"There are real problems and parents are desperate for any kind of solution."
Legitimately grave problems, wrong solutions. If I'm becoming obese, the solution is not for me to wear something which physically restrains the affected area from expanding.
The real solutions to these social problems are available but difficult and require sacrifice. So people are opting for the solutions which are (momentarily) quick and easy.
Your rights are violated if you're forced to wear a yellow star or pink triangle -- even if the badge is in a non-visible location, and even if "forced" merely means that it's legally permitted, but practically awkward or difficult, to remove the badge. Having a GPS device DOES automatically make you less private, if you haven't *chosen* to have the device.
The right not to be tracked is meaningless without the right to have the *certainty* of not being tracked, i.e. what the courts call "the expectation of privacy". If you can't move about except in the constant presence of tracking devices, and you have no knowledge or control of when the devices are currently tracking you, then that's not privacy.
1. Put away the Jolt Cola. 2. Take ten deep breaths. 3. Review the thread . ..
The originating "FUD" post -- http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114371&cid=969 1647 -- responded, not to the article OP, but to "And no doubt, trackable" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11 4371&cid=969 1099 -- (admittedly somewhat breathless, scatter-shot, and wanting of a copy-editor).
Nowhere in *that* thread is there any mention of "THEY want to . . . hide them". He/she did write, 'It's the "weaving them into products" thing that's got everyone upset.' Can we at least agree on that simple question of fact? And he/she didn't say that spying was the *intention*, merely that it would make "one hell of a spying system. All those evil laws the people in power dream of would be **possible**."
The referenced "voicing concerns" was *my* post responding to your first "FUD" post, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114371&cid=969 1879 And yes, now that I've looked again, I see that you're accurate in saying, "I characterized the **original** poster as paranoid." There might have been less confusion in this thread, if your first "FUD" post had been "reply to"'d the article-OP and not the "And no doubt, trackable".
My comment about how privacy-protection flows from "people voicing concerns" isn't about a "hypothetical future", but about the past. Businesses wouldn't be concerned if consumers didn't object.
Yes, as you say, "those who stand to benefit from RFID" [I presume you mean consumers] "also have privacy concerns" -- which is why I & other posters say, in effect, that it's essential to our privacy, that RFID must be removed from consumer merchandise upon purchase. After purchase, the merchandise's location and use is no one else's business, *regardless* of whether it was bought with a credit-card. So, let's cut through all the rhetoric and return to the privacy/paranoia issue: DO YOU AGREE OR NOT with the premise of this last paragraph, to wit, "privacy demands the right to *easily* go about our business without having RFID tags accompany our person, our private vehicles, etc."?
"I think you're suffering from outrage fatigue. See 'The Onion: Nation's Liberals Suffering From Outrage Fatigue'". No doubt about it. In fact in my case, "outrage despondency" might be more accurate.
As it happens, I'm not a liberal. I'm eclectic. (Although the Republican Party has given us the two Presidents most threatening of civil liberties and separation of powers, the two most imperious and cynical and morally corrupt Presidents -- concerning *national* issues -- in my lifetime.) And there's a non-trivial number of card-carrying conservatives who share some of my concerns.
Lately I've begun to think that a Kerry victory will make little difference. Things like the Patriot Act are undone only with the greatest difficulty, especially with such a polarized electorate and closely-divided (and likely to remain so) Congress.
The Great American Experiment succeeded (at least for a while, and excepting slavery, native Americans, and the era of Manifest Destiny) because there was always enough room for the individual to navigate one's boat between the rocks -- and if not, one could always escape to the frontier. One could always find a place and an opportunity to Start Over, to perpetually remake one's self -- largely due to a tradition of jealously guarding the principles of individual liberties and limited-purpose limited-power government.
Can you imagine what the Founders would have thought of a central government which wishes to record and monitor every act of its own citizens, to effectively confine the vote to the landed gentry, to give the Executive Branch the power to conduct secret searches, forbid the disclosure of those searches after the fact, detain persons indefinitely without benefit of counsel, claim immunity (without using the word) to disclosing its actions to Conress, sanction torture -- ALL without judicial review, and thinly clothed with totalitarian-sounding use of words like Patriot and Homeland?
I no longer regard the US as the best (free-est) place to live on earth. In all seriousness, I've started to make plans to emigrate, before DHS starts to require national ID-cards, internal passports, and Exit Permits with retina-scans.
"why would you assume that nothing is being done to on the privacy front?"
