It is effect, this is to banks what the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comics_Code_Authority&oldid=604210348 Comics Code Authority] was to comic-book stores.
Then: "If you don't want trouble, only sell pre-approved comic books"
Now: "If you don't want trouble, only deal with businesses in pre-approved lines of business."
Some of the regulations you mentioned are probably unconstitutional on 10th-ammendment grounds.
Let's take regulation of waterways, for instance. There are many grounds for the feds to be able to regulate these, but I find it hard to believe that there isn't at least one waterway in America that is "outside the scope of federal regulation" under our constitution. In fact, I would expect many waterways would be found exempt if a lawyer who knows what he's doing took it to court.
For those outside the USA, the US constitution give the federal government many enumerated powers and it also gives the federal government the power to do other things that are necessary and proper to carry out the listed powers.
Here is an incomplete list of justifications for federal regulation of a waterway: * It is a navigable waterway - that is, a boat can go from it to the ocean without having to go on dry land. * It can be used in interstate commerce, that is, a boat can go from a point in one state to a point in another state without having to go on dry land. * It affects a postal road. * It affects federal government property, such as passing through a national park. * It is used in interstate commerce * It is used by plants are animals whose protection or regulation is regulated by the federal government (and where those regulations themselves are constitutional)
A hypothetical example of a waterway that is probably exempt from federal regulation: * Private landowners and state and local governments own all the land that contains and surrounds an "inland sea" (think: mini-version of the "Great Salt Lake" in Utah) as well as the land under and around all tributaries of this inland sea. There are no protected species and no pollution issues that would bring any legitimate federal interest. There are no interstate commerce issues. It is not used as a water supply, so there is no regulate-able health issue. The water doesn't seep into an aquifer but just sits there until it evaporates.
I would only add that Operators MUST be non-commercial to be subject to your rules.
Why?
Even today, many for-profit enterprises that "go more than one inch off the ground" do not fall under FAA jurisdiction.
For example, a hobby store which does a model-rocket or radio-controlled-toy-aircraft demo in the shopping mall's remote (far from buildings, power lines, etc.) parking lot in a town far from an airport, using only low-flying rockets or planes is no more subject to FAA rules than if the same demo were done by one of its customers.
I don't know about BC backed by stock, but a form of e-Gold or even e-US-Dollars or e-Pick-your-fiat-currency modeled after BitCoins and backed by a bank or other reputable institution's guaranteeing the e-currency and regulators guaranteeing it didn't play hanky-panky with the blockchain is something I might use.
Bonus points if this were done as a consortium, with enough regulated-institution participants that at least half of the mining was done by regulated entities, leaving up to 49.9% to be done by anyone who wants a piece of the action.
For example, if MegaBank or LargeCreditUnion put a billion US dollars in escrow and issued a billion e-dollars, and made its money on a small transaction fee - small being much smaller than today's credit-card or similar transaction fees - I might use it.
Ditto if a large, reputable, regulated company did the same thing with gold bullion or even a particular stock-market-proxy such as an index fund.
They key elements of this would be: * as convenient as a pre-paid debit card for consumers * I can be a merchant without getting a merchant account * as forgery-proof as actual currency, maybe even more so. * value is just as stable as the underlying asset, e.g. US dollars. A e-dollar today will buy $1 today and $1 a year from now, minus transaction fees. * I can invest in gold or whatever without going to a commodities or stock exchange or broker and without taking physical possession of gold.
I call these "convenience bitcoins" because they offer the convenience of not handling the actual goods with the convenience of not having to think about dealing with an intermediary like a broker or bank.
The only things I can see preventing this from happening are: * unwillingness of large banks to do this, for fear of eating into their existing business models * banks actively trying to stop this through regulation or abuse of market influence, for the same reasons * naive governments who fear anonymous transactions, never-mind that with the public blockchain, the anonymity is actually less than a cash transaction unless special efforts like the transaction-washing that happens at some of today's BitCoin exchanges is used.
Hobbyist or not, manned or not, there needs to be some clear jurisdictional bounds so that anything flying high enough to be in "airplane space" or anything close to the ground near an airport, blimp base, registered helipad, or other fixed-location registered aircraft take-off or landing-site is under either federal FAA rules or similar state rules.
