I'd think using one of these laser trackers in the US will get you a visit from some humorless suits, especially if they believe you're using that laser to paint an aircraft to give an aimpoint for a followup missile. Remember, it's not what you're doing that gets you into trouble, it's what they think you're doing.
What would be interesting is somebody homebrewing an EMP cannon and tracking system, then shooting these UAVs down when they cross a property line, then suing the city/county/state for putting them in the air over private property. Bound to kick up taxes in that neighborhood. Would a suit based on the assumption that an overflight by a UAV be considered a warrantless search work against the authorities? Would the city/county/state arrest the property owner for 'destruction of government property', 'obstructing justice', or 'interfering with a criminal investigation' even if there is no clear-cut 'crimes' being committed and no warrants issued at the time of the overflight?
Hmmmmmmmmmm. I think I'll head down to Radio Shack...
Perhaps they created a branching reality (multiverse theory), and in their reality they are gone. Maybe that solves the Fermi Paradox. Advanced civilizations wipe themselves out by observing too much. Curiosity kills the...well, um...cat. Are we about to win a Galactic Darwin Award also?
Wasn't it Douglas Adams who said the prevailing theory these days is, the universe lasts just until somebody can figure it out, then resets itself into something even weirder, and that this process has happened 3 or 4 times already?
Initial drive capacity. As in, what kinda drive does it come with. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that, I haddn't had my coffee yet. Somebody else in this thread mentioned it comes driveless. I think I'll pass on this one. $900 for 2 TB of storage (Drobo & 4x500 GB SATA drives) is a bit much. I can build my own for a LOT less than that.
Yeah, that was Eric Von Daniken's theory. Aliens came to earth, mated with dumb animals and gave birth to us, then they helped their children build pyramids or some such nonsense.
Why would aliens want to breed with dumb animals? That's the part of the whole 'Chariots of the Gods' bit I never did get. Larry Niven had some conjectures about the problem.
David Brin's "Heart of the Comet" has a more interesting take on panspermia. Hell of a read, too...
My girlfriend is more a Star Wars fan, though, thankfully, she HATES Jar-Jar. Fortunately for me, she 'indulges' my Trek passion, and even took me to The Star Trek Experience for my birthday this year.
I wouldn't recommend one of these home theatres, though, til the kids get outta the 'break everything in sight' phase.
Seriously, it's like you guys really love FUD, I mean look at what you just said, it's like you didn't even think for a second about what could be done to prevent the abuses you're talking about, you're just going "OMG this is what's gonna happen if we do that" as if there was no way to prevent that. You just start imagining scenarios in which, in our case, data is as unprotected as possible and that the most evil person/group of persons you can imagine tries to exploit it, and then far-fetching the whole thing to apply it to something that would never happen in the first place. And not even for a second do you try to think up ways to prevent such abuses.
Never dealt with an insurance company beyond paying the premiums, eh? Or the government beyond picking up your check, eh? Look at what you're saying, "Nothing to worry about, our government would never lie, our corporations are honest." When you decide to put down your Oreos, turn off your MTV, and come outta Mom's basement to the Real World, let me know.
Your points are so ridiculous yet you just do see it, just try to apply that type of thinking to storing credit card numbers, entire bank accounts and social security numbers on computer systems and you'll see you'd get even better FUD out of it, the only problem being you'd know none of those FUDdy things happened.
I don't have any credit cards. I don't believe in 28% interest on a credit card and taking 40 years to pay them off. Nothing to steal there. If I want to borrow money, I'll talk with my bank and/or my credit union. If I absolutely positively need plastic, I use a prepaid debit card for 50 bucks a year. Go ahead and steal the number for it if you can, I don't keep much on it unless I need to get something with it and cash is inconvenient.
And you'd be surprised at what I could find out about you from your social security number. I used to do a lotta skip tracing. SSNs and credit reports are REAL handy for tracking somebody down so you can sue 'em. Totally legal for the job I was doing, Totally legal for the search engine we paid for to offer them to us for the use we had for them.
Hmm, no. Do you think that insurance companies now, as they don't have enough info to assess your risk level, simply say : "Oh well, too bad. We'll just charge him the same premiums we would if we knew he was low-risk."?
They have these guys working for them called actuaries. They do for insurance companies what bookies do for betting - they analyse risk and compute odds. It's a hitherto unknown science called 'statistics'. And they're good at it. Why do you think car insurance premiums are 5 times the 'going rate' for males between 16 and 25? Because statistically, the risk is MUCH greater of an accident in that age bracket.
The total premiums would probably go down a little, but the distribution would be much more fair and efficient.
