store or billboard. Just think how useful this will be to stalkers!
You can make an entirely safe populace by placing everyone in solitary confinement in a vast prison system. But is that really what you want? Similarly here, there are indeed advantages to RFIDing the populace. But can we please think about all of the implications, and not just listen to industry arguments?
"The more she does stupid things like this, the easier it will be to defeat her when she runs for President. It's funny how the most leftist of politicians do exactly the sorts of things that they accuse the right of."
Actually, what she is doing now is acting like the right, not the left. It is the right that tries to control your lives through the morality police. The left merely lectures you to death or tries to shut you up.
Show GTA to a hard-core right: "Oh my God, we have to ban this awful stuff!"
Show GTA to a hard-cord left: "Ugh, that's disgusting. Wouldn't you rather go out and play?"
I knew what I wrote would be controversial. I even had one coward mod me as "flamebait" when it is obvious that this isn't what I was doing. No one likes to hear their country is falling behind, and they will engage in all sorts of mental manipulation into fooling themselves to think otherwise. But I never expected I would have so many responses that neatly illustrated the sort of anti-intellectual attitude that I said is common in America now.
Look at your response. You call me a "moron" for disagreeing with you, or expressing a point-of-view that you think is wrong. Brilliant example of exactly what I'm talking about, and what's going wrong with this country.
My original post wasn't just about the education system, though it was of course about that in part. Societal attitudes play a huge part. Yes, religion is put above science for many people. If science says something that their religion contradicts, their religious views trump science. They reject what science says and tell themselves they know better because God tells them so. That's what "above science" means.
Your rant about government waste and corruption is one I agree with. Where I disagree with you is your take on the Chinese economy. Yes, the Chinese economy is strong, growing recently at about 10% a year. Think the U.S. would like some of that? The fact that some workers are paid peanuts doesn't negate the high-tech work that is exploding throughout the country, particularly along the coast. And no, the police would not shoot me for pointing out that Chinese manufacturer workers get paid less.
But the fact that I disagree with you on some matters (while agreeing with you on others) does not make me think you are a moron.
Public education could be a way to produce excellent results if the public cared enough to effect societal changes. But as long as it's cool to be ignorant, no education will help.
Your point about China is well taken, but at least it's home for those students. When America stood for something different, it could draw them in. Now that America is increasingly like China, might as well stay at home where at least they appreciate intellectual endeavors.
Yeah, several people seemed to think I was talking about education funding, and I wasn't. My fault for using an unclear metaphor in my subject heading. What I meant is the effort society puts into education, paying for it in many ways.
I agree that you don't want to throw good money after bad. That's not the big issue. It's the whole American view of science (which is atrocious compared to other first-world countries).
I'm sorry you view me as a bigot. I made my comments based on personal experience living all over the US. On the coasts, I found intellectuals respected. In the south and in the west, I found intellectuals made fun of. There are of course exceptions everywhere, but I was talking about the overall tenor of each place.
Clearly your mileage varied, and I'm happy for you. I wish I had had your experiences.
As for religion and science, I had specifically in mind evolution and the religious right, not Mormonism. I never found Mormon teachings to be antithetical to science in general.
This is no surprise, but the extension of long-term trends of various sociological effects. When you have a country (USA) that looks down on intelligence (and yes, the culture for the most part does unless you live on the coasts or in academia), and you have huge sections of the country that put religion above science, or at least give it equal time, you have the basis for lower education standards. The geeks fight back, but they are always the minority.
Now couple that with right-wing attacks on public schooling in general, bleeding the public schools systems dry in order to push private schooling, and things get worse.
Now add in an economy where many of the jobs that really use your brain get offshored, and what's left are service jobs that require not as much education, and you have an increasing pressure not to care about higher education. Just get one of those service jobs and root for your team and have a beer after work and all is well in your world. Right?
Meanwhile India gets the tech jobs, and China is our major creditor, and suddenly all those smart Chinese students think why should they bother coming to xenophobic and dopey America when they can get the good science education and jobs back home. Where the economy is strong, education is encouraged, science is not neutered by religion, and things are moving forward.
There's your answer as to why Apple is not a "worse monopoly." They aren't even a monopoly! They are a hardware vendor with software for their hardware. You are welcome to put a Linux variant on their hardware instead. You are welcome to buy from many other hardware vendors instead.
I'm sick of this type of argument, usually seen in political circles. Target A gets caught doing some harm, so partisan followers change the subject with "Yeah? Well Target B is just as bad, so let's talk about them instead." How about we just keep talking about Target A, the subject at hand.
"Google's ability to beat MSN in unveiling maps, new search and e-mail functions has helped boost its market share. Google now has 55 percent of the market for search queries, up from 47 percent a year ago, according to Internet researcher ComScore Networks Inc. "
So I would say Google is becoming ever more dominant.
"Why is there a book google hacking, if they only comprise 36% of the market, and not a book search engine hacking.
Or did somebody lie on their market penetration percentage test?"
