What gives the impression that voters have anything to do with how the NSA operates? Sure, in theory one could try to vote someone into a position of authority who could influence their operation, but how realistic is that? The people that head up the NSA are 'technically' appointed and confirmed by elected officials, but an administration is not going to appoint someone who isn't on their side, so congress has limited options. In the end, it becomes a choice between (ultimately) identical candidates. Administrations may boast they will clean things up when elected but once they win and realize what they have, does anyone really think they are going to throw it away?
Many campaign promises get broken... those that have to do with reducing one's own power almost always get broken.
In the end, intelligence agencies and law enforcement are usually very focused on finding ways around any limitations to how they believe they can be most effective. That does include finding ways to circumvent legal barriers.
Sadly, it seems to be largely human nature... how many people can resist snooping at a diary when found, or a colleague's pay check found in a drawer while looking for a pencil, etc... This is simply on a much larger scale. Yes, it is very wrong, but if you think someone, when voted into the coveted position of being able to know most secrets, is going to give up the advantages it offers.... think again.
And now it is also known where the drones will be controlled from, although I am not convinced that there is only a single command centre. That would be rather stupid... Anyway, so, one of the control centres will be located in Horsham, PA near Philadelphia on part of the grounds of the format naval air base, according to the following article: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130320_Horsham_command_center_for_drones_stirs_controversy.html
It would actually make quite a lot of sense for a custom system where the control software (essentially the OS) is provided in the srtorage component (16MB), and things like actual programs are loaded into RAM. Since typically (as far as I recall) mindstorm programs are loaded into the brick at runtime, it makes perfect sense that no storage is used for this, other than perhaps a ramdisk.
There is also the notion that an EULA bears only explicit agreement from one party, which generally isn't enough to call it a true contract in writing. A unilaterally binding agreement is not really a contract in the strictest sense. When combined with the actual act of purchasing, one could try to argue that the entire transaction (that concludes with the agreement to the EULA) constitutes some form of contract, but I doubt that in a legal sense that would be held up as a broad interpretation of the contract concept.
I know of at least one situation where a contractor had a customer sign his agreement that stated that the customer would pay a certain amount for work listed on the agreement. There was a dispute over the work, the agreement was brought into evidence, and rendered invalid as a contract because (1) the customer never got a copy of the agreement he signed, and (2) the agreement did not contain a signature of the contractor or representative.
> "The question becomes, what do we do to fix this so that consumers are truly protected?
Well, the obvious solution is to fix the US court system, where almost any case can be brought against a company or an individual, often even with barely any basis in law. It is much too lucrative to sue, and thus that right gets abused left and right.
So, tighten up the court system so that it becomes more about upholding established law rather than entertaining suits from attorneys who just happen to have found some interpretation of some law (or anything close enough) that they could argue to have a case against someone.
Is this realistic? Of course not. Ever since the notion of 'common sense' has been abolished in favour of law, anything even remotely sensible has become impossible. The courts now get to deal with lawsuits about stuff that should be common sense, and at the same time attorneys refuse quite obvious cases because they feel it cannot be won because despite 'common sense' there isn't enough hard evidence to show that someone was truly at fault. It's pretty much impossible to change (1) the court system, (2) the legislation, and (3) people's desire to seek monetary gain at the expense of others...
The main problem with the aDesigner approach is that it is based on assumptions about how a blind individual accesses a webpage with a specific screen reader. Reality is that there are multiple screen readers that are commonly used by the blind, and they have differences in how they present a webpage. As such, a simulation of how a webpage is rendered through a screen reader would need to be configurable based on the behaviour of the various screen readers, and often even different versions of a specific screen reader. On top of that, you also have to account for the individual reading behaviour of the user, because not all users utilize the screen reader the same way when reading web pages.
Back in 2005, at the HCI International conference in Las Vegas, Ms. Asakawa confirmed that her team had not tested the accuracy of the aDesigner against input from a sufficient diverse group of blind users. Instead, it was reported to be based on an assumed standard screen reader and reading protocol.
