To ensure you don't split that hair you are worried about not splitting, it's not your definition they'll be using.
The definition I know of is: "operators of electronic communications networks and services". In other words, if you provide a service, such as YouTube. You are an ISP.
First off, if the item is in the "what if" pool and isn't effective, then loosing it shouldn't matter.
Secondly, if the sole argument you are going to present is "It's hopeless! Just give up!", then frankly I wish you would.
Our current system for email is virtually 100% open and unsecured. No, I don't think we'll ever eliminate spam. And yes, we may take steps in the search for the 'optimal plan' that end up being a total waste of time.
But at the end of the day, the only thing you have presented so far is pessimism. That doesn't prove your case or make your point.
Even if we never get around to tearing down SMTP and replacing it with something designed to be secured from the start (and why the hell not given we could use that for MTA-MTA connections and still present an SMTP emulation for MUA's) there are plenty of aveneues for us to take in locking down what we do have to work with.
And regarding the "now people will trust spam more" malarky. Stupid people do stupid stuff. News at 11. The point of SPF isn't to ensure the email is trustworthy, it's to ensure the email was meant to come from example.com. The folk ignorant enough to trust spam aren't going to know enough to ever realize or care about SPF or any other measure put in place. They are going to click it regardless. But at least now, those of us who aren't vying for Darwin Awards will have another tool in the arsenal of cutting the volume of what we are receiving and have absolutely no intention of ever clicking.
Waiting for Profits in Space GeoEye Fights Delays With New Imaging Satellite By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL Published: 2 February 2009
Anyone who's used Google Earth has likely seen images from GeoEye, a Dulles, Va., Earth-imaging company. The Internet giant allows users to zoom in from a view of a continent to a car on the street by using images from GeoEye, along with ones from competitor DigitalGlobe, the U.S. Geological Survey and elsewhere.
GeoEye has used its flagship Ikonos satellite to provide images for Google and the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), its biggest customer. But those customers - and investors - have been waiting for GeoEye-1, the company's newest satellite, to become fully operational.
GeoEye-1 has faced delays from launch to operation, and as a result, the company has been missing out on revenues under a new NGA contract.
GeoEye-1, a two-story-tall satellite built by a contractor team led by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, is the world's highest-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite, according to the company. The first image the satellite took was of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania; a tennis player is visible about to serve the ball.
GeoEye-1's launch, originally planned for the first quarter of 2007, finally took place last Sept. 6. Work went slower than planned, then the launch was bumped to allow Boeing Launch Services to give priority to a U.S. government launch. Once in orbit, the satellite suffered from delays in calibrating its accuracy and testing its software. The process, which normally takes up to three months, has lasted five so far, according to GeoEye spokes-man Mark Brender.
GeoEye has told investors for several months that the company is nearing the end of this phase. Matt O'Connell, the company's president and chief executive, said the GeoEye-1 satellite should be fully operational at least by the end of the first quarter of 2009, though GeoEye is aiming for sometime this month.
"We're still in the process of fine-tuning the accuracy," O'Connell said. "You make a change, you do a couple of orbits, you look at the imagery, you test it, you find what you think might be a bug, you do another change. So it's an iterative process, so it takes a while."
The process now is focusing on aligning the positional accuracy of the satellite with the GPS grid, he said. "We're all disappointed that it hasn't gone faster. But we're excited that we are nearing the end of the tunnel."
O'Connell said testing that he's seen lately makes him more confident that GeoEye-1 is getting closer to becoming fully operational, as more glitches are eliminated and the satellite is "hitting accuracy levels that are near our target."
What's hanging in the balance is a new Service Level Agreement with the NGA that would boost GeoEye's revenues. Once GeoEye-1 is operational and the NGA certifies GeoEye-1 images as meeting the agency's standards, NGA will buy $12.5 million in GeoEye-1 images a month under its NextView program. That will give GeoEye a consistent revenue source after somewhat bumpy revenues in recent quarters. Revenues were down 24 percent to $106 million for the first nine months of 2008.
GeoEye's competitor, DigitalGlobe, won the first contract under the NextView program. Its satellite, WorldView-3, provides black-and-white images to NGA.
