In the medieval ages, the Church seized power. Religion was the major power holder, and all world leaders were beholden to the Church. As such, the Church had a huge amount of control over all the world.
There has been a huge movement to either debase the public's acceptance of religion or to showcase political figures as religious crusaders, either of which moves the public's accepted authority to these political figures. It is commonly held in America that the left mocks people for believing in angels, while the right upholds all that is wholesome and good in the eyes of Jehovah. Those who abandon their belief in angels are expected to support and thus empower politicians on the left; those who retain their belief in angels are expected to support and thus empower politicians on the right.
Now the scientists are loudly criticizing the politicians for tugging at the emotional and irrational behaviors of the masses, rather than laying down policy based on measured and purportedly-understood ideals. This is simply a power grab by the scientists so that they can feel like their research and their beliefs are the driving force controlling the world. They are the new Church. It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong about anything; what matters is that they are important and that they have justification that absolves them from any such wrongness because it is, at the moment, the best reason anyone has to do anything. Essentially, the scientists say "Our cars cause global warming!" and cars are forced to be lower emissions; and then 10 years later they say "Well it turns out global warming isn't a real thing; but 10 years ago modern science didn't understand the mechanisms that were causing what we were seeing" and it's all okay because it would be rather stupid to look at all the evidence for global warming and go, "This looks good but we're probably all stupid so let's assume it's all wrong."
Scientists will of course be the strongest holders of power because they can survive being proven severely wrong in the most publicly visible way possible.
Yes it's called a "Loan" and it's what happens when you buy a $600 toy with $50 and someone tells you they need $20 a month until they have $600 from you.
Because they discovered hacking would require significant financial and logistics means.
Not tagging onto the trans-atlantic cables with a hardware device. Hacking of computers.
"Our systems are so secure though! They couldn't have been hacked by teenagers! Only like... a rich and powerful bazillionare, or a government, or something, would b e able to break our shit! It has encryption!"
Yes but that's not the point. The point is that you can, relatively easily, identify an RFID tag by the use of cameras to see who is incidentally at this position when this RFID is present, until you narrow it down to a single vehicle and RFID present in all compared cases, and identify the license tag. This is relatively intensive, although some automation is possible with modern visual analysis algorithms (and license plates can be snapped and read by OCR very effectively, if you're not just using your standard traffic cam).
You're trying to argue that the government can't look up the license plate, because it's some kind of super-secret information. It's not. It's public record. The hard part is the correlation of RFID to present vehicle, which isn't a difficult problem but does require more intent than "hey, let's have this automatically get_id_from_plate() from the camera and notate down the RFID for that plate, too!" Notably you also can't definitively say an RFID associates with one vehicle or one person--it's owned by a person, but his wife or kid might also use it sometimes. But you get the idea.
We're talking about the government, sanctioned by the highway administration, having access to a highway-administration database to look up information that any individual--me, you, the coke-fueled tweenaged hooker that sucked your dick last night--can access by walking into one of the many motor vehicle administration locations where you go to get your license and saying "WXZ395 who is this?" No questions, no background checks. Just poke, poke, print, here you go kid.
This isn't a top-secret database that requires credentials and authorization and need-to-know. It's PUBLIC INFORMATION. It's the kind of thing you can just ask for. It's as public as how much INCOME TAX you pay and the name of the person who owns a house. In the case of license plates, you have to go into a building to ask--unless you're a state facility and set up access. Right now it costs me a dollar to punch in a license plate and get a VIN, insurance information, criminal background check, name, and home address. I don't have a special job function for this; it's just a service that's out there. A dollar is cheaper than driving to the MVA and asking.
Obviously the City of New York would access New York State's license plate database for free. Or just use taxpayer funds.
Wanna see the real property database for Baltimore City? Go here and punch in, say, 1402 Madison into "Property," then hit "Search". Then click the link marked "Select" in the results to see that BCO MANAGEMENT COMPANY LLC, 2911 CRESMONT AVE, BALTIMORE, MD. 21211 paid $201.60 to the state and $4046.40 to the city of Baltimore in property taxes in 2012, minus a special credit (it's a historical district property).
If times are already horrible, you can't make them much worse. People starving in the streets?
To put this into perspective: Some African countries are actually pretty well off and ripe for capitalism, which is actually exceedingly resource-intensive (you'll keep as much as 9% of your labor in a capitalistic system, but it's often as low as 4% i.e. in the United States). Others are terrible and dysfunctional, completely, and people can't get food; these countries are better off under a system of feudalism, which in modern times would likely include some sort of public healthcare and public scientific advancement function.
