Go ahead and create a large group that can counter the power of the corporations. Call it a Conglomeration, or something. Watch it rise to power, supplanting the corporations, unions, churches, etc. Watch it get corrupted, and the country become for the Conglomeration, of the Conglomeration and by the Conglomeration.
Name a large group of people that had power that didn't abuse that power.
Last time I had an MRI it was extremely noisy, so I suspect the field wasn't 100% constant. (Could be wrong, or there are different kinds of MRI, I'm old enough that it was called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance)
no one thought that heavy security would be needed
Who is this imaginary "no one", that never thinks anything could go wrong? I and all my friends who grew up watching "War Games" are always thinking about how things could go wrong.
It always seemed to me that what "no one" is thinking is not that bad things can happen, but "I'll put in just enough security so that the failure won't happen until after I retire."
Most times I could get through the checkout faster if they just had a human doing it for me.
Of course a professional checker who's do this for awhile could be faster than Joe Random shopper. The point isn't speed, it's not having to pay a skilled worker bee.
Tidbit: You have a few items to buy. The express lane is open, and a regular checker is open, and the people waiting seem to have the same number of items. Which checker do you choose?
Always choose the regular checker if there's not too much stuff in the carts of the people ahead of you. Store managers always put their slowest checkers on the express lanes. (Think about it: Which customer is more important to you, the guy who is buying one pack of gum, or the housewife with $200 worth of groceries in her cart?)
At least at Giant, it's not exactly random. But you do get a $2 off coupon if you're audited.
Try this: Pick up an item from the shelf. Look at it. Put it into your bag without scanning. Take it out of the bag and scan it. Put it back in the bag. The scan gun will give you a list of all the things you've bought, so you can verify before you check out.
I'm very absent minded, so this happens to me not infrequently. AFAIK, every time I've done that, I've been audited.
Another interesting tidbit: When they audit, they just rescan a few different items. Their audit makes sure you've scanned at least one of the items you've put in your bag, but it doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between 4 or 5 of an item.
I'm not sure what they do if the audit doesn't match. It's entirely possible that you try to scan an item, it doesn't take, but you hear a beep from another shopper and think your gun caught it.
Don Lancaster described this process years ago. The trick is the tiny diode at the bottom of the antenna to turn the AC into DC. It has to handle 400 - 800 THz. Plausible, but difficult. 5-10 years really means they have no idea when they'd be able to produce this in industrial quantities.
This would work, and you could even start watching before the download finished. If they used multicast technology and a few regional proxies, the bandwidth requirements would go way, way down.
I'm sure their content license preclude any of the above.
I seems to have five extra wires, that could be the power supply connection. Also it looks like it goes to a hub, so that might be where it will get it's power in the production version.
It appears to be plugged into a hub, from which you can add a mouse and keyboard. Networking may also come across the USB port. There are 5 extra wires that supply power I imagine.
Damn straight. I once saw a guy write a program composed of Z80 opcodes onto a legal sized note pad. He then hand assembled the code, copied the bytes into a hex editor, then sent the code to someone else to burn into a PROM. That's the way all coding should be done.
With the current system, the arbitrators find for the companies something like 90% over the time. You think a backdoor system could get much worse. (Ok, maybe)
Another poster wrote:
If an arbiter finds against the corporation enough times, they get paid $0 when the company stops using him or her.
Here's a fix. I bring my professional arbitrator and the company brings their professional arbitrator. (both licensed and registered) At the beginning of the meeting, a coin is flipped and one arbitrator goes home.
INAL, but I'd imagine that the slashdot "public" would know that you can patent an idea, so there's no deception expressed or implied, however there's an internet rule that says something like, "There's no idea so goofy, that someone on the Internet doesn't believe it"
I'm going to use the legal defense, "If you lie big enough, you can get away with it."
Just don't use a cellphone. Or a landline. Or cable TV. Smoke signals are right out, but Semaphores between the hours of 10am and 4pm will still be allowed.