Anything else should either be unregulated, regulated by the states if they so choose, or if it is over a place where the feds already have jurisdiction such as a navigable waterway, non-FAA federal jurisdiction.
Operators of aircraft such as crop-dusters, stunt planes, etc. flying close to the ground away from designated take-off and landing-areas will be "on notice" that they are sharing the airspace with devices not operating under FAA rules.
Operators unmanned aircraft operating without FAA approval will be "on notice" that they need to steer clear of regulated take-off and landing-zones and stay below "FAA regulated airspace" or they will be subject to fines or other sanctions from the FAA.
In some states cities have immunity from being sued, so you don't even have to play the "blame each other game" - just make sure the city winds up with the blame.
I can see a hack that messed up the timing of traffic lights to create a traffic jam, but unless things have changed in the last decade or two, traffic lights in my country have "both way green light detectors" safeties.
If a light detects that it is green and a "conflicting" light is also green, the whole system will reset to a "safe mode" such as a 4-way flashing-red-light.
So, yeah, I think scenarios where a hacker or evil-computer-that-takes-over-the-city that turns the lights to green-in-all-directions is a bit far-fetched.
If I'm wrong, either the traffic engineer who didn't order the safeties put in, the installer who put the wrong thing in, or the manufacturer who didn't build the safeties safe enough needs to be called on the carpet.
Photographs or copies of the front and back of all critical documents and of at least one "monthly statement" of every company you do business with can be kept off-site.
Be careful doing this with your phone though: If you do, dump the photos off of your phone then fill up your phone's memory with something else. Otherwise, if your phone gets stolen someone who has the desire and know-how can "undelete" the phone's memory and, well, that won't be fun.
Your thumbprint and face should be enough to get your Drivers License or state-issued photo-ID replaced.
If you've opened a non-online bank account in the USA in the last few years, your thumbprint is probably on file.
It won't be fast but within a few days you should be able to start reconstructing your life.
Also, if you are in a state where the cops can pull up your drivers license photo in their car, AND if you still look like your photograph, you should be able to prove yourself to their satisfaction on-the-spot. Especially if the car you are driving when you arrive at your smoldering former house is registered to you.
Decades ago there was a "liquid candy" marketed to children that came in small (less than 2 oz. I think) mostly(?)-wax "bottles" that were technically edible.
I'm using "edible" as a euphemism for "non-toxic, but no real taste and other than to gross out your parents or show off to your friends there was no good reason to eat it rather than throwing it away."
Was this practical as a "water bottle"? Not really. Is it "prior art" on any related patents? Possibly, especially against any "broad" claims.
... mission-critical things like banking and providing essential government services should "play it conservatively" and not be at the forefront of technology.
OR, where it makes sense for them to be at the forefront, the "old way of doing things" should be kept around until after the "new" way has proven it is robust enough for the task.
Being "robust enough for the task" means, among other things, not having unacceptable levels of downtime under normal or abnormal-but-common conditions (such as DDOS attacks) and having an acceptable and well-tested contingency plan when the unexpected or expected-but-rare event happens (such as a large earthquake taking out your primary and backup data centers and most of your communications, leaving only your "hardened" disaster-response and other "can't-fail during a public emergency" systems mostly intact).
Too-long-will-not-read version: There are things we should change now to bring pay into a gender balance, there are vestiges of past practices that will "take care of themselves" over time which will bring gender pay into balance, and there may be things which should not be "fixed" just for the sake of achieving gender balance because the "fix" will be worse than the "disease."
Long version:
The gender gap will only close so far, here's why:
* As long as we live in a society where more women prefer to halt or "downsize" their career in favor of their family than men, women's average career opportunities will be lower. * As long as we live in a society where child-rearing after divorces falls more on women than on men, the women who have to reduce their work hours or drop out of college so they can raise their kids will drag down the average career opportunities for women. * It will take generations to "bleed out" the vestiges of past discrimination. If today's boys and girls see that their grandmothers or great-grandmothers were nurses and teachers and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were doctors and headmasters, they will notice and may choose a career path accordingly. * If today's boys see elementary-school-teaching as female-dominated, they are more likely to grow up thinking that the job is "beneath them" and not worthy of being paid well. * Some jobs, such as being an administrative assistant or schoolteacher, are much more tolerant of long career breaks than others, such as science and engineering. They are also much easier to get into as a second career. This means the talent pool of those who could become trained for the job in less than 2 years if they wanted to resume that career or switch to that career is larger, which in turn means wages may be lower.