Feudalism makes the people the property of a landlord, but also gives the landlord a strong stake in the well being of the people; historically this means that landlords would take up to 75% (in rare cases, only 25%--keeping 75% of your labor is a huge wet dream, but once in a while a cougar does show up at some kid's dorm room) of the products of serf labor, but supply military protection for them. In the modern times, a public health system would be essential to maintain landowner profits; and these countries are so resource-poor in some cases that a strong focus on scientific advancements to improve the efficiency of leveraging their resources would be obviated IF they had the resources to put into it.
If America experienced a severe economic disaster such as a supervolcano eruption, complete and total food crop failure, or economic collapse leading to near 100% unemployment, a "strong democratic leader" would not be enough. ACOP asserted that in the "worst case" you want a democracy; in such worst case scenarios, a democracy is the WORST form of government because nobody wants to work together. When you only have enough resources to make a small gestapo police force feel safe and secure, trying to ask everyone to bear with you and trust you and vote on measures that will be good for all of us "in the long run" won't work because you're telling everyone to suffer and take a significant risk of death by starvation; everyone will want measures good for them and bad for everyone else, and if they get it then you have a few comfortable people and a large riotous body of proles and no resources for a police force to control them. In that case, it's more effective to actually build a small gestapo police force and force everyone into something for their own good.
Obviously, America hasn't experienced this; but our so-called leaders (whatever happened to "public servants"?) are desperately trying for a gestapo police force anyway.
Do you know the name of the person driving in front of your car simply by looking at their license plate?
You can have a camera at, say, 50 locations with RFID. You can correlate that X car is the uniquely present vehicle in each of a few pictures (as low as 2 if all other cars are different). You can then look at the license plate and pull the driver information out of the state vehicle registration database. The state (in this case, the city) is running the camera and RFID stuff, so they basically administrate the database.
Of COURSE they can find out who you are, you blunt skulled dufus.
Actually... in my state, I can walk into the MVA and give them a license plate number and get a name and address. Registration information is public information.
Yes and I pay money in taxes that covers city services, and when I call to have those services performed they close the ticket and say "alleyway cleaned, debris removed" and I go back and see they have removed zero of the trash bags, tires, or abandoned building materials. Call again, they remove... most of it, leave some building materials and concrete around. I pay for this shit in taxes you know. And people tell me, "Do it yourself and pay a junk company to remove it, you freeloader!"
Do you really think the city won't bill you extra tolls for roads you already pay for?
I built a dipole sniper rifle once that could fry electronics from 500 meters. No boom, no bullet. Just one glorious column of invisible EMP death reaching out to skullfuck your television into the grave.
There's an Impeach Obama to Stop World War 3 booth RIGHT NEXT TO ME, RIGHT NOW. I really don't think you can rule out people paying cash to avoid the Government tracking their cars.
I have used deodorant once. I was like 12. It did nothing for me so I didn't use it ever again.
Tooth brushes are good. I suggest you look into also something called "metal", it's useful for something called "plumbing" which can get you "running water" that you can use for "showers". Also if you take three inches of a metal called "steel" and use a damn flat rock to force a sharp edge onto it, you can remove hair... unsightly, ugly facial hair and hair in places where sweat tends to rot, which greatly extends the amount of time you can allow to lapse between those "shower" things or, alternately, greatly improves the effectiveness of such "showers".
There are a LOT of sparrows. So many, in fact, that in America you're allowed to murder them in any way you see fit. Slowly, painfully, brutally, by stomping on them, by setting fire to them, by poisoning, by running them over with your car, by swinging a baseball bat and intercepting one trying to escape your cat, etc. It is not a crime to inflict undue suffering on them, as long as they do eventually die.
Joe Dumbass buys Verizon Internet Access for $49.95/mo plus fees*. *2.18 Federal taxes, $7.32 Additional Fees, $3.07 Internet Fees, $11.23 Technology Obsolescence Fees.
BrickPackets Inc. purchases an OC-192 pipe from Level 3 Communications for $75,000/year plus $145,000 one time fee to run the lines (nice discount).
Joe Dumbass has purchased the service of having access to the Internet, to be able to address and communicate with other things that have access to the Internet.
BrickPackets Inc. has purchased the service of having access to the Internet, to be able to address and communicate with other things that have access to the Internet. BrickPackets Inc. has a much bigger pipe, and their TOS doesn't restrict their usage patterns with caps or usage guidelines (i.e. they're allowed to host network services like Web sites or streaming video servers).