"We're comfortable the GeoEye is on a path that's going to have [GeoEye-1] operational and available for NGA taskings," NGA spokesman Dave Burpee said.
In the meantime, the NGA and Google keep buying images from Ikonos, which was launched in 1999 by GeoEye's predecessor company, Space Imaging. GeoEye was formed in 2006 when OrbImage, a company O'Connell also headed, bought Space Imaging, a Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture.
You are misreading the statement. The idea being offered is that in the spirit of "consumer protection" the FTC is gearing up to look at regulating EULA's.
Why is it so many otherwise perfectly intelligent people act as if a solution which doesn't solve 100% of the problem must be completely worthless?
"You know, it's 20 below out, and you are standing in a swimming pool slowly freezing. You could get out and go inside.
"Nah, I'd still be wet and cold."
Yes, a 99% effective solution (i.e. something that reduced the actual volume of spam by 99%) would likely not result in any fewer people clicking on spam. But it would mean a 99% reduction in spam.
How, in the great wild wild world of the web, do you look at that as a bad thing. Do you know how much of the current traffic in the world is spam?
Disease is a biological problem. You can't eliminate disease from the world using a purely technological approach.
However, if you have an internet connection to post to/., then chances are good that you and I both have living conditions that are far far more livable and comfortable thanks to the fact that people did use technology when it was possible to prevent what could be prevented and aliveate what couldn't.
You and I get the flu, pneumonia, or even TB, we are likely to live through it. That wasn't the case in 1809 or even 1909.
Spam is not a purely technological problem, you are right about that. But it's also not completely divorced from technology, and there are plenty of things out there that could be done that would cut down on the volume and the 'sting' of spam. Someday, I hope we implement them.
Since they just display the most recent imagery that their providers have, the issue isn't with Google but the fact that appearently no one considers your plot of land important enough to actually photograph. If you want an ego boost, find out how much it costs to charter one of the companies providing the aerial photography to do a fly by of your area.
I have no doubt that they have something more sophisticated. My point was to hightlight the ridiculous nature of spreading FUD that there might somehow not be a way to backup files for a online service that is billed as a way to store and share files online.
agreed, but this will most likely be connected to some *cough cloud* form on online computing. will it have backup abilities ?
No, at no time whatsoever will you ever have access to the files you store on gdrive. In fact, gdrive is really just a counter attached to/dev/null
Will it have backup abilities? WTF? You either uploaded a file to it, thus implying you had access to it, enabling you to back it up. Or you can download the file from it, thus implying you have access to it, enabling you to back it up.
To map your analogy of a company into your hypothetical of Maine attempting to secede, we need to make a few corrections.
1. Maine isn't an employee. They are a 2% shareholder and have a seat on the board of directors. 2. Maine isn't leaving, it's attempting to split a division off from the company, claiming the 2% share it holds entitles it to 2% of the company.
Maine doesn't get to do that. Not without a vote from the board of directors, whose job it is to watch over the whole company, not just Maine's division. Maybe they are willing to spin the division off because they don't see it's loss threatening the whole to do it. That's happened. Plenty of companies have been formed out of divisions of bigger companies. Or, maybe the board isn't willing to let Maine have it's division. Maybe this is a division integral to the company. But whatever the case, it's the board's decision, not Maine's alone.
Maybe that division is staffed with people who are all for the idea. Employees who would really love to split off and form their own company. But that doesn't matter.
If they decide to all quit and leave company to form their own, that's one thing and they have the freedom to do that. And in the real world, that's happened plenty of times. But that means actually leaving the company (with all that entails), not simply taking the assets of the company and using them to form your own.
Likely article the submitter was referring to
on
New Ads That Watch You
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· Score: 4, Informative
When you watch these ads, the ads check you out By DINESH RAMDE - 5 hours ago
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there's a slim -- but growing -- chance the ad is watching you too.
Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly.
That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.
And even if the ads don't shift based on which people are watching, the technology's ability to determine the viewers' demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they're reaching their target audience.
While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.
The concept is reminiscent of the science-fiction movie "Minority Report," in which Tom Cruise's character enters a mall and finds that retinal scanners identify him and prompt personalized ads that greet him by name.