What are you, under contract from the MSN Search team? The books is Goggle Hacking because in the world of online search there are only two choices that the vast majority of web surfers care about:
As an ex-programmer, now technical writer too, I know exactly what you are talking about. Can anyone read a book on programming and become a programmer? Pretty much. How good a programmer will most of those people be? Average, or not very good at all. You have to have a certain mindset, a way of thinking that allows for clean code. If you don't have that, you can learn the language and some algorithms, but your code will never be a joy to work with.
Same thing is true of writing. More so. It's amazing how often companies think anyone can write. Why, it's only the language you speak so how hard could it be? Why I could whip out a manual in no time...if I could just get past this project...and then I need to clean my desk...ah, lunch time calls...etc. The manual never gets done. Or if it does get started, they quickly learn how intimidating a blank screen is when you are the one expected to come up with the next sentence.
Don't get me started on what managers write. Their emails are astounding. Astoundingly bad. But that's not atypical in the least. Most people know how to communicate, but not in writing. So enter the technical writer who can do all of the writing that needs to get done, on time, to spec, with good quality. As you said, I'm not in the least worried that some programmer is going to take my job. I can't even get them to write an email telling me what they want me to write. They are so afraid of writing, they would rather tell me on the phone what they want and let me take the notes!
Nope, I don't know any of the characters involved in any of these cases, or the parent poster. I've just read about it in the book I linked, and I was around in those days to read about the stories as they happened.
Indeed, in the courtroom, Bell South was embarrassed when they were forced to admit how they came up with that inflated number. If you would like to read more about this case, Phrack editor Knight Lightning, Phrack and 2600 itself, I strongly recommend The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling, which you can freely download from the link in whatever format you want.
It also talks about the famous Steve Jackson Games court case, and lots of good history about the BBS days. It also talks about the first hackers, and believe me it goes far, far back, long before computers existed... Required reqading.
One of his sisters, they will tell you. And this Neanderthal? Some kind of monkey, they will say. If proven otherwise, they will just say, "The science is not fully in yet."
In the late 90s, I was one of those investing in Amazon stock. I used to read the Yahoo investment message board for Amazon, and I remember all those posters who were absolutely sure Amazon was going down. They used to post detailed diatribes about profit and loss estimates, and how Amazon was fooling everyone with their accounting, and that their end was going to be soon and hard.
Yeah, yeah, I know, you get those types on every Yahoo stock board, and some of them are just shorts trying to scare people away. But the meme on the Amazon board was that they were losing money on every sale...but making it up in volume! Hardy har har. These people were absolutely convinced that Amazon would never succeed at their profit margins. And indded, Amazon was losing money every quarter.
But Jeff Bezos kept saying that the important thing was growth and market share and mind share, and that to go to profitability too soon would be a mistake. The Yahooligans roundly laughed at Bezos for saying stuff like that. But in the end, Bezos pulled it off. Amazon survived the dot-bomb, and is a solid company. But I'll bet anything if I went to the Yahoo board today (I'm no longer an investor in them, so I don't check), they will still be saying that Amazon's end is nigh.
Shows you the value of ignorning conventional wisdom if you have a new idea and a strong vision of how to implemenent the idea in the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they would. But at the moment, the Republicans control every branch of power, so I used them as the current example.
The problem is the slippery slope. How would RFID have helped identify those poor victims in the London underground? Only if they had RFID embedded in them in the first place. So in essence that is what they are arguing for. It usually begins, "Just think of the chiiiiildren!" with visions of kidnapping scares. Nowadays it's the "but what about terrorism???" scare.
Yes, embedding RFID in every person on earth would aid law enforcement quite a bit. It would help you keep track of your kids, and you could Lojack them if they were ever kidnapped. On the other hand, just think how nice it would be for the government to track everyone they view as a dissident, or an environmentalist, or a Democrat (oh wait, it hasn't reached that point...yet). Just think how marketers would love to be able to track your movement so as to show you an ad as you approached their kiosk or store or billboard. Just think how useful this will be to stalkers!
You can make an entirely safe populace by placing everyone in solitary confinement in a vast prison system. But is that really what you want? Similarly here, there are indeed advantages to RFIDing the populace. But can we please think about all of the implications, and not just listen to industry arguments?
Actually, what she is doing now is acting like the right, not the left. It is the right that tries to control your lives through the morality police. The left merely lectures you to death or tries to shut you up.
Show GTA to a hard-core right: "Oh my God, we have to ban this awful stuff!"
Show GTA to a hard-cord left: "Ugh, that's disgusting. Wouldn't you rather go out and play?"
Look at your response. You call me a "moron" for disagreeing with you, or expressing a point-of-view that you think is wrong. Brilliant example of exactly what I'm talking about, and what's going wrong with this country.
My original post wasn't just about the education system, though it was of course about that in part. Societal attitudes play a huge part. Yes, religion is put above science for many people. If science says something that their religion contradicts, their religious views trump science. They reject what science says and tell themselves they know better because God tells them so. That's what "above science" means.
Your rant about government waste and corruption is one I agree with. Where I disagree with you is your take on the Chinese economy. Yes, the Chinese economy is strong, growing recently at about 10% a year. Think the U.S. would like some of that? The fact that some workers are paid peanuts doesn't negate the high-tech work that is exploding throughout the country, particularly along the coast. And no, the police would not shoot me for pointing out that Chinese manufacturer workers get paid less.