I'm not. But little or nothing would be done on that front, if there weren't people voicing concerns. When you make statements like "showing the rest of us how paranoid you are", you belittle the act of expressing those concerns, which the field of rhetoric calls an "ad hominem" argument -- to use your phrase, "a shopworn debating trick".
If you think that the concerns need to be voiced, then say so. OTOH, if you think the concerns are unwarranted, then say so. But don't ridicule someone for expressing concern, then turn around and ridicule them for defending that concern by associating themselves with respected organizations who share that concern.
So, which is it? Do you believe the concern is legit? And if so, then exactly which utterances of other people do you consider to be "paranoid", and why?
"our purchases (UNLESS you use only cash) is already in databases." I do. And that's why.
"data is already being aggregated. The horse is long gone from the barn." Even if the horse is presently gone, that's no reason to shoot in its direction and then turn around and demolish the barn. If Samuel Adams and his ilk had had your attitude, the US national Anthem would now be "God Save The Queen".
Perhaps we can agree to elevate this dialogue by shunning the extremes of the spectrum.
"Consider some of the main usages . . . Anti-theft . . . Quick checkout . . . 'easily-removable' defeats the entire purpose for which a lot of stores will use them."
It's not the merchants' _ostensible_intended_ usages which are excessive, Virginia; it's the _potential_ uses, by corporations, hackers, private snoops, governments, etc.
Jeez, things are going way beyond Ben Franklin's famous saying about trading liberty for security. Lately, I've been seeing way too many of these examples of people being naively willing to short-sightedly throw away privacy, the safety of anonymity, and safeguards against the Ashcrofts of the world -- irreversibly -- not for "security", but MERELY for fscking temporary CONVENIENCE!!
I'd say it depends on when the show is aired. Why should "dirty words" be a problem if it's broadcast during "adult" hours, like the standards used for TV?
"So if I hit the town on Saturday night and don't manage to pull I've no life?"
not at all what i meant (or said). merely saying (amicably), if one seriously wants to be in a relationship, one's time could be better spent than partying until 4AM AND following up by hitting slashdot; e.g., get to sleep earlier to make time to spend Sunday at the park, museum, etc. anyhow, it was semi-facetious (and apparently poorly worded).
seriously, Bill's reeeeallly starting to act worried, and this latest absurdity puts him over the top. Maybe it's the recent OSS wins in Paris, Munich, China, Australia, etc. (not to mention the recent CERT & IE publicity).
This transparent attempt to play on offshoring fears is particularly shameful.
I'm surprised that his PR people haven't reeled him in, because this MSFT campaign might be getting the attention and curiosity of demographics who might otherwise have been oblivious.
(caveat: I have no conventionally-recognized qualifications whatsoever.) Purely as a "thought-experiment", it seems that digitized signals can never EXACTLY reproduce original analog signals, by definition, since they are quantized.
However, whether or not a digitized signal can be brought *sufficiently* close as to be indistinguishable by humans, is a different matter. OTOH, although it's conceivable, it might remain impractical for years, if it requires that the DSP approach the complexity and subtlety of the auditory centers of the brain.
On a Sunday at 15:00 UTC, what time-zone would you speculate is occupied by the plurality (if not outright majority) of actively-browsing slashdotters?
"Besides, what's wrong with swinging by slashdot when you stagger home at 4am? (assuming you're alone, that is.)"
I think a lot of people would say that if: (a) you stagger home at 4am Sunday, (b) you're alone, and (c) you then swing by slashdot *despite* the troubling evidence of (b) that your time is misused, then you don't "have a life".;-)
"automatically put them into *multiple* categories . . . Create a full-text index in real-time . . . display a sidebar of 'Related previously-viewed pages' . . . 'More text like this' and using Bayesian . . . Allow the user to browse their own hard drive, and categorize content automatically"
. . . and get ready either to retire early or to find a vocation outside of "knowledge-work".
"Or would I rather be an M.B.A. and making $150,000?"
A mirage. The offshore-ing which has happened in other fields, can just as easily happen to MBAs, PhDs, etc. The ONLY safe vocations are those which have an INESCAPABLY strong requirement for a FULL-TIME physical presence.
Even health-care isn't safe: look at the proportion of routine dental care which migrated from dentists to dental hygienists, and then ask yourself how difficult would it be for the same thing to happen with routine medical care?
The only knowledge-jobs which won't emigrate to the least-cost locations -- or have their onshore salaries collapsed by a flood of immigrants, as is happening with nursing -- are jobs which are restricted for reasons like national security (e.g. the most secretive defense-industry jobs), and the thinnest topmost layer of leading-edge R&D jobs.
