Honest people don't have anything to hide from other honest people. Privacy is needed only because there are some who do wrong by taking advantage of others. This includes those in government and business.
......If you're #1 non-negotianble requirment for the net is video-on-demand, their analysis may be correct.......
This is a requirement that the Internet was never designed for in the beginning. It is something that is being bolted on and it doesn't fit all that well into intrinsic design and purpose for which the Internet and its protocols were intended for. It was never designed to transmit time critical video and audio. It original purpose and design was to accurately transmit COMPUTER data from A to B even if the data path was at times not all that good. The computers at each end order and sort the data and reassemble it without error (mostly). If an error does happen, the receiving computer ask for that fraction of the data to be sent again and then stuffs the corrected data into the proper spot. for live video and audio, that doesn't work. All the data or at least most of it has to get there in the proper order and on time.
Today, a requirement is being imposed on the present Internet for transmitting a kind of data for which is, at its very core, not all that well suited. Looking at and prioritizing data is and always will be a stop gap measure to try to get around a basic, intrinsic limitation of the Internet at its very core. Maybe some entirely new procedures and protocols need to be invented in order to transmit real time data over existing networks.
.......then you simply don't have enough rail infrastructure......
Before the automobile became popular in Germany, there was rail service to almost every town and even village. Over time most of these little local "Bimmelbahn" trains were either abandoned outright or replaced with buses. Every little village also had a grocery store where the normal daily things were within walking distance. Those too have largely been replaced by mega-chains that can sell the same things much cheaper and with a huge available variety. In Germany the number of reasonable neighborhood shopping opportunities still far exceeds those found in the Western parts of the US.
Compared to the American West, Germany is a very densely populated country, yet even there many people endure the hassles of using their car because it is still the lesser overall hassle in many daily routines. Especially in summer, the "Stau" (traffic jam) is the norm, rather than the exception. A moving metal carpet crawls along many sections of the Autobahn.
In the competition between rail and road a big factor often ignored by public transit boosters is that of time and convenience. Rail is definitely the most efficient way to move a given mass from point A to B but seldom the most convenient. Riding public transit while toting a weeks worth of groceries just isn't something most people enjoy. Stopping at a grocery after work is seldom an option for anyone who commutes on public transit. Therefore many forget about transit, because the need (want) to do their shopping at lunch break or after work.
In India of course, automobiles are largely unaffordable to most and roads are poor or marginal. Therefore trains are a preferred mode of transport.
.....You presume that there will always be a difference?.....
There will be as long as the POTS remains basically a circuit switched system and the internet a packet system. A packet system makes more efficient use of the signal path, but a circuit switched setup delivers time critical information more reliably.
The Internet was never originally designed to deliver time critical data, such as live voice and video. It was conceived as a way to send digital data correctly even in the face of unreliable data transmission speeds and path interruptions. Data that did not make it on the first try can get resent until all the data EVENTUALLY gets to its destination. The Internet is being coerced into transmitting live voice and video even though this type of data was never part of the original basic design. To use the Internet technology for this kind of data, the "eventually" has to be turned in to a more or less "immediately". That means looking at the data and decide if it is of the "eventual" or "immediate" kind and doing the best effort to get the latter delivered, even at the expense of slowing down the former. Doing that has nothing whatever to do with "neutrality".
.....instead the injury was caused by the sudden violent movement of my brain......
Obviously, no helmet or seat belt will guarantee survival in a crash. I am glad to hear that you were able to recover from your injury. Generally though, the violence of brain shock is reduced by helmets and seat belts are especially protective in roll over type of accidents, where the vehicle doesn't necessarily come to a violent stop as in a collision. The vehicle I referred to in an earlier post in this thread, where a beautiful young lady was killed, was that type of a crash. She alone of the four others did not have her seat belt fastened and she alone was killed. The vehicle left the road and gyrated violently down an embankment. No other vehicle was involved. Such loss of control types of accidents are quite common. Seat belts don't give nearly as much protection in high speed collisions.
.....I include in the "existing evidence" only objective facts: observations that can be confirmed today........
In addition to the amazing coherence of the entire Biblical text, pointing to one author, namely God Himself there are other authenticating evidences. Anyone claiming to be God, outside of time and space, ought to be able to write history in advance, since time is totally transparent to such a being. In the book of Isaiah God challenges god pretenders (idols) to authenticate their claims by accurate stating the past and the FUTURE.
This is exactly what we find in the Bible. There are many prophecies concerning Israel and the Messiah. These are historical and are harder to pin down observationally today, but still true. However the prediction of and the fulfillment of the rebirth of the nation of Israel after almost 2000 years of exile and dispersion is a fact that cannot be lightly dismissed as a coincidence. For centuries erudite scholars have pondered these passages predicting the return of the Jews to their land. Even only 150 years ago few believed in a literal rebirth of that nation. Piles of scholarly books and doctoral theses tried to explain these then mysterious passages in spiritual terms. Most of them did not take these scriptures in anything approaching a literal sense. Yet in 1948, the state of Israel became a real nation once again.
Not only that, just as predicted, Jerusalem came under Jewish sovereignty again for the first time since Nebuchadnezzar dragged the Jews off to Babylon, centuries before Jesus appeared. This prophecy was fulfilled in 1967. In addition to that the Scripture tells us that Jerusalem would become a "stone of stumbling" and a rock of offense to the nations. Other than for religious reasons, Jerusalem is not a very important town. Yet the thorny problems of that city keep diplomats and statesmen up at night, trying to figure out a solution to the contentious issues surrounding that city as well as the whole nation of Israel.
The book of Revelation predicts a world ruler to come who will force people to accept something often referred to as "The Mark of the Beast" and goes on to tell us that anyone without this numerical mark "will not be able to buy nor sell". Before the computer age people wondered how on earth could the lack of some kind of mark keep anyone from carrying on trade. I think as a/. reader you may have some idea that this certainly doable with present technology or at least in the not so distant future. Try to do certain kinds of transactions even today without a credit card or social security number.