It's completely fair that Joe Dumbass isn't allowed to host Web servers or streaming media or whatever. It is, however, a fact that Joe Dumbass has a connection to THE INTERNET, and BrickPackets Inc. has a connection to THE INTERNET, and Joe Dumbass is going to use his connection to watch live news streaming from BrickPackets Inc.'s servers. Verizon's service contract to Joe Dumbass says that he will have access to THE INTERNET, and thus blocking BrickPackets Inc. streaming media content from Joe Dumbass is infringing on their service contract with Joe Dumbass. If they do so, they can't bill themselves as providing "Internet Access" anymore.
No, we shouldn't. Verizon is a business and they have every right to decide what flows through their pipes. They're not a common carrier unless they want to be a common carrier.
Now that we've cleared that up, Congress has informed me that I need to go fetch the entire executive board of Verizon for an inquiry into why they're facilitating so much child pornography and providing a communications network for global child sex trafficking...
It's the other way around. Democracy works best in good times; in horrible times, you want a dictatorship. People don't want to take risks or accept short-term hardship for long-term rebuilding and stability; if the economy is terrible and the world is terrible and everything is terrible, people don't want to bleed a little to relieve the pressure so they can get better. They're in too much pain, they don't want more pain. Somebody has to force them down and make them bleed.
People make horribly thought out emotional decisions. Put them in a broken world and they will make horribly thought out emotional decisions, mostly selfish, and usually wrong. They'll try to make things better for themselves, try to fix perceived problems that don't exist, and put in place perceived solutions that only make things worse.
They'll get it and it will be awesome. The whole Internet will cease being useful. Slashdot and Wikipedia will go away. Newspapers will return, the Onion will have a print edition again, and Internet news sites will shut down because they're not revenue-generating anymore. Verizon will charge $69.99/mo for high-speed access to Amazon and eBay, the only two sites that derive substantial revenue from services rendered online. People will realize Wal-Mart is closer and will just disconnect from the Internet entirely. Smartphones will supply e-mail.
It doesn't matter what we call them. Students who bring laptops to class and actually use them for their purported "educational purpose" perform significantly worse than students who take notes by hand. Even slashdot knows.
Slashdot Mirror
Your arguments are invalid because i got the $20/mo figure from how much less I pay by buying my own phone outright and not having the contract.
Phablets have bigger problems. (Obligatory XKCD)
The deal is simple.
In the medieval ages, the Church seized power. Religion was the major power holder, and all world leaders were beholden to the Church. As such, the Church had a huge amount of control over all the world.
There has been a huge movement to either debase the public's acceptance of religion or to showcase political figures as religious crusaders, either of which moves the public's accepted authority to these political figures. It is commonly held in America that the left mocks people for believing in angels, while the right upholds all that is wholesome and good in the eyes of Jehovah. Those who abandon their belief in angels are expected to support and thus empower politicians on the left; those who retain their belief in angels are expected to support and thus empower politicians on the right.
Now the scientists are loudly criticizing the politicians for tugging at the emotional and irrational behaviors of the masses, rather than laying down policy based on measured and purportedly-understood ideals. This is simply a power grab by the scientists so that they can feel like their research and their beliefs are the driving force controlling the world. They are the new Church. It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong about anything; what matters is that they are important and that they have justification that absolves them from any such wrongness because it is, at the moment, the best reason anyone has to do anything. Essentially, the scientists say "Our cars cause global warming!" and cars are forced to be lower emissions; and then 10 years later they say "Well it turns out global warming isn't a real thing; but 10 years ago modern science didn't understand the mechanisms that were causing what we were seeing" and it's all okay because it would be rather stupid to look at all the evidence for global warming and go, "This looks good but we're probably all stupid so let's assume it's all wrong."
Scientists will of course be the strongest holders of power because they can survive being proven severely wrong in the most publicly visible way possible.
Yes it's called a "Loan" and it's what happens when you buy a $600 toy with $50 and someone tells you they need $20 a month until they have $600 from you.
Because they discovered hacking would require significant financial and logistics means.
Not tagging onto the trans-atlantic cables with a hardware device. Hacking of computers.
"Our systems are so secure though! They couldn't have been hacked by teenagers! Only like... a rich and powerful bazillionare, or a government, or something, would b e able to break our shit! It has encryption!"
Yes but that's not the point. The point is that you can, relatively easily, identify an RFID tag by the use of cameras to see who is incidentally at this position when this RFID is present, until you narrow it down to a single vehicle and RFID present in all compared cases, and identify the license tag. This is relatively intensive, although some automation is possible with modern visual analysis algorithms (and license plates can be snapped and read by OCR very effectively, if you're not just using your standard traffic cam).