Um, no. The insurance company's profits will go up, the premiums will remain the same. Hey, you're used to the rate now, right? By getting more info on you, they can more accurately gauge the risk you'll be that they (god forbid) actually have to pay a claim, and if your risk goes beyond a certain threshhold, they'll drop you like a hot rock. Think I'm kidding? File claims on 3 uninsured idiots backing into your car in a parking lot within a year and see how fast your premiums go up after the 2nd, and how fast they cancel you after the 3rd. Insurance companies are for-profit entities. They're in business to make money, not to pay claims. If they can figure out a way to pay zero claims, they'll do it.
Actually I hope one day (within the next 20 years) gene sequencing for health purposes will be made systematically for health purposes and stored in a super-high security database that other branches of the government/law enforcement couldn't get to, except of course via a special warrant emitted by a judge.
No thank you. Having everybody's genome in a database someplace is a monumentally BAD idea. What's to stop some unscrupulous person deciding they don't like, for instance, people with blonde hair and brown eyes? They can dig through the genome records to find what gene sequences selects for both of these traits, then cobble together a virus that targets these sequences. Impossible? Now, mebbe, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it'll be impossible forever.
Besides, our government gets all kind of info without a warrant these days. Want to give them more? Not me, unless it'll bury them in paperwork til they can't do anything else but the paperwork...
I don't know what it would implicate, but I suppose it might tell you how likely you are to have a certain type of cancer/cardiovascular disease/alzheimer and allow you to stay on the look-out for what you're the most likely to have.
And let's look at health insurance, since you brought it up. Give them this information, and they can start dropping coverage on people at risk. People like me. Last place I worked decided to change coverage to get a 'better rate'. First thing the salesman asked when he came in was, "Who here is diabetic?" Three hands went up, mine being one of them. Second question was, "Anybody here have heart problems?" I raised my hand. He then said, "Sorry, we can't cover diabetics or people with heart problems." And since my coverage dropped with the old company when they switched over, I became uninsurable because the old insurance company wasn't going to carry me unless my premiums went from 200/month to 1500/month. And that's just for me.
And besides, private databases are under no obligation to demand to see a warrant. They can be shared for 'legitimate business reasons'. How much you wanna bet that these databases won't be sold to insurance companies, security companies, credit card companies, anybody with a vested interest in seeing that they keep somebody alive to get money out of them? Never saw a privacy agreement that didn't state that conditions of use are subject to change without notice?
I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money.
Who'd want it?
Seriously, who'd want to download his music? I've downloaded a ton of stuff over the years, but I never downloaded KISS.
I admit I'm rather undereducated, having only learned a bit of calculus way back in the Stone Age. You know, before ipods. I downloaded the PDF, This stuff is way over my head. It'll be interesting to see what kind of experiments he's planning on trying to prove the theory, though. Especially the gravity part...
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Except it's not called stalking when the police does it. It's called 'an ongoing investigation'.
What would be interesting is somebody homebrewing an EMP cannon and tracking system, then shooting these UAVs down when they cross a property line, then suing the city/county/state for putting them in the air over private property. Bound to kick up taxes in that neighborhood. Would a suit based on the assumption that an overflight by a UAV be considered a warrantless search work against the authorities? Would the city/county/state arrest the property owner for 'destruction of government property', 'obstructing justice', or 'interfering with a criminal investigation' even if there is no clear-cut 'crimes' being committed and no warrants issued at the time of the overflight?
Hmmmmmmmmmm. I think I'll head down to Radio Shack...
Wasn't it Douglas Adams who said the prevailing theory these days is, the universe lasts just until somebody can figure it out, then resets itself into something even weirder, and that this process has happened 3 or 4 times already?
This new theory suggests two things I see off the top of my head:
1. There is no other intelligent life in the universe, otherwise they would have killed the universe by looking at it.
2. The theory is flawed and the universe is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. We just don't understand all the process yet.
Personally, my money's on #2.
We shoulda thought of that sooner...
Thanks, that's what I needed to know.
Initial drive capacity. As in, what kinda drive does it come with. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that, I haddn't had my coffee yet. Somebody else in this thread mentioned it comes driveless. I think I'll pass on this one. $900 for 2 TB of storage (Drobo & 4x500 GB SATA drives) is a bit much. I can build my own for a LOT less than that.
Looks cute, but doesn't say a damned thing about initial drive capacity. For $500 I wanna know how much it'll hold before I buy it.
Can you say 'niche market'?
Why would aliens want to breed with dumb animals? That's the part of the whole 'Chariots of the Gods' bit I never did get. Larry Niven had some conjectures about the problem.
