Depending on the situation, most likely turn them over. Particularly because if it really were a matter of national security, say a terrorist threat, they don't want to be the scapegoat. All of that said, however, whether or not AT&T or Comcast have a backbone or not is a different issue entirely than what the article infers.
federal executive policies and legal opinions are *not* federal law. show me which federal law allows telcos to voluntarily give information to third parties in contravention of state laws. you can't because it doesn't exist. the issue was whether the federal government could hide illegal actions behind state secrecy, something that again, is itself an illegal act (this time it's illegal under federal laws enacting federal secrecy).
Well, the Patriot Act does for one. So does the Federal Communications Act. By voluntary, however, it does not mean that one day, the telco can just go dump a bunch of documents off at the FBI. It does mean, however, that if requested, the telco can without the need for the FBI to get a court order. It happens all the time with local law enforcement.
You're missing the point. The "revolution" is in market penetration and ubiquitousness. It doesn't require that similar technology has never been seen before. Your microwave oven at $2,000 in 1% of households is cool technology but hardly a revolution. At $89 and in nearly all households, it clearly is.
If something to be revolutionary requires market penetration, the kinect isn't revolutionary because it holds a very small percentage of the market. We are talking about revolutionary technology, however and the Amanda Range did turn out to be revolutionary, it change society. The main use of the kinect, right now at this moment, is not robotics but gaming. It is not revolutionary (although it is impressive). If and when it makes a difference in society which is what the definition of revolutionary means, when used as an adjective, it will be revolutionary. But, most likely not because it was a cool input device for a game console.
As many have posted, it is being used in robotic research right now. It has the potential to revolutionize that field. It just hasn't had time to do that, yet.
That's a subtle distinction between my data and theirs. At one time, that information was considered to be a part of a fiduciary relationship between the customer and telco. But, if my memory serves me correctly, that was quietly changed in a telecommunications bill in the mid 1990s. I can remember (back in the old days) a statement to the effect that the telephone company would need access to my call data for the purpose of billing and administration. But those days are gone. Unless we can get Congress to repair their mistake. But that will be like taking candy away from a baby. A very large baby, with well funded lobbyists.
Yes, you remember correctly. However, those days are long gone and the erosion of privacy rights started long before 9/11. Law enforcement always claimed they needed access to that information for various levels of security. Post 9/11 it is even worse. If something is classified as a security threat, whether actual or not, the government now has broad powers to invade privacy without a warrant.
There is a mentality in the US, now, that individual rights aren't important if the cause is great enough. The problem with that mentality is that what constitutes great causes changes over time. First there was organized crime, then there was national security, then there was the war on drugs, then there was the threat of terrorism.
And it's not just the government. Employers will now use credit ratings to make hiring decisions. Background checks used to mean checking references, now it is criminal background checks. Got dui charge in college, too bad, you might not get a job 15 years later. Same thing if you had speeding tickets.
Americans believe they have a right to privacy, but that right has been chipped away so much, that it is really just a belief and not a reality. There was a time when the government was supposed to be the protector of rights, not the invader of them.
I agree the Velodyne was revolutionary, but will the kinect, as a device, be used for these purposes or will something researchers learned from using a kinect in research be the device? If it will come from the research, then if it is determined that a kinect is revolutionary, it will be revolutionary for robotic research, not robotics.
What part misrepresents - the fact that a court has to decide something. In Missouri, the public service commission is a legal authority and can issue rulings. You may have noticed that the 2006 court case you mention was moved to Federal court, since it is really about whether a federal law can trump a state law. The phone companies in question were violating a local/state law. If I recall correctly, the federal court upheld the federal position.
I was responding to the original poster's comments and was not intending a political discourse on politics or congress, so excuse me for being "wrong."
That said, we have a two party system because to get elected (other than president) you need to be able to win the majority of the vote in your state or district. It is highly unlikely that would occur on a regular basis if there were more than two parties.
The Tea Party is not a third party (at least not yet), although many republicans wish they were, since that is who they first ran against. If they were a third party, they would not have been running on the republican ticket. They did so because they are a faction of the republican party (just like the evangelical right was not a party unto itself).
Yes, the checks and balances I mention are a result of the three part government. However, if everyone in congress was of the same party as the executive branch, then for all practical purposes two of the three checks and balances would cease to exist. For the three part government checks and balances to work implies that there are multiple parties. It's just that prior to the 70's the alignment was on liberal or conservative, not democrat vs republician. Republicans who were liberal and Democrats who were liberal would get together on issues as would their conservative counterparts in both parties. Back then, it was the ideology that drove the partnerships not the party affiliation (although party affiliation was important, too).
In terms of your comment about doing things that would get them relected. Yes, if I were in congress I would take steps needed to get re-elected. However, if those steps would mean catering to special interest groups that are not inline with what I thought was important or served my conscience, constituents or nation, then no.
The sad fact in America, today, is that you cannot get elected or re-elected without catering to special interest groups. That is the real change I would like to see, where it's not big lobbyists that influence congress more than the constituents.