You're trying to argue that the government can't look up the license plate, because it's some kind of super-secret information. It's not. It's public record. The hard part is the correlation of RFID to present vehicle, which isn't a difficult problem but does require more intent than "hey, let's have this automatically get_id_from_plate() from the camera and notate down the RFID for that plate, too!" Notably you also can't definitively say an RFID associates with one vehicle or one person--it's owned by a person, but his wife or kid might also use it sometimes. But you get the idea.
We're talking about the government, sanctioned by the highway administration, having access to a highway-administration database to look up information that any individual--me, you, the coke-fueled tweenaged hooker that sucked your dick last night--can access by walking into one of the many motor vehicle administration locations where you go to get your license and saying "WXZ395 who is this?" No questions, no background checks. Just poke, poke, print, here you go kid.
This isn't a top-secret database that requires credentials and authorization and need-to-know. It's PUBLIC INFORMATION. It's the kind of thing you can just ask for. It's as public as how much INCOME TAX you pay and the name of the person who owns a house. In the case of license plates, you have to go into a building to ask--unless you're a state facility and set up access. Right now it costs me a dollar to punch in a license plate and get a VIN, insurance information, criminal background check, name, and home address. I don't have a special job function for this; it's just a service that's out there. A dollar is cheaper than driving to the MVA and asking.
Obviously the City of New York would access New York State's license plate database for free. Or just use taxpayer funds.
Wanna see the real property database for Baltimore City? Go here and punch in, say, 1402 Madison into "Property," then hit "Search". Then click the link marked "Select" in the results to see that BCO MANAGEMENT COMPANY LLC, 2911 CRESMONT AVE, BALTIMORE, MD. 21211 paid $201.60 to the state and $4046.40 to the city of Baltimore in property taxes in 2012, minus a special credit (it's a historical district property).
You thought tax information was private too?
If times are already horrible, you can't make them much worse. People starving in the streets?
To put this into perspective: Some African countries are actually pretty well off and ripe for capitalism, which is actually exceedingly resource-intensive (you'll keep as much as 9% of your labor in a capitalistic system, but it's often as low as 4% i.e. in the United States). Others are terrible and dysfunctional, completely, and people can't get food; these countries are better off under a system of feudalism, which in modern times would likely include some sort of public healthcare and public scientific advancement function.
Feudalism makes the people the property of a landlord, but also gives the landlord a strong stake in the well being of the people; historically this means that landlords would take up to 75% (in rare cases, only 25%--keeping 75% of your labor is a huge wet dream, but once in a while a cougar does show up at some kid's dorm room) of the products of serf labor, but supply military protection for them. In the modern times, a public health system would be essential to maintain landowner profits; and these countries are so resource-poor in some cases that a strong focus on scientific advancements to improve the efficiency of leveraging their resources would be obviated IF they had the resources to put into it.
If America experienced a severe economic disaster such as a supervolcano eruption, complete and total food crop failure, or economic collapse leading to near 100% unemployment, a "strong democratic leader" would not be enough. ACOP asserted that in the "worst case" you want a democracy; in such worst case scenarios, a democracy is the WORST form of government because nobody wants to work together. When you only have enough resources to make a small gestapo police force feel safe and secure, trying to ask everyone to bear with you and trust you and vote on measures that will be good for all of us "in the long run" won't work because you're telling everyone to suffer and take a significant risk of death by starvation; everyone will want measures good for them and bad for everyone else, and if they get it then you have a few comfortable people and a large riotous body of proles and no resources for a police force to control them. In that case, it's more effective to actually build a small gestapo police force and force everyone into something for their own good.
Obviously, America hasn't experienced this; but our so-called leaders (whatever happened to "public servants"?) are desperately trying for a gestapo police force anyway.
Do you know the name of the person driving in front of your car simply by looking at their license plate?
You can have a camera at, say, 50 locations with RFID. You can correlate that X car is the uniquely present vehicle in each of a few pictures (as low as 2 if all other cars are different). You can then look at the license plate and pull the driver information out of the state vehicle registration database. The state (in this case, the city) is running the camera and RFID stuff, so they basically administrate the database.
Of COURSE they can find out who you are, you blunt skulled dufus.
Actually... in my state, I can walk into the MVA and give them a license plate number and get a name and address. Registration information is public information.
Well if the New York DOT is supporting this....
Yes and I pay money in taxes that covers city services, and when I call to have those services performed they close the ticket and say "alleyway cleaned, debris removed" and I go back and see they have removed zero of the trash bags, tires, or abandoned building materials. Call again, they remove... most of it, leave some building materials and concrete around. I pay for this shit in taxes you know. And people tell me, "Do it yourself and pay a junk company to remove it, you freeloader!"
