The politician on the podium, however, has no use for a cellphone, so s/he won't be inconvenienced at all, while his/her safety is increased
Furthermore, the politician on the podium wants people to shut up and listen to him, instead of chatting on their cell phones. I'm sure the secret service is smart enough to realize that since many various frequencies can be used for detonating bombs, jamming cell phone signals isn't much use. So perhaps this is really about power hungry politicians trying to force people to pay attention, and safety is just an excuse.
Nowadays most people spend more time talking on cell phones than talking face to face. It's pretty spooky when you think about it that way: Wherever Bush travels, today's most common form of personal communication is silenced.
But seriously, you can get to the point of having people anal and trusting no one. Everyone is suspicious of the other, and while I suppose that is a good way to reduce theft, it also makes the place not very nice to work and shop or be around.
I'm studying abroad in China and that's how things work here. It's really annoying. Every time I bring a friend to my dorm room I have to spend five minutes filling out a complicated visitor registration form and showing ID. I could see the point if my friend was a stranger, but I've been living here for four months and the security guards already know my best friends by name, since they visit every single day. But their orders are to follow visitor registration procedures blindly without thinking, thus anyone that they can recognize as a non-resident must register on entry.
The really silly thing is that these rules don't prevent unauthorized entry at all. There are simply too many people living in the dorm for security to memorize them all, so most visitors walk right in without bothering to register. Only the most frequent visitors, which are probably the lowest security threats, are actually forced to waste time registering.
From this experience I can definitely see that blindly following a set of procedures to thwart social engineering is not necessarily the way to go, and can actually weaken security. Plus, I've found that such suspicion doesn't make for a very nice living environment.
I think what they meant to say is that they realized it's more important to keep OTHER Windows users safe
Many viruses cause distributed DOS attacks against Microsoft, so this could be more about keeping Microsoft itself safe than keeping other Windows users safe. I bet they spend tons of money fending off DDOS attacks, plus having slow or nonworking websites due to these attacks gives them a negative image.
Why not use BlueTooth for this? You get close to a 'beackon' and a little icon appears on your phone, if you choose to click the icon it takes you to the desired URL.
The advantage of this is that it's simple and cheap. Anyone can print out a code and stick it anywhere they want. Of course that will lead to problems too; you can bet scummy advertisers will be making stickers out of these this and plastering them on everything.
Why erect non-human readable signs where they get in the way? What are the benefits of me being able to see this large thing other than to know something is there?
I've thought of an example:
In many cities bus stops have signs listing all the routes and times. But these things tend to change a lot and the signs often aren't updated. If each bus stop had a Semacode link on it, you could go to a webpage for that particular bus stop that would hopefully have the most up to date information.
Of course the human readable URL could be included as well, but cell phones are slow to type on, so the Semacode could be a real time saver.
If it makes you feel any better, in about 2 weeks I'm moving off to Asia, and taking my U.S. job with me. The majority of the work I do just requires an internet connection and sometimes a telephone, and the rest involves travel to random places that are just as (in-)accessible from there as here, so why not?
Wow, that's exactly the kind of job I'd like to find. I've always wanted to be able to travel to random places and get paid to do it.
I've been studying Chinese for three years. That's the main reason I'm living in China, to improve my Chinese ability. I'm hoping it will improve my chances of finding a tech job involving travel or working overseas.
I'd like to take this idea of living in a low-cost neighborhood and telecommuting to a new extreme. I've been living in China for six months now and have found that the cost of living, including food, housing, transportation, and entertainment is only about $10 a day. Now if I could just get a telecommuting job doing software development for a company in the US I could put tons of money into savings and long-term investments. That way I could retire much earlier or use the savings to develop my own business.
I don't think companies would consider hiring me the same as outsourcing to low-paid Chinese or Indian coders. As an American I have perfect English and an understanding of American culture, as well as a quality education from an American university. Plus I already have experience doing software development for American companies, including plenty of telecommuting.
Will I ever find such an ideal job? Who knows, but hopefully as telecommuting becomes more and more ubiquitous it will become more and more likely.
There already exist entitites that make others of their type, operate on chemical energy from the enviroment, and are self-repairing. We call them "bacteria". It is not unreasonable to expect that at some point in the future we will be able to create machines with these characteristics.