If I could change one thing in the election process it would be to eliminate corporate contributions to campaigns and issues. The constitution gives people the right to vote, not business. If all of the board of directors of some corporation want a candidate that would enact policies that would favor their corporation, then let the board of directors contribute of their own funds (and under the same limits as anybody else). If I am a sole proprietor and want my business to support a candidate, that ultimately is my personal income as all the business income flows through to me for tax purposes. Why should corporations be any different? Then there are PACs. If people want to form a PAC, fine, we are told that part of the money raised by PACs is for education of the electorate. Fine, let contributions given to the PAC be used for that purpose, but individuals still have to fund candidates, not the PAC itself. I was taught that we were supposed to have a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Last time I checked, corporations are not people. They shouldn't have a say in politics. Their employees, their boards, etc. are people, if they feel strongly about a candidate or an issue, then they should do the contributing.
In short, or maybe not too short, that is what I mean by changing the system.
Or cafe X will see an uptick in business as their tables turn quicker. Either way, it's the free market economy at its best.
(Side note: this only works because in a place like NYC, there is a lot of competition. If you lived in a small town with only one coffeeshop, then this would be a completely different deal. (I'm looking at you Time Warner Cable.))
But even in a small town, the store owner would be in their right to not allow kindles and other devices. A small town, probably has a smaller coffee shop, which probably has fewer seats that need to be turned over just as quickly as in NYC to be profitable. I've lived in a town of 30,000 that had a Panera's coffee shop. It was next to impossible to eat their during normal lunch hours because of their free wifi and all of the college kids sitting around on their laptops with a cup of coffee for hours on end. $2 for a cup of coffee for 3 or 4 hours of internet wasn't a bad deal for the kids, but it sure impacted business for the store.
Their solution? During the lunch hours 11:00 - 1:30, you could only use laptops in one relatively small section of the place. They even had free internet terminals at some of the tables if you wanted. It turns out that the same amount of people were using the internet, but instead of one per table or booth, they all shared the tables and booths in that area. In that way, the store could still serve it's paying customers.
The whole point of the above story is that it impacts even small towns.
What about disabled people with their large clumsy wheelchairs? Or non-white people? Or Women? What about Muslims? What they have one down the street?
I know the Nazis burned the books, so modern fascists burn Kindles?
Still feel like a free country?
That's a stupid argument. For one, disabled people in wheelchars, non-blacks, woment, Muslims, etc, have rights that are enforced under law. Nobody has the right to read a kindle or use a laptop or cell phone wherever they want to.
Second, the coffee shop, being privately owned is perfectly within its right to say if you don't wear shoes or shirt we will not serve you. If you smoke, we will not serve you and yes, if you use a kindle, we will not serve you.
The said coffee shops in the articles are doing this for very good business reasons. They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue. They way the potential for lost revenue by kindle customers getting upset and going elsewhere with the actual loss they were experiencing.
If you don't like it, you are free to frequent other coffee shops or even start your own that caters to kindle users. That's what it means to live in a free country.
In countries where privacy is valued, the phone company has no right to voluntarily give out your information.
I agree the phone company has no right to give you your information. However, they are not in fact doing that. They are giving out "their" information regarding their billing charges, which by it's very nature includes usage data. I don't agree with it, but that is in fact what occurs.
There is nothing to stop companies from giving out any information about you that isn't protected by law (such as medical information). How many bad checks have you seen taped to a cash register with a note to not accept checks from such and such individual. That is financial information about you. How much spam and junk mail do you get because somebody you do business with sold your email or street address? Just as it is not illegal for this to occur, it is not illegal for the phone company to sell your information or to give it to the authorities.
What is in question is whether they have to surrender the information if the authorities demand it and the answer is "no." At least until a judge issues an order saying they must do so. In theory, that only occurs if there is just cause. Real life, however, is much different than theory.
So, in short, the phone company has every right to voluntarily give out your information. They also have a right to voluntarily withhold that information.
There is nothing wrong with revolutionizing consumer applications, however, the article stated that it was revolutionizing robotics, not consumer applications. Even your own questions in your post about who knows what will emerge from this, point to the fact that it is not revolutionizing anything but does have the potential to revolutionize. At this point in the development, it is too soon to tell if it is truly revolutionary or not. I do agree, it has the potential to be so, it just hasn't done it yet.
It's revolutionary in the sense of "causing a revolution".
The ongoing Egyptian revolution has thus far consisted of popular protests and a bloodless military coup, both well worn political strategies. Yet these events are revolutionary for Egypt. Things will be different in Egypt in the future.
Wouldn't you say that people involved in sparking and carrying out the revolution were revolutionary? If a new technology came on the scene and caused the revolution, wouldn't it be a revolutionary technology?
In fact, isn't this the whole point of the word "revolutionary"? If a "revolutionary" new technology doesn't cause a revolution then was it really revolutionary at all? Maybe you're thinking of the word novel instead? You've made a good argument that the Kinect isn't novel.
In any case, if the Kinect is causing a robotics revolution then I'd say it's revolutionary regardless of the reason it is causing the revolution.
As I stated in a previous post, the actual definition for revolutionary, when used as an adjective is "something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour." What is going on in Egypt meets that definition. The kinect technology does not, at least not yet.
Many new technologies come on the scene and have failed miserably. Because of that they are not revolutionary. It is not that some technology is new and has the potential to be revolutionary that makes it revolutionary. It is only in hindsight that a product or technology can be determined to be revolutionary because it is only then that the impact on society or human endeavour can be seen.