But the fact that I disagree with you on some matters (while agreeing with you on others) does not make me think you are a moron.
Your point about China is well taken, but at least it's home for those students. When America stood for something different, it could draw them in. Now that America is increasingly like China, might as well stay at home where at least they appreciate intellectual endeavors.
I agree that you don't want to throw good money after bad. That's not the big issue. It's the whole American view of science (which is atrocious compared to other first-world countries).
Clearly your mileage varied, and I'm happy for you. I wish I had had your experiences.
As for religion and science, I had specifically in mind evolution and the religious right, not Mormonism. I never found Mormon teachings to be antithetical to science in general.
Now couple that with right-wing attacks on public schooling in general, bleeding the public schools systems dry in order to push private schooling, and things get worse.
Now add in an economy where many of the jobs that really use your brain get offshored, and what's left are service jobs that require not as much education, and you have an increasing pressure not to care about higher education. Just get one of those service jobs and root for your team and have a beer after work and all is well in your world. Right?
Meanwhile India gets the tech jobs, and China is our major creditor, and suddenly all those smart Chinese students think why should they bother coming to xenophobic and dopey America when they can get the good science education and jobs back home. Where the economy is strong, education is encouraged, science is not neutered by religion, and things are moving forward.
Microsoft is a software OS vendor, one of few.
Apple is not a convicted monopolist.
Microsoft is.
There's your answer as to why Apple is not a "worse monopoly." They aren't even a monopoly! They are a hardware vendor with software for their hardware. You are welcome to put a Linux variant on their hardware instead. You are welcome to buy from many other hardware vendors instead.
I'm sick of this type of argument, usually seen in political circles. Target A gets caught doing some harm, so partisan followers change the subject with "Yeah? Well Target B is just as bad, so let's talk about them instead." How about we just keep talking about Target A, the subject at hand.
"Google's ability to beat MSN in unveiling maps, new search and e-mail functions has helped boost its market share. Google now has 55 percent of the market for search queries, up from 47 percent a year ago, according to Internet researcher ComScore Networks Inc. "
So I would say Google is becoming ever more dominant.
LOL, good response. But the reality of /. nowadays is there are more Microsoft shills than detractors.
Or did somebody lie on their market penetration percentage test?"
What are you, under contract from the MSN Search team? The books is Goggle Hacking because in the world of online search there are only two choices that the vast majority of web surfers care about:
1. Google
2. Who cares?
Of course the new Digital Millenium Toilet Act will let the RIAA hang around your house for a day or so until the evidence reappears.
Same thing is true of writing. More so. It's amazing how often companies think anyone can write. Why, it's only the language you speak so how hard could it be? Why I could whip out a manual in no time...if I could just get past this project...and then I need to clean my desk...ah, lunch time calls...etc. The manual never gets done. Or if it does get started, they quickly learn how intimidating a blank screen is when you are the one expected to come up with the next sentence.
Don't get me started on what managers write. Their emails are astounding. Astoundingly bad. But that's not atypical in the least. Most people know how to communicate, but not in writing. So enter the technical writer who can do all of the writing that needs to get done, on time, to spec, with good quality. As you said, I'm not in the least worried that some programmer is going to take my job. I can't even get them to write an email telling me what they want me to write. They are so afraid of writing, they would rather tell me on the phone what they want and let me take the notes!
"It's...full of stars!"
[ ] This is a good idea
[ ] This is a kludge
[ ] I didn't read TFA, but I like clicking boxes anyway
Nope, I don't know any of the characters involved in any of these cases, or the parent poster. I've just read about it in the book I linked, and I was around in those days to read about the stories as they happened.
It also talks about the famous Steve Jackson Games court case, and lots of good history about the BBS days. It also talks about the first hackers, and believe me it goes far, far back, long before computers existed... Required reqading.
Good point. Either way, it was going to be the same outcome for him...
One of his sisters, they will tell you. And this Neanderthal? Some kind of monkey, they will say. If proven otherwise, they will just say, "The science is not fully in yet."
"Just defragmenting my disk"
No, for that you need EBay.
Yeah, yeah, I know, you get those types on every Yahoo stock board, and some of them are just shorts trying to scare people away. But the meme on the Amazon board was that they were losing money on every sale...but making it up in volume! Hardy har har. These people were absolutely convinced that Amazon would never succeed at their profit margins. And indded, Amazon was losing money every quarter.
But Jeff Bezos kept saying that the important thing was growth and market share and mind share, and that to go to profitability too soon would be a mistake. The Yahooligans roundly laughed at Bezos for saying stuff like that. But in the end, Bezos pulled it off. Amazon survived the dot-bomb, and is a solid company. But I'll bet anything if I went to the Yahoo board today (I'm no longer an investor in them, so I don't check), they will still be saying that Amazon's end is nigh.
Shows you the value of ignorning conventional wisdom if you have a new idea and a strong vision of how to implemenent the idea in the long term.
Oh, and she didn't see this coming?
Well, since the films are in Windows Media format, I think the place where you can do that should be obvious.