Academia? No jobs, eventually no demand for the relevant degrees, and then no way for the university to pay for the relevant professors. Not to mention the disruption which will eventually be caused by trans-national distance-based learning.
Even attorneys -- many of whom spend little or no time in court -- are currently protected only by the inertia of tradition and historical practices. There's no fundamental technological reason that court appearances couldn't be done by video-conference. And where will the money to pay onshore attorneys come from, when hordes of white-collar jobs have been lost?
The same technologies which enable distance learning, will enable remote fulfillment of ANY knowledge-work, including management. And what will justify the cost of onshore managers, when most of their workers are offshore?
The vast majority of university degrees are acquired in six years or less. How long from today do you think it will require, for expanding pools of Asian-born graduates to be ready to fill the bulk of the need for knowledge-workers, just as is happening now with info-tech jobs?
Beat the rush and learn a trade, or buy a fast-food franchise, etc.
"Black panther is a common term for a melanistic phase leopard (there's your black leopard). They occur in litters mixed with regular leopards . . . Black jaguars are the same, but even more common"
? So for both jags & leopards, the black ones occur in whatever regions the "regular" ones do?
"Black jaguars are the same, but even more common; I believe they are the most common color variant among the big cats."
? Surely you're connoting that black ones are the most common *outliers*, not the most common color, right?
Slashdot Mirror
swap hacks and cracks for tax
The Dutch are renowned for their attention to the welfare of children. I'd really like to hear the opinions of any Dutch readers.
Not the same. You have the choice (theoretically) to work elsewhere.
"There are real problems and parents are desperate for any kind of solution."
Legitimately grave problems, wrong solutions.
If I'm becoming obese, the solution is not for me to wear something which physically restrains the affected area from expanding.
The real solutions to these social problems are available but difficult and require sacrifice. So people are opting for the solutions which are (momentarily) quick and easy.
Your rights are violated if you're forced to wear a yellow star or pink triangle -- even if the badge is in a non-visible location, and even if "forced" merely means that it's legally permitted, but practically awkward or difficult, to remove the badge. Having a GPS device DOES automatically make you less private, if you haven't *chosen* to have the device.
The right not to be tracked is meaningless without the right to have the *certainty* of not being tracked, i.e. what the courts call "the expectation of privacy". If you can't move about except in the constant presence of tracking devices, and you have no knowledge or control of when the devices are currently tracking you, then that's not privacy.
1. Put away the Jolt Cola. .
9 1647 -- responded, not to the article OP, but to "And no doubt, trackable"1 4371&cid=969 1099 -- (admittedly somewhat breathless, scatter-shot, and wanting of a copy-editor).
9 1879
2. Take ten deep breaths.
3. Review the thread . .
The originating "FUD" post -- http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114371&cid=96
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1
Nowhere in *that* thread is there any mention of "THEY want to . . . hide them".
He/she did write, 'It's the "weaving them into products" thing that's got everyone upset.'
Can we at least agree on that simple question of fact?
And he/she didn't say that spying was the *intention*, merely that it would make "one hell of a spying system. All those evil laws the people in power dream of would be **possible**."
The referenced "voicing concerns" was *my* post responding to your first "FUD" post, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114371&cid=96
And yes, now that I've looked again, I see that you're accurate in saying, "I characterized the **original** poster as paranoid." There might have been less confusion in this thread, if your first "FUD" post had been "reply to"'d the article-OP and not the "And no doubt, trackable".
My comment about how privacy-protection flows from "people voicing concerns" isn't about a "hypothetical future", but about the past. Businesses wouldn't be concerned if consumers didn't object.
Yes, as you say, "those who stand to benefit from RFID" [I presume you mean consumers] "also have privacy concerns" -- which is why I & other posters say, in effect, that it's essential to our privacy, that RFID must be removed from consumer merchandise upon purchase. After purchase, the merchandise's location and use is no one else's business, *regardless* of whether it was bought with a credit-card.
So, let's cut through all the rhetoric and return to the privacy/paranoia issue: DO YOU AGREE OR NOT with the premise of this last paragraph, to wit, "privacy demands the right to *easily* go about our business without having RFID tags accompany our person, our private vehicles, etc."?
"I think you're suffering from outrage fatigue. See 'The Onion: Nation's Liberals Suffering From Outrage Fatigue'".
No doubt about it. In fact in my case, "outrage despondency" might be more accurate.