Do you really think the city won't bill you extra tolls for roads you already pay for?
I built a dipole sniper rifle once that could fry electronics from 500 meters. No boom, no bullet. Just one glorious column of invisible EMP death reaching out to skullfuck your television into the grave.
Except if they have cameras and can identify the vehicle or identify a vehicle uniquely present in all N pictures, they can now identify you.
There's an Impeach Obama to Stop World War 3 booth RIGHT NEXT TO ME, RIGHT NOW. I really don't think you can rule out people paying cash to avoid the Government tracking their cars.
eventually it will be illegal to drive without EZPass, and you will be billed for driving all over the place. All roads will be toll roads.
I have used deodorant once. I was like 12. It did nothing for me so I didn't use it ever again.
Tooth brushes are good. I suggest you look into also something called "metal", it's useful for something called "plumbing" which can get you "running water" that you can use for "showers". Also if you take three inches of a metal called "steel" and use a damn flat rock to force a sharp edge onto it, you can remove hair... unsightly, ugly facial hair and hair in places where sweat tends to rot, which greatly extends the amount of time you can allow to lapse between those "shower" things or, alternately, greatly improves the effectiveness of such "showers".
There are a LOT of sparrows. So many, in fact, that in America you're allowed to murder them in any way you see fit. Slowly, painfully, brutally, by stomping on them, by setting fire to them, by poisoning, by running them over with your car, by swinging a baseball bat and intercepting one trying to escape your cat, etc. It is not a crime to inflict undue suffering on them, as long as they do eventually die.
Joe Dumbass buys Verizon Internet Access for $49.95/mo plus fees*. *2.18 Federal taxes, $7.32 Additional Fees, $3.07 Internet Fees, $11.23 Technology Obsolescence Fees.
BrickPackets Inc. purchases an OC-192 pipe from Level 3 Communications for $75,000/year plus $145,000 one time fee to run the lines (nice discount).
Joe Dumbass has purchased the service of having access to the Internet, to be able to address and communicate with other things that have access to the Internet.
BrickPackets Inc. has purchased the service of having access to the Internet, to be able to address and communicate with other things that have access to the Internet. BrickPackets Inc. has a much bigger pipe, and their TOS doesn't restrict their usage patterns with caps or usage guidelines (i.e. they're allowed to host network services like Web sites or streaming video servers).
It's completely fair that Joe Dumbass isn't allowed to host Web servers or streaming media or whatever. It is, however, a fact that Joe Dumbass has a connection to THE INTERNET, and BrickPackets Inc. has a connection to THE INTERNET, and Joe Dumbass is going to use his connection to watch live news streaming from BrickPackets Inc.'s servers. Verizon's service contract to Joe Dumbass says that he will have access to THE INTERNET, and thus blocking BrickPackets Inc. streaming media content from Joe Dumbass is infringing on their service contract with Joe Dumbass. If they do so, they can't bill themselves as providing "Internet Access" anymore.
That sounds like AOL.
No, we shouldn't. Verizon is a business and they have every right to decide what flows through their pipes. They're not a common carrier unless they want to be a common carrier.
Now that we've cleared that up, Congress has informed me that I need to go fetch the entire executive board of Verizon for an inquiry into why they're facilitating so much child pornography and providing a communications network for global child sex trafficking...
It's the other way around. Democracy works best in good times; in horrible times, you want a dictatorship. People don't want to take risks or accept short-term hardship for long-term rebuilding and stability; if the economy is terrible and the world is terrible and everything is terrible, people don't want to bleed a little to relieve the pressure so they can get better. They're in too much pain, they don't want more pain. Somebody has to force them down and make them bleed.
People make horribly thought out emotional decisions. Put them in a broken world and they will make horribly thought out emotional decisions, mostly selfish, and usually wrong. They'll try to make things better for themselves, try to fix perceived problems that don't exist, and put in place perceived solutions that only make things worse.
They'll get it and it will be awesome. The whole Internet will cease being useful. Slashdot and Wikipedia will go away. Newspapers will return, the Onion will have a print edition again, and Internet news sites will shut down because they're not revenue-generating anymore. Verizon will charge $69.99/mo for high-speed access to Amazon and eBay, the only two sites that derive substantial revenue from services rendered online. People will realize Wal-Mart is closer and will just disconnect from the Internet entirely. Smartphones will supply e-mail.
Boring, slow, dried up, and going nowhere important.
It doesn't matter what we call them. Students who bring laptops to class and actually use them for their purported "educational purpose" perform significantly worse than students who take notes by hand. Even slashdot knows.