Jesus speaks of a time of trouble and destruction to come, the likes of which the world has never seen nor will see again after the time that happens. Then He adds that if that time were not cut short by the direct intervention of God Himself, no human would remain alive. That prophecy could not happen until mankind developed the terrible weapons of mass destruction we have today.
The Bible is a most amazing book that gives strong evidence that it is a message that comes to us from beyond time and space, from the one God who tells us in Isaiah that he inhabits eternity, transcending our time bound universe. Jesus claimed to be God on a mission to planet earth. IF that is true I think it behooves us to listen to and heed His message. Jesus is the only religious leader who even CLAIMS to have risen from the dead but also, I believe that he made good on that claim. He promises that everyone who trusts and believes in Him will also transcend death by resurrection. You, like a juror in a court room, must carefully weigh the biblical evidence and either BELIEVE it is true or not.
I wonder how someone would fake a retina or DNA biometric. Automated, near instant DNA tests are not that far away.
As far as immigration, or who gets to live where, well in the end, historically in humanity it has been the might makes right system. The "native" Americans are also immigrants, except they got here before anybody lived here, at least as far as we know. When the Europeans came, there were only about 3 million or so people in the entire North American Continent. There certainly should have been room for everybody, even back then.
A big reason there was so much conflict is because the natives had a very different view of land use. The European idea of outright exclusive "ownership" of land by individuals was a totally foreign concept to them. The Europeans had the better weapons and thus were able to enforce their culture and land use ideas on the incumbents and simply took by force what they wanted. Such things were not unique to America. This has happened all over the planet, whenever there was a clash of people and cultures.
Now we are here and have the right and duty to determine who may come here into the country in the same way you have the right and duty to determine who may enter your land and home. You would not like it if just anybody came into your house, helped themselves to whatever they found in the refrigerator and went to sleep in your bed. You'd likely get upset if someone pitched a tent in your yard and lived there without your OK. Neither can and will our society permit just anybody to come here and reap our benefits.
..... that would restrict the travel of any non-citizens in the country......
Do you think that maybe, just maybe the Feds MIGHT be smart enough to come up with a passport like document for LEGAL aliens? AFAIK anyone can still ride a bus or train without showing an ID. The license to drive car should that alone and each state should decide the form and conditions thereof. If the government required an ID or permit for all forms of travel, that would likely be constitutionally invalid. In the end, does it really matter if the gov't knows you went to see your relatives in Wisconsin or wherever? The phone company has all your phone records, your ISP knows with whom you correspond by email and has a record of all the questionable sites you surfed to. Your bank and credit card companies have records of all your non-cash expenditures, The gov't can get all that info on you if they want to. So now what's the big deal if they ask to see your ID before getting on an airplane? You are living in the information age where you will leave an information trail unless you work VERY hard not to. Get used to it.
.....She burned to death, which is one of the worst ways to die......
I know there are instances where a seat belt increases the chances of death. Most often however it is the case that seat belts prevent serious injuries and death in crashes. This is especially true in rollovers.
I had a discussion concerning helmet laws and motorcycles with a relative in Canada once. He pointed out the fact that society as a whole pays the cost of patching up and possibly supporting an injured motorcycle rider through the health care system and thus by society as a whole. Thus, society has an interest in minimizing the cost and thus helmet mandates. A similar case can be made for seat belt laws. In the US they don't refuse to treat someone just because that person did not wear a seat belt or helmet. Thus all those who have health insurance pay more when a person is injured severely because they did not wear a simple protective device.
.......they serenely reply that "God works in mysterious ways", which sort of means "we can't know what and how.........
First I would like to thank you for a polite and considered reply.
The Bible as we have it today is a collection of 66 books written by 40 different people over a period of thousands of years. Yet it exhibits a marvelous unity of its central message. As in a court of law, you the jury can weigh the evidence and decide to BELIEVE or reject the testimony of the Biblical witnesses.
The Bible assumes there is a God. His existence is never questioned. The message is that this God is transcendent and wants to have loving interactions with humans whom he created in such a way that they may indeed interact with Him. That is why man alone is such a religious creature. Man somehow craves this interaction with the Creator. Religion is the outward manifestation of a deep longing for closeness to God. It appears to be hardwired into the human race.
Ultimately, there can only be one will in this and in all other possible universes. All other wills either must freely submit to that One will or be programmed not to have a will. The Bible tells us that man and some other creatures commonly called angels were created to have a free will. They can choose whether to submit this gift of free will in LOVE to the will of God. At some point in time, humans chose to declare independence from God by NOT submitting to God. Evidently, so did some of the angels.
Those who desire to submit their will to God's can have interaction with Him, both here and now and forever. God respects our choices. He will allow those who refuse to submit and obey to live apart from Him, now and forever. The Bible calls this apartness condition Hell. Right now, good and the evil are inseparably intertwined at least here on earth. That presence of everything contrary to the will of God is the cause of all the misery here and now. It was not always so and will not always be. There will be a place where there is nothing bad and another with nothing good, both good and bad as defined by God and His innate being. This planet will be part of the only good side, just as it was in the beginning.
We humans and all of science only know what this creation was and is like AFTER the loss of man's perfect communion with God. Right now, every discovery of science and technology can be and almost always is used for war and destruction. Jesus an other parts of the Bible tell us about the restoration of the conditions as they were in the beginning where this will no longer be the case. All of science will ONLY be used for good.
I wonder who even looks at all the "information" flood. The FBI or whoever looks that stuff they have on you if there is a reason. They cannot possibly keep track of it all since in the end, only humans can interpret and evaluate information. The government had enough information to prevent 911. Some even say they knew about it an let it happen.