I'll give a concrete example. The Jarvik 7 artificial heart was an amazing piece of technology, however it did not revolutionize how we treat heart attacks or heart transplants. As amazing as it was, it failed the test of being a "major" impact on society or human endeavour. This does nothing to diminish what it was and did.
Likewise, the kinect is a great piece of technology. So far, however, it has demonstratively lowered the price point, but has yet to demonstrate a lasting major impact or change. As such, at this point, the best that can be said about the kinect is that it has the "potential" to be revolutionary in the field of robotics, not that it "is" revolutionary or even revolutionizing the field of robotics.
That's because even with a two party system, the US government has checks and balances. So even if the president wants to do something or wants to change something, congress has to, also. The executive branch cannot effect significant change without congress and vice-versa. The president can issue executive orders, but those do not hold the same power as legislation.
So, if you are correct and the people vote him out of office in two years, it will still be the same thing as before. Obama was definitely a 180 degree turn from Bush and yet things remain the same. The next candidate will be 180 degree turn from Obama and things will be the same. The real problem, is that congress is not interested in what is best for the country as a whole (all of its citizens) but only the special interest groups that got them elected in the first place.
When congress (and the president) start doing what is best for the country instead of what is most likely to get them re-elected. Then we will have real change. Until then, it will be the same old thing, regardless of who is in the oval office.
Also mentioned in the TFA is that the phone companies can voluntarily comply with the request, but it still takes a court order if they chose not to. That has always been the case.
It seems that the summary omitted once crucial detail -- The FBI may request the information and it may voluntarily be given. However, to demand it still requires an intervention from the courts.
There is nothing new here. If your phone company chooses to give information about you to the FBI or some other government agency, you may have a gripe with the phone company, but the government can't just come in a compel the phone company to give up that information without a court order.
Everybody keeps saying this is revolutionary because of cost. So by that definition, a Yugo is revolutionary. The actual definition for revolutionary, when used as an adjective is "something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour." I do not think the kinect has met that requirement. It might someday, but in terms of robotics, the kinect has not had a sudden impact on society. In terms of human endeavour, it is too soon to determine whether it has made a sudden impact.
So, far, it has definitely lowered the entry cost into one part of the equation for robotics. But unless you are in marketing, the only way to tell if something is revolutionary or not is after the fact.
Just changing the game does not make something revolutionary. How society is changed makes something revolutionary.
Actually, the iPod was a revolutionary because it took disparate technologies and put them together in a new way to produce a new product. The kinect, from a gaming perspective might be revolutionary, but from a robotics perspective is just a consumerized version of what already was in the robotics field. Sure it is at a cheaper price point, and that may benefit research, but that doesn't revolutionize the robotics industry.
Do you really believe that the makers of industrial robots are going to stick kinects on all of their robots? Do you really believe that the military will use kinects as the brains of their drones? Do you really believe that future cars will have a kinect sitting in the grill for accident avoidance? Kinects provide a way to do rapid development, but it is not a robust enough or harden enough for other than consumer applications.
Now, one may argue that it will be hardened and it will be improved, but what that actually means is that different software will be developed to control it, which at that point, it no longer is a kinect.
Years ago, Lego came out with their Mindstorm robotics kit. It used a lot of the same technology that was being used in real robotic research at the time. Nobody claimed it was revolutionary. It was useful for turning kids on to robotics and computers. It was useful in the laboratory for prototyping things, but nobody actually developed a robot for outside the lab that was powered by Mindstorm. Likewise, the kinect may turn people onto robotics. I am sure it will be useful in the lab to prototype things, but actually being integrated, as is, into a product? No, that won't happen.
Again, using the military or manufacturing robots as an example, the cost of the sensor being a $100 or $1000 is not the issue. It is the underlying software that is the expensive part. The kinect provides the cheap hardware sensor. It does not nor cannot provide the underlying software that is specific to the task at hand.
It's revolutionary because prior to the launch of the Kinect, if you wanted both visual input and a depth map on a robot, you had to spend hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars on LIDAR sensors, which are fussy pieces of equipment at the best of times. Within its design range, Kinect is as accurate as any LIDAR sensor, much more reliable, and waaaaay cheaper. For this reason, a lot of robot designers don't bother with LIDAR, which means you have to estimate distance and range with GPS, direct image data, or a host of other not-quite-as-accurate means. Not to mention it handles skeletal tracking, gesture recognition and other unpleasant programming tasks itself, leaving the robot designer free to do other things.
Kinect really has kind of changed the game overnight. People are very excited about being able to equip accurate depth sensors on all kinds of robots that they wouldn't have bothered with before. Even if no "new" innovations were to ever appear from Kinect, the increase in accuracy of old standbys like manipulator arms will be tremendous now that they can have depth maps. I'm at Cornell at the moment, and many of the grad students in robotics already have Kinect-based projects well underway, and even in the undergrad robot learning classes (where you typically do one semester-long project) the professor is pushing Kinect as an option.
But even as you mention, the only "revolutionary" part is the price point. Kinect isn't allowing something new to happen, only what has been happening to occur at a cheaper point. The first Amanda Radar Range was revolutionary. The $89 2011 model isn't. It's just cheaper.
