There's not a real economy in WoW, per say. You get most of your money from quests and kills, which is pretty well-regulated (in the sense that lower level mobs and quests give lower amounts of money, and there's a limit to what you can kill and loot), and you spend most of it in NPC shops. The only semblance of an economy is the auction house and trade channels.
The fact that most of your money disappears into NPC shops with set prices keeps inflation from happening.
How great would it be to have a go at driving that thing?:)
I remember hearing that the scientists driving the rover had to live on martian time. Since the rovers were solar powered they could only go during the martian daytime, which doesn't always coincide with the earth daytime (I believe it's a few hours longer, but I may be wrong). The result was scientists who were sometimes wide awake and working at 4AM, but sleeping at 2PM. They had to be careful to stay indoors if they knew it was dark outside, because walking outside when your body thinks it's midday and seeing it dark can throw off your whole schedule and make you tired when you need to be awake.
Yes, I'm a girl. And I've been on the internet since about '95. I've surfed Slashdot since probably '00 and have had a computer in my house literally as long as I can remember. I don't count in the "recent" rise of women in computing.;)
Well, I agree that you can usually get used to lower volumes.. but this is not true when there is background noise unfortunatly. Without good bg-noise-blocking headphones you'll need to raise the volume to focus on what you want to hear, especially if it has a narrator involved...
Very true. Like you, I turn it up when I'm in a loud area (like in the car or while doing dishes), but then turn it down again when the background noise is gone. This is where the turn-it-down-until-other-people-can't-hear-it theory comes in. I either take the bud out and turn it down until I can't hear it, or turn it down until I feel like I can just barely understand the narrator (and my ears adjust to this lower volume within about 30 seconds). Sometimes I forget to turn it down, though, and that's where my bf's voices come in handy.
ihm.. besides... isnt it difficult judging volume on what other people hear? when he's not around, do you constantly go around asking people "can you hear this?"
Simple. I take the earbud out of my ear (I only wear one at a time normally) and see if I can still hear it.
It's actually a good rule, and I do check my volume every once and a while, especially after doing things like the dishes where I have to turn up the volume to make out what the narrator is saying. It's too easy to listen to something that's too loud and simply get used to it. Fortunately it's often true in the reverse. Listen to something you can barely hear and eventually you won't notice the low volume at all. (Or is that my slightly insane boyfriend stealthily turning up the volume so he can hear his voices?)
My rule for volume was that if somebody standing near me can hear it, even if it's just a quiet hum or just the beat, it's too loud. Every once and a while my boyfriend tells me he hears voices, which is his way of telling me to turn down my audiobook's volume.
Seriously, though, fear is a defense mechanism. It evolved because creatures that run away from danger survive. If these mice escaped, they'd doubtless get eaten by something within minutes of leaving their safe, cozy cages.
Being fearless sounds like a good thing, but it's really not. It's like pain. If I told you I could make your brain stop processing pain you'd probably rejoyce. But that's actually the disease known as leprosy. Leppers don't feel pain, so they don't recognize when they have injuries and fail to care for themselves. Lots of nasty infections (among other complications) ensue.
Yes, but if you put an RFID reader in every door in a building you can get a pretty good idea of where the person went and what he did. It's not as invasive as video monitoring (you can't see exactly what the person in the room, just when he entered it), but in a way it's worse because there's no way to hide from it, assuming you're forced to wear the badges and every door has a reader. Sure, if you put a card reader at the front of the school you'd be able to see when kids went in and out, but it wouldn't be very invasive because they could avoid that door if they wanted to (assuming there are other entrances and exits). The way they're talking about it (readers at the doors to every classroom and even the bathrooms, for chrissakes!), you'd be able to place a kid in a specific room or hallway at any given time between the hours of 8 and 3. That sounds pretty damn invasive to me. Tracking what class your kids should be in is one thing. Tracking where they are down to the minute is another.