Anybody needing a security clearance will likely have whatever information the government has on them closely scrutinized. The government isn't the only one interested in your doings and preferences. Any business wanting to sell something would like to know if you might possibly be a candidate to buy their stuff. In a way it is actually nice to get advertising on things I am interested in rather than getting bombarded with mountains of crap for things I have not the slightest interest in. I like gadgets and so I get a lot of gadget catalogs and emails.
As for wearing seat belts, drinking inspections etc., that doesn't bother me. People ought to have enough sense to wear them and not drive drunk. Recently we had a tragic accident here in our valley involving teenagers. All those in the vehicle wearing seat belts survived mostly uninjured, but one wonderful young lady who did not wear hers was killed. A few years ago, a whole family was wiped out a few miles from here by a drunk driver. As a/. reader I assume you are smart enough to wear your seat belt and don't drive when intoxicated. If a cop should stop you, then you can smile at him/her and wish them a nice day.
.......What you propose, the limitation of travel from state to state requiring a passport......
Not really. Only if you want to get on an airplane flying from state to state. What's so different about that than requiring a drivers license if you want to drive a car either within a state o from one to another? We've had those for years. In either case the government wants to know who you are. My teenage son had to bring his birth certificate and social security card to the DMV in order to get a driver's learning permit.
That is still a long ways from having to get explicit permission, Soviet style, to travel from A to B.
....A passport is required to go to Canada now?.....
It sure is, and not only to fly, but also when you go by any other means of travel. I think that either Congress or the SCOTUS will revisit that ID thing in the future. Congress constitutionally cannot forbid travel, but they certainly have the right to regulate airlines and passengers. This includes the conditions under which passengers may board airplanes. I suppose if you prefer a full body search to showing acceptable ID, they should allow for that. They don't really have to know who you are. They only have to be reasonably sure you are not going to cause a hazard to the plane or its passengers by having some kind of weapon or explosive. The constitution says they cannot forbid travel, but says nothing about attaching uniformly applicable conditions to certain forms of transportation. If you want to drive a car, you need a drivers license or someone who has one must transport you.
In our modern society there are fewer and fewer things that do NOT require some sort of permission from some level of government. Most of that permit business is only another form of taxation. I used to live in a city where a homeowner had to get a permit (and pay for it) to replace a defective water heater even if it was an identical replacement. Why get a permit (license) for a dog, especially for one that never leaves the owner's property? All that is is a tax on dogs.
The Feds don't really have to use a financial club to force any state into complying with unfunded mandates. Any state should say to Congress: "We'll comply with your law if you pay for every penny of implementing and enforcing it." Unfunded mandates at any level of government is nothing more than another tax upon the people.
A universal tamper-resistant national ID is in itself not such a bad idea. Most modern nations have some kind of national ID system. Biometric IDs would certainly reduce identity fraud dramatically as well as the influx of illegal aliens.
......Withholding funding for highways and such is an all too powerful lever.......
That is also limited by the fact that the money all comes from the citizens of the states to begin with. If a state would enact a law that withholds all taxes of every kind collected from its citizens, especially income tax, there is nothing the Feds could do short of taking over that state's government by military force or other draconian measures. That might be pretty tough for a big important state, such as California. The whole idea of how far the interstate commerce clause can be stretched might have to be revisited by the SCOTUS.
The Feds rightfully regulate commerce and the ID requirements for airplane passengers is lawful. Since a passport is already part of my traveling kit anyway, I simply use that even when traveling within the country. I have never shown any airport guard my license to drive a car. Why not simply forget forcing the states into issuing "approved" IDs and just require a passport for anyone who wants to fly between states? It is now needed to go to Canada or Mexico. Driver's licenses are just that, for driving motor vehicles, not for identification.
The politicians in Washington obviously have not thought this ID thing through very well. Of course many, if not most countries have some sort of uniform ID card system, so maybe a passport or some variation thereof can serve that officially. This real ID thing is a tempest in a teapot.
......If you examine the hardware minutely, you can notice the patterns on the media.........
With enough effort, you could determine patterns, but not necessarily the meaning or message of these. For centuries, scholars could discern the patterns engraved in the ancient stones of Egyptian monuments, but the meaning of these had been lost until the "Rosetta Stone" was found and used in 1822, somewhat like a cryptographic key to make sense of the ancient inscriptions. Because we know the ASCII code, we have a big leg up on figuring out what the meaning of the patterns in a computer might be.
You may have missed my point. My point is that a computer can be "resurrected" from a proper backup into an entirely new, better hardware. The software of an old, limited DOS computer can be easily loaded into a modern system, one with even a foreign processor, and perform far better than it ever did originally.
Why then should it be so impossible to believe in the Biblical idea of a resurrection of the complete personality, the real "you" in a better, transformed body? Can there be a body designed to transcend time and space, able to operate in additional universes, a multiverse capable hardware for a human soul?
We don't have the foggiest idea how how such a technology might work and therefore call it supernatural. How is it possible to walk on water? I BELIEVE that Jesus did. He claimed to be God. If THAT is true, don't you think He might know how to do stuff we deem "impossible"? We call such things "miracles" and brand those who believe such things as real and true "religious nuts" or worse.
Even our present body "wetware" is determined by the software codes stored in the DNA. The elements in your body and mine are identical. It is in the patterns of their arrangements as coded by the data stored in the DNA where we are different.
.....would you use it as screed for defining the Universe......
I never did and the Bible doesn't either. Both science and the Bible give hints that there are other dimensions. You did not read the last sentence of what I wrote before. Of course you can believe or not, but that is all. Nothing can be proven.
(...Want to prove that Jesus rose from the dead?.....)
I do believe that he did, based on the testimony of multiple witnesses. We humans tend to declare that which we do not understand as "mystical" or "supernatural". The various conservation laws are pretty solid evidence that nothing goes out of existence. Things only change form and place. That makes it pretty likely that you and I also do not disappear into nothingness when what the Bible calls our earthly "tent" is torn down, when that body we live in no longer works.