(Tin cans and string will be allowed, as long as you don't have to cross a public street and it's not a permanent installation)
No arbiter can be impartial. Their livelihood depends upon bias and outright prejudice (as in "pre-judging"). It is not an honorable profession.
Like a judge appointed for life?
Anyway, the state could set up their own arbitration board, and when a case comes up, they assign someone from the board. The companies would pay for the board, but they wouldn't have hiring and firing decisions. That would make it more impartial.
Which, of course, they'll always require, as long as the law allows them to.
It's bigger than just the Federal Arbitration Act law. Cell phone companies enjoy a natural N-opoly (where N is a small integer) because it's hard to set nationwide coverage, and the FCC doesn't just let anyone use the airwaves.
There's no market incentive to offer a service where you don't have to sue, since all the other players put these clauses into their contracts. The cell phone providers don't actually collude on this, they just have to see what the others use in their contracts. (Anyone know when they started doing this? If ever there was a case for business practice patents, this is it. Perhaps we can award the originator of bad practices a retroactive patent so that only they will be able to use a particular bad practice.)
They do charge fat people more to ride airplanes, not so much because they use more fuel, but because they take two seats. If you can't squeeze into a regular airplane seat you either have to pay for two, or pay more to ride on a type of plane that has bigger seats.
In general, at any Uni with a large endowment, desirable students have no problem paying for tuition. You can be desirable either because you have talent, or because your parents have money. If you have the talent, and no money, any University will pay your full tuition. It helps if you've discovered a new theorem, or a medical breakthrough.
For 77 million accounts, though, you have to consider the possibility that somebody would commission a serious forensic teardown of your system, decapping, microscopes, and the lot.
For $77 million accounts the Russian Mob (via the ex-KGB) would commission a serious beatdown, kneecaping, blackmail, and the lot. As always, xkcd to the rescue. http://xkcd.com/538/
If any one employee has access to that kind of data, they're in trouble.
Talk to a lawyer for your own state, but for a good overview of what incorporation is today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(business)
"...a corporation being a legal entity that is effectively recognized as a person under the law). The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organization, sports club, or a government of a new city or town."...
A corporation has extra rights that the "people acting in a group" don't have. If a person or persons dump oil into the gulf of Mexico, they can be taken to jail. If a corporation dumps millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, there will be a fine. Even if people died in the accident, no one will go to jail, and the courts are loathe to implement a "Corporate Death Sentence" where the fines are enough to bankrupt the company. (Enron was a exception, not the rule)
So adjust the law about what corporations are about. Right now they have a duty to their shareholders. Most companies incorporate in the state with the most favorable corporate laws, a Federal corporate law could help that. (You would have to incorporate in you own state, or incorporate Federally.)
Corporations should be beholden primarily to the taxpayers, the shareholders get a cut and say after that. Corporate officers should answer to the taxpayers. Attorney-client privilege for corporate lawyers should extend to the taxpayers, not the officers or shareholders.
Remember: Incorporation is a legal fiction given by the Government. The power of the government derives from the will of the people. Corporations should always act in the best interest of the people, and like the Secret Service, they should be willing to take a bullet for us. If a group of people don't want to take this responsibility, no one is forcing them to incorporate.
Whoooosh... It's a joke son, a joke. Strong AI has always been about 5 years away.
Anyway, I used to work for an AI company. There was one customer that found a bug in our software, so we asked for the code that was giving them trouble. They wouldn't even give us a code fragment. Finally, they were able to write a different program that replicated the bug, and then we could fix it.
This Australian company would drill boreholes somewhere looking for diamonds. Each meter of core would have hundreds of measurements taken, but not every measurement was taken for every every sample. The AI would take all that data, and I presume some more from echo studies, and determine where to find the diamonds. It was successful enough that they kept it extremely secret.
My point is when most people discover the golden goose, they keep quiet about it. Remember, most millionaires are not the Donald Trumps of the world, but the guy next door driving a car that he paid less than $30,000 for. (old data, adjust for inflation)
Slashdot Mirror
Go ahead and create a large group that can counter the power of the corporations. Call it a Conglomeration, or something. Watch it rise to power, supplanting the corporations, unions, churches, etc. Watch it get corrupted, and the country become for the Conglomeration, of the Conglomeration and by the Conglomeration.