As it happens, I'm not a liberal. I'm eclectic. (Although the Republican Party has given us the two Presidents most threatening of civil liberties and separation of powers, the two most imperious and cynical and morally corrupt Presidents -- concerning *national* issues -- in my lifetime.) And there's a non-trivial number of card-carrying conservatives who share some of my concerns.
Lately I've begun to think that a Kerry victory will make little difference. Things like the Patriot Act are undone only with the greatest difficulty, especially with such a polarized electorate and closely-divided (and likely to remain so) Congress.
The Great American Experiment succeeded (at least for a while, and excepting slavery, native Americans, and the era of Manifest Destiny) because there was always enough room for the individual to navigate one's boat between the rocks -- and if not, one could always escape to the frontier. One could always find a place and an opportunity to Start Over, to perpetually remake one's self -- largely due to a tradition of jealously guarding the principles of individual liberties and limited-purpose limited-power government.
Can you imagine what the Founders would have thought of a central government which wishes to record and monitor every act of its own citizens, to effectively confine the vote to the landed gentry, to give the Executive Branch the power to conduct secret searches, forbid the disclosure of those searches after the fact, detain persons indefinitely without benefit of counsel, claim immunity (without using the word) to disclosing its actions to Conress, sanction torture -- ALL without judicial review, and thinly clothed with totalitarian-sounding use of words like Patriot and Homeland?
I no longer regard the US as the best (free-est) place to live on earth. In all seriousness, I've started to make plans to emigrate, before DHS starts to require national ID-cards, internal passports, and Exit Permits with retina-scans.
"why would you assume that nothing is being done to on the privacy front?"
I'm not. But little or nothing would be done on that front, if there weren't people voicing concerns. When you make statements like "showing the rest of us how paranoid you are", you belittle the act of expressing those concerns, which the field of rhetoric calls an "ad hominem" argument -- to use your phrase, "a shopworn debating trick".
If you think that the concerns need to be voiced, then say so. OTOH, if you think the concerns are unwarranted, then say so. But don't ridicule someone for expressing concern, then turn around and ridicule them for defending that concern by associating themselves with respected organizations who share that concern.
So, which is it? Do you believe the concern is legit? And if so, then exactly which utterances of other people do you consider to be "paranoid", and why?
"our purchases (UNLESS you use only cash) is already in databases."
I do. And that's why.
"data is already being aggregated. The horse is long gone from the barn."
Even if the horse is presently gone, that's no reason to shoot in its direction and then turn around and demolish the barn. If Samuel Adams and his ilk had had your attitude, the US national Anthem would now be "God Save The Queen".
Perhaps we can agree to elevate this dialogue by shunning the extremes of the spectrum.
"Passive tags . . . using current induced in them by an RFID interrogator . . . effective range is presently less than 2 feet"
yeah, and now we can all relax, confident in the knowledge that THIS technology will never advance further, right?
"showing the rest of us how paranoid you are"
yes, right along with all those "kooks" at ACLU, eff.org, epic.org . . .
"Consider some of the main usages . . . Anti-theft . . . Quick checkout . . . 'easily-removable' defeats the entire purpose for which a lot of stores will use them."
It's not the merchants' _ostensible_intended_ usages which are excessive, Virginia; it's the _potential_ uses, by corporations, hackers, private snoops, governments, etc.
Jeez, things are going way beyond Ben Franklin's famous saying about trading liberty for security. Lately, I've been seeing way too many of these examples of people being naively willing to short-sightedly throw away privacy, the safety of anonymity, and safeguards against the Ashcrofts of the world -- irreversibly -- not for "security", but MERELY for fscking temporary CONVENIENCE!!
WHY, oh WHY does this kind of stuff surprise anyone anymore?
Get used to it.
This whole crew is the Anti-Google.
why? (unless the merchant simultaneously scans your National ID Card)
I'd say it depends on when the show is aired.
Why should "dirty words" be a problem if it's broadcast during "adult" hours, like the standards used for TV?
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/tbar/takeatour.h tm
actually, it's an IE toolbar. I installed it just for the reader, because I wanted one which scrolls vertically.
"So if I hit the town on Saturday night and don't manage to pull I've no life?"
not at all what i meant (or said).
merely saying (amicably), if one seriously wants to be in a relationship, one's time could be better spent than partying until 4AM AND following up by hitting slashdot; e.g., get to sleep earlier to make time to spend Sunday at the park, museum, etc.
anyhow, it was semi-facetious (and apparently poorly worded).
seriously, Bill's reeeeallly starting to act worried, and this latest absurdity puts him over the top. Maybe it's the recent OSS wins in Paris, Munich, China, Australia, etc. (not to mention the recent CERT & IE publicity).