When the certain parts of your computer crap out, the computer stops working, (dies) but if you have a complete backup of the system, you can load that all back into a newer, faster hardware. You are in effect 'resurrecting' your old computer in a superior environment.
So then how can you dogmatically assert that someone with a vastly superior knowledge and technology (God?) cannot take the software part of you (mind, spirit) from a backup and re-load the real you into a new, superior body? A body no longer subject to the same constraints or your present one?
We have only two ways of knowing. One is by experience and the other is by testimony. By far the largest portion of your total knowledge comes by testimony. You simply BELIEVE what you are taught or read in the media. This is especially true of the past. You cannot experience either the past not the future, only the present. You are give the option to either believe or not. I happen to believe the Bible and you believe something else.
......It is organized a lot like and its components are a lot like a computer.........
However, even a computer has this thing called software, an immaterial product of mind. No matter how minutely you examine the physical hardware of a computer, you learn little or nothing about its software until you turn it on.
Jesus in particular and the Bible in general mentions the existence of another dimension, that of the spirit. It is in effect another universe, where different rules apply. He called that universe "heaven". He said:
"If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"
The Apostle Paul writes of being "seventh heaven" and seeing things that it is impossible to articulate. Does that imply there are six "lower" ones and possibly even higher ones? Are these the other universes that scientists are speculating about?
To us the "miracles" of Jesus, including the biggest one of all, the resurrection, are "unscientific" because our understanding of even our own universe is so small.
Jesus claimed to be God on a visit to our time-space universe and told us we are little children who need to humbly believe. Our science fiction writers have come up with some pretty imaginative ideas, but all of them pale in comparison to what God has intended for those who believe Him and are willing to go with His program, for here and now and for the future.
Scientists have tantalizing indications that there are other dimensions and universes but we now do not have access to these in our present state. We read in the Bible:
"And I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption." (1Corinthians 15:50)
For context read that entire chapter where we can read about immortality and transformation. This world is definitely not all there is, but at present we can only BELIEVE this, we have not what most of us would consider PROOF.
..... this brings the iPhone down from a category of dependable, reliable devices to a category of toys........
NO cellphone nor even high speed Internet gets anywhere close in reliability to good old fashioned POTS that has been around for about a hundred years now. So by that measure ALL cell phones are unreliable toys. There are many rural places where cell phones are useless. Even in some cities there are dead spots with no or poor service.
....Of course I can do that, because I built it in the first place......
So then why don't you build you own version of the iPhone? Build your own car and wide screen TV and fabricate your own chips for them while you are at it. Modern technology or even not so modern technology requires many people working together. Some call that civilization.
I bet you would even have a hard time making your own pencils. Fell and mill your own cedar tree and go mine some graphite. Most people don't make their own pencils nor computers, but I suppose it might bring a measure of satisfaction of boasting that you are able to make your own pencils from scratch.
(...... just having the self built hardware and buying a Apple supported OS X?.......)
Apple doesn't build computers, they never have built so much as even one. They build a complete computing SOLUTION, in the same way Ford builds transportation solutions called cars and trucks. Dell, HP, Sony etc. all only build computers, the body, so to speak. MS supplies the soul to all personal computers, other than the Apple's Macs. Apple builds the body and then puts the soul into it they themselves created. If you wish, you can put MS or Linux souls into your Mac in addition or in place of the OSX soul put there by the creator of the Mac. However, Apple won't let you put the soul of their systems into a foreign body. The soul is therefore clearly more important than the body.
...No one is supposed to be able to get a credit report on you without your explicit authorization anyway.......
Indeed true, I know some landlords and they have a permission form each rental applicant must sign that gives the Landlord or his agent the right to get the applicant's credit report. The rental application fee is mostly to cover the cost of the credit report and is non-refundable. The credit report history gets used to get a pretty good idea of how well the applicant pays their bills. Someone who chronically pays their bills late will likely also have rent payment delinquencies.
Consumers should have an easy, low cost way to check their credit report and some impartial dispute resolution system they can afford. Creditors need some way gauge the financial, and by extension, general responsibility and reliability of applicants. For landlords, it is likely that someone careless with money will also be careless with the landlord's premises and fall behind in their rent, necessitating often costly hassle of eviction proceedings.
...... In some fields, bad credit (valid or not) can severely limit your employment options......
Landlords I know of also use the credit report as a tie breaker when otherwise equally qualified persons are seeking housing. The one(s) with the better credit report is chosen as a tenant.
I suppose that the credit report is a way of measuring responsibility. Someone who manages their money well and pays their debt obligations on time is more likely to be a better tenant and employee, other things being equal. Now in the age of the Internet, it should be mandatory for the keepers of the data (credit bureaus) to give free, continuous access to each consumer to READ and possibly dispute their own information in the data banks. Some sort of impartial arbitration system, rather expensive courts and lawyers, should be in place to allow for this.
....My (Nokia) phone can play AACs, which means anything from iTunes Plus......
How easy is it to get the music from the ITMS into your Nokia? As a/. reader you know how to do simple stuff like that, but it may not be as easy for mostly cluless consumers.
.......in both cases the player manufacturer takes a cut of the revenue.....
Apple doesn't share the revenue from the iPods with anyone AFAIK. Why any player manufacturers should share with the music companies is beyond me. That's like CD player makers paying the record companies or stores a cut for each player. How about the stations getting a cut for each radio or TV set sold? Maybe MS was dumb enough to start such a thing with their flopped Zune, but then MS has money to burn.
.....More than 100 million iPods have been sold and more are still going out the door every day......
Not only that, but soon there will a whole lot of iphones added to the music players that cannot use the MS DRM content. Anyone who makes a product of which a significant number is sold by one retailer, is cutting their won business and future profits when they refuse to deal on that retailer's terms. Ask any manufacturer who has ever dealt with Walmart about that.
Slashdot Mirror
....What do I have to hide?......
Honest people don't have anything to hide from other honest people. Privacy is needed only because there are some who do wrong by taking advantage of others. This includes those in government and business.