That is not to say that ms. Asakawa has not done very impressive work. It is simply more limited in nature, and by promoting it to e.g. web developers as yet another tool that will tell them how a blind person will see the page, a possible disservice is done, because developers (especially in companies) are very good at deciding that their pages are accessible 'because they look right in aDesigner'.
I think you miss another important aspect of this "war"... As in fighting a guerilla army, you usually end up being on the less effective side of the conflict due to rules and regulations that one tends to be bound by, whereas a guerilla army usually couldn't care less about the rules. Spammers do not care about breaking rules, regulations, and protocols, so they can play very dirty whenever they want (and botnets are a clear example of that). Offensive action against them is usually still bound by some rules, and thus they have a natural advantage. Spammers do not care about any collateral damage... System administrators and othe people fighting the spammers usually do have to care about collateral damage.
Your claim that bookshare is 'at no charge' isn't entirely accurate. Bookshare does charge a fee to its members, except for some specific user classes such as k12 students who have a reading disability.
The problem with the kindle was largely that the text-to-speech functionality was a mainstream feature they were advertising (albeit in somewhat beta-fashion). In terms of accessibility to enable blind and visually impaired users to read the (otherwise) print materials on the kindle, no copyright violation etc would take place because that is covered under specific exceptions. Of course, the overall inaccessibility of the kindle makes that argument a bit hard to make.
But with the Intel Reader being marketed as a specific assistive technology device, it's functionality as described would not be in violation with any copyright laws or DMCA because it is an assistive technology device that enables printed materials to be read by blind and visually impaired users.
Copyright exceptions exist for the purpose of ensuring that people with disabilities can access print materials, etc... Printed works can be presented in alternative specialized formats (and voice rendering is one of those formats) without constituting a copyright violation. Check out bookshare.org... It's largely based on that.
There is also an often overlooked consideration that affects the influence of piracy on sales. Quite often, if people pirate software it is because they don't care to pay for it (and it is of course illegal and wrong). But those same people are also likely to go for used copies of software as an alternative to pirated copies. In either case, the software vendor isn't making a sale from this person.
For online games, that is even less an issue because there the revenue stream is of course the subscriptions.
As a not-so-in-fashion player of only select games, I happily await the availability of used copies (yes, cheap and sometimes even free) rather than bothering with pirated copies. Sure, I won't be able to play a game within the first few days of it being available, but I do not even play many games, so I can happily wait to get my hands on a really cheap copy.
In all, looking at the amount of used copies of games that pass through e.g. EBay, I think it is quite clear that the amount of people playing a given game is vastly larger than the amount of copies that got ever sold.
You may want to check out Debian, especially now Lenny has been released as Debian 5.0. It includes a decent amount of work from the DebianEeePC team (http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC), and runs nicely. Like all distributions, there are a few rough edges for some Eee PC models (due to hardware differences and less-than-ideal drivers being available).
In the end, it will probably depend largely on what people are used to in terms of Linux distributions. But if you like Debian and Debian-derivatives, I would certainly recommend taking a look at Debian.
It is also important to note that the DebianEeePC project has a very active developer and user community that is more than happy to help out both newbies and more experienced users.
Actually, if I am not mistaken, accessibility is covered as an exception under copyright law in that accessible versions of e.g. books in specialized format (which audio is one form of) are allowed. That's what NLS (part of the Library of Congress) and bookshare.org are based on.
The text-to-speech feature of Kindle2 is important to people with visual impairments, since it is a good step in the direction of making the device accessible to that user group.
Of course, the example you refer to has more to do with a broken healthcare/insurance system than with the post.
Either way, the issue with umbilical cord blood banking is more like paying social security taxes, without having any guarantees that by the time you need to be able to count on the payout there actually will be any. While there is a lot of research pointing at stem cell research being the answer to many problems, there is no guanratee that (1) by the time you need it the research will have resulted in a usable solution to whatever problem you face, and (2) by the time you need it the banked cord blood will in fact be usable for whatever solution has been found to be possible with stem cells.