This transparent attempt to play on offshoring fears is particularly shameful.
I'm surprised that his PR people haven't reeled him in, because this MSFT campaign might be getting the attention and curiosity of demographics who might otherwise have been oblivious.
(caveat: I have no conventionally-recognized qualifications whatsoever.)
Purely as a "thought-experiment", it seems that digitized signals can never EXACTLY reproduce original analog signals, by definition, since they are quantized.
However, whether or not a digitized signal can be brought *sufficiently* close as to be indistinguishable by humans, is a different matter. OTOH, although it's conceivable, it might remain impractical for years, if it requires that the DSP approach the complexity and subtlety of the auditory centers of the brain.
On a Sunday at 15:00 UTC, what time-zone would you speculate is occupied by the plurality (if not outright majority) of actively-browsing slashdotters?
;-)
"Besides, what's wrong with swinging by slashdot when you stagger home at 4am? (assuming you're alone, that is.)"
I think a lot of people would say that if:
(a) you stagger home at 4am Sunday,
(b) you're alone, and
(c) you then swing by slashdot *despite* the troubling evidence of (b) that your time is misused,
then you don't "have a life".
post-docs, that's who. ;-)
(see bottom paragraph)
. . . it's Sunday morning. Get off slashdot, so I'll stop getting this damn
HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
Problem: I can't access the article.
Solution: It's Sunday morning. Why don't all of you geeks get off slashdot, and get a life.
(Of course, this doesn't apply to *me*:
I *had* a life once, but demonstrated that I'm incapable of maintaining it.)
"automatically put them into *multiple* categories . . . Create a full-text index in real-time . . . display a sidebar of 'Related previously-viewed pages' . . . 'More text like this' and using Bayesian . . . Allow the user to browse their own hard drive, and categorize content automatically"
Do you mean something like this?
. . . and get ready either to retire early or to find a vocation outside of "knowledge-work".
"Or would I rather be an M.B.A. and making $150,000?"
A mirage. The offshore-ing which has happened in other fields, can just as easily happen to MBAs, PhDs, etc. The ONLY safe vocations are those which have an INESCAPABLY strong requirement for a FULL-TIME physical presence.
Even health-care isn't safe: look at the proportion of routine dental care which migrated from dentists to dental hygienists, and then ask yourself how difficult would it be for the same thing to happen with routine medical care?
The only knowledge-jobs which won't emigrate to the least-cost locations -- or have their onshore salaries collapsed by a flood of immigrants, as is happening with nursing -- are jobs which are restricted for reasons like national security (e.g. the most secretive defense-industry jobs),
and the thinnest topmost layer of leading-edge R&D jobs.
Academia? No jobs, eventually no demand for the relevant degrees, and then no way for the university to pay for the relevant professors. Not to mention the disruption which will eventually be caused by trans-national distance-based learning.
Even attorneys -- many of whom spend little or no time in court -- are currently protected only by the inertia of tradition and historical practices. There's no fundamental technological reason that court appearances couldn't be done by video-conference. And where will the money to pay onshore attorneys come from, when hordes of white-collar jobs have been lost?
The same technologies which enable distance learning, will enable remote fulfillment of ANY knowledge-work, including management. And what will justify the cost of onshore managers, when most of their workers are offshore?
The vast majority of university degrees are acquired in six years or less. How long from today do you think it will require, for expanding pools of Asian-born graduates to be ready to fill the bulk of the need for knowledge-workers, just as is happening now with info-tech jobs?
Beat the rush and learn a trade, or buy a fast-food franchise, etc.
. . . it would have been titled,
"Americans: READ FEWER BOOKS!"
. . . quarter-scale sized."
1. Buy two robots.
2. Buy Barbie wardrobes.
3. Clothe robots.
4. Buy web-cam.
5. Register domain for LIVE-NUDE-KNURLS.com
6. Offer paid membership to see web-cam of knurl-on-knurl action.
7. ???
8. PROFIT!!!
"Black panther is a common term for a melanistic phase leopard (there's your black leopard). They occur in litters mixed with regular leopards . . . Black jaguars are the same, but even more common"
? So for both jags & leopards, the black ones occur in whatever regions the "regular" ones do?
"Black jaguars are the same, but even more common; I believe they are the most common color variant among the big cats."
? Surely you're connoting that black ones are the most common *outliers*, not the most common color, right?