There a number of politicians have been given the shaft because their Phds were based on theses that were mostly copy&paste from unattributed sources.
Of course, not having received a doctorate in the first place (rather than based on insufficiently independent work) is a bit more audacious.
Doesn't anybody check that? And in this kind of position?
In most areas of life, if you talk the talk and deliver on promises, nobody checks to see if you walked the walk, other than in a most superficial manner.
I very much doubt that there was only one qualified candidate for her job. Obviously the system they used picked one of the worst.
I don't know about that... her position was "President of the US Academy." A presidential position in a large nonprofit is all about image, motivation and being able to bring in the money. My guess is that mo matter what her academic credentials were, she wouldn't have been able to keep that position for 17 years without excelling at the mentioned criteria. Most eggheads in any specialty who were really interested in the pursuit of knowledge would be dismal failures as presidents of such an organization. They require someone who inspires confidence (who we usually call a con artist).
But McLuhan wasn't saying that in his work. Have you read it? Yikes...it's dense like a philosophy text.
McLuhan was more in 'TED talk' mode, breathlessly in wonder at the potential insights gleanable from the act of analyzing human communication with the tools of the network engineer.
I'd still argue that McLuhan is in the picture, but that quote is very definitely not an accurate summation of his overall message; when I studied what he was doing, that quote was presented and interpreted more as a battle cry to change the way people approached transmission vs signal -- and then he had to contort his logic to attempt to back up that battle cry in any meaningful way (partly because he was only seeing part of the picture and was trying to push a narrow agenda). I'd definitely agree about him being in 'TED talk' mode, that sums it up quite nicely:)
Add to that that some of his ideas were obviously not credible, even at the time, and you get this disconnect between people that see his one famous line and then dive into his works expecting some amazing revelation of the thought that went behind that. In reality, the more interesting work is done by others after the fact refuting his claims (and thereby also discovering the use cases for his transmission theory).
Then again, I haven't read any of his stuff in around 20 years, so I've probably introduced a lot of situational bias and coloured memory into this:)
ah, Marshall McLuhan...confusing the hell out of undergrads studying Comm Theory with one quotation...
I'm going to have to check out Annie Hall now.
FYI, McLuhan's quotation, "The medium is the message" is a tautology. It's like saying on the topic of candy, "The shape is the taste"
skittles and M&M's have the same shape, but very different tastes...what I mean is, McLuhan's quotation is only erudite if you take a ridiculously reductive understanding of communication theory...
My response to McLuhan when I used to teach Comm Theory: "The message is the message, the 'medium' is the channel by which the message is transmitted"
The value of McLuhan's quotation is this: it introduces us to a deeper, more complex understanding of Communications analysis...it isn't valuable in and of itself, but it teases us with notions best explained by others.
Odd, I always took McLuhan's tautology to mean "The transmission method used shapes the meaning of the content". But it's short and memorable. This is kind of like the original 2001 novel; it's compressing a lot of potential information into something fairly short (leaving lots of space in the movie for visual art), and being dense yet vague enough for reams of analysis to be produced out of a dense but lossy source material.
I've always thought that this is how the best works are created -- spark the intellect, but leave the gaps to be filled in by the reader/viewer.
More useful for art than hard communication, of course.
Oh, and as for "the shape is the taste" -- this doesn't quite fit for me. More like "the shape is the promise". You see something that shape and size, and assume that it's designed to be eaten, and is a layered candy. This of course is why you should keep medicine out of the reach of small children.
Thank you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, for this insightful riposte.
Most of these issues seem to me like something that will be an issue the first time around -- and because you're all friends, can be easily overcome (otherwise, you're not really friends, are you? Just acquaintances of convenience).
As for the vegetarian/lactose intolerant... well, someone who's lactose intolerant can eat anything a vegetarian can eat (at least a strict vegetarian). Speaking as a casual vegan (I have meat/animal products, but as the exception, not the rule), there's lots of stuff to prepare in this wide world that everyone can enjoy, and it's usually less expensive than the prepackaged stuff that'll give you an early death.