Here are some other factors that are likely to give one gender an advantage over another but the advantage could just as easily be a women's advantage as a man's. * As long as we live in a society where girls are "steered" towards certain career fields and men towards others, then unless by chance the average salaries and other career opportunities in "women-dominated careers" is the same as in "men-dominated careers," one gender or the other will have a statistical "advantage" at any given time. * If - and I'm not saying there is, but if - there is a gender-specific biological preference for certain types of work and that preference isn't countered by some other force such as encouraging people to have careers outside of their gender's statistical preference, there will likely be one gender with a more average pay and career opportunities than the other at any given time. * There are certain jobs that women, on average, are simply more qualified to do than men, and vice-versa. Fortunately, many of these, such as being a professional football player or professional soprano vocalist, are so low in numbers that they don't sway the averages. Others, such as certain jobs in the military and law enforcement that require strength and endurance standards that men on average are better able to meet, are common enough that the lack of a 50/50 balance in these careers will affect the "average" ratio of pay for men and women. If jobs that are male- or for that matter female-dominated are stepping-stones to other careers, such as becoming a General in the Army, then the effects will be felt for a much longer period of time.
These lists are by no means complete.
Some of these things will take care of themselves over time. Others will require deliberate effort to overcome. Others, such as the (hypothetical?) gender-specific biological preferences for certain types of work, should probably be accepted as not worth "fixing" as the "fix" - encouraging people to take on career paths that would not naturally be their first choice, merely to achieve some statistical balance - is probably worse than the "disease" - having a small, permanent imbalance in male- to female- average earnings.
Go to Great Britain and watch it live on a taxed television set.
Oh, you mean how can you watch it without the hassles of international travel? Why didn't you say so in the first place?:^)
If BBC got smart, it would change its international licensing agreements with companies like BBC America to reserve the right to show all future shows world-wide on an on-demand, a la carte basis. It might have to agree to charge a minimum-but-affordable per-episode fee to not completely gut the overseas television market.
If it did this for future seasons of Dr. Who, for example, it might charge a per-episode fee so that if someone legally paid for each episode, they would pay several times what they would if they waited until the end of the season and bought the DVD. Yes, die-hards with money to burn would do it, and yes, people would invite their friends over just like they do now, but at least it would be legal. It would also be priced high enough that there would be a market for cable networks like BBC America to buy the rights to air the shows. Those same die-hards would probably buy the DVDs anyways because they tend to be the kind of people who like the DVD extras and they like to have them on their shelves to show their friends how much of a die-hard they really are.
First off, in a war zone where there is anarchy, "everything is legal" unless the local warlord or the country or entity firing bombs in your direction says otherwise.
Second, during times of disaster many communication rules are waived, particularly on frequencies that don't cross national boundaries and which don't cause harm to other emergency or government services.
Third, there are unlicensed frequencies that can be used for ad-hoc metro-area connections if you have good directional antenna. CB radio works tens of miles, maybe over 100, with a good directional antenna and that's without "skywave." Highly directional WiFi antennas can give you tens-of-miles communication over "no special license required" frequencies. If you can go above RF and use visible light or near-infrared, you can either use pulses or if you are really sophisticated and the distances aren't too long, you can use lasers to do "fiber optics without the fiber." As far as I know, there are no radio authorities that regulate the use of visible light, but you may run into safety-related laws if you use laser beams.
Slashdot Mirror
... would be the potential threat of terrorists to take over the blockchain or make people think they could.
Of course I meant to say Comics Code Authority.
Memo to self: Preview THEN post.
It is effect, this is to banks what the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comics_Code_Authority&oldid=604210348 Comics Code Authority] was to comic-book stores.
Then: "If you don't want trouble, only sell pre-approved comic books"
Now: "If you don't want trouble, only deal with businesses in pre-approved lines of business."