......If you're #1 non-negotianble requirment for the net is video-on-demand, their analysis may be correct.......
This is a requirement that the Internet was never designed for in the beginning. It is something that is being bolted on and it doesn't fit all that well into intrinsic design and purpose for which the Internet and its protocols were intended for. It was never designed to transmit time critical video and audio. It original purpose and design was to accurately transmit COMPUTER data from A to B even if the data path was at times not all that good. The computers at each end order and sort the data and reassemble it without error (mostly). If an error does happen, the receiving computer ask for that fraction of the data to be sent again and then stuffs the corrected data into the proper spot. for live video and audio, that doesn't work. All the data or at least most of it has to get there in the proper order and on time.
Today, a requirement is being imposed on the present Internet for transmitting a kind of data for which is, at its very core, not all that well suited. Looking at and prioritizing data is and always will be a stop gap measure to try to get around a basic, intrinsic limitation of the Internet at its very core. Maybe some entirely new procedures and protocols need to be invented in order to transmit real time data over existing networks.
.......then you simply don't have enough rail infrastructure......
Before the automobile became popular in Germany, there was rail service to almost every town and even village. Over time most of these little local "Bimmelbahn" trains were either abandoned outright or replaced with buses. Every little village also had a grocery store where the normal daily things were within walking distance. Those too have largely been replaced by mega-chains that can sell the same things much cheaper and with a huge available variety. In Germany the number of reasonable neighborhood shopping opportunities still far exceeds those found in the Western parts of the US.
Compared to the American West, Germany is a very densely populated country, yet even there many people endure the hassles of using their car because it is still the lesser overall hassle in many daily routines. Especially in summer, the "Stau" (traffic jam) is the norm, rather than the exception. A moving metal carpet crawls along many sections of the Autobahn.
In the competition between rail and road a big factor often ignored by public transit boosters is that of time and convenience. Rail is definitely the most efficient way to move a given mass from point A to B but seldom the most convenient. Riding public transit while toting a weeks worth of groceries just isn't something most people enjoy. Stopping at a grocery after work is seldom an option for anyone who commutes on public transit. Therefore many forget about transit, because the need (want) to do their shopping at lunch break or after work.
In India of course, automobiles are largely unaffordable to most and roads are poor or marginal. Therefore trains are a preferred mode of transport.
.....You presume that there will always be a difference?.....
There will be as long as the POTS remains basically a circuit switched system and the internet a packet system. A packet system makes more efficient use of the signal path, but a circuit switched setup delivers time critical information more reliably.
The Internet was never originally designed to deliver time critical data, such as live voice and video. It was conceived as a way to send digital data correctly even in the face of unreliable data transmission speeds and path interruptions. Data that did not make it on the first try can get resent until all the data EVENTUALLY gets to its destination. The Internet is being coerced into transmitting live voice and video even though this type of data was never part of the original basic design. To use the Internet technology for this kind of data, the "eventually" has to be turned in to a more or less "immediately". That means looking at the data and decide if it is of the "eventual" or "immediate" kind and doing the best effort to get the latter delivered, even at the expense of slowing down the former. Doing that has nothing whatever to do with "neutrality".
Obviously, no helmet or seat belt will guarantee survival in a crash. I am glad to hear that you were able to recover from your injury. Generally though, the violence of brain shock is reduced by helmets and seat belts are especially protective in roll over type of accidents, where the vehicle doesn't necessarily come to a violent stop as in a collision. The vehicle I referred to in an earlier post in this thread, where a beautiful young lady was killed, was that type of a crash. She alone of the four others did not have her seat belt fastened and she alone was killed. The vehicle left the road and gyrated violently down an embankment. No other vehicle was involved. Such loss of control types of accidents are quite common. Seat belts don't give nearly as much protection in high speed collisions.
.....I include in the "existing evidence" only objective facts: observations that can be confirmed today........
/. reader you may have some idea that this certainly doable with present technology or at least in the not so distant future. Try to do certain kinds of transactions even today without a credit card or social security number.
In addition to the amazing coherence of the entire Biblical text, pointing to one author, namely God Himself there are other authenticating evidences. Anyone claiming to be God, outside of time and space, ought to be able to write history in advance, since time is totally transparent to such a being. In the book of Isaiah God challenges god pretenders (idols) to authenticate their claims by accurate stating the past and the FUTURE.
This is exactly what we find in the Bible. There are many prophecies concerning Israel and the Messiah. These are historical and are harder to pin down observationally today, but still true. However the prediction of and the fulfillment of the rebirth of the nation of Israel after almost 2000 years of exile and dispersion is a fact that cannot be lightly dismissed as a coincidence. For centuries erudite scholars have pondered these passages predicting the return of the Jews to their land. Even only 150 years ago few believed in a literal rebirth of that nation. Piles of scholarly books and doctoral theses tried to explain these then mysterious passages in spiritual terms. Most of them did not take these scriptures in anything approaching a literal sense. Yet in 1948, the state of Israel became a real nation once again.
Not only that, just as predicted, Jerusalem came under Jewish sovereignty again for the first time since Nebuchadnezzar dragged the Jews off to Babylon, centuries before Jesus appeared. This prophecy was fulfilled in 1967. In addition to that the Scripture tells us that Jerusalem would become a "stone of stumbling" and a rock of offense to the nations. Other than for religious reasons, Jerusalem is not a very important town. Yet the thorny problems of that city keep diplomats and statesmen up at night, trying to figure out a solution to the contentious issues surrounding that city as well as the whole nation of Israel.
The book of Revelation predicts a world ruler to come who will force people to accept something often referred to as "The Mark of the Beast" and goes on to tell us that anyone without this numerical mark "will not be able to buy nor sell". Before the computer age people wondered how on earth could the lack of some kind of mark keep anyone from carrying on trade. I think as a
Jesus speaks of a time of trouble and destruction to come, the likes of which the world has never seen nor will see again after the time that happens. Then He adds that if that time were not cut short by the direct intervention of God Himself, no human would remain alive. That prophecy could not happen until mankind developed the terrible weapons of mass destruction we have today.