As for those who are terrified of doing the "dining in" thing -- first off, why are they joining in this in the first place? If it's more a "want to spend time with friends, they'd be with us if we dined out" thing, then give them some training wheels -- have them come over early and help out at someone else's place. Same goes for the guy who has a hot plate and microwave that he has to move out of the way to fold his bed down at night.
Trust me, you'll have a LOT more fun eating with friends than going out to a restaurant. It's a bit more work on the cleanup side, but if you're doing this every Friday, for example, and you do it in a 4 house rotation (more friends is fine, just have them come over early/provide some of the cooking ingredients/ stay late to help clean up/ whatever works with your group of friends), you've got one cleanup per month for the benefit of having something fun and different to do with friends each Friday evening.
Hey... if Reality TV can do it with people who are perfect strangers (some of whom become good friends after the experience), you should be able to pull it off with friends. Or are you really afraid to get to know your friends better, for fear that they aren't really people you like?
Hey... one other idea: for the people who feel threatened by this: take a cooking class. Unless you live out in the boondocks where you're not going to find good restaurants anyway, you've got cooking classes available, and they can be fun to do with friends. If you have a large enough group, you can even get custom classes tailored to what your group wants to do.
And as for cooking... once you get over the initial fear and depenency on cookbooks, it's really a fun pastime. You learn what foods go well together, and can usually whip something up with the ingredients on hand without too much difficulty (as long as you're not having to do it 3x a day). Use recipes as inspiration instead of a manual, and things will go much better (even if some of the stuff you make flops).
Just like in the world of technology -- feel free to experiment, think outside the box, and do your own thing. Cooking isn't really all that different from programming after all.
Just use a reference pad based on a book you own. Don't mention what book on the pad.
It can even reference multiple books on your bookshelf.
If you use e-books, you can even keep them on your handheld device for quick reference, in case you need your passwords when away from the home. Using Project Gutenberg as a pad reference resource sounds really interesting now that I think of it....
The ones that get me are the language localized ones that display words in the native language and instruct you, in the native language, to do something to the words (like, remove all vowels, write the singular form of the word, etc). I have to say, my language skills have improved as a result of those (not much though; I just keep re-trying the captcha until I get one I can guess, just like a bot would do).
Another option: have dining in parties with your friends. Have each person take a rotation, try out new recipes/variants, and in general, have a good time without the bad music/bad lighting/bad seating. Non-paying guests can stay and wash the dishes;)
All of my passwords look like that. Randomly generated with special characters. Typically 25 chars long.
They are in a password manager. I don't have to remember them at all. It's easier than having passwords I can remember but are easier to guess/can be found by rainbow table.
-- BMO
I guess you didn't get what I did: that's the crypt hash for "Password". Found at the top of most hash tables.
change your password to "aeb30d1be48a8ed9" and store it in plaintext:D You could add some salt, I guess, but that'll leave them guessing either way....
I've always wondered... what stops people from issuing fake FISA orders? I mean, if anyone challenges them, you just say they don't have the clearance. FISA *IS* catch-22.
You can't even go after someone issuing such an order with "impersonating a federal officer" -- as unless you're the President of the US,/how would you know/?
I imagine a terror group could make a pretty quick job of any public works under the guise of FISA.
For weeks now, Apple has been running huge ads telling me that their development work is done in California. I never figured out why I would care about that, but they assured me it was really important. Now you're telling me they are lying???? How could Apple do that to me??
It's obviously their way around the gag order preventing them from admitting they're still working with the NSA....
While the content obviously doesn't suddenly land in the public domain because of this, it could be argued that only content in the public domain should be allowed to be broadcast like this , as unless you view the copyright frame, it is just information being broadcast where everyone can see/hear it.
The only possible way to believe this is, like the original poster, to either be deliberately or blithely clueless about how copyright works.
This is a very binary view of a situation that has many nuances. You're basically saying I either don't actually believe what I said, or am being intentionally or unintentionally ignorant about how copyright works (not about copyright law, but how copyright works).