It should also be noted that in the past when humans have created technologies to copy capabilities existing in nature, they have often greatly extended on nature's original. For example, we copied the idea of flight from birds and a hundred years later have vehicles capable of flying orders of magnitude higher and faster than birds ever could. The same goes for machines copying the human brain's ability to do arithmetic.
Extend this pattern to self-replication and intelligence and the results could be truly scary indeed. Eventually we will find ways to copy these two abilities of nature, and before long may have technology for intelligence and replication that is orders of magnitude better than that provided by nature originally. Thus such technologies may truly be something to worry about, and the gray goo or world taken over by robots scenario might not be so far-fetched after all.
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Furthermore, the politician on the podium wants people to shut up and listen to him, instead of chatting on their cell phones. I'm sure the secret service is smart enough to realize that since many various frequencies can be used for detonating bombs, jamming cell phone signals isn't much use. So perhaps this is really about power hungry politicians trying to force people to pay attention, and safety is just an excuse.
Nowadays most people spend more time talking on cell phones than talking face to face. It's pretty spooky when you think about it that way: Wherever Bush travels, today's most common form of personal communication is silenced.
I'm studying abroad in China and that's how things work here. It's really annoying. Every time I bring a friend to my dorm room I have to spend five minutes filling out a complicated visitor registration form and showing ID. I could see the point if my friend was a stranger, but I've been living here for four months and the security guards already know my best friends by name, since they visit every single day. But their orders are to follow visitor registration procedures blindly without thinking, thus anyone that they can recognize as a non-resident must register on entry.
The really silly thing is that these rules don't prevent unauthorized entry at all. There are simply too many people living in the dorm for security to memorize them all, so most visitors walk right in without bothering to register. Only the most frequent visitors, which are probably the lowest security threats, are actually forced to waste time registering.
From this experience I can definitely see that blindly following a set of procedures to thwart social engineering is not necessarily the way to go, and can actually weaken security. Plus, I've found that such suspicion doesn't make for a very nice living environment.
Many viruses cause distributed DOS attacks against Microsoft, so this could be more about keeping Microsoft itself safe than keeping other Windows users safe. I bet they spend tons of money fending off DDOS attacks, plus having slow or nonworking websites due to these attacks gives them a negative image.
The advantage of this is that it's simple and cheap. Anyone can print out a code and stick it anywhere they want. Of course that will lead to problems too; you can bet scummy advertisers will be making stickers out of these this and plastering them on everything.
I've thought of an example:
In many cities bus stops have signs listing all the routes and times. But these things tend to change a lot and the signs often aren't updated. If each bus stop had a Semacode link on it, you could go to a webpage for that particular bus stop that would hopefully have the most up to date information.
Of course the human readable URL could be included as well, but cell phones are slow to type on, so the Semacode could be a real time saver.
Wow, that's exactly the kind of job I'd like to find. I've always wanted to be able to travel to random places and get paid to do it.
I've been studying Chinese for three years. That's the main reason I'm living in China, to improve my Chinese ability. I'm hoping it will improve my chances of finding a tech job involving travel or working overseas.
I'd like to take this idea of living in a low-cost neighborhood and telecommuting to a new extreme. I've been living in China for six months now and have found that the cost of living, including food, housing, transportation, and entertainment is only about $10 a day. Now if I could just get a telecommuting job doing software development for a company in the US I could put tons of money into savings and long-term investments. That way I could retire much earlier or use the savings to develop my own business.
I don't think companies would consider hiring me the same as outsourcing to low-paid Chinese or Indian coders. As an American I have perfect English and an understanding of American culture, as well as a quality education from an American university. Plus I already have experience doing software development for American companies, including plenty of telecommuting.
Will I ever find such an ideal job? Who knows, but hopefully as telecommuting becomes more and more ubiquitous it will become more and more likely.
It should also be noted that in the past when humans have created technologies to copy capabilities existing in nature, they have often greatly extended on nature's original. For example, we copied the idea of flight from birds and a hundred years later have vehicles capable of flying orders of magnitude higher and faster than birds ever could. The same goes for machines copying the human brain's ability to do arithmetic.
Extend this pattern to self-replication and intelligence and the results could be truly scary indeed. Eventually we will find ways to copy these two abilities of nature, and before long may have technology for intelligence and replication that is orders of magnitude better than that provided by nature originally. Thus such technologies may truly be something to worry about, and the gray goo or world taken over by robots scenario might not be so far-fetched after all.