The Bible is a most amazing book that gives strong evidence that it is a message that comes to us from beyond time and space, from the one God who tells us in Isaiah that he inhabits eternity, transcending our time bound universe. Jesus claimed to be God on a mission to planet earth. IF that is true I think it behooves us to listen to and heed His message. Jesus is the only religious leader who even CLAIMS to have risen from the dead but also, I believe that he made good on that claim. He promises that everyone who trusts and believes in Him will also transcend death by resurrection. You, like a juror in a court room, must carefully weigh the biblical evidence and either BELIEVE it is true or not.
....Until someone is able to fake biometrics.....
I wonder how someone would fake a retina or DNA biometric. Automated, near instant DNA tests are not that far away.
As far as immigration, or who gets to live where, well in the end, historically in humanity it has been the might makes right system. The "native" Americans are also immigrants, except they got here before anybody lived here, at least as far as we know. When the Europeans came, there were only about 3 million or so people in the entire North American Continent. There certainly should have been room for everybody, even back then.
A big reason there was so much conflict is because the natives had a very different view of land use. The European idea of outright exclusive "ownership" of land by individuals was a totally foreign concept to them. The Europeans had the better weapons and thus were able to enforce their culture and land use ideas on the incumbents and simply took by force what they wanted. Such things were not unique to America. This has happened all over the planet, whenever there was a clash of people and cultures.
Now we are here and have the right and duty to determine who may come here into the country in the same way you have the right and duty to determine who may enter your land and home. You would not like it if just anybody came into your house, helped themselves to whatever they found in the refrigerator and went to sleep in your bed. You'd likely get upset if someone pitched a tent in your yard and lived there without your OK. Neither can and will our society permit just anybody to come here and reap our benefits.
..... that would restrict the travel of any non-citizens in the country......
Do you think that maybe, just maybe the Feds MIGHT be smart enough to come up with a passport like document for LEGAL aliens? AFAIK anyone can still ride a bus or train without showing an ID. The license to drive car should that alone and each state should decide the form and conditions thereof. If the government required an ID or permit for all forms of travel, that would likely be constitutionally invalid. In the end, does it really matter if the gov't knows you went to see your relatives in Wisconsin or wherever? The phone company has all your phone records, your ISP knows with whom you correspond by email and has a record of all the questionable sites you surfed to. Your bank and credit card companies have records of all your non-cash expenditures, The gov't can get all that info on you if they want to. So now what's the big deal if they ask to see your ID before getting on an airplane? You are living in the information age where you will leave an information trail unless you work VERY hard not to. Get used to it.
.....She burned to death, which is one of the worst ways to die......
I know there are instances where a seat belt increases the chances of death. Most often however it is the case that seat belts prevent serious injuries and death in crashes. This is especially true in rollovers.
I had a discussion concerning helmet laws and motorcycles with a relative in Canada once. He pointed out the fact that society as a whole pays the cost of patching up and possibly supporting an injured motorcycle rider through the health care system and thus by society as a whole. Thus, society has an interest in minimizing the cost and thus helmet mandates. A similar case can be made for seat belt laws. In the US they don't refuse to treat someone just because that person did not wear a seat belt or helmet. Thus all those who have health insurance pay more when a person is injured severely because they did not wear a simple protective device.
.......they serenely reply that "God works in mysterious ways", which sort of means "we can't know what and how.........
First I would like to thank you for a polite and considered reply.
The Bible as we have it today is a collection of 66 books written by 40 different people over a period of thousands of years. Yet it exhibits a marvelous unity of its central message. As in a court of law, you the jury can weigh the evidence and decide to BELIEVE or reject the testimony of the Biblical witnesses.
The Bible assumes there is a God. His existence is never questioned. The message is that this God is transcendent and wants to have loving interactions with humans whom he created in such a way that they may indeed interact with Him. That is why man alone is such a religious creature. Man somehow craves this interaction with the Creator. Religion is the outward manifestation of a deep longing for closeness to God. It appears to be hardwired into the human race.
Ultimately, there can only be one will in this and in all other possible universes. All other wills either must freely submit to that One will or be programmed not to have a will. The Bible tells us that man and some other creatures commonly called angels were created to have a free will. They can choose whether to submit this gift of free will in LOVE to the will of God. At some point in time, humans chose to declare independence from God by NOT submitting to God. Evidently, so did some of the angels.
Those who desire to submit their will to God's can have interaction with Him, both here and now and forever. God respects our choices. He will allow those who refuse to submit and obey to live apart from Him, now and forever. The Bible calls this apartness condition Hell. Right now, good and the evil are inseparably intertwined at least here on earth. That presence of everything contrary to the will of God is the cause of all the misery here and now. It was not always so and will not always be. There will be a place where there is nothing bad and another with nothing good, both good and bad as defined by God and His innate being. This planet will be part of the only good side, just as it was in the beginning.
We humans and all of science only know what this creation was and is like AFTER the loss of man's perfect communion with God. Right now, every discovery of science and technology can be and almost always is used for war and destruction. Jesus an other parts of the Bible tell us about the restoration of the conditions as they were in the beginning where this will no longer be the case. All of science will ONLY be used for good.
....."Total Information Awareness.".....
/. reader I assume you are smart enough to wear your seat belt and don't drive when intoxicated. If a cop should stop you, then you can smile at him/her and wish them a nice day.
I wonder who even looks at all the "information" flood. The FBI or whoever looks that stuff they have on you if there is a reason. They cannot possibly keep track of it all since in the end, only humans can interpret and evaluate information. The government had enough information to prevent 911. Some even say they knew about it an let it happen.