But this technology doesn't go nearly that far. It doesn't identify people individually -- it simply categorizes them by outward appearances.
So a video screen might show a motorcycle ad for a group of men, but switch to a minivan ad when women and children join them, said Vicki Rabenou, the chief measurement officer of Tampa, Fla.-based TruMedia Technologies Inc., one of the leaders in developing the technology.
"This is proactive merchandising," Rabenou said. "You're targeting people with smart ads."
Because the tracking industry is still in its infancy, there isn't yet consensus on how to refer to the technology. Some call it face reading, face counting, gaze tracking or, more generally, face-based audience measurement.
Whatever it's called, advertisers are finally ready to try it, said advertising consultant Jack Sullivan, a senior vice president of Starcom USA in Chicago. "I think you're going to see a lot of movement toward it by the end of this year in the top 10 markets," he said.
Because face tracking might feel reminiscent of Big Brother, manufacturers are racing to offer reassurances. When the systems capture an image of who's watching the screen, a computer instantly analyzes it. The systems' manufacturers insist, however, that nothing is ever stored and no identifying information is ever associated with the pictures. That makes the system less intrusive than a surveillance camera that records what it sees, the developers say.
The idea still worries Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group in San Francisco. Tien said it's not enough to say some system is "not as bad as some other technology," and argues that cameras that study people contribute to an erosion of privacy.
In general, the tracking systems work like this: A sensor or camera in or near the screen identifies viewers' faces by picking up shapes, colors and the relative speed of movement. The concept is similar to the way consumer cameras now can automatically make sure faces are in focus.
When the ad system pinpoints a face, it compares shapes and patterns to faces that are already identified in a database as male or female. That lets the system predict the person's gender almost immediately.
"The most important features seem to be cheekbones, fullness of lips and the gap between the eyebrows," said Paolo Prandoni, chief scienti
I'd say nothing. That's why there isn't anything stopping you from leaving and starting your own micronation out in the middle of the Pacific or seeking citizenship status in Japan.
That land you want to 'take with you' because you aren't willing to leave but still don't want to be part of the group?
That's something you'd have to negotiate for with the government acting as the represenative of the "People", and I'm willing to bet the government values it far more than the 'blue book' price. And there have been cases, where that's been done, just none that I can recall since 'modern' times and few that were done with just individuals.
..., ultimately, that is the problem with the way most people aggitate for secession. You claim you have the majority support, but what you really have is the majority of a minority of the nation.
If you were to actually convince the majority, then there wouldn't be a problem. If the majority agreed, there wouldn't even be bloodshed. But instead most secessionists act as if it's only the opinion of the secessionists that counts.
You've just demonstrated the problem beautifully.
Do you just get to walk into the capitol building and say, "Top of the morning to you chaps, I'd like to join!" to become a nation?
Then tell me why leaving would be any easier.
Joining a nation means you benefit in that nations power, it's resources, and it's laws. You aren't just picking up a new flag and anthem.
By allowing you to join, the nation is in essense investing part of their efforts in your future. Why would you expect to be able to, after benefiting from all that, suddenly turn around and say "No thanks guys, I think I'll go it alone now." without someone speaking up?
That isn't to say that you shouldn't be allowed to say it, but it is to say that once you've committed to join a nation, it isn't just you that your decision to leave should be run by.
So legally there is some problems, but morally, I absolutely believe it is right.. Those people did not agree to the Constitution, and governments should be voluntary. I'm sorry if that throws a big kink in the whole works but this is what I believe is right. I don't believe it's right to forcefully control others or force them to adhere to your rules and laws. You can act in defense against an aggressor, but when you encourage force or enforce laws that 19 century philosopher Lysander Spooner would call a vice, or crimes that have no true victim, on unwilling people then YOU become the aggressor. I believe that it's wrong force on other men? Am I in error for that belief?
Who am I to be the arbitrator of what beliefs are correct or not. Yours are not mine, and that is all I know for certain. Which is why I originally stated I doubt we would ever see eye to eye on this matter.