I think they did a patch for Windows 2000 the month after the last patch was supposed to come out.
Some of the regulations you mentioned are probably unconstitutional on 10th-ammendment grounds.
Let's take regulation of waterways, for instance. There are many grounds for the feds to be able to regulate these, but I find it hard to believe that there isn't at least one waterway in America that is "outside the scope of federal regulation" under our constitution. In fact, I would expect many waterways would be found exempt if a lawyer who knows what he's doing took it to court.
For those outside the USA, the US constitution give the federal government many enumerated powers and it also gives the federal government the power to do other things that are necessary and proper to carry out the listed powers.
Here is an incomplete list of justifications for federal regulation of a waterway:
* It is a navigable waterway - that is, a boat can go from it to the ocean without having to go on dry land.
* It can be used in interstate commerce, that is, a boat can go from a point in one state to a point in another state without having to go on dry land.
* It affects a postal road.
* It affects federal government property, such as passing through a national park.
* It is used in interstate commerce
* It is used by plants are animals whose protection or regulation is regulated by the federal government (and where those regulations themselves are constitutional)
A hypothetical example of a waterway that is probably exempt from federal regulation:
* Private landowners and state and local governments own all the land that contains and surrounds an "inland sea" (think: mini-version of the "Great Salt Lake" in Utah) as well as the land under and around all tributaries of this inland sea. There are no protected species and no pollution issues that would bring any legitimate federal interest. There are no interstate commerce issues. It is not used as a water supply, so there is no regulate-able health issue. The water doesn't seep into an aquifer but just sits there until it evaporates.
I would only add that Operators MUST be non-commercial to be subject to your rules.
Why?
Even today, many for-profit enterprises that "go more than one inch off the ground" do not fall under FAA jurisdiction.
For example, a hobby store which does a model-rocket or radio-controlled-toy-aircraft demo in the shopping mall's remote (far from buildings, power lines, etc.) parking lot in a town far from an airport, using only low-flying rockets or planes is no more subject to FAA rules than if the same demo were done by one of its customers.
I don't know about BC backed by stock, but a form of e-Gold or even e-US-Dollars or e-Pick-your-fiat-currency modeled after BitCoins and backed by a bank or other reputable institution's guaranteeing the e-currency and regulators guaranteeing it didn't play hanky-panky with the blockchain is something I might use.
Bonus points if this were done as a consortium, with enough regulated-institution participants that at least half of the mining was done by regulated entities, leaving up to 49.9% to be done by anyone who wants a piece of the action.
For example, if MegaBank or LargeCreditUnion put a billion US dollars in escrow and issued a billion e-dollars, and made its money on a small transaction fee - small being much smaller than today's credit-card or similar transaction fees - I might use it.
Ditto if a large, reputable, regulated company did the same thing with gold bullion or even a particular stock-market-proxy such as an index fund.
They key elements of this would be:
* as convenient as a pre-paid debit card for consumers
* I can be a merchant without getting a merchant account
* as forgery-proof as actual currency, maybe even more so.
* value is just as stable as the underlying asset, e.g. US dollars. A e-dollar today will buy $1 today and $1 a year from now, minus transaction fees.
* I can invest in gold or whatever without going to a commodities or stock exchange or broker and without taking physical possession of gold.
I call these "convenience bitcoins" because they offer the convenience of not handling the actual goods with the convenience of not having to think about dealing with an intermediary like a broker or bank.
The only things I can see preventing this from happening are:
* unwillingness of large banks to do this, for fear of eating into their existing business models
* banks actively trying to stop this through regulation or abuse of market influence, for the same reasons
* naive governments who fear anonymous transactions, never-mind that with the public blockchain, the anonymity is actually less than a cash transaction unless special efforts like the transaction-washing that happens at some of today's BitCoin exchanges is used.
Nobody is stopping you. Well, except maybe the government.
Hobbyist or not, manned or not, there needs to be some clear jurisdictional bounds so that anything flying high enough to be in "airplane space" or anything close to the ground near an airport, blimp base, registered helipad, or other fixed-location registered aircraft take-off or landing-site is under either federal FAA rules or similar state rules.
Anything else should either be unregulated, regulated by the states if they so choose, or if it is over a place where the feds already have jurisdiction such as a navigable waterway, non-FAA federal jurisdiction.