Name a large group of people that had power that didn't abuse that power.
and that the cost of producing an episode is about ten times of what it should be."
Most things cost around what they should cost. I think what he meant to say was that it would cost 10 times what it would be worth.
Last time I had an MRI it was extremely noisy, so I suspect the field wasn't 100% constant. (Could be wrong, or there are different kinds of MRI, I'm old enough that it was called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance)
My astrophysics prof claimed that magnets of that strength could make you see colors.
Have you been checked for Hemachromatosis or other blood/iron disorders?
no one thought that heavy security would be needed
Who is this imaginary "no one", that never thinks anything could go wrong? I and all my friends who grew up watching "War Games" are always thinking about how things could go wrong.
It always seemed to me that what "no one" is thinking is not that bad things can happen, but "I'll put in just enough security so that the failure won't happen until after I retire."
Most times I could get through the checkout faster if they just had a human doing it for me.
Of course a professional checker who's do this for awhile could be faster than Joe Random shopper. The point isn't speed, it's not having to pay a skilled worker bee.
Tidbit: You have a few items to buy. The express lane is open, and a regular checker is open, and the people waiting seem to have the same number of items. Which checker do you choose?
Always choose the regular checker if there's not too much stuff in the carts of the people ahead of you. Store managers always put their slowest checkers on the express lanes. (Think about it: Which customer is more important to you, the guy who is buying one pack of gum, or the housewife with $200 worth of groceries in her cart?)
At least at Giant, it's not exactly random. But you do get a $2 off coupon if you're audited.
Try this: Pick up an item from the shelf. Look at it. Put it into your bag without scanning. Take it out of the bag and scan it. Put it back in the bag. The scan gun will give you a list of all the things you've bought, so you can verify before you check out.
I'm very absent minded, so this happens to me not infrequently. AFAIK, every time I've done that, I've been audited.
Another interesting tidbit: When they audit, they just rescan a few different items. Their audit makes sure you've scanned at least one of the items you've put in your bag, but it doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between 4 or 5 of an item.
I'm not sure what they do if the audit doesn't match. It's entirely possible that you try to scan an item, it doesn't take, but you hear a beep from another shopper and think your gun caught it.
Don Lancaster described this process years ago. The trick is the tiny diode at the bottom of the antenna to turn the AC into DC. It has to handle 400 - 800 THz. Plausible, but difficult. 5-10 years really means they have no idea when they'd be able to produce this in industrial quantities.
This would work, and you could even start watching before the download finished. If they used multicast technology and a few regional proxies, the bandwidth requirements would go way, way down.
I'm sure their content license preclude any of the above.
I seems to have five extra wires, that could be the power supply connection. Also it looks like it goes to a hub, so that might be where it will get it's power in the production version.
It appears to be plugged into a hub, from which you can add a mouse and keyboard. Networking may also come across the USB port. There are 5 extra wires that supply power I imagine.
Damn straight. I once saw a guy write a program composed of Z80 opcodes onto a legal sized note pad. He then hand assembled the code, copied the bytes into a hex editor, then sent the code to someone else to burn into a PROM. That's the way all coding should be done.
Oh, and Get Off My Lawn, ya lousy kids.
Another poster wrote:
If an arbiter finds against the corporation enough times, they get paid $0 when the company stops using him or her.
Here's a fix. I bring my professional arbitrator and the company brings their professional arbitrator. (both licensed and registered) At the beginning of the meeting, a coin is flipped and one arbitrator goes home.
Interesting.
INAL, but I'd imagine that the slashdot "public" would know that you can patent an idea, so there's no deception expressed or implied, however there's an internet rule that says something like, "There's no idea so goofy, that someone on the Internet doesn't believe it"
I'm going to use the legal defense, "If you lie big enough, you can get away with it."