Anybody needing a security clearance will likely have whatever information the government has on them closely scrutinized. The government isn't the only one interested in your doings and preferences. Any business wanting to sell something would like to know if you might possibly be a candidate to buy their stuff. In a way it is actually nice to get advertising on things I am interested in rather than getting bombarded with mountains of crap for things I have not the slightest interest in. I like gadgets and so I get a lot of gadget catalogs and emails.
As for wearing seat belts, drinking inspections etc., that doesn't bother me. People ought to have enough sense to wear them and not drive drunk. Recently we had a tragic accident here in our valley involving teenagers. All those in the vehicle wearing seat belts survived mostly uninjured, but one wonderful young lady who did not wear hers was killed. A few years ago, a whole family was wiped out a few miles from here by a drunk driver. As a
.......What you propose, the limitation of travel from state to state requiring a passport ......
Not really. Only if you want to get on an airplane flying from state to state. What's so different about that than requiring a drivers license if you want to drive a car either within a state o from one to another? We've had those for years. In either case the government wants to know who you are. My teenage son had to bring his birth certificate and social security card to the DMV in order to get a driver's learning permit.
That is still a long ways from having to get explicit permission, Soviet style, to travel from A to B.
....A passport is required to go to Canada now? .....
It sure is, and not only to fly, but also when you go by any other means of travel. I think that either Congress or the SCOTUS will revisit that ID thing in the future. Congress constitutionally cannot forbid travel, but they certainly have the right to regulate airlines and passengers. This includes the conditions under which passengers may board airplanes. I suppose if you prefer a full body search to showing acceptable ID, they should allow for that. They don't really have to know who you are. They only have to be reasonably sure you are not going to cause a hazard to the plane or its passengers by having some kind of weapon or explosive. The constitution says they cannot forbid travel, but says nothing about attaching uniformly applicable conditions to certain forms of transportation. If you want to drive a car, you need a drivers license or someone who has one must transport you.
In our modern society there are fewer and fewer things that do NOT require some sort of permission from some level of government. Most of that permit business is only another form of taxation. I used to live in a city where a homeowner had to get a permit (and pay for it) to replace a defective water heater even if it was an identical replacement. Why get a permit (license) for a dog, especially for one that never leaves the owner's property? All that is is a tax on dogs.
The Feds don't really have to use a financial club to force any state into complying with unfunded mandates. Any state should say to Congress: "We'll comply with your law if you pay for every penny of implementing and enforcing it." Unfunded mandates at any level of government is nothing more than another tax upon the people.
A universal tamper-resistant national ID is in itself not such a bad idea. Most modern nations have some kind of national ID system. Biometric IDs would certainly reduce identity fraud dramatically as well as the influx of illegal aliens.
......Withholding funding for highways and such is an all too powerful lever .......
That is also limited by the fact that the money all comes from the citizens of the states to begin with. If a state would enact a law that withholds all taxes of every kind collected from its citizens, especially income tax, there is nothing the Feds could do short of taking over that state's government by military force or other draconian measures. That might be pretty tough for a big important state, such as California. The whole idea of how far the interstate commerce clause can be stretched might have to be revisited by the SCOTUS.
The Feds rightfully regulate commerce and the ID requirements for airplane passengers is lawful. Since a passport is already part of my traveling kit anyway, I simply use that even when traveling within the country. I have never shown any airport guard my license to drive a car. Why not simply forget forcing the states into issuing "approved" IDs and just require a passport for anyone who wants to fly between states? It is now needed to go to Canada or Mexico. Driver's licenses are just that, for driving motor vehicles, not for identification.
The politicians in Washington obviously have not thought this ID thing through very well. Of course many, if not most countries have some sort of uniform ID card system, so maybe a passport or some variation thereof can serve that officially. This real ID thing is a tempest in a teapot.
......If you examine the hardware minutely, you can notice the patterns on the media.........
With enough effort, you could determine patterns, but not necessarily the meaning or message of these. For centuries, scholars could discern the patterns engraved in the ancient stones of Egyptian monuments, but the meaning of these had been lost until the "Rosetta Stone" was found and used in 1822, somewhat like a cryptographic key to make sense of the ancient inscriptions. Because we know the ASCII code, we have a big leg up on figuring out what the meaning of the patterns in a computer might be.
You may have missed my point. My point is that a computer can be "resurrected" from a proper backup into an entirely new, better hardware. The software of an old, limited DOS computer can be easily loaded into a modern system, one with even a foreign processor, and perform far better than it ever did originally.
Why then should it be so impossible to believe in the Biblical idea of a resurrection of the complete personality, the real "you" in a better, transformed body? Can there be a body designed to transcend time and space, able to operate in additional universes, a multiverse capable hardware for a human soul?
We don't have the foggiest idea how how such a technology might work and therefore call it supernatural. How is it possible to walk on water? I BELIEVE that Jesus did. He claimed to be God. If THAT is true, don't you think He might know how to do stuff we deem "impossible"? We call such things "miracles" and brand those who believe such things as real and true "religious nuts" or worse.
Even our present body "wetware" is determined by the software codes stored in the DNA. The elements in your body and mine are identical. It is in the patterns of their arrangements as coded by the data stored in the DNA where we are different.
.....would you use it as screed for defining the Universe......
I never did and the Bible doesn't either. Both science and the Bible give hints that there are other dimensions. You did not read the last sentence of what I wrote before. Of course you can believe or not, but that is all. Nothing can be proven.
(...Want to prove that Jesus rose from the dead?.....)
I do believe that he did, based on the testimony of multiple witnesses. We humans tend to declare that which we do not understand as "mystical" or "supernatural". The various conservation laws are pretty solid evidence that nothing goes out of existence. Things only change form and place. That makes it pretty likely that you and I also do not disappear into nothingness when what the Bible calls our earthly "tent" is torn down, when that body we live in no longer works.
When the certain parts of your computer crap out, the computer stops working, (dies) but if you have a complete backup of the system, you can load that all back into a newer, faster hardware. You are in effect 'resurrecting' your old computer in a superior environment.