On the plus side, you'd probably get less kids lingering in the hallway when the bell rings. Now the teachers can pinpoint down to the millisecond how late they are to class. Kids, we're taking one point off your grade for every second between the bell and when you come in the door.
The danger of making broad statements like this, however scientifically accurate, is that people tend to read them and say "Oh, I'm a woman, that must mean I'm not good at spacial analysis and that I will live longer than the men in my life." That's not necessarily true, and I know you're not saying it's true, but most people will read those statments and start to make assumptions based on someone's gender, which is where bias and predjudice begin.
I'm a female geek, and that already puts me in the minority. I happen to have extremely well-devloped spacial skills. In a high school art class I once drew a made-up glass box with interconnected passages for an exercise on perspective (such exercises usually involve rulers and a dot on the horizon). The art teacher (also female) thought I had drawn a bunch of nonsense until I sketched out the box from a top-down view. From that she helped me work out the shading so it looked more realistic. I still have that picture, and most people who look at it will have no idea what's going on unless they stare at it for a while or until I show them the top-down sketch. But it's exactly what a box like that would look like.
I also am extremely good in math. I never had to put any effort at all into my math or computer science classes and always got As. When I went to college I was afraid that my high school had gone easy on me and that I was going to be slaughtered by the Calculus 2 class I took in my first semester, but I aced that as well with barely a sweat.
If women are scientifically pre-dispositioned to be poor at math, why did I do so well? Oh, simple: I'm the exception to the rule. But this is science we're talking about. There are no exceptions. If you have exceptions it means that you need to redefine your rule. Rather than simply saying "women are worse at math than men," find out why!
Now, here comes the controvertial part. The closed-minded and faint of heart need not read any farther. What if gender is not a digital (1 or 0) quality? What if gender is an analog (a range between 1 and 0) quality? Scientifically, sex is an analog quality. For those who don't know, "sex" refers to the physical sex of a being (usually defined by the genetalia) and "gender" refers to the self-identity of the being as either male or female. Different quantities of hormones can create males with female secondary characteristics or vice-versa. You can read more about sex and gender here.
It makes people uncomfortable to think of someone as being anything other than "male" or "female." Gender is a digital quality, but sex is an analog quality. You might also say that the analog-ness of sex is abnormal, and only occurs with genetic mutations. Well, men and women produce BOTH of the sex-related hormones, testosterone and estrogen. It's really these hormones that determine someone's sex. In a way, every male is part female because he produces estrogen, and vice versa because females produce testosterone. Perhaps if a female produces more testosterone than normal, but not enough to cause her gender to switch to male then she'll show traditionally male qualities, like improved math skills.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that using "gender" as a basis for anything scientific will run you into trouble because it's really just a concept we've made up so we can slap people into two neat and separate groups. If you tell me that the presence of testosterone leads to improved math skills (and show me studies to prove it!) I won't doubt it. But if you tell me that being a man leads to improved math skills I'm going to tell you your science needs work.
Don't know how true this is, but I've been told that regardless of what contract you signed they cannot stake a claim for EVERYTHING you do on your free time. They can claim anything you do while at work or during time you are being paid to work. They can also claim anything you do on your free time that has something to do with their company (so if you worked for a gaming company, any freelance games you code will be property of your employer). But if it doesn't directly relate to your employer's business and you don't do it on company time then you should own all rights to your own creations/ideas.
You could argue that octopi, too, have that feature. They can change the color and pattern of their skin similar to the way we can change the color and pattern on a monitor. They even have pixels of a sort (I think, I only know a token amount about octopus biology). They just don't do it with electrons or produce their own light. There are, however, creatures in nature that produce their own light. If you loosen your definitions enough I bet you could find an equivalent of just about any technology in nature.