David Brin's "Heart of the Comet" has a more interesting take on panspermia. Hell of a read, too...
No, that was when they did the lobotomies. The writer's strike is a lot more recent than that.
Yeah, it's proprietary, but a lotta open source audio apps know MP3.
As for hosing my user partition, that's what backups are for. You DO back up things now and again, don't you???
I wouldn't recommend one of these home theatres, though, til the kids get outta the 'break everything in sight' phase.
Oh, great. More Pauly Shore movies.
Shoot me now, please.
That's the Mayans that disappeared. The Incas were down in Peru.
Never dealt with an insurance company beyond paying the premiums, eh? Or the government beyond picking up your check, eh? Look at what you're saying, "Nothing to worry about, our government would never lie, our corporations are honest." When you decide to put down your Oreos, turn off your MTV, and come outta Mom's basement to the Real World, let me know.
I don't have any credit cards. I don't believe in 28% interest on a credit card and taking 40 years to pay them off. Nothing to steal there. If I want to borrow money, I'll talk with my bank and/or my credit union. If I absolutely positively need plastic, I use a prepaid debit card for 50 bucks a year. Go ahead and steal the number for it if you can, I don't keep much on it unless I need to get something with it and cash is inconvenient.
And you'd be surprised at what I could find out about you from your social security number. I used to do a lotta skip tracing. SSNs and credit reports are REAL handy for tracking somebody down so you can sue 'em. Totally legal for the job I was doing, Totally legal for the search engine we paid for to offer them to us for the use we had for them.
They have these guys working for them called actuaries. They do for insurance companies what bookies do for betting - they analyse risk and compute odds. It's a hitherto unknown science called 'statistics'. And they're good at it. Why do you think car insurance premiums are 5 times the 'going rate' for males between 16 and 25? Because statistically, the risk is MUCH greater of an accident in that age bracket.
Um, no. The insurance company's profits will go up, the premiums will remain the same. Hey, you're used to the rate now, right? By getting more info on you, they can more accurately gauge the risk you'll be that they (god forbid) actually have to pay a claim, and if your risk goes beyond a certain threshhold, they'll drop you like a hot rock. Think I'm kidding? File claims on 3 uninsured idiots backing into your car in a parking lot within a year and see how fast your premiums go up after the 2nd, and how fast they cancel you after the 3rd. Insurance companies are for-profit entities. They're in business to make money, not to pay claims. If they can figure out a way to pay zero claims, they'll do it.
No thank you. Having everybody's genome in a database someplace is a monumentally BAD idea. What's to stop some unscrupulous person deciding they don't like, for instance, people with blonde hair and brown eyes? They can dig through the genome records to find what gene sequences selects for both of these traits, then cobble together a virus that targets these sequences. Impossible? Now, mebbe, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it'll be impossible forever.
Besides, our government gets all kind of info without a warrant these days. Want to give them more? Not me, unless it'll bury them in paperwork til they can't do anything else but the paperwork...
And let's look at health insurance, since you brought it up. Give them this information, and they can start dropping coverage on people at risk. People like me. Last place I worked decided to change coverage to get a 'better rate'. First thing the salesman asked when he came in was, "Who here is diabetic?" Three hands went up, mine being one of them. Second question was, "Anybody here have heart problems?" I raised my hand. He then said, "Sorry, we can't cover diabetics or people with heart problems." And since my coverage dropped with the old company when they switched over, I became uninsurable because the old insurance company wasn't going to carry me unless my premiums went from 200/month to 1500/month. And that's just for me.
And besides, private databases are under no obligation to demand to see a warrant. They can be shared for 'legitimate business reasons'. How much you wanna bet that these databases won't be sold to insurance companies, security companies, credit card companies, anybody with a vested interest in seeing that they keep somebody alive to get money out of them? Never saw a privacy agreement that didn't state that conditions of use are subject to change without notice?
Who'd want it?
Seriously, who'd want to download his music? I've downloaded a ton of stuff over the years, but I never downloaded KISS.
Personally, I never cared much for KISS's music. It was my generation's version of Britney Spears. 'Nuff said.
Lemme get back to you in about 5 billion years...
AFTER I've had coffee...
Oh, wait, that's String Theory...
I admit I'm rather undereducated, having only learned a bit of calculus way back in the Stone Age. You know, before ipods. I downloaded the PDF, This stuff is way over my head. It'll be interesting to see what kind of experiments he's planning on trying to prove the theory, though. Especially the gravity part...
The practice runs are kinda fun tho...
But why would you want to? Wouldn't they be more trouble than they're worth?