Governments are formed for the benefit of the people. All the people. When a select group, who have been benefiting from the labors of the people and their government, seek to reject it, then in my opinion it is their burden to find a peaceful solution to that rejection. Whereas the majority of secessionists basically exhibit the attitude that once they 'break' from us it's up to us to deal with it.
And while my argument concerning land may have sounded purely legal, it is also based in morals. The land you stand on today is the result of hundreds of years of effort put into this nation by the people before you. To up and claim it simply because you happen to be standing on it today is the equivalent of theft, to me. If you don't want to be part of us, that's fine. As you've pointed out, there are ways to go where you don't have to be part of any nation, much less ours. But don't start taking what isn't yours.
But for what it's worth, I agree with your opinion of the Lakotah.
Even going just by states and not populaltion, what is a majority in that secnario?
Hint, it's not 1.
Have 26 states vote to let Maine go, and we can talk about having majorities, though personally I'd prefer you go the "Congress" method and make it both a majority in states and population.
what makes their land "US soil" if not the will of the people
What makes the land you stand on anymore yours than mine? A deed? And what does that deed say? Ever hear of eminent domain?
That land was 'ours' far longer than it was 'yours'. People died protecting it, hell there were multiple wars fought to keep it. We've spent millions (possibly even billons) developing and improving it. And you think you have the right simply to 'walk away' with it? By what right? That you managed to be squirted out of your mom in the general location some number of years ago? What have you put into it that outweighs the investment of twenty plus decades that our nation has put into it?
It's far more than simply "the Feds pull out their equipment and leave".
Regarding your second statement, ultimately, that is the problem with the way most people aggitate for secession. You claim you have the majority support, but what you really have is the majority of a minority of the nation.
If you were to actually convince the majority, then there wouldn't be a problem. If the majority agreed, there wouldn't even be bloodshed. But instead most secessionists act as if it's only the opinion of the secessionists that counts.
It'd be different if you were saying these things back in the 1700's. Back when the entire world wasn't already completely staked out and claimed. But today, if you want your own nation, go make it. Don't expect us to give you part of ours simply because you happened to live in it when you were still willing to be part of us.
In that respect, people peacefully 'secede' from nations all the time. The US has a bounty of folk from other countries that have foresaken their citizenship and seek to become part of ours.
I don't believe the Civil war was a good idea, just an inevitable one. The South, as much as modern southern pride would try to claim otherwise, was just as eager as the North for blood. And, in our revisionist world where Ft Sumter never happened, there would still have been blood. The South was rich but not self-sufficent. It's industry was based on an unsustainable model and eventually they would have been forced to try to take Northern land simply to keep things going. Cotton, their primary source of wealth and power, is not a crop that is kind to the land. That was the one of the biggest fights between the Slavers and the Abolitionists, the fact that the South was aggressively claiming western lands to feed it's need for fresh soil. Remember what the Mason-Dixon line was about?
Regarding the right to secession, I imagine that particular difference of opinion will not be one that you and I will ever see eye to eye on.
But to redirect your question, if a group of paramilitary militia in Texas decide to secede from the nation and declare their land free of US law, would you let them? And if so, under what justification, given they are on US soil and benefiting from US protection? What claim do they hold that trumps the US Governments?
If one man can not secede, why can two? If two can't, why three? If not three, why a hundred? If not a hundred, how many must there be?
And you know as well as I, the argument is not "Kill them to prevent them from leaving." The South is still populated, yes a horrible, horrible number of people died. But they died on both sides, and not because one side was attempting to exterminate the other but because both sides were willing to send men into meat grinders rather than lose.
He, like Bush, did what he thought was necessary to preserve the Union. Unlike Bush, Lincoln actually accomplished his mission rather than furthered us along the path of ruin.
I can't say that I would have agreed with his stance or his ways, had I met him. But it's a lot easier to criticize with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.
The primary difference between Bush and Lincoln is Lincoln actually had reasons for his actions, a real war to fight, and results where Bush had suspicions, two wars started by himself, and nothing but failures.
PS. The US government is chock full of Fasces. And while your description of them is accurate, you fail to point out that both his and the majority of the ones you see in the Capitol are missing their axe blade. Symbolically this is the acknowledgement that the true power rests with the People, not the Government.