I am not doubting that the Kinect is changing the game. I just question whether it is revolutionary or not.
<quote><p>makes it available to the general public at a low price point. </p></quote>
Point me to the item that does what the Kinect does, with the simplicity and cheapness of that Kinect. Cheapness, and how easy it is to use can be a game changer in any market.
On the hardware side, it is nothing MAJOR, such as an easy universal robotic language(which everyone uses) would be. However, it does mean more interactive robots that can navigate and recognise objects better. It will add all that, at a dirt cheap price and the implementation of it is only getting easier.
Cheapness and how easy it is may be a game changer in the consumer market, that's not even accurate here. What are you going to do buy a 360 and kinect and stick it in your robot? That's not a cheap solution. What makes the Kinect work is not the hardware, but the software behind it. Cheap digital hardware has been available for a long time. Japan has produced robots that "see" and "navigate" and adapt for quite some time now. It's true they aren't cheap, but sticking a kinect in one of them won't change the price point as that is such a small part of the price.
If you are going to use the kinect for robotics, the hardware cost of something other than the kinect unit is not the obstacle. Even with the kinect unit, hardware is not the problem. Developing the software to make your robot do what you want it to is the hard part. Making the software be able to adapt to unplanned situations is even more difficult. The kinect doesn't provide any of that.
Don't get me wrong, having a game console use software that can figure out what my hands and/or feet are doing is impressive, but in terms of revolutionizing robotics, it doesn't. At best it might be evolutionary, but definitely not revolutionary.
And when the police have a blue tuesday and nobody shows up for work, that isn't a walk out either, right? If 3000 employees all taking vacation/flex time at the same time the day after a major announcement they disagree with isn't a walkout, I'm not sure what is.
What made the iPhone such a success? Apple looked at what they thought a phone should do and then developed an OS and infrastructure around that vision. Google did a similar thing with Android but started with where Apple left off. Not really innovating, but it will be successful because of sheer market presence. Innovation with Android comes from the phone manufactures because the OS can be adapted to so many things. Microsoft is also not innovating, but trying to stay in the game. To do so, however, they need manufactures and so enters Nokia.
Nokia who once was a leader in innovation for both hardware and OS is left with the task of producing a commodity product to run somebody else's non-innovative idea for a phone. This does not bode well for Nokia as their success will now be tied to Microsoft. Furthermore, alienating their developers for Symbian is a real issue. If as a Symbian developer, I will have to learn a new platform, will I chose the low penetration Windows or put my efforts into developing for iOS or Android? Palm's WebOS developers faced a similar fate and many of the best went Android.
Why? Not because Android (or iOS) was better than WebOS, but because they have families to feed and bills to pay. The same will be the case for Nokia's Symbian developers. There was already internal friction between Symbian and Meego. Adding Windows to the mix will just further fractionate the developer community and it makes Nokia look like they don't have any kind of strategy at all.
As the phone makers have learned, to have a successful smart-phone, you need developers. Alienating your developers is not a good way to succeed in a market that can change overnight.
Who buys Nokia phones anymore? Symbian is a fine technology, but management made numerous mistakes that took Nokia from the lead position to next to oblivion. Betting the future of your company on a Windows phone doesn't seem too smart, either.
What are the major cell phone OSs? There's iOS, Android, Symbian, RIM and WebOS and Windows. Maybe Microsoft's plan is to take out Symbian and RIM (HP/Palm already has botched WebOS) so that they are one of the top 3. That would at least follow their general business plan for computers - instead of innovating they conquer and divide.
How does kinect make a revolutionary change in robotics. All of the technology in kinect has been available for a long time and in use in many fields. What kinect does is makes it available to the general public at a low price point. Surely MIT isn't implying that Microsoft created a whole new technology that they or the rest of academia hadn't already come up with? No, instead, what Microsoft did, is what they always do -- they packaged existing technologies together. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just not revolutionary.
Yes, I am aware of that, but do you pre-check every link on slashdot that you click? Even the editors point out that when linking to the NYT that a subscription is required to view the document. Couldn't the editors extend a similar courtesy by either not linking directly or noting that it is linked directly?
"The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site."
I'll grant that. However, even if the swedish prosecutor is abusive, you still need the victims to testify. The facts of what happen, at least what has been reported, are not disputed, even by Assange. Assange escalated it by refusing to cooperate, he even admitted that.
For this to be a government conspiracy against him requires a number of players -- the Swedish government, the Swedish courts, the Swedish prosecutor, the US government, the two victims and who knows how many others. Since the Swedes don't depend on the US for aid or protection, it is difficult to see what power the US would have to influence so many Swedes in the process.
A much more reasonable answer is that Assange screwed up. Because he's famous, it is big news. Just like Lindsey Lohan shoplifting. Thousands of people shoplifted that day in LA, the only one that makes the news is Lohan. Why? Because she's famous.
As much as we want to believe there is a conspiracy against Assange, there is no evidence that one exists nor does it appear to be logistically possible in this specific case.