Especially (2) is a bit of a concern to me personally, because you invest a whole lot of money into the banking while there really is no guarantee that the entire process is indeed capable of storing the needed cord blood for the length of time that might be needed without any ill effects. Nor is stem cell research far enough as far as I can see that they can really answer whether cord blood banked for say 20, 30, heck, 80 years will indeed yield stem cells that can successfully be used in treatments.
It is utter irony of course that the US is so much for boasting freedom etc, but they are implementing measures that are supposedly done in the interest of security without really adding much of anything (beyond annoyance and essentially making the entire visa waiver program useless). It does however seem to indicate just what the US government thinks about the rest of the world: no one can be trusted.
Of course, since apparently green card holders now will be subjected to the ridiculous US VISIT requirements as well, that distruct shouldn't surprise anyone.
Sad thing is... I'd be willing to bet money that Obama won't change any of this during his presidency, which (to me) would be a clear indication that this isn't just the action of an adminstration under a crazy shrub, but rather a consistent move towards protectionism and isolation.
The question is of course who will be providing "vendor" support for things like the programming tools (compiler, linker, debugger,...) given that it looks like the code changes that were needed to accomplish OpenSolaris on zSeries have not been integrated into the upstream repositories of those packages? Forked programming tools are a big concern, unless someone can truly commit to ensuring that the fork can be kept up to date with ongoing upstream development, or if the changes actually do get integrated in the upstream anyway.
"According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies..." is of course the key statement in terms of the countersuit requesting that the EULA be declared void, in which case your entire argument becomes void as well.
In my more adventurous days I encountered what seemed to be (but wasn't) a rather fun immigration agent when entering the US from my 6th or 7th international business trip that year, and was faced with the question (while the officer was flipping through my well-stamped passport): "Have you ever come to the US before?"
My first thought was 'well, duh, I live here (on a visa)' but I chose a nicer reply: "I can't remember but it ought to be in my passport."
Obviously, laws like this apply to the people in the country, not to people of a certain nationality. The interesting part of these laws is they usually offer equal protection to *anyone* in the country, not just citizens. So, I'd be willing to bet that Canadian law prohibits the publication of recognizable images (without consent) of even a tourist.
If you drive to Canada from the US, and your car gets broken into, it won't matter that it isn't a Canadian car, or that the car isn't owned by a Canadian. At least, not to law enforcement. The person breaking into the car might of course take the license plate into consideration:)
I believe the issue is even more complicated than you mention, because we're talking about a possible "preventative cure", not a cure as-such. Therefore, it is not really a case of curing someone who has autism (especially not severe cases) but rather preventing autism from developing (or developing further). So, it is not only a matter of whether one should go for this preventative cure in a specific situation, but also whether it is too late to really make a difference.
Overall, this research result is not entirely unexpected. A lot of earlier research has pointed in the same direction, and people have been using carefully tailored diets for quite a while with reasonable success to handle autism (and some other developmental conditions). But as far as I can see, severe autism cases may perhaps be more manageable by a strict diet, but it will not "cure" the person from being autistic. As far as I know, that is still (and possibly will always be) a permanent condition.
Yes, global sharing of personal records such as medical information is a risk, as is any form of sharing. While controls can and will be put in place, there is always a risk that something is going to get messed up. On the other hand, is the risk really any greater than it already is at national levels? So, they should protect things better on the national level first? Sure, but that can equally well be done by a major overhaul of the entire system, making it more global as part of the "better" design.
And besides, judging by the various scandals that have emerged in recent years in the US concerning medical records (e.g. finding a whole bunch of them in a dumpster behind a clinic, etc...) it isn't as if most laws and regulations that are meant to protect this data are implemented well. So, why not allow for a decent attempt to redesign how things are done, and put effort in supporting proper protections in said new system rather than spending time and effort on fighting against a redesign?