The simple answer is, "it's just not the same." I have a smaller Wacom and while I absolutely adore the thing it still can't hold a candle to simple pencil-and-paper. It may be because I have a smaller model, but I just don't feel like I have the same amount of control with a tablet as I do with a pencil, even though they feel exactly the same in my hand. It probably has something to do with the slight disorientation you get when looking at one thing but drawing on another. Usually I can get over this, but when trying to make small, quick strokes I find I often draw at the wrong angle. My instinct is still to turn the tablet to get the correct angle, but obviously that causes problems (the pen in my hand no longer matches up with the screen position), and even with software that will turn the page on the screen it's hard to get that perfect angle. I find I need to erase (or undo) more often with a tablet than with a pencil because it just doesn't look right. Until they make the tablet itself behave more like paper (same texture, reactivity to the pencil, etc.) then the tablet will always be "just not the same."
Oh, and by the way, nature did come up with the "fixed wing" solution to flying. It's called a hawk.;) Sparrows fly by flapping. Hawks sometimes fly by flapping, but have discovered the more efficient solution of gliding. However, when gliding a hawk isn't as maneuverable as the flapping sparrow, though it can go faster. So, in a way the flapping versus fixed wing methods differ the same way as the legs versus wheels method. One may be more efficient, but the other is more maneuverable (and may be a better solution depending on the exact problem).
I have yet, though, to see nature come up with a jet engine.;)
Remember that an artificial fin is a lot simpler than an artifical leg. When an amputee had a leg, he had an ankle and a knee. Dolphins cannot move their tailfins the way we move our legs. Think of it more like an ear, it's functional but it doesn't move. The part that moves is in her tail, and that part wasn't amputated. The fin only provided extra push (thus why she can still swim with the amputated fin, just slower and with more exertion). I imagine that once she got used to having it on it was very easy to "remember" how to swim.
Take for example Office 2000. I've installed this before on a Windows 2000 machine. When I run it as an Administrator, there is no problem. When I run it as a User account, it keeps asking me to insert the Office 2000 CD because there are missing components. WTF? Granted I installed it with only the features I need, but why the hell should it ask for the CD in the User account and not the Administrator account?
You need to reinstall it for every new user who wants to use Office. It's a "security feature" of 2000. If you really want to use MSOffice, try 2003 instead.
Yeah, it'll remain a choice... the same way you can choose your cable company now. If all the stores decide to go this way then the consumer is out of luck.
That may not be a choice in the future. If every major store decides to use these things then you'll have to look for the little mom&pop stores that are becoming very rare nowadays (and extinct in some locations) to get items that don't have RFID tags embedded in them. For the next few years, yes you can only buy from stores that don't use RFID, but these little tags are incredibly useful and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that they will be on the majority of the things you buy in the majority of stores in ten or twenty years from now. Think ahead, my friend.;) It's the forseable future I'm worried about.
I don't doubt it, but this is what Wal-Mart has been known to do. Once it drives out the competition it closes its own doors if there's a better performing store not too far away. Saves them money. For a little while at least, you'll be without a market. I've known people this has happened to, though my own Wal-Mart seems to be doing well enough to stay, while the local K-Mart is holding on by its fingernails.
Are there no supermarkets near you? No Stater Brothers or Albertsons or whatever you have in your area?
Not ones that sell, say, chair cusions. I do not buy food at Wal-Mart, those I use the supermarkets for. I have no idea what Stater Brothers or Albertsons are, I'm assuming grocery stores. In any case, no there are none in my area.
What about Target?
No Target. I've seen their commercials plenty of times but I have never once seen a Target store. I don't believe there's any in my state (maybe there's one, but I haven't seen it).
What about a mall for that matter?
Closest mall is a half hour away and through one of the worst pieces of highway in the state (in terms of accidents--it's so bad that I don't like to drive through that area by myself, I need two sets of eyes). That's where I get most of my clothes and tech toys. And surprisingly, they have really good sushi in the food court. But I can't get there every day.
What is it you're looking for that you can't find at K-Mart that you need to go to Wal-Mart for??