Slashdot Mirror
I sincerly hope that whomever you voted for wasn't someone you actually thought was going to be lockstep with you 100% of the time.
If they were, I'm sorry you were a fool.
If they weren't, quit being an ass simply because it's not 'your guy' up there making choices you don't agree with.
To ensure you don't split that hair you are worried about not splitting, it's not your definition they'll be using.
The definition I know of is: "operators of electronic communications networks and services". In other words, if you provide a service, such as YouTube. You are an ISP.
First off, if the item is in the "what if" pool and isn't effective, then loosing it shouldn't matter.
Secondly, if the sole argument you are going to present is "It's hopeless! Just give up!", then frankly I wish you would.
Our current system for email is virtually 100% open and unsecured. No, I don't think we'll ever eliminate spam. And yes, we may take steps in the search for the 'optimal plan' that end up being a total waste of time.
But at the end of the day, the only thing you have presented so far is pessimism. That doesn't prove your case or make your point.
Even if we never get around to tearing down SMTP and replacing it with something designed to be secured from the start (and why the hell not given we could use that for MTA-MTA connections and still present an SMTP emulation for MUA's) there are plenty of aveneues for us to take in locking down what we do have to work with.
And regarding the "now people will trust spam more" malarky. Stupid people do stupid stuff. News at 11. The point of SPF isn't to ensure the email is trustworthy, it's to ensure the email was meant to come from example.com. The folk ignorant enough to trust spam aren't going to know enough to ever realize or care about SPF or any other measure put in place. They are going to click it regardless. But at least now, those of us who aren't vying for Darwin Awards will have another tool in the arsenal of cutting the volume of what we are receiving and have absolutely no intention of ever clicking.
Coincidently enough, your answer was published today.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3927935&c=FEA&s=BUS
Waiting for Profits in Space
GeoEye Fights Delays With New Imaging Satellite
By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
Published: 2 February 2009
Anyone who's used Google Earth has likely seen images from GeoEye, a Dulles, Va., Earth-imaging company. The Internet giant allows users to zoom in from a view of a continent to a car on the street by using images from GeoEye, along with ones from competitor DigitalGlobe, the U.S. Geological Survey and elsewhere.
GeoEye has used its flagship Ikonos satellite to provide images for Google and the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), its biggest customer. But those customers - and investors - have been waiting for GeoEye-1, the company's newest satellite, to become fully operational.
GeoEye-1 has faced delays from launch to operation, and as a result, the company has been missing out on revenues under a new NGA contract.
GeoEye-1, a two-story-tall satellite built by a contractor team led by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, is the world's highest-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite, according to the company. The first image the satellite took was of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania; a tennis player is visible about to serve the ball.
GeoEye-1's launch, originally planned for the first quarter of 2007, finally took place last Sept. 6. Work went slower than planned, then the launch was bumped to allow Boeing Launch Services to give priority to a U.S. government launch. Once in orbit, the satellite suffered from delays in calibrating its accuracy and testing its software. The process, which normally takes up to three months, has lasted five so far, according to GeoEye spokes-man Mark Brender.
GeoEye has told investors for several months that the company is nearing the end of this phase. Matt O'Connell, the company's president and chief executive, said the GeoEye-1 satellite should be fully operational at least by the end of the first quarter of 2009, though GeoEye is aiming for sometime this month.
"We're still in the process of fine-tuning the accuracy," O'Connell said. "You make a change, you do a couple of orbits, you look at the imagery, you test it, you find what you think might be a bug, you do another change. So it's an iterative process, so it takes a while."
The process now is focusing on aligning the positional accuracy of the satellite with the GPS grid, he said. "We're all disappointed that it hasn't gone faster. But we're excited that we are nearing the end of the tunnel."
O'Connell said testing that he's seen lately makes him more confident that GeoEye-1 is getting closer to becoming fully operational, as more glitches are eliminated and the satellite is "hitting accuracy levels that are near our target."