In the end, sharing of medical information on a more global level is largely used for statistical investigation of things, such as immunization side effects, medication interactions, effectiveness of treatments, etc...
I fully understand people's privacy concerns, etc... but let's be realistic. E.g. people have been fighting against a national ID card in the US for a long time now, and yet, there is an enormous wealth of information available on virtually any individual (US citizen or resident), mostly gathered by *private* companies. From my interpretation of laws, it seems dubious that private companies can collect so much information in a legal way, but I guess they manage to do it. And from what I've heard and read, it seems that the US government is definitely allowed to purchase this information at will. So, what privacy are we talking about again?
Really... I do believe privacy is very important. But I also believe that progress is possible without breaking down that privacy. In fact, I do believe that progress can be made by providing sufficient oversight and spending effort and time on pushing for the implementation of sufficient protections.
The saddest of all this is that the ATM implementation as it is used in the US suffers from quite a lot of security concerns, whereas one of the very first multibank banking systems was able to a much better job at security earlier on. Take for example BANCONTACT (BankSys in Belgium). They engineered the system to avoid transmitting the PIN, and to avoid requiring banks to actually record the PIN anywhere in their system. While a lot of the finer details are not really public, the core of the design revolves around building a concatenation of the account/card number, the PIN, and some other numeric identifiers that specify things like country code, bank code, etc... That number conveniently ends up being just enough digits to fill a 56-bit register, that with appropriate padding, turns into a 64-bit input entity for a DES-based encryption module. It isn't pure DES, and the key for the encryption is a combination of keys submitted by the participating banks. The result is what gets sent across the wire, and the banks (and BankSys) only uses that encrypted result as identifier. As such, there is no need to know the user's PIN (and in fact, it is really not stored). Of course, changes have been made to this design over the years (this was early 90s), but the back design goals remained the same: security!
Compare that to US banks that commonly can *mail* (through the US Postal Service) user's the PIN for their ATM card. I had that happen to me multiple times. Same with credit cards... All those notes in the mail to tell me what my PIN is... Plain stupid and very insecure.
It just shows how you can take a pretty well designed (and secure) system, even visit the designers and implementors to learn from it, and then to go back home and screw it up in various ways to make it less secure. Why? I honestly don't know.
Hm, I have yet to see a free money or debit card reader anywhere. For bills, money identifiers are quite expensive and a bit bulky. As far as debit card readers, those are not free either. Sometimes state agencies for the blind may be willing to pay for one, on an individual basis, but that certainly does not apply to the majority of blind people.
Also, note that you can't just use debit cards for everything. There are quite a few things in life that you do need cash for, and blind people should not be excluded from being able to use regular money.
Finally, making bills accessible isn't really rocket science. Looking around at other countries around the world, the US is really far behind in this. Unfortunately for the blind, the US treasury has a very large loophole (although it could make for an interesting legal battle): all US currency ever printed remains legal tender, so even if new bills are made accessible, there will remain a large amount of inaccessible bills in circulation for a *long* time. Other countries have been able to replace bills. On the other hand, that also means that it is even more important for the US to act on this immediately, because the problem only gets bigger (and they already missed the boat on the last bill redesign (using colour) that went through recently).
Mentioned future development already exists
on
Talking iPods
·
· Score: 1
OK - this is definitely a bogus patent. For one, RockBox already provides this functionality (in a more limited sense right now) albeit without using a TTS engine. Though it could (e.g. using flite). But the article says that the patent mentions future developments bringing speech menus to other devices?!? Hello?!? Has Apple paid attention to developments in the past couple of years? There already are speech-output capable PDAs and cellphones on the market. Look at any reputable site concerning accessible devices for the blind, and you'll find just how much already exists right now. The blind community has even commented on the lack of speech support in the iPod (so it is not a surprise that Apple is finally paying attention, now that they realize that there is a larger market for this feature).
Of course, based on the US Patent Office's track record I would not at all be surprised if this patent actually gets granted.