Let's see, there was the time I needed chair cushions and K-Mart didn't have any to fit my chairs (they had about three types, Wal-Mart had more like twenty-three). K-Mart didn't have the right kind of shelving to go into my grandma's house, but Wal-Mart had just the right kind. There's been more, but those are the ones that come to mind right away. Going to K-Mart is just not worth it anymore. They almost have more bare shelves than filled ones, and no matter how long the lines they always only have two registers open. They're dying. I try to buy things from them when I can. I bought the game controller I used for Prince of Persia from them just a few weeks ago, but while I was there I noticed that they had about six computer game titles where Wal-Mart usually has a whole shelf full. I don't go to Wal-Mart that often, maybe once a month, but sometimes I have to. In my area Wal-Mart has already won, and there's not much I can do about it.
Don't outlaw them; don't regulate them; just inform people about them and let the PEOPLE decide what information they're comfortable giving away.
See, the thing is that if this technology keeps going forward that people might not have a choice in what information they're comfortable giving away. There's no switch on these tags to shut them off. You can't choose which items you want to be seen by folks with scanners walking by your house, they're all visible. You'd have to line your house with tinfoil to prevent that cop from walking by with a scanner and reading your inventory. You can inform people all you want, but they will still have to go to unreasonable limits to prevent these things from being tracked. I, for one, don't want to have to think carefully about my purchases to be sure I'm not buying something (or a combination of somethings) that might send up a red flag when some random cop scans my apartment. It doesn't matter how informed I am, that cop can still scan my house. Now, what's the difference between that and an actual physical search of your house? Without passing laws about the matter ahead of time, one is legal and the other is not. Which is why I say pass the laws now and don't wait for some poor schmuck to have to take this to the supreme court to argue that scanning his house is an illegal search. This is one of the reasons we have laws, to protect the rights of the little guy (even the little ignorant guy who has no idea what RFID tags are).
Now, while that would be cool what would not be cool would be if the cops could scan your apartment, decide you have the materials for making a bomb along with some items that may be typical for muslim households, assume from this that you are a terrorist, then barge into your house and arrest you.
RFID tags are coming, there's nothing we can do about it, and there's a lot of cool things we can do with them. We just want to be sure they're used properly, and that means laws. Don't outlaw them, just outline proper and improper usage.
Slashdot Mirror
There's not a real economy in WoW, per say. You get most of your money from quests and kills, which is pretty well-regulated (in the sense that lower level mobs and quests give lower amounts of money, and there's a limit to what you can kill and loot), and you spend most of it in NPC shops. The only semblance of an economy is the auction house and trade channels.
The fact that most of your money disappears into NPC shops with set prices keeps inflation from happening.
Does that still sound fun?
I feel like the name, "UpStage" and the release date of April 1 just screams "April Fools joke." The article looks too long to be a gag, though.
I hope the presence of the word "boyfriend" in my previous posts will discourage the subjects of your "fear". ;)
Maybe I'm a homosexual guy. ;)
;)
Yes, I'm a girl. And I've been on the internet since about '95. I've surfed Slashdot since probably '00 and have had a computer in my house literally as long as I can remember. I don't count in the "recent" rise of women in computing.
It's actually a good rule, and I do check my volume every once and a while, especially after doing things like the dishes where I have to turn up the volume to make out what the narrator is saying. It's too easy to listen to something that's too loud and simply get used to it. Fortunately it's often true in the reverse. Listen to something you can barely hear and eventually you won't notice the low volume at all. (Or is that my slightly insane boyfriend stealthily turning up the volume so he can hear his voices?)
My rule for volume was that if somebody standing near me can hear it, even if it's just a quiet hum or just the beat, it's too loud. Every once and a while my boyfriend tells me he hears voices, which is his way of telling me to turn down my audiobook's volume.
Seriously, though, fear is a defense mechanism. It evolved because creatures that run away from danger survive. If these mice escaped, they'd doubtless get eaten by something within minutes of leaving their safe, cozy cages.