What's hanging in the balance is a new Service Level Agreement with the NGA that would boost GeoEye's revenues. Once GeoEye-1 is operational and the NGA certifies GeoEye-1 images as meeting the agency's standards, NGA will buy $12.5 million in GeoEye-1 images a month under its NextView program. That will give GeoEye a consistent revenue source after somewhat bumpy revenues in recent quarters. Revenues were down 24 percent to $106 million for the first nine months of 2008.
GeoEye's competitor, DigitalGlobe, won the first contract under the NextView program. Its satellite, WorldView-3, provides black-and-white images to NGA.
"We're comfortable the GeoEye is on a path that's going to have [GeoEye-1] operational and available for NGA taskings," NGA spokesman Dave Burpee said.
In the meantime, the NGA and Google keep buying images from Ikonos, which was launched in 1999 by GeoEye's predecessor company, Space Imaging. GeoEye was formed in 2006 when OrbImage, a company O'Connell also headed, bought Space Imaging, a Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture.
You are misreading the statement. The idea being offered is that in the spirit of "consumer protection" the FTC is gearing up to look at regulating EULA's.
And for that I refer you to this comment.
Why is it so many otherwise perfectly intelligent people act as if a solution which doesn't solve 100% of the problem must be completely worthless?
Yes, a 99% effective solution (i.e. something that reduced the actual volume of spam by 99%) would likely not result in any fewer people clicking on spam. But it would mean a 99% reduction in spam.
How, in the great wild wild world of the web, do you look at that as a bad thing. Do you know how much of the current traffic in the world is spam?
Yeah, myself... I'm waiting for them to get Streetview of the ocean floor....
Disease is a biological problem. You can't eliminate disease from the world using a purely technological approach.
However, if you have an internet connection to post to /., then chances are good that you and I both have living conditions that are far far more livable and comfortable thanks to the fact that people did use technology when it was possible to prevent what could be prevented and aliveate what couldn't.
You and I get the flu, pneumonia, or even TB, we are likely to live through it. That wasn't the case in 1809 or even 1909.
Spam is not a purely technological problem, you are right about that. But it's also not completely divorced from technology, and there are plenty of things out there that could be done that would cut down on the volume and the 'sting' of spam. Someday, I hope we implement them.
Since they just display the most recent imagery that their providers have, the issue isn't with Google but the fact that appearently no one considers your plot of land important enough to actually photograph. If you want an ego boost, find out how much it costs to charter one of the companies providing the aerial photography to do a fly by of your area.
So your arguement is basicly "The current system sucks, therefore no system will work!"?
I have no doubt that they have something more sophisticated. My point was to hightlight the ridiculous nature of spreading FUD that there might somehow not be a way to backup files for a online service that is billed as a way to store and share files online.
You once again forget that the state pretty much is the asset. That land you are standing on, it ain't yours.
K'. And how does that negate GP's point?
No, at no time whatsoever will you ever have access to the files you store on gdrive. In fact, gdrive is really just a counter attached to /dev/null
Will it have backup abilities? WTF? You either uploaded a file to it, thus implying you had access to it, enabling you to back it up. Or you can download the file from it, thus implying you have access to it, enabling you to back it up.
To map your analogy of a company into your hypothetical of Maine attempting to secede, we need to make a few corrections.
1. Maine isn't an employee. They are a 2% shareholder and have a seat on the board of directors.
2. Maine isn't leaving, it's attempting to split a division off from the company, claiming the 2% share it holds entitles it to 2% of the company.
Maine doesn't get to do that. Not without a vote from the board of directors, whose job it is to watch over the whole company, not just Maine's division. Maybe they are willing to spin the division off because they don't see it's loss threatening the whole to do it. That's happened. Plenty of companies have been formed out of divisions of bigger companies. Or, maybe the board isn't willing to let Maine have it's division. Maybe this is a division integral to the company. But whatever the case, it's the board's decision, not Maine's alone.
Maybe that division is staffed with people who are all for the idea. Employees who would really love to split off and form their own company. But that doesn't matter.