Slashdot Mirror
What gives the impression that voters have anything to do with how the NSA operates? Sure, in theory one could try to vote someone into a position of authority who could influence their operation, but how realistic is that? The people that head up the NSA are 'technically' appointed and confirmed by elected officials, but an administration is not going to appoint someone who isn't on their side, so congress has limited options. In the end, it becomes a choice between (ultimately) identical candidates. Administrations may boast they will clean things up when elected but once they win and realize what they have, does anyone really think they are going to throw it away?
Many campaign promises get broken... those that have to do with reducing one's own power almost always get broken.
In the end, intelligence agencies and law enforcement are usually very focused on finding ways around any limitations to how they believe they can be most effective. That does include finding ways to circumvent legal barriers.
Sadly, it seems to be largely human nature... how many people can resist snooping at a diary when found, or a colleague's pay check found in a drawer while looking for a pencil, etc... This is simply on a much larger scale. Yes, it is very wrong, but if you think someone, when voted into the coveted position of being able to know most secrets, is going to give up the advantages it offers.... think again.
And now it is also known where the drones will be controlled from, although I am not convinced that there is only a single command centre. That would be rather stupid... Anyway, so, one of the control centres will be located in Horsham, PA near Philadelphia on part of the grounds of the format naval air base, according to the following article: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130320_Horsham_command_center_for_drones_stirs_controversy.html
It would actually make quite a lot of sense for a custom system where the control software (essentially the OS) is provided in the srtorage component (16MB), and things like actual programs are loaded into RAM. Since typically (as far as I recall) mindstorm programs are loaded into the brick at runtime, it makes perfect sense that no storage is used for this, other than perhaps a ramdisk.
There is also the notion that an EULA bears only explicit agreement from one party, which generally isn't enough to call it a true contract in writing. A unilaterally binding agreement is not really a contract in the strictest sense. When combined with the actual act of purchasing, one could try to argue that the entire transaction (that concludes with the agreement to the EULA) constitutes some form of contract, but I doubt that in a legal sense that would be held up as a broad interpretation of the contract concept.
I know of at least one situation where a contractor had a customer sign his agreement that stated that the customer would pay a certain amount for work listed on the agreement. There was a dispute over the work, the agreement was brought into evidence, and rendered invalid as a contract because (1) the customer never got a copy of the agreement he signed, and (2) the agreement did not contain a signature of the contractor or representative.
> "The question becomes, what do we do to fix this so that consumers are truly protected?
Well, the obvious solution is to fix the US court system, where almost any case can be brought against a company or an individual, often even with barely any basis in law. It is much too lucrative to sue, and thus that right gets abused left and right.
So, tighten up the court system so that it becomes more about upholding established law rather than entertaining suits from attorneys who just happen to have found some interpretation of some law (or anything close enough) that they could argue to have a case against someone.
Is this realistic? Of course not. Ever since the notion of 'common sense' has been abolished in favour of law, anything even remotely sensible has become impossible. The courts now get to deal with lawsuits about stuff that should be common sense, and at the same time attorneys refuse quite obvious cases because they feel it cannot be won because despite 'common sense' there isn't enough hard evidence to show that someone was truly at fault. It's pretty much impossible to change (1) the court system, (2) the legislation, and (3) people's desire to seek monetary gain at the expense of others...
The main problem with the aDesigner approach is that it is based on assumptions about how a blind individual accesses a webpage with a specific screen reader. Reality is that there are multiple screen readers that are commonly used by the blind, and they have differences in how they present a webpage. As such, a simulation of how a webpage is rendered through a screen reader would need to be configurable based on the behaviour of the various screen readers, and often even different versions of a specific screen reader. On top of that, you also have to account for the individual reading behaviour of the user, because not all users utilize the screen reader the same way when reading web pages.
Back in 2005, at the HCI International conference in Las Vegas, Ms. Asakawa confirmed that her team had not tested the accuracy of the aDesigner against input from a sufficient diverse group of blind users. Instead, it was reported to be based on an assumed standard screen reader and reading protocol.