Being fearless sounds like a good thing, but it's really not. It's like pain. If I told you I could make your brain stop processing pain you'd probably rejoyce. But that's actually the disease known as leprosy. Leppers don't feel pain, so they don't recognize when they have injuries and fail to care for themselves. Lots of nasty infections (among other complications) ensue.
And car accidents kill less people per year than heart disease. Does that mean we shouldn't try and make cars safer?
Yes, but if you put an RFID reader in every door in a building you can get a pretty good idea of where the person went and what he did. It's not as invasive as video monitoring (you can't see exactly what the person in the room, just when he entered it), but in a way it's worse because there's no way to hide from it, assuming you're forced to wear the badges and every door has a reader. Sure, if you put a card reader at the front of the school you'd be able to see when kids went in and out, but it wouldn't be very invasive because they could avoid that door if they wanted to (assuming there are other entrances and exits). The way they're talking about it (readers at the doors to every classroom and even the bathrooms, for chrissakes!), you'd be able to place a kid in a specific room or hallway at any given time between the hours of 8 and 3. That sounds pretty damn invasive to me. Tracking what class your kids should be in is one thing. Tracking where they are down to the minute is another.
On the plus side, you'd probably get less kids lingering in the hallway when the bell rings. Now the teachers can pinpoint down to the millisecond how late they are to class. Kids, we're taking one point off your grade for every second between the bell and when you come in the door.
The danger of making broad statements like this, however scientifically accurate, is that people tend to read them and say "Oh, I'm a woman, that must mean I'm not good at spacial analysis and that I will live longer than the men in my life." That's not necessarily true, and I know you're not saying it's true, but most people will read those statments and start to make assumptions based on someone's gender, which is where bias and predjudice begin.
I'm a female geek, and that already puts me in the minority. I happen to have extremely well-devloped spacial skills. In a high school art class I once drew a made-up glass box with interconnected passages for an exercise on perspective (such exercises usually involve rulers and a dot on the horizon). The art teacher (also female) thought I had drawn a bunch of nonsense until I sketched out the box from a top-down view. From that she helped me work out the shading so it looked more realistic. I still have that picture, and most people who look at it will have no idea what's going on unless they stare at it for a while or until I show them the top-down sketch. But it's exactly what a box like that would look like.
I also am extremely good in math. I never had to put any effort at all into my math or computer science classes and always got As. When I went to college I was afraid that my high school had gone easy on me and that I was going to be slaughtered by the Calculus 2 class I took in my first semester, but I aced that as well with barely a sweat.
If women are scientifically pre-dispositioned to be poor at math, why did I do so well? Oh, simple: I'm the exception to the rule. But this is science we're talking about. There are no exceptions. If you have exceptions it means that you need to redefine your rule. Rather than simply saying "women are worse at math than men," find out why!
Now, here comes the controvertial part. The closed-minded and faint of heart need not read any farther. What if gender is not a digital (1 or 0) quality? What if gender is an analog (a range between 1 and 0) quality? Scientifically, sex is an analog quality. For those who don't know, "sex" refers to the physical sex of a being (usually defined by the genetalia) and "gender" refers to the self-identity of the being as either male or female. Different quantities of hormones can create males with female secondary characteristics or vice-versa. You can read more about sex and gender here.
It makes people uncomfortable to think of someone as being anything other than "male" or "female." Gender is a digital quality, but sex is an analog quality. You might also say that the analog-ness of sex is abnormal, and only occurs with genetic mutations. Well, men and women produce BOTH of the sex-related hormones, testosterone and estrogen. It's really these hormones that determine someone's sex. In a way, every male is part female because he produces estrogen, and vice versa because females produce testosterone. Perhaps if a female produces more testosterone than normal, but not enough to cause her gender to switch to male then she'll show traditionally male qualities, like improved math skills.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that using "gender" as a basis for anything scientific will run you into trouble because it's really just a concept we've made up so we can slap people into two neat and separate groups. If you tell me that the presence of testosterone leads to improved math skills (and show me studies to prove it!) I won't doubt it. But if you tell me that being a man leads to improved math skills I'm going to tell you your science needs work.