Let's break it down:
1) content doesn't suddenly land in the public domain because of broadcast -- if this is untrue, please cite the appropriate source (including country for which this is untrue) 2) it could be argued -- here I'm entering weasel word territory -- unless you can prove that someone couldn't argue with you about the following point, the rest holds true. Of course, if you can somehow prove that someone can't argue with you, you couldn't have read my previous post without a significant penchant for misunderstanding written English. 3) only content in the public domain should be allowed to be broadcast like this -- note the *should* -- not *is* -- this is where you've got into trouble I think; we're (myself and the OP) not talking about how things are, we're talking about how they should be based on the intent of copyright law. In my case, it was talking about how I thought the OP thought things should be. 4) as unless you view the copyright frame, it is just information being broadcast where everyone can see/hear it -- potential reason why it *should* not be legal to broadcast copyright works (ergo, if it is broacast, it is either illegal or public domain).
I presume you saw the bit about "view the copyright frame" and went "aha! That's not how copyright works! Copyright doesn't depend on the knowledge of the viewer! Ignorance is no excuse!"
I'd like to point out that that has very little to do with what we were discussing, which is how the public airwaves *should* be used.
I'd also like to point out that copyright doesn't work the same way in all countries (although we're talking about the US here, due to the whole discussion of public airwaves), and that copyright hasn't always worked the same way in the US, and is likely to change how it works again in the future. Thus, discussion about how things *should* work is important to keep alive as society and lawmakers grapple with the opposing interests that make demands for copyright change and use of public resources such as the airwaves.
Even obsessive compulsive people are generally not that focused, nor do they attempt equal parts character assassination, discussion downplay and strawmen.
You've only seen the tip of the iceberg, in terms of obsessive posting maniacs. Cold Fjord has a long ways to go to rival someone like APK that can post over 100 off-topic posts in a single story (some with fewer than a couple dozen or so on topic posts).
Ah; but the difference between Cold Fjord and APK is that Cold Fjord actually stays on-topic and always picks *something* out of the parent post to reply to, even if it doesn't always have much to do with the overall conversation and leads to derailment. He still has a pretty impressive volume when damage control is required, but his intent appears to be different than APK's.
I suppose someday, someone will do their PhD on Slashdot thread contents....
Actually, he makes a good point. Putting something on the public airwaves is a public performance -- not just from the performance side, but fully public, in that you cannot limit the audience.
While the content obviously doesn't suddenly land in the public domain because of this, it could be argued that only content in the public domain should be allowed to be broadcast like this, as unless you view the copyright frame, it is just information being broadcast where everyone can see/hear it. If I went down to a street corner and started acting out shakespeare, or singing a song I wrote even, and someone recorded it, I'd have absolutely nothing I could do about that. If they then rebroadcast that recording, my content would be covered by copyright, but they would have copyright on the recording itself.
Similarly, programming sent over the airwaves cannot be restricted in as far as who receives it, nor what they do with that -- but the content embedded in the programming still belongs to the copyright holder.
I think there was a reason he was asking it as a question. I think I somewhat answered that question in my reply.
Except you see that's total bullshit. The "exchange" for using the public airwaves is billions in licensing fees paid to the government, not providing you with content for free. They don't owe you jack.
Second, if you take away their revenue stream(ie ads), then they will stop paying for those airwaves and stop producing content.
Not quite right... sure they have to pay licensing fees to the government... those fees are paid for a LICENSE. Said license says what they can and cannot do with the public radio spectrum. One of the conditions is broadcast of public content. The license says nothing about the broadcasters being guaranteed to make a profit. The airwaves don't suffer if someone's not using them -- especially now with digital broadcasting, where most of the airwaves are going dark anyway.
Really, the solution is somewhat obvious: commercials have to be entertaining. Commercial entities need to start working with script writers more closely. Product placement needs to improve.
They need more of an old-school or sesame street model instead of this "jam 38 minutes of overly compressed loud programming that people don't want to watch into an hour of programming".
Can you imagine if this was done in audio CDs? One CD having 38 minutes of ads with 7 songs wedged in between at lower volume levels?