That is not to say that ms. Asakawa has not done very impressive work. It is simply more limited in nature, and by promoting it to e.g. web developers as yet another tool that will tell them how a blind person will see the page, a possible disservice is done, because developers (especially in companies) are very good at deciding that their pages are accessible 'because they look right in aDesigner'.
I think you miss another important aspect of this "war"... As in fighting a guerilla army, you usually end up being on the less effective side of the conflict due to rules and regulations that one tends to be bound by, whereas a guerilla army usually couldn't care less about the rules. Spammers do not care about breaking rules, regulations, and protocols, so they can play very dirty whenever they want (and botnets are a clear example of that). Offensive action against them is usually still bound by some rules, and thus they have a natural advantage. Spammers do not care about any collateral damage... System administrators and othe people fighting the spammers usually do have to care about collateral damage.
Your claim that bookshare is 'at no charge' isn't entirely accurate. Bookshare does charge a fee to its members, except for some specific user classes such as k12 students who have a reading disability.
The problem with the kindle was largely that the text-to-speech functionality was a mainstream feature they were advertising (albeit in somewhat beta-fashion). In terms of accessibility to enable blind and visually impaired users to read the (otherwise) print materials on the kindle, no copyright violation etc would take place because that is covered under specific exceptions. Of course, the overall inaccessibility of the kindle makes that argument a bit hard to make.
But with the Intel Reader being marketed as a specific assistive technology device, it's functionality as described would not be in violation with any copyright laws or DMCA because it is an assistive technology device that enables printed materials to be read by blind and visually impaired users.
Copyright exceptions exist for the purpose of ensuring that people with disabilities can access print materials, etc... Printed works can be presented in alternative specialized formats (and voice rendering is one of those formats) without constituting a copyright violation. Check out bookshare.org... It's largely based on that.
I also expect that it is a step towards having better protection against e.g. any form of phishing sites that would try to appear to be a Google site.
There is also an often overlooked consideration that affects the influence of piracy on sales. Quite often, if people pirate software it is because they don't care to pay for it (and it is of course illegal and wrong). But those same people are also likely to go for used copies of software as an alternative to pirated copies. In either case, the software vendor isn't making a sale from this person.
For online games, that is even less an issue because there the revenue stream is of course the subscriptions.
As a not-so-in-fashion player of only select games, I happily await the availability of used copies (yes, cheap and sometimes even free) rather than bothering with pirated copies. Sure, I won't be able to play a game within the first few days of it being available, but I do not even play many games, so I can happily wait to get my hands on a really cheap copy.
In all, looking at the amount of used copies of games that pass through e.g. EBay, I think it is quite clear that the amount of people playing a given game is vastly larger than the amount of copies that got ever sold.
You may want to check out Debian, especially now Lenny has been released as Debian 5.0. It includes a decent amount of work from the DebianEeePC team (http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC), and runs nicely. Like all distributions, there are a few rough edges for some Eee PC models (due to hardware differences and less-than-ideal drivers being available).
In the end, it will probably depend largely on what people are used to in terms of Linux distributions. But if you like Debian and Debian-derivatives, I would certainly recommend taking a look at Debian.
It is also important to note that the DebianEeePC project has a very active developer and user community that is more than happy to help out both newbies and more experienced users.
Actually, if I am not mistaken, accessibility is covered as an exception under copyright law in that accessible versions of e.g. books in specialized format (which audio is one form of) are allowed. That's what NLS (part of the Library of Congress) and bookshare.org are based on.
The text-to-speech feature of Kindle2 is important to people with visual impairments, since it is a good step in the direction of making the device accessible to that user group.
Of course, the example you refer to has more to do with a broken healthcare/insurance system than with the post.
Either way, the issue with umbilical cord blood banking is more like paying social security taxes, without having any guarantees that by the time you need to be able to count on the payout there actually will be any. While there is a lot of research pointing at stem cell research being the answer to many problems, there is no guanratee that (1) by the time you need it the research will have resulted in a usable solution to whatever problem you face, and (2) by the time you need it the banked cord blood will in fact be usable for whatever solution has been found to be possible with stem cells.