Don't know how true this is, but I've been told that regardless of what contract you signed they cannot stake a claim for EVERYTHING you do on your free time. They can claim anything you do while at work or during time you are being paid to work. They can also claim anything you do on your free time that has something to do with their company (so if you worked for a gaming company, any freelance games you code will be property of your employer). But if it doesn't directly relate to your employer's business and you don't do it on company time then you should own all rights to your own creations/ideas.
You could argue that octopi, too, have that feature. They can change the color and pattern of their skin similar to the way we can change the color and pattern on a monitor. They even have pixels of a sort (I think, I only know a token amount about octopus biology). They just don't do it with electrons or produce their own light. There are, however, creatures in nature that produce their own light. If you loosen your definitions enough I bet you could find an equivalent of just about any technology in nature.
The simple answer is, "it's just not the same." I have a smaller Wacom and while I absolutely adore the thing it still can't hold a candle to simple pencil-and-paper. It may be because I have a smaller model, but I just don't feel like I have the same amount of control with a tablet as I do with a pencil, even though they feel exactly the same in my hand. It probably has something to do with the slight disorientation you get when looking at one thing but drawing on another. Usually I can get over this, but when trying to make small, quick strokes I find I often draw at the wrong angle. My instinct is still to turn the tablet to get the correct angle, but obviously that causes problems (the pen in my hand no longer matches up with the screen position), and even with software that will turn the page on the screen it's hard to get that perfect angle. I find I need to erase (or undo) more often with a tablet than with a pencil because it just doesn't look right. Until they make the tablet itself behave more like paper (same texture, reactivity to the pencil, etc.) then the tablet will always be "just not the same."
Oh, and by the way, nature did come up with the "fixed wing" solution to flying. It's called a hawk. ;) Sparrows fly by flapping. Hawks sometimes fly by flapping, but have discovered the more efficient solution of gliding. However, when gliding a hawk isn't as maneuverable as the flapping sparrow, though it can go faster. So, in a way the flapping versus fixed wing methods differ the same way as the legs versus wheels method. One may be more efficient, but the other is more maneuverable (and may be a better solution depending on the exact problem).
;)
I have yet, though, to see nature come up with a jet engine.
A wheel on an axle is notoriously more efficient than these "legs" things.
Until you try to go up stairs. DARPA is working on building dog-like robots with legs to carry a soldier's gear. Wheels are good only on flat surfaces. Ever try to push a wheelchair up a rocky slope? They make wheelchair ramps for a reason. Sometimes nature DOES get it right.
Remember that an artificial fin is a lot simpler than an artifical leg. When an amputee had a leg, he had an ankle and a knee. Dolphins cannot move their tailfins the way we move our legs. Think of it more like an ear, it's functional but it doesn't move. The part that moves is in her tail, and that part wasn't amputated. The fin only provided extra push (thus why she can still swim with the amputated fin, just slower and with more exertion). I imagine that once she got used to having it on it was very easy to "remember" how to swim.
Take for example Office 2000. I've installed this before on a Windows 2000 machine. When I run it as an Administrator, there is no problem. When I run it as a User account, it keeps asking me to insert the Office 2000 CD because there are missing components. WTF? Granted I installed it with only the features I need, but why the hell should it ask for the CD in the User account and not the Administrator account?
You need to reinstall it for every new user who wants to use Office. It's a "security feature" of 2000. If you really want to use MSOffice, try 2003 instead.
Yeah, it'll remain a choice... the same way you can choose your cable company now. If all the stores decide to go this way then the consumer is out of luck.