I don't worry about giving anyone ideas on this, as audio CDs are almost as popular as audio cassettes these days.
Did the author of the summary read the article? The article for some reason mentions individualized video feeds for every American which is unrealistic and nothing like the sort of thing anyone has said the NSA is recording. 12,000 PB is far, far larger than the 272 PB estimated to hold all US domestic phone calls for a year, plus the foreign and international calls (which people forgot the NSA captures).
I work in the monitoring space. But looking at newspapers rather than people.
We get fairly well structured content. And searching it is hard and that is with TEXT content. You want to do that but add speech-to-text in the mix?
The quality of such a database would be crap. It may be useful AFTER the fact when you have a starting point (HE blew up the , who has he spoken too? Oh disposable phones. Not so helpful) but not to start analyzing The Masses. I don't see it.
There's nothing to see until you hit a certain mass of interrelational data, at which point your graph matches start showing interesting correlations. As soon as you start depending on the content to define the structure, you've lost. You want to depend only on the metadata to define the content. Who cares about whether the phone was disposable? What you really want is all calls made to/from that phone, and where that connects to. Then you see that in certain situations, the same person is communicating with an awful lot of disposable phones, and that communication suddenly stopped yesterday. Flag goes up, and content of communication is searched.
The problem is, that while this does limit the search footprint (and storage footprint), it marginalizes FPs, it doesn't eliminate them. And now that FP is being deep-delved instead of quickly passed off as unimportant as would previously happen.
They must be grabbing bulb content data. Attachment, Googles cloud printed documents, email content, and a shed load of photos and spreadsheets etc.
Actually, they're likely storing a lot less -- they're creating an associative web. This means that if they're doing 2 degrees of separation, they need to create 2 degrees of links between every bit of data they're archiving. All that meta-metadata adds up, and probably uses up more of the storage space than the actual data itself. Of course, they probably also have round robin pools of data and flags that capture it for analysis/long-term storage based on patterns found in the relationships. This way, while they're SEEING all the data, they don't need to store everything. Who knows? maybe they're using Google's transcription tech to compress audio too -- doesn't have to be accurate, as it's just context for the relational data, and they can use it to trigger audio capture in the cases where it might actually be useful.
Again, not to downplay what they're doing -- the data they're collecting, combined with the way they're likely storing it, will enable them to know more about what motivates individuals/how they relate to others than the individuals likely know about themselves. No need to capture the realtime data to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
This is where I double-check that I actually posted to slashdot....
There a number of politicians have been given the shaft because their Phds were based on theses that were mostly copy&paste from unattributed sources.
Of course, not having received a doctorate in the first place (rather than based on insufficiently independent work) is a bit more audacious.
Doesn't anybody check that? And in this kind of position?
In most areas of life, if you talk the talk and deliver on promises, nobody checks to see if you walked the walk, other than in a most superficial manner.
I very much doubt that there was only one qualified candidate for her job. Obviously the system they used picked one of the worst.
I don't know about that... her position was "President of the US Academy." A presidential position in a large nonprofit is all about image, motivation and being able to bring in the money. My guess is that mo matter what her academic credentials were, she wouldn't have been able to keep that position for 17 years without excelling at the mentioned criteria. Most eggheads in any specialty who were really interested in the pursuit of knowledge would be dismal failures as presidents of such an organization. They require someone who inspires confidence (who we usually call a con artist).
But McLuhan wasn't saying that in his work. Have you read it? Yikes...it's dense like a philosophy text.
McLuhan was more in 'TED talk' mode, breathlessly in wonder at the potential insights gleanable from the act of analyzing human communication with the tools of the network engineer.
I'd still argue that McLuhan is in the picture, but that quote is very definitely not an accurate summation of his overall message; when I studied what he was doing, that quote was presented and interpreted more as a battle cry to change the way people approached transmission vs signal -- and then he had to contort his logic to attempt to back up that battle cry in any meaningful way (partly because he was only seeing part of the picture and was trying to push a narrow agenda). I'd definitely agree about him being in 'TED talk' mode, that sums it up quite nicely :)
Add to that that some of his ideas were obviously not credible, even at the time, and you get this disconnect between people that see his one famous line and then dive into his works expecting some amazing revelation of the thought that went behind that. In reality, the more interesting work is done by others after the fact refuting his claims (and thereby also discovering the use cases for his transmission theory).