If they decide to all quit and leave company to form their own, that's one thing and they have the freedom to do that. And in the real world, that's happened plenty of times. But that means actually leaving the company (with all that entails), not simply taking the assets of the company and using them to form your own.
from the AP
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gtt0GDVKp2kUEw39aEGal9yfYmjgD961JH500
When you watch these ads, the ads check you out
By DINESH RAMDE - 5 hours ago
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there's a slim -- but growing -- chance the ad is watching you too.
Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly.
That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.
And even if the ads don't shift based on which people are watching, the technology's ability to determine the viewers' demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they're reaching their target audience.
While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.
The concept is reminiscent of the science-fiction movie "Minority Report," in which Tom Cruise's character enters a mall and finds that retinal scanners identify him and prompt personalized ads that greet him by name.
But this technology doesn't go nearly that far. It doesn't identify people individually -- it simply categorizes them by outward appearances.
So a video screen might show a motorcycle ad for a group of men, but switch to a minivan ad when women and children join them, said Vicki Rabenou, the chief measurement officer of Tampa, Fla.-based TruMedia Technologies Inc., one of the leaders in developing the technology.
"This is proactive merchandising," Rabenou said. "You're targeting people with smart ads."
Because the tracking industry is still in its infancy, there isn't yet consensus on how to refer to the technology. Some call it face reading, face counting, gaze tracking or, more generally, face-based audience measurement.
Whatever it's called, advertisers are finally ready to try it, said advertising consultant Jack Sullivan, a senior vice president of Starcom USA in Chicago. "I think you're going to see a lot of movement toward it by the end of this year in the top 10 markets," he said.
Because face tracking might feel reminiscent of Big Brother, manufacturers are racing to offer reassurances. When the systems capture an image of who's watching the screen, a computer instantly analyzes it. The systems' manufacturers insist, however, that nothing is ever stored and no identifying information is ever associated with the pictures. That makes the system less intrusive than a surveillance camera that records what it sees, the developers say.
The idea still worries Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group in San Francisco. Tien said it's not enough to say some system is "not as bad as some other technology," and argues that cameras that study people contribute to an erosion of privacy.
In general, the tracking systems work like this: A sensor or camera in or near the screen identifies viewers' faces by picking up shapes, colors and the relative speed of movement. The concept is similar to the way consumer cameras now can automatically make sure faces are in focus.
When the ad system pinpoints a face, it compares shapes and patterns to faces that are already identified in a database as male or female. That lets the system predict the person's gender almost immediately.
"The most important features seem to be cheekbones, fullness of lips and the gap between the eyebrows," said Paolo Prandoni, chief scienti
I'm a teenaged bearded woman, those insensitive clods!
You, yourself?
I'd say nothing. That's why there isn't anything stopping you from leaving and starting your own micronation out in the middle of the Pacific or seeking citizenship status in Japan.
That land you want to 'take with you' because you aren't willing to leave but still don't want to be part of the group?
That's something you'd have to negotiate for with the government acting as the represenative of the "People", and I'm willing to bet the government values it far more than the 'blue book' price. And there have been cases, where that's been done, just none that I can recall since 'modern' times and few that were done with just individuals.
Again,
You've just demonstrated the problem beautifully.
Do you just get to walk into the capitol building and say, "Top of the morning to you chaps, I'd like to join!" to become a nation?
Then tell me why leaving would be any easier.
Joining a nation means you benefit in that nations power, it's resources, and it's laws. You aren't just picking up a new flag and anthem.
By allowing you to join, the nation is in essense investing part of their efforts in your future. Why would you expect to be able to, after benefiting from all that, suddenly turn around and say "No thanks guys, I think I'll go it alone now." without someone speaking up?
That isn't to say that you shouldn't be allowed to say it, but it is to say that once you've committed to join a nation, it isn't just you that your decision to leave should be run by.
Who am I to be the arbitrator of what beliefs are correct or not. Yours are not mine, and that is all I know for certain. Which is why I originally stated I doubt we would ever see eye to eye on this matter.
Governments are formed for the benefit of the people. All the people. When a select group, who have been benefiting from the labors of the people and their government, seek to reject it, then in my opinion it is their burden to find a peaceful solution to that rejection. Whereas the majority of secessionists basically exhibit the attitude that once they 'break' from us it's up to us to deal with it.