Especially (2) is a bit of a concern to me personally, because you invest a whole lot of money into the banking while there really is no guarantee that the entire process is indeed capable of storing the needed cord blood for the length of time that might be needed without any ill effects. Nor is stem cell research far enough as far as I can see that they can really answer whether cord blood banked for say 20, 30, heck, 80 years will indeed yield stem cells that can successfully be used in treatments.
It is utter irony of course that the US is so much for boasting freedom etc, but they are implementing measures that are supposedly done in the interest of security without really adding much of anything (beyond annoyance and essentially making the entire visa waiver program useless). It does however seem to indicate just what the US government thinks about the rest of the world: no one can be trusted.
Of course, since apparently green card holders now will be subjected to the ridiculous US VISIT requirements as well, that distruct shouldn't surprise anyone.
Sad thing is... I'd be willing to bet money that Obama won't change any of this during his presidency, which (to me) would be a clear indication that this isn't just the action of an adminstration under a crazy shrub, but rather a consistent move towards protectionism and isolation.
Sad sad sad...
The question is of course who will be providing "vendor" support for things like the programming tools (compiler, linker, debugger, ...) given that it looks like the code changes that were needed to accomplish OpenSolaris on zSeries have not been integrated into the upstream repositories of those packages? Forked programming tools are a big concern, unless someone can truly commit to ensuring that the fork can be kept up to date with ongoing upstream development, or if the changes actually do get integrated in the upstream anyway.
"According to the EULA, the retail boxed copies..." is of course the key statement in terms of the countersuit requesting that the EULA be declared void, in which case your entire argument becomes void as well.
In my more adventurous days I encountered what seemed to be (but wasn't) a rather fun immigration agent when entering the US from my 6th or 7th international business trip that year, and was faced with the question (while the officer was flipping through my well-stamped passport): "Have you ever come to the US before?"
My first thought was 'well, duh, I live here (on a visa)' but I chose a nicer reply: "I can't remember but it ought to be in my passport."
He was not amused... Luckily this was pre-9/11...
Obviously, laws like this apply to the people in the country, not to people of a certain nationality. The interesting part of these laws is they usually offer equal protection to *anyone* in the country, not just citizens. So, I'd be willing to bet that Canadian law prohibits the publication of recognizable images (without consent) of even a tourist.
:)
If you drive to Canada from the US, and your car gets broken into, it won't matter that it isn't a Canadian car, or that the car isn't owned by a Canadian. At least, not to law enforcement. The person breaking into the car might of course take the license plate into consideration
I believe the issue is even more complicated than you mention, because we're talking about a possible "preventative cure", not a cure as-such. Therefore, it is not really a case of curing someone who has autism (especially not severe cases) but rather preventing autism from developing (or developing further). So, it is not only a matter of whether one should go for this preventative cure in a specific situation, but also whether it is too late to really make a difference.
Overall, this research result is not entirely unexpected. A lot of earlier research has pointed in the same direction, and people have been using carefully tailored diets for quite a while with reasonable success to handle autism (and some other developmental conditions). But as far as I can see, severe autism cases may perhaps be more manageable by a strict diet, but it will not "cure" the person from being autistic. As far as I know, that is still (and possibly will always be) a permanent condition.
Yes, global sharing of personal records such as medical information is a risk, as is any form of sharing. While controls can and will be put in place, there is always a risk that something is going to get messed up. On the other hand, is the risk really any greater than it already is at national levels? So, they should protect things better on the national level first? Sure, but that can equally well be done by a major overhaul of the entire system, making it more global as part of the "better" design.
And besides, judging by the various scandals that have emerged in recent years in the US concerning medical records (e.g. finding a whole bunch of them in a dumpster behind a clinic, etc...) it isn't as if most laws and regulations that are meant to protect this data are implemented well. So, why not allow for a decent attempt to redesign how things are done, and put effort in supporting proper protections in said new system rather than spending time and effort on fighting against a redesign?