Slashdot Mirror
Depending on the situation, most likely turn them over. Particularly because if it really were a matter of national security, say a terrorist threat, they don't want to be the scapegoat. All of that said, however, whether or not AT&T or Comcast have a backbone or not is a different issue entirely than what the article infers.
federal executive policies and legal opinions are *not* federal law. show me which federal law allows telcos to voluntarily give information to third parties in contravention of state laws. you can't because it doesn't exist. the issue was whether the federal government could hide illegal actions behind state secrecy, something that again, is itself an illegal act (this time it's illegal under federal laws enacting federal secrecy).
Well, the Patriot Act does for one. So does the Federal Communications Act. By voluntary, however, it does not mean that one day, the telco can just go dump a bunch of documents off at the FBI. It does mean, however, that if requested, the telco can without the need for the FBI to get a court order. It happens all the time with local law enforcement.
You're missing the point. The "revolution" is in market penetration and ubiquitousness. It doesn't require that similar technology has never been seen before. Your microwave oven at $2,000 in 1% of households is cool technology but hardly a revolution. At $89 and in nearly all households, it clearly is.
If something to be revolutionary requires market penetration, the kinect isn't revolutionary because it holds a very small percentage of the market. We are talking about revolutionary technology, however and the Amanda Range did turn out to be revolutionary, it change society. The main use of the kinect, right now at this moment, is not robotics but gaming. It is not revolutionary (although it is impressive). If and when it makes a difference in society which is what the definition of revolutionary means, when used as an adjective, it will be revolutionary. But, most likely not because it was a cool input device for a game console.
As many have posted, it is being used in robotic research right now. It has the potential to revolutionize that field. It just hasn't had time to do that, yet.
That's a subtle distinction between my data and theirs. At one time, that information was considered to be a part of a fiduciary relationship between the customer and telco. But, if my memory serves me correctly, that was quietly changed in a telecommunications bill in the mid 1990s. I can remember (back in the old days) a statement to the effect that the telephone company would need access to my call data for the purpose of billing and administration. But those days are gone. Unless we can get Congress to repair their mistake. But that will be like taking candy away from a baby. A very large baby, with well funded lobbyists.
Yes, you remember correctly. However, those days are long gone and the erosion of privacy rights started long before 9/11. Law enforcement always claimed they needed access to that information for various levels of security. Post 9/11 it is even worse. If something is classified as a security threat, whether actual or not, the government now has broad powers to invade privacy without a warrant.
There is a mentality in the US, now, that individual rights aren't important if the cause is great enough. The problem with that mentality is that what constitutes great causes changes over time. First there was organized crime, then there was national security, then there was the war on drugs, then there was the threat of terrorism.
And it's not just the government. Employers will now use credit ratings to make hiring decisions. Background checks used to mean checking references, now it is criminal background checks. Got dui charge in college, too bad, you might not get a job 15 years later. Same thing if you had speeding tickets.
Americans believe they have a right to privacy, but that right has been chipped away so much, that it is really just a belief and not a reality. There was a time when the government was supposed to be the protector of rights, not the invader of them.
I agree the Velodyne was revolutionary, but will the kinect, as a device, be used for these purposes or will something researchers learned from using a kinect in research be the device? If it will come from the research, then if it is determined that a kinect is revolutionary, it will be revolutionary for robotic research, not robotics.
What part misrepresents - the fact that a court has to decide something. In Missouri, the public service commission is a legal authority and can issue rulings. You may have noticed that the 2006 court case you mention was moved to Federal court, since it is really about whether a federal law can trump a state law. The phone companies in question were violating a local/state law. If I recall correctly, the federal court upheld the federal position.
I was responding to the original poster's comments and was not intending a political discourse on politics or congress, so excuse me for being "wrong."
That said, we have a two party system because to get elected (other than president) you need to be able to win the majority of the vote in your state or district. It is highly unlikely that would occur on a regular basis if there were more than two parties.
The Tea Party is not a third party (at least not yet), although many republicans wish they were, since that is who they first ran against. If they were a third party, they would not have been running on the republican ticket. They did so because they are a faction of the republican party (just like the evangelical right was not a party unto itself).
Yes, the checks and balances I mention are a result of the three part government. However, if everyone in congress was of the same party as the executive branch, then for all practical purposes two of the three checks and balances would cease to exist. For the three part government checks and balances to work implies that there are multiple parties. It's just that prior to the 70's the alignment was on liberal or conservative, not democrat vs republician. Republicans who were liberal and Democrats who were liberal would get together on issues as would their conservative counterparts in both parties. Back then, it was the ideology that drove the partnerships not the party affiliation (although party affiliation was important, too).
In terms of your comment about doing things that would get them relected. Yes, if I were in congress I would take steps needed to get re-elected. However, if those steps would mean catering to special interest groups that are not inline with what I thought was important or served my conscience, constituents or nation, then no.
The sad fact in America, today, is that you cannot get elected or re-elected without catering to special interest groups. That is the real change I would like to see, where it's not big lobbyists that influence congress more than the constituents.