Then again, I haven't read any of his stuff in around 20 years, so I've probably introduced a lot of situational bias and coloured memory into this :)
ah, Marshall McLuhan...confusing the hell out of undergrads studying Comm Theory with one quotation...
I'm going to have to check out Annie Hall now.
FYI, McLuhan's quotation, "The medium is the message" is a tautology. It's like saying on the topic of candy, "The shape is the taste"
skittles and M&M's have the same shape, but very different tastes...what I mean is, McLuhan's quotation is only erudite if you take a ridiculously reductive understanding of communication theory...
My response to McLuhan when I used to teach Comm Theory: "The message is the message, the 'medium' is the channel by which the message is transmitted"
I used it to introduce the Shannon-Weaver Model.
The value of McLuhan's quotation is this: it introduces us to a deeper, more complex understanding of Communications analysis...it isn't valuable in and of itself, but it teases us with notions best explained by others.
Odd, I always took McLuhan's tautology to mean "The transmission method used shapes the meaning of the content". But it's short and memorable. This is kind of like the original 2001 novel; it's compressing a lot of potential information into something fairly short (leaving lots of space in the movie for visual art), and being dense yet vague enough for reams of analysis to be produced out of a dense but lossy source material.
I've always thought that this is how the best works are created -- spark the intellect, but leave the gaps to be filled in by the reader/viewer.
More useful for art than hard communication, of course.
Oh, and as for "the shape is the taste" -- this doesn't quite fit for me. More like "the shape is the promise". You see something that shape and size, and assume that it's designed to be eaten, and is a layered candy. This of course is why you should keep medicine out of the reach of small children.
Thank you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, for this insightful riposte.
Most of these issues seem to me like something that will be an issue the first time around -- and because you're all friends, can be easily overcome (otherwise, you're not really friends, are you? Just acquaintances of convenience).
As for the vegetarian/lactose intolerant... well, someone who's lactose intolerant can eat anything a vegetarian can eat (at least a strict vegetarian). Speaking as a casual vegan (I have meat/animal products, but as the exception, not the rule), there's lots of stuff to prepare in this wide world that everyone can enjoy, and it's usually less expensive than the prepackaged stuff that'll give you an early death.
As for those who are terrified of doing the "dining in" thing -- first off, why are they joining in this in the first place? If it's more a "want to spend time with friends, they'd be with us if we dined out" thing, then give them some training wheels -- have them come over early and help out at someone else's place. Same goes for the guy who has a hot plate and microwave that he has to move out of the way to fold his bed down at night.
Trust me, you'll have a LOT more fun eating with friends than going out to a restaurant. It's a bit more work on the cleanup side, but if you're doing this every Friday, for example, and you do it in a 4 house rotation (more friends is fine, just have them come over early/provide some of the cooking ingredients/ stay late to help clean up/ whatever works with your group of friends), you've got one cleanup per month for the benefit of having something fun and different to do with friends each Friday evening.
Hey... if Reality TV can do it with people who are perfect strangers (some of whom become good friends after the experience), you should be able to pull it off with friends. Or are you really afraid to get to know your friends better, for fear that they aren't really people you like?
Hey... one other idea: for the people who feel threatened by this: take a cooking class. Unless you live out in the boondocks where you're not going to find good restaurants anyway, you've got cooking classes available, and they can be fun to do with friends. If you have a large enough group, you can even get custom classes tailored to what your group wants to do.
And as for cooking... once you get over the initial fear and depenency on cookbooks, it's really a fun pastime. You learn what foods go well together, and can usually whip something up with the ingredients on hand without too much difficulty (as long as you're not having to do it 3x a day). Use recipes as inspiration instead of a manual, and things will go much better (even if some of the stuff you make flops).
Just like in the world of technology -- feel free to experiment, think outside the box, and do your own thing. Cooking isn't really all that different from programming after all.