Operators of aircraft such as crop-dusters, stunt planes, etc. flying close to the ground away from designated take-off and landing-areas will be "on notice" that they are sharing the airspace with devices not operating under FAA rules.
Operators unmanned aircraft operating without FAA approval will be "on notice" that they need to steer clear of regulated take-off and landing-zones and stay below "FAA regulated airspace" or they will be subject to fines or other sanctions from the FAA.
In some states cities have immunity from being sued, so you don't even have to play the "blame each other game" - just make sure the city winds up with the blame.
I can see a hack that messed up the timing of traffic lights to create a traffic jam, but unless things have changed in the last decade or two, traffic lights in my country have "both way green light detectors" safeties.
If a light detects that it is green and a "conflicting" light is also green, the whole system will reset to a "safe mode" such as a 4-way flashing-red-light.
So, yeah, I think scenarios where a hacker or evil-computer-that-takes-over-the-city that turns the lights to green-in-all-directions is a bit far-fetched.
If I'm wrong, either the traffic engineer who didn't order the safeties put in, the installer who put the wrong thing in, or the manufacturer who didn't build the safeties safe enough needs to be called on the carpet.
Spy vs. Spy.
To monitor them and make sure the material does not fall into the hands of terrorists or spill into the nearby river costs $8 million per year.'"
And dealing with the aftermath of letting them spill into a river or fall into the hands of terrorists would cost less???
Photographs or copies of the front and back of all critical documents and of at least one "monthly statement" of every company you do business with can be kept off-site.
Be careful doing this with your phone though: If you do, dump the photos off of your phone then fill up your phone's memory with something else. Otherwise, if your phone gets stolen someone who has the desire and know-how can "undelete" the phone's memory and, well, that won't be fun.
Your thumbprint and face should be enough to get your Drivers License or state-issued photo-ID replaced.
If you've opened a non-online bank account in the USA in the last few years, your thumbprint is probably on file.
It won't be fast but within a few days you should be able to start reconstructing your life.
Also, if you are in a state where the cops can pull up your drivers license photo in their car, AND if you still look like your photograph, you should be able to prove yourself to their satisfaction on-the-spot. Especially if the car you are driving when you arrive at your smoldering former house is registered to you.
Sure, it might have been exploited while it was a zero-day bug but by the time it made it to /., it was an EX-zero-day bug.
Decades ago there was a "liquid candy" marketed to children that came in small (less than 2 oz. I think) mostly(?)-wax "bottles" that were technically edible.
I'm using "edible" as a euphemism for "non-toxic, but no real taste and other than to gross out your parents or show off to your friends there was no good reason to eat it rather than throwing it away."
Was this practical as a "water bottle"? Not really. Is it "prior art" on any related patents? Possibly, especially against any "broad" claims.
Code war: What the US and the Soviet Union had during the nasopharyngitis outbreaks of the 1950s through the 1980s.
... mission-critical things like banking and providing essential government services should "play it conservatively" and not be at the forefront of technology.
OR, where it makes sense for them to be at the forefront, the "old way of doing things" should be kept around until after the "new" way has proven it is robust enough for the task.
Being "robust enough for the task" means, among other things, not having unacceptable levels of downtime under normal or abnormal-but-common conditions (such as DDOS attacks) and having an acceptable and well-tested contingency plan when the unexpected or expected-but-rare event happens (such as a large earthquake taking out your primary and backup data centers and most of your communications, leaving only your "hardened" disaster-response and other "can't-fail during a public emergency" systems mostly intact).
Back in my day, that thing would've cost $500 per bolt, minimum.
A fork in the universe, I see.
Take it, they will.
Too-long-will-not-read version: There are things we should change now to bring pay into a gender balance, there are vestiges of past practices that will "take care of themselves" over time which will bring gender pay into balance, and there may be things which should not be "fixed" just for the sake of achieving gender balance because the "fix" will be worse than the "disease."
Long version:
The gender gap will only close so far, here's why:
* As long as we live in a society where more women prefer to halt or "downsize" their career in favor of their family than men, women's average career opportunities will be lower.