If I could change one thing in the election process it would be to eliminate corporate contributions to campaigns and issues. The constitution gives people the right to vote, not business. If all of the board of directors of some corporation want a candidate that would enact policies that would favor their corporation, then let the board of directors contribute of their own funds (and under the same limits as anybody else). If I am a sole proprietor and want my business to support a candidate, that ultimately is my personal income as all the business income flows through to me for tax purposes. Why should corporations be any different? Then there are PACs. If people want to form a PAC, fine, we are told that part of the money raised by PACs is for education of the electorate. Fine, let contributions given to the PAC be used for that purpose, but individuals still have to fund candidates, not the PAC itself. I was taught that we were supposed to have a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Last time I checked, corporations are not people. They shouldn't have a say in politics. Their employees, their boards, etc. are people, if they feel strongly about a candidate or an issue, then they should do the contributing.
In short, or maybe not too short, that is what I mean by changing the system.
Or cafe X will see an uptick in business as their tables turn quicker. Either way, it's the free market economy at its best.
(Side note: this only works because in a place like NYC, there is a lot of competition. If you lived in a small town with only one coffeeshop, then this would be a completely different deal. (I'm looking at you Time Warner Cable.))
But even in a small town, the store owner would be in their right to not allow kindles and other devices. A small town, probably has a smaller coffee shop, which probably has fewer seats that need to be turned over just as quickly as in NYC to be profitable. I've lived in a town of 30,000 that had a Panera's coffee shop. It was next to impossible to eat their during normal lunch hours because of their free wifi and all of the college kids sitting around on their laptops with a cup of coffee for hours on end. $2 for a cup of coffee for 3 or 4 hours of internet wasn't a bad deal for the kids, but it sure impacted business for the store.
Their solution? During the lunch hours 11:00 - 1:30, you could only use laptops in one relatively small section of the place. They even had free internet terminals at some of the tables if you wanted. It turns out that the same amount of people were using the internet, but instead of one per table or booth, they all shared the tables and booths in that area. In that way, the store could still serve it's paying customers.
The whole point of the above story is that it impacts even small towns.
What about disabled people with their large clumsy wheelchairs? Or non-white people? Or Women? What about Muslims? What they have one down the street?
I know the Nazis burned the books, so modern fascists burn Kindles?
Still feel like a free country?
That's a stupid argument. For one, disabled people in wheelchars, non-blacks, woment, Muslims, etc, have rights that are enforced under law. Nobody has the right to read a kindle or use a laptop or cell phone wherever they want to.
Second, the coffee shop, being privately owned is perfectly within its right to say if you don't wear shoes or shirt we will not serve you. If you smoke, we will not serve you and yes, if you use a kindle, we will not serve you.
The said coffee shops in the articles are doing this for very good business reasons. They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue. They way the potential for lost revenue by kindle customers getting upset and going elsewhere with the actual loss they were experiencing.
If you don't like it, you are free to frequent other coffee shops or even start your own that caters to kindle users. That's what it means to live in a free country.
In countries where privacy is valued, the phone company has no right to voluntarily give out your information.
I agree the phone company has no right to give you your information. However, they are not in fact doing that. They are giving out "their" information regarding their billing charges, which by it's very nature includes usage data. I don't agree with it, but that is in fact what occurs.
There is nothing to stop companies from giving out any information about you that isn't protected by law (such as medical information). How many bad checks have you seen taped to a cash register with a note to not accept checks from such and such individual. That is financial information about you. How much spam and junk mail do you get because somebody you do business with sold your email or street address? Just as it is not illegal for this to occur, it is not illegal for the phone company to sell your information or to give it to the authorities.
What is in question is whether they have to surrender the information if the authorities demand it and the answer is "no." At least until a judge issues an order saying they must do so. In theory, that only occurs if there is just cause. Real life, however, is much different than theory.
So, in short, the phone company has every right to voluntarily give out your information. They also have a right to voluntarily withhold that information.
There is nothing wrong with revolutionizing consumer applications, however, the article stated that it was revolutionizing robotics, not consumer applications. Even your own questions in your post about who knows what will emerge from this, point to the fact that it is not revolutionizing anything but does have the potential to revolutionize. At this point in the development, it is too soon to tell if it is truly revolutionary or not. I do agree, it has the potential to be so, it just hasn't done it yet.
It's revolutionary in the sense of "causing a revolution".
The ongoing Egyptian revolution has thus far consisted of popular protests and a bloodless military coup, both well worn political strategies. Yet these events are revolutionary for Egypt. Things will be different in Egypt in the future.
Wouldn't you say that people involved in sparking and carrying out the revolution were revolutionary? If a new technology came on the scene and caused the revolution, wouldn't it be a revolutionary technology?
In fact, isn't this the whole point of the word "revolutionary"? If a "revolutionary" new technology doesn't cause a revolution then was it really revolutionary at all? Maybe you're thinking of the word novel instead? You've made a good argument that the Kinect isn't novel.
In any case, if the Kinect is causing a robotics revolution then I'd say it's revolutionary regardless of the reason it is causing the revolution.
As I stated in a previous post, the actual definition for revolutionary, when used as an adjective is "something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour." What is going on in Egypt meets that definition. The kinect technology does not, at least not yet.
Many new technologies come on the scene and have failed miserably. Because of that they are not revolutionary. It is not that some technology is new and has the potential to be revolutionary that makes it revolutionary. It is only in hindsight that a product or technology can be determined to be revolutionary because it is only then that the impact on society or human endeavour can be seen.