That may not be a choice in the future. If every major store decides to use these things then you'll have to look for the little mom&pop stores that are becoming very rare nowadays (and extinct in some locations) to get items that don't have RFID tags embedded in them. For the next few years, yes you can only buy from stores that don't use RFID, but these little tags are incredibly useful and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that they will be on the majority of the things you buy in the majority of stores in ten or twenty years from now. Think ahead, my friend. ;) It's the forseable future I'm worried about.
I don't doubt it, but this is what Wal-Mart has been known to do. Once it drives out the competition it closes its own doors if there's a better performing store not too far away. Saves them money. For a little while at least, you'll be without a market. I've known people this has happened to, though my own Wal-Mart seems to be doing well enough to stay, while the local K-Mart is holding on by its fingernails.
Are there no supermarkets near you? No Stater Brothers or Albertsons or whatever you have in your area?
Not ones that sell, say, chair cusions. I do not buy food at Wal-Mart, those I use the supermarkets for. I have no idea what Stater Brothers or Albertsons are, I'm assuming grocery stores. In any case, no there are none in my area.
What about Target?
No Target. I've seen their commercials plenty of times but I have never once seen a Target store. I don't believe there's any in my state (maybe there's one, but I haven't seen it).
What about a mall for that matter?
Closest mall is a half hour away and through one of the worst pieces of highway in the state (in terms of accidents--it's so bad that I don't like to drive through that area by myself, I need two sets of eyes). That's where I get most of my clothes and tech toys. And surprisingly, they have really good sushi in the food court. But I can't get there every day.
What is it you're looking for that you can't find at K-Mart that you need to go to Wal-Mart for??
Let's see, there was the time I needed chair cushions and K-Mart didn't have any to fit my chairs (they had about three types, Wal-Mart had more like twenty-three). K-Mart didn't have the right kind of shelving to go into my grandma's house, but Wal-Mart had just the right kind. There's been more, but those are the ones that come to mind right away. Going to K-Mart is just not worth it anymore. They almost have more bare shelves than filled ones, and no matter how long the lines they always only have two registers open. They're dying. I try to buy things from them when I can. I bought the game controller I used for Prince of Persia from them just a few weeks ago, but while I was there I noticed that they had about six computer game titles where Wal-Mart usually has a whole shelf full. I don't go to Wal-Mart that often, maybe once a month, but sometimes I have to. In my area Wal-Mart has already won, and there's not much I can do about it.
Don't outlaw them; don't regulate them; just inform people about them and let the PEOPLE decide what information they're comfortable giving away.
See, the thing is that if this technology keeps going forward that people might not have a choice in what information they're comfortable giving away. There's no switch on these tags to shut them off. You can't choose which items you want to be seen by folks with scanners walking by your house, they're all visible. You'd have to line your house with tinfoil to prevent that cop from walking by with a scanner and reading your inventory. You can inform people all you want, but they will still have to go to unreasonable limits to prevent these things from being tracked. I, for one, don't want to have to think carefully about my purchases to be sure I'm not buying something (or a combination of somethings) that might send up a red flag when some random cop scans my apartment. It doesn't matter how informed I am, that cop can still scan my house. Now, what's the difference between that and an actual physical search of your house? Without passing laws about the matter ahead of time, one is legal and the other is not. Which is why I say pass the laws now and don't wait for some poor schmuck to have to take this to the supreme court to argue that scanning his house is an illegal search. This is one of the reasons we have laws, to protect the rights of the little guy (even the little ignorant guy who has no idea what RFID tags are).
Now, while that would be cool what would not be cool would be if the cops could scan your apartment, decide you have the materials for making a bomb along with some items that may be typical for muslim households, assume from this that you are a terrorist, then barge into your house and arrest you.
RFID tags are coming, there's nothing we can do about it, and there's a lot of cool things we can do with them. We just want to be sure they're used properly, and that means laws. Don't outlaw them, just outline proper and improper usage.