And while my argument concerning land may have sounded purely legal, it is also based in morals. The land you stand on today is the result of hundreds of years of effort put into this nation by the people before you. To up and claim it simply because you happen to be standing on it today is the equivalent of theft, to me. If you don't want to be part of us, that's fine. As you've pointed out, there are ways to go where you don't have to be part of any nation, much less ours. But don't start taking what isn't yours.
But for what it's worth, I agree with your opinion of the Lakotah.
Maine = 1 state out of 50.
Even going just by states and not populaltion, what is a majority in that secnario?
Hint, it's not 1.
Have 26 states vote to let Maine go, and we can talk about having majorities, though personally I'd prefer you go the "Congress" method and make it both a majority in states and population.
What makes the land you stand on anymore yours than mine? A deed? And what does that deed say? Ever hear of eminent domain?
That land was 'ours' far longer than it was 'yours'. People died protecting it, hell there were multiple wars fought to keep it. We've spent millions (possibly even billons) developing and improving it. And you think you have the right simply to 'walk away' with it? By what right? That you managed to be squirted out of your mom in the general location some number of years ago? What have you put into it that outweighs the investment of twenty plus decades that our nation has put into it?
It's far more than simply "the Feds pull out their equipment and leave".
Regarding your second statement, ultimately, that is the problem with the way most people aggitate for secession. You claim you have the majority support, but what you really have is the majority of a minority of the nation.
If you were to actually convince the majority, then there wouldn't be a problem. If the majority agreed, there wouldn't even be bloodshed. But instead most secessionists act as if it's only the opinion of the secessionists that counts.
It'd be different if you were saying these things back in the 1700's. Back when the entire world wasn't already completely staked out and claimed. But today, if you want your own nation, go make it. Don't expect us to give you part of ours simply because you happened to live in it when you were still willing to be part of us.
In that respect, people peacefully 'secede' from nations all the time. The US has a bounty of folk from other countries that have foresaken their citizenship and seek to become part of ours.
I don't believe the Civil war was a good idea, just an inevitable one. The South, as much as modern southern pride would try to claim otherwise, was just as eager as the North for blood. And, in our revisionist world where Ft Sumter never happened, there would still have been blood. The South was rich but not self-sufficent. It's industry was based on an unsustainable model and eventually they would have been forced to try to take Northern land simply to keep things going. Cotton, their primary source of wealth and power, is not a crop that is kind to the land. That was the one of the biggest fights between the Slavers and the Abolitionists, the fact that the South was aggressively claiming western lands to feed it's need for fresh soil. Remember what the Mason-Dixon line was about?
Regarding the right to secession, I imagine that particular difference of opinion will not be one that you and I will ever see eye to eye on.
But to redirect your question, if a group of paramilitary militia in Texas decide to secede from the nation and declare their land free of US law, would you let them? And if so, under what justification, given they are on US soil and benefiting from US protection? What claim do they hold that trumps the US Governments?
If one man can not secede, why can two? If two can't, why three? If not three, why a hundred? If not a hundred, how many must there be?
And you know as well as I, the argument is not "Kill them to prevent them from leaving." The South is still populated, yes a horrible, horrible number of people died. But they died on both sides, and not because one side was attempting to exterminate the other but because both sides were willing to send men into meat grinders rather than lose.
He, like Bush, did what he thought was necessary to preserve the Union. Unlike Bush, Lincoln actually accomplished his mission rather than furthered us along the path of ruin.
I can't say that I would have agreed with his stance or his ways, had I met him. But it's a lot easier to criticize with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.
The primary difference between Bush and Lincoln is Lincoln actually had reasons for his actions, a real war to fight, and results where Bush had suspicions, two wars started by himself, and nothing but failures.
PS. The US government is chock full of Fasces. And while your description of them is accurate, you fail to point out that both his and the majority of the ones you see in the Capitol are missing their axe blade. Symbolically this is the acknowledgement that the true power rests with the People, not the Government.
So first he was like all:
but then:
and then:
and after that:
Mr Pot? There is a Mr Kettle on the line for you, Mr Archangel Michael Kettle. Shall I take a message?