I'll give a concrete example. The Jarvik 7 artificial heart was an amazing piece of technology, however it did not revolutionize how we treat heart attacks or heart transplants. As amazing as it was, it failed the test of being a "major" impact on society or human endeavour. This does nothing to diminish what it was and did.
Likewise, the kinect is a great piece of technology. So far, however, it has demonstratively lowered the price point, but has yet to demonstrate a lasting major impact or change. As such, at this point, the best that can be said about the kinect is that it has the "potential" to be revolutionary in the field of robotics, not that it "is" revolutionary or even revolutionizing the field of robotics.
That's because even with a two party system, the US government has checks and balances. So even if the president wants to do something or wants to change something, congress has to, also. The executive branch cannot effect significant change without congress and vice-versa. The president can issue executive orders, but those do not hold the same power as legislation.
So, if you are correct and the people vote him out of office in two years, it will still be the same thing as before. Obama was definitely a 180 degree turn from Bush and yet things remain the same. The next candidate will be 180 degree turn from Obama and things will be the same. The real problem, is that congress is not interested in what is best for the country as a whole (all of its citizens) but only the special interest groups that got them elected in the first place.
When congress (and the president) start doing what is best for the country instead of what is most likely to get them re-elected. Then we will have real change. Until then, it will be the same old thing, regardless of who is in the oval office.
Also mentioned in the TFA is that the phone companies can voluntarily comply with the request, but it still takes a court order if they chose not to. That has always been the case.
It seems that the summary omitted once crucial detail -- The FBI may request the information and it may voluntarily be given. However, to demand it still requires an intervention from the courts.
There is nothing new here. If your phone company chooses to give information about you to the FBI or some other government agency, you may have a gripe with the phone company, but the government can't just come in a compel the phone company to give up that information without a court order.
Everybody keeps saying this is revolutionary because of cost. So by that definition, a Yugo is revolutionary. The actual definition for revolutionary, when used as an adjective is "something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour." I do not think the kinect has met that requirement. It might someday, but in terms of robotics, the kinect has not had a sudden impact on society. In terms of human endeavour, it is too soon to determine whether it has made a sudden impact.
So, far, it has definitely lowered the entry cost into one part of the equation for robotics. But unless you are in marketing, the only way to tell if something is revolutionary or not is after the fact.
Just changing the game does not make something revolutionary. How society is changed makes something revolutionary.
Actually, the iPod was a revolutionary because it took disparate technologies and put them together in a new way to produce a new product. The kinect, from a gaming perspective might be revolutionary, but from a robotics perspective is just a consumerized version of what already was in the robotics field. Sure it is at a cheaper price point, and that may benefit research, but that doesn't revolutionize the robotics industry.
Do you really believe that the makers of industrial robots are going to stick kinects on all of their robots? Do you really believe that the military will use kinects as the brains of their drones? Do you really believe that future cars will have a kinect sitting in the grill for accident avoidance? Kinects provide a way to do rapid development, but it is not a robust enough or harden enough for other than consumer applications.
Now, one may argue that it will be hardened and it will be improved, but what that actually means is that different software will be developed to control it, which at that point, it no longer is a kinect.
Years ago, Lego came out with their Mindstorm robotics kit. It used a lot of the same technology that was being used in real robotic research at the time. Nobody claimed it was revolutionary. It was useful for turning kids on to robotics and computers. It was useful in the laboratory for prototyping things, but nobody actually developed a robot for outside the lab that was powered by Mindstorm. Likewise, the kinect may turn people onto robotics. I am sure it will be useful in the lab to prototype things, but actually being integrated, as is, into a product? No, that won't happen.
Again, using the military or manufacturing robots as an example, the cost of the sensor being a $100 or $1000 is not the issue. It is the underlying software that is the expensive part. The kinect provides the cheap hardware sensor. It does not nor cannot provide the underlying software that is specific to the task at hand.
It's revolutionary because prior to the launch of the Kinect, if you wanted both visual input and a depth map on a robot, you had to spend hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars on LIDAR sensors, which are fussy pieces of equipment at the best of times. Within its design range, Kinect is as accurate as any LIDAR sensor, much more reliable, and waaaaay cheaper. For this reason, a lot of robot designers don't bother with LIDAR, which means you have to estimate distance and range with GPS, direct image data, or a host of other not-quite-as-accurate means. Not to mention it handles skeletal tracking, gesture recognition and other unpleasant programming tasks itself, leaving the robot designer free to do other things.
Kinect really has kind of changed the game overnight. People are very excited about being able to equip accurate depth sensors on all kinds of robots that they wouldn't have bothered with before. Even if no "new" innovations were to ever appear from Kinect, the increase in accuracy of old standbys like manipulator arms will be tremendous now that they can have depth maps. I'm at Cornell at the moment, and many of the grad students in robotics already have Kinect-based projects well underway, and even in the undergrad robot learning classes (where you typically do one semester-long project) the professor is pushing Kinect as an option.
But even as you mention, the only "revolutionary" part is the price point. Kinect isn't allowing something new to happen, only what has been happening to occur at a cheaper point. The first Amanda Radar Range was revolutionary. The $89 2011 model isn't. It's just cheaper.
I am not doubting that the Kinect is changing the game. I just question whether it is revolutionary or not.