So then how can you dogmatically assert that someone with a vastly superior knowledge and technology (God?) cannot take the software part of you (mind, spirit) from a backup and re-load the real you into a new, superior body? A body no longer subject to the same constraints or your present one?
We have only two ways of knowing. One is by experience and the other is by testimony. By far the largest portion of your total knowledge comes by testimony. You simply BELIEVE what you are taught or read in the media. This is especially true of the past. You cannot experience either the past not the future, only the present. You are give the option to either believe or not. I happen to believe the Bible and you believe something else.
......It is organized a lot like and its components are a lot like a computer.........
However, even a computer has this thing called software, an immaterial product of mind. No matter how minutely you examine the physical hardware of a computer, you learn little or nothing about its software until you turn it on.
Jesus in particular and the Bible in general mentions the existence of another dimension, that of the spirit. It is in effect another universe, where different rules apply. He called that universe "heaven". He said:
"If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"
The Apostle Paul writes of being "seventh heaven" and seeing things that it is impossible to articulate. Does that imply there are six "lower" ones and possibly even higher ones? Are these the other universes that scientists are speculating about?
To us the "miracles" of Jesus, including the biggest one of all, the resurrection, are "unscientific" because our understanding of even our own universe is so small.
Jesus claimed to be God on a visit to our time-space universe and told us we are little children who need to humbly believe. Our science fiction writers have come up with some pretty imaginative ideas, but all of them pale in comparison to what God has intended for those who believe Him and are willing to go with His program, for here and now and for the future.
Scientists have tantalizing indications that there are other dimensions and universes but we now do not have access to these in our present state. We read in the Bible:
"And I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption." (1Corinthians 15:50)
For context read that entire chapter where we can read about immortality and transformation. This world is definitely not all there is, but at present we can only BELIEVE this, we have not what most of us would consider PROOF.
.....I think Steve Wozniak (the designer of the Apple I) would beg to differ!......
It was STILL a complete system. They did not slap someone els's software in it. They built the WHOLE computer from day one.
..... this brings the iPhone down from a category of dependable, reliable devices to a category of toys........
NO cellphone nor even high speed Internet gets anywhere close in reliability to good old fashioned POTS that has been around for about a hundred years now. So by that measure ALL cell phones are unreliable toys. There are many rural places where cell phones are useless. Even in some cities there are dead spots with no or poor service.
....Of course I can do that, because I built it in the first place......
So then why don't you build you own version of the iPhone? Build your own car and wide screen TV and fabricate your own chips for them while you are at it. Modern technology or even not so modern technology requires many people working together. Some call that civilization.
I bet you would even have a hard time making your own pencils. Fell and mill your own cedar tree and go mine some graphite. Most people don't make their own pencils nor computers, but I suppose it might bring a measure of satisfaction of boasting that you are able to make your own pencils from scratch.
(...... just having the self built hardware and buying a Apple supported OS X?.......)
Apple doesn't build computers, they never have built so much as even one. They build a complete computing SOLUTION, in the same way Ford builds transportation solutions called cars and trucks. Dell, HP, Sony etc. all only build computers, the body, so to speak. MS supplies the soul to all personal computers, other than the Apple's Macs. Apple builds the body and then puts the soul into it they themselves created. If you wish, you can put MS or Linux souls into your Mac in addition or in place of the OSX soul put there by the creator of the Mac. However, Apple won't let you put the soul of their systems into a foreign body. The soul is therefore clearly more important than the body.
...No one is supposed to be able to get a credit report on you without your explicit authorization anyway. ......
Indeed true, I know some landlords and they have a permission form each rental applicant must sign that gives the Landlord or his agent the right to get the applicant's credit report. The rental application fee is mostly to cover the cost of the credit report and is non-refundable. The credit report history gets used to get a pretty good idea of how well the applicant pays their bills. Someone who chronically pays their bills late will likely also have rent payment delinquencies.
Consumers should have an easy, low cost way to check their credit report and some impartial dispute resolution system they can afford. Creditors need some way gauge the financial, and by extension, general responsibility and reliability of applicants. For landlords, it is likely that someone careless with money will also be careless with the landlord's premises and fall behind in their rent, necessitating often costly hassle of eviction proceedings.
...... In some fields, bad credit (valid or not) can severely limit your employment options......
Landlords I know of also use the credit report as a tie breaker when otherwise equally qualified persons are seeking housing. The one(s) with the better credit report is chosen as a tenant.
I suppose that the credit report is a way of measuring responsibility. Someone who manages their money well and pays their debt obligations on time is more likely to be a better tenant and employee, other things being equal. Now in the age of the Internet, it should be mandatory for the keepers of the data (credit bureaus) to give free, continuous access to each consumer to READ and possibly dispute their own information in the data banks. Some sort of impartial arbitration system, rather expensive courts and lawyers, should be in place to allow for this.
....My (Nokia) phone can play AACs, which means anything from iTunes Plus......
/. reader you know how to do simple stuff like that, but it may not be as easy for mostly cluless consumers.
How easy is it to get the music from the ITMS into your Nokia? As a
.......in both cases the player manufacturer takes a cut of the revenue.....
Apple doesn't share the revenue from the iPods with anyone AFAIK. Why any player manufacturers should share with the music companies is beyond me. That's like CD player makers paying the record companies or stores a cut for each player. How about the stations getting a cut for each radio or TV set sold? Maybe MS was dumb enough to start such a thing with their flopped Zune, but then MS has money to burn.
.....More than 100 million iPods have been sold and more are still going out the door every day......
Not only that, but soon there will a whole lot of iphones added to the music players that cannot use the MS DRM content. Anyone who makes a product of which a significant number is sold by one retailer, is cutting their won business and future profits when they refuse to deal on that retailer's terms. Ask any manufacturer who has ever dealt with Walmart about that.