* As long as we live in a society where child-rearing after divorces falls more on women than on men, the women who have to reduce their work hours or drop out of college so they can raise their kids will drag down the average career opportunities for women.
* It will take generations to "bleed out" the vestiges of past discrimination. If today's boys and girls see that their grandmothers or great-grandmothers were nurses and teachers and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were doctors and headmasters, they will notice and may choose a career path accordingly.
* If today's boys see elementary-school-teaching as female-dominated, they are more likely to grow up thinking that the job is "beneath them" and not worthy of being paid well.
* Some jobs, such as being an administrative assistant or schoolteacher, are much more tolerant of long career breaks than others, such as science and engineering. They are also much easier to get into as a second career. This means the talent pool of those who could become trained for the job in less than 2 years if they wanted to resume that career or switch to that career is larger, which in turn means wages may be lower.
Here are some other factors that are likely to give one gender an advantage over another but the advantage could just as easily be a women's advantage as a man's.
* As long as we live in a society where girls are "steered" towards certain career fields and men towards others, then unless by chance the average salaries and other career opportunities in "women-dominated careers" is the same as in "men-dominated careers," one gender or the other will have a statistical "advantage" at any given time.
* If - and I'm not saying there is, but if - there is a gender-specific biological preference for certain types of work and that preference isn't countered by some other force such as encouraging people to have careers outside of their gender's statistical preference, there will likely be one gender with a more average pay and career opportunities than the other at any given time.
* There are certain jobs that women, on average, are simply more qualified to do than men, and vice-versa. Fortunately, many of these, such as being a professional football player or professional soprano vocalist, are so low in numbers that they don't sway the averages. Others, such as certain jobs in the military and law enforcement that require strength and endurance standards that men on average are better able to meet, are common enough that the lack of a 50/50 balance in these careers will affect the "average" ratio of pay for men and women. If jobs that are male- or for that matter female-dominated are stepping-stones to other careers, such as becoming a General in the Army, then the effects will be felt for a much longer period of time.
These lists are by no means complete.
Some of these things will take care of themselves over time. Others will require deliberate effort to overcome. Others, such as the (hypothetical?) gender-specific biological preferences for certain types of work, should probably be accepted as not worth "fixing" as the "fix" - encouraging people to take on career paths that would not naturally be their first choice, merely to achieve some statistical balance - is probably worse than the "disease" - having a small, permanent imbalance in male- to female- average earnings.
... "Oh frak."
Go to Great Britain and watch it live on a taxed television set.
Oh, you mean how can you watch it without the hassles of international travel? Why didn't you say so in the first place? :^)
If BBC got smart, it would change its international licensing agreements with companies like BBC America to reserve the right to show all future shows world-wide on an on-demand, a la carte basis. It might have to agree to charge a minimum-but-affordable per-episode fee to not completely gut the overseas television market.
If it did this for future seasons of Dr. Who, for example, it might charge a per-episode fee so that if someone legally paid for each episode, they would pay several times what they would if they waited until the end of the season and bought the DVD. Yes, die-hards with money to burn would do it, and yes, people would invite their friends over just like they do now, but at least it would be legal. It would also be priced high enough that there would be a market for cable networks like BBC America to buy the rights to air the shows. Those same die-hards would probably buy the DVDs anyways because they tend to be the kind of people who like the DVD extras and they like to have them on their shelves to show their friends how much of a die-hard they really are.
First off, in a war zone where there is anarchy, "everything is legal" unless the local warlord or the country or entity firing bombs in your direction says otherwise.
Second, during times of disaster many communication rules are waived, particularly on frequencies that don't cross national boundaries and which don't cause harm to other emergency or government services.
Third, there are unlicensed frequencies that can be used for ad-hoc metro-area connections if you have good directional antenna. CB radio works tens of miles, maybe over 100, with a good directional antenna and that's without "skywave." Highly directional WiFi antennas can give you tens-of-miles communication over "no special license required" frequencies. If you can go above RF and use visible light or near-infrared, you can either use pulses or if you are really sophisticated and the distances aren't too long, you can use lasers to do "fiber optics without the fiber." As far as I know, there are no radio authorities that regulate the use of visible light, but you may run into safety-related laws if you use laser beams.