<quote><p>makes it available to the general public at a low price point. </p></quote>
Point me to the item that does what the Kinect does, with the simplicity and cheapness of that Kinect. Cheapness, and how easy it is to use can be a game changer in any market.
On the hardware side, it is nothing MAJOR, such as an easy universal robotic language(which everyone uses) would be. However, it does mean more interactive robots that can navigate and recognise objects better. It will add all that, at a dirt cheap price and the implementation of it is only getting easier.
Cheapness and how easy it is may be a game changer in the consumer market, that's not even accurate here. What are you going to do buy a 360 and kinect and stick it in your robot? That's not a cheap solution. What makes the Kinect work is not the hardware, but the software behind it. Cheap digital hardware has been available for a long time. Japan has produced robots that "see" and "navigate" and adapt for quite some time now. It's true they aren't cheap, but sticking a kinect in one of them won't change the price point as that is such a small part of the price.
If you are going to use the kinect for robotics, the hardware cost of something other than the kinect unit is not the obstacle. Even with the kinect unit, hardware is not the problem. Developing the software to make your robot do what you want it to is the hard part. Making the software be able to adapt to unplanned situations is even more difficult. The kinect doesn't provide any of that.
Don't get me wrong, having a game console use software that can figure out what my hands and/or feet are doing is impressive, but in terms of revolutionizing robotics, it doesn't. At best it might be evolutionary, but definitely not revolutionary.
And when the police have a blue tuesday and nobody shows up for work, that isn't a walk out either, right? If 3000 employees all taking vacation/flex time at the same time the day after a major announcement they disagree with isn't a walkout, I'm not sure what is.
What made the iPhone such a success? Apple looked at what they thought a phone should do and then developed an OS and infrastructure around that vision. Google did a similar thing with Android but started with where Apple left off. Not really innovating, but it will be successful because of sheer market presence. Innovation with Android comes from the phone manufactures because the OS can be adapted to so many things. Microsoft is also not innovating, but trying to stay in the game. To do so, however, they need manufactures and so enters Nokia.
Nokia who once was a leader in innovation for both hardware and OS is left with the task of producing a commodity product to run somebody else's non-innovative idea for a phone. This does not bode well for Nokia as their success will now be tied to Microsoft. Furthermore, alienating their developers for Symbian is a real issue. If as a Symbian developer, I will have to learn a new platform, will I chose the low penetration Windows or put my efforts into developing for iOS or Android? Palm's WebOS developers faced a similar fate and many of the best went Android.
Why? Not because Android (or iOS) was better than WebOS, but because they have families to feed and bills to pay. The same will be the case for Nokia's Symbian developers. There was already internal friction between Symbian and Meego. Adding Windows to the mix will just further fractionate the developer community and it makes Nokia look like they don't have any kind of strategy at all.
As the phone makers have learned, to have a successful smart-phone, you need developers. Alienating your developers is not a good way to succeed in a market that can change overnight.
Who buys Nokia phones anymore? Symbian is a fine technology, but management made numerous mistakes that took Nokia from the lead position to next to oblivion. Betting the future of your company on a Windows phone doesn't seem too smart, either.
What are the major cell phone OSs? There's iOS, Android, Symbian, RIM and WebOS and Windows. Maybe Microsoft's plan is to take out Symbian and RIM (HP/Palm already has botched WebOS) so that they are one of the top 3. That would at least follow their general business plan for computers - instead of innovating they conquer and divide.
How does kinect make a revolutionary change in robotics. All of the technology in kinect has been available for a long time and in use in many fields. What kinect does is makes it available to the general public at a low price point. Surely MIT isn't implying that Microsoft created a whole new technology that they or the rest of academia hadn't already come up with? No, instead, what Microsoft did, is what they always do -- they packaged existing technologies together. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just not revolutionary.
Yes, I am aware of that, but do you pre-check every link on slashdot that you click? Even the editors point out that when linking to the NYT that a subscription is required to view the document. Couldn't the editors extend a similar courtesy by either not linking directly or noting that it is linked directly?
> unless the CIA or the government is somehow clairvoyant
The Swedish prosecutor's abuse of legal process may pre-date the leaking of the diplomatic cables but it sure as hell doesn't predate the 2008 US Army Counterintelligence plan to discredit Wikileaks:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2259550/military-plan-destroy-wikileaks
"The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site."
I'll grant that. However, even if the swedish prosecutor is abusive, you still need the victims to testify. The facts of what happen, at least what has been reported, are not disputed, even by Assange. Assange escalated it by refusing to cooperate, he even admitted that.
For this to be a government conspiracy against him requires a number of players -- the Swedish government, the Swedish courts, the Swedish prosecutor, the US government, the two victims and who knows how many others. Since the Swedes don't depend on the US for aid or protection, it is difficult to see what power the US would have to influence so many Swedes in the process.
A much more reasonable answer is that Assange screwed up. Because he's famous, it is big news. Just like Lindsey Lohan shoplifting. Thousands of people shoplifted that day in LA, the only one that makes the news is Lohan. Why? Because she's famous.
As much as we want to believe there is a conspiracy against Assange, there is no evidence that one exists nor does it appear to be logistically possible in this specific case.