In the end, sharing of medical information on a more global level is largely used for statistical investigation of things, such as immunization side effects, medication interactions, effectiveness of treatments, etc...
I fully understand people's privacy concerns, etc... but let's be realistic. E.g. people have been fighting against a national ID card in the US for a long time now, and yet, there is an enormous wealth of information available on virtually any individual (US citizen or resident), mostly gathered by *private* companies. From my interpretation of laws, it seems dubious that private companies can collect so much information in a legal way, but I guess they manage to do it. And from what I've heard and read, it seems that the US government is definitely allowed to purchase this information at will. So, what privacy are we talking about again?
Really... I do believe privacy is very important. But I also believe that progress is possible without breaking down that privacy. In fact, I do believe that progress can be made by providing sufficient oversight and spending effort and time on pushing for the implementation of sufficient protections.
The saddest of all this is that the ATM implementation as it is used in the US suffers from quite a lot of security concerns, whereas one of the very first multibank banking systems was able to a much better job at security earlier on. Take for example BANCONTACT (BankSys in Belgium). They engineered the system to avoid transmitting the PIN, and to avoid requiring banks to actually record the PIN anywhere in their system. While a lot of the finer details are not really public, the core of the design revolves around building a concatenation of the account/card number, the PIN, and some other numeric identifiers that specify things like country code, bank code, etc... That number conveniently ends up being just enough digits to fill a 56-bit register, that with appropriate padding, turns into a 64-bit input entity for a DES-based encryption module. It isn't pure DES, and the key for the encryption is a combination of keys submitted by the participating banks. The result is what gets sent across the wire, and the banks (and BankSys) only uses that encrypted result as identifier. As such, there is no need to know the user's PIN (and in fact, it is really not stored). Of course, changes have been made to this design over the years (this was early 90s), but the back design goals remained the same: security!
Compare that to US banks that commonly can *mail* (through the US Postal Service) user's the PIN for their ATM card. I had that happen to me multiple times. Same with credit cards... All those notes in the mail to tell me what my PIN is... Plain stupid and very insecure.
It just shows how you can take a pretty well designed (and secure) system, even visit the designers and implementors to learn from it, and then to go back home and screw it up in various ways to make it less secure. Why? I honestly don't know.
Hm, I have yet to see a free money or debit card reader anywhere. For bills, money identifiers are quite expensive and a bit bulky. As far as debit card readers, those are not free either. Sometimes state agencies for the blind may be willing to pay for one, on an individual basis, but that certainly does not apply to the majority of blind people.
Also, note that you can't just use debit cards for everything. There are quite a few things in life that you do need cash for, and blind people should not be excluded from being able to use regular money.
Finally, making bills accessible isn't really rocket science. Looking around at other countries around the world, the US is really far behind in this. Unfortunately for the blind, the US treasury has a very large loophole (although it could make for an interesting legal battle): all US currency ever printed remains legal tender, so even if new bills are made accessible, there will remain a large amount of inaccessible bills in circulation for a *long* time. Other countries have been able to replace bills. On the other hand, that also means that it is even more important for the US to act on this immediately, because the problem only gets bigger (and they already missed the boat on the last bill redesign (using colour) that went through recently).
OK - this is definitely a bogus patent. For one, RockBox already provides this functionality (in a more limited sense right now) albeit without using a TTS engine. Though it could (e.g. using flite). But the article says that the patent mentions future developments bringing speech menus to other devices?!? Hello?!? Has Apple paid attention to developments in the past couple of years? There already are speech-output capable PDAs and cellphones on the market. Look at any reputable site concerning accessible devices for the blind, and you'll find just how much already exists right now. The blind community has even commented on the lack of speech support in the iPod (so it is not a surprise that Apple is finally paying attention, now that they realize that there is a larger market for this feature).
Of course, based on the US Patent Office's track record I would not at all be surprised if this patent actually gets granted.