Just don't use a cellphone. Or a landline. Or cable TV. Smoke signals are right out, but Semaphores between the hours of 10am and 4pm will still be allowed. (Tin cans and string will be allowed, as long as you don't have to cross a public street and it's not a permanent installation)
No arbiter can be impartial. Their livelihood depends upon bias and outright prejudice (as in "pre-judging"). It is not an honorable profession.
Like a judge appointed for life?
Anyway, the state could set up their own arbitration board, and when a case comes up, they assign someone from the board. The companies would pay for the board, but they wouldn't have hiring and firing decisions. That would make it more impartial.
Which, of course, they'll always require, as long as the law allows them to.
It's bigger than just the Federal Arbitration Act law. Cell phone companies enjoy a natural N-opoly (where N is a small integer) because it's hard to set nationwide coverage, and the FCC doesn't just let anyone use the airwaves.
There's no market incentive to offer a service where you don't have to sue, since all the other players put these clauses into their contracts. The cell phone providers don't actually collude on this, they just have to see what the others use in their contracts. (Anyone know when they started doing this? If ever there was a case for business practice patents, this is it. Perhaps we can award the originator of bad practices a retroactive patent so that only they will be able to use a particular bad practice.)
They do charge fat people more to ride airplanes, not so much because they use more fuel, but because they take two seats. If you can't squeeze into a regular airplane seat you either have to pay for two, or pay more to ride on a type of plane that has bigger seats.
In general, at any Uni with a large endowment, desirable students have no problem paying for tuition. You can be desirable either because you have talent, or because your parents have money. If you have the talent, and no money, any University will pay your full tuition. It helps if you've discovered a new theorem, or a medical breakthrough.
For 77 million accounts, though, you have to consider the possibility that somebody would commission a serious forensic teardown of your system, decapping, microscopes, and the lot.
For $77 million accounts the Russian Mob (via the ex-KGB) would commission a serious beatdown, kneecaping, blackmail, and the lot. As always, xkcd to the rescue. http://xkcd.com/538/
If any one employee has access to that kind of data, they're in trouble.
*Note: All the above (:-) for the humor impaired.
Talk to a lawyer for your own state, but for a good overview of what incorporation is today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(business)
"...a corporation being a legal entity that is effectively recognized as a person under the law). The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organization, sports club, or a government of a new city or town."...
A corporation has extra rights that the "people acting in a group" don't have. If a person or persons dump oil into the gulf of Mexico, they can be taken to jail. If a corporation dumps millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, there will be a fine. Even if people died in the accident, no one will go to jail, and the courts are loathe to implement a "Corporate Death Sentence" where the fines are enough to bankrupt the company. (Enron was a exception, not the rule)
It seems like you could even exploit this.
So adjust the law about what corporations are about. Right now they have a duty to their shareholders. Most companies incorporate in the state with the most favorable corporate laws, a Federal corporate law could help that. (You would have to incorporate in you own state, or incorporate Federally.)
Corporations should be beholden primarily to the taxpayers, the shareholders get a cut and say after that. Corporate officers should answer to the taxpayers. Attorney-client privilege for corporate lawyers should extend to the taxpayers, not the officers or shareholders.
Remember: Incorporation is a legal fiction given by the Government. The power of the government derives from the will of the people. Corporations should always act in the best interest of the people, and like the Secret Service, they should be willing to take a bullet for us. If a group of people don't want to take this responsibility, no one is forcing them to incorporate.
Whoooosh... It's a joke son, a joke. Strong AI has always been about 5 years away.
Anyway, I used to work for an AI company. There was one customer that found a bug in our software, so we asked for the code that was giving them trouble. They wouldn't even give us a code fragment. Finally, they were able to write a different program that replicated the bug, and then we could fix it.
This Australian company would drill boreholes somewhere looking for diamonds. Each meter of core would have hundreds of measurements taken, but not every measurement was taken for every every sample. The AI would take all that data, and I presume some more from echo studies, and determine where to find the diamonds. It was successful enough that they kept it extremely secret.
My point is when most people discover the golden goose, they keep quiet about it. Remember, most millionaires are not the Donald Trumps of the world, but the guy next door driving a car that he paid less than $30,000 for. (old data, adjust for inflation)