>> without the bad music/bad lighting/bad seating
You have much more posh friends than I.
You frequent better restaurants than I do.
Just use a reference pad based on a book you own. Don't mention what book on the pad.
It can even reference multiple books on your bookshelf.
If you use e-books, you can even keep them on your handheld device for quick reference, in case you need your passwords when away from the home. Using Project Gutenberg as a pad reference resource sounds really interesting now that I think of it....
People had some place in the house call a Dining Room and it was much larger than their computer den. Shocking!
A room just for eating in? Weird.
How could you operate your computer from there..?
You read slashdot and you can't figure that one out? Time to turn in your geek card....
But then again, these days, most people entertain in the room where their sofa and TV are, not in their non-existent dining room....
The ones that get me are the language localized ones that display words in the native language and instruct you, in the native language, to do something to the words (like, remove all vowels, write the singular form of the word, etc). I have to say, my language skills have improved as a result of those (not much though; I just keep re-trying the captcha until I get one I can guess, just like a bot would do).
Another option: have dining in parties with your friends. Have each person take a rotation, try out new recipes/variants, and in general, have a good time without the bad music/bad lighting/bad seating. Non-paying guests can stay and wash the dishes ;)
All of my passwords look like that. Randomly generated with special characters. Typically 25 chars long.
They are in a password manager. I don't have to remember them at all. It's easier than having passwords I can remember but are easier to guess/can be found by rainbow table.
--
BMO
I guess you didn't get what I did: that's the crypt hash for "Password". Found at the top of most hash tables.
change your password to "aeb30d1be48a8ed9" and store it in plaintext :D You could add some salt, I guess, but that'll leave them guessing either way....
I've always wondered... what stops people from issuing fake FISA orders? I mean, if anyone challenges them, you just say they don't have the clearance. FISA *IS* catch-22.
You can't even go after someone issuing such an order with "impersonating a federal officer" -- as unless you're the President of the US, /how would you know/?
I imagine a terror group could make a pretty quick job of any public works under the guise of FISA.
But but but...
For weeks now, Apple has been running huge ads telling me that their development work is done in California. I never figured out why I would care about that, but they assured me it was really important. Now you're telling me they are lying???? How could Apple do that to me??
It's obviously their way around the gag order preventing them from admitting they're still working with the NSA....
The only possible way to believe this is, like the original poster, to either be deliberately or blithely clueless about how copyright works.
This is a very binary view of a situation that has many nuances. You're basically saying I either don't actually believe what I said, or am being intentionally or unintentionally ignorant about how copyright works (not about copyright law, but how copyright works).
Let's break it down:
1) content doesn't suddenly land in the public domain because of broadcast
-- if this is untrue, please cite the appropriate source (including country for which this is untrue)
2) it could be argued
-- here I'm entering weasel word territory -- unless you can prove that someone couldn't argue with you about the following point, the rest holds true. Of course, if you can somehow prove that someone can't argue with you, you couldn't have read my previous post without a significant penchant for misunderstanding written English.
3) only content in the public domain should be allowed to be broadcast like this
-- note the *should* -- not *is* -- this is where you've got into trouble I think; we're (myself and the OP) not talking about how things are, we're talking about how they should be based on the intent of copyright law. In my case, it was talking about how I thought the OP thought things should be.
4) as unless you view the copyright frame, it is just information being broadcast where everyone can see/hear it
-- potential reason why it *should* not be legal to broadcast copyright works (ergo, if it is broacast, it is either illegal or public domain).
I presume you saw the bit about "view the copyright frame" and went "aha! That's not how copyright works! Copyright doesn't depend on the knowledge of the viewer! Ignorance is no excuse!"
I'd like to point out that that has very little to do with what we were discussing, which is how the public airwaves *should* be used.
I'd also like to point out that copyright doesn't work the same way in all countries (although we're talking about the US here, due to the whole discussion of public airwaves), and that copyright hasn't always worked the same way in the US, and is likely to change how it works again in the future. Thus, discussion about how things *should* work is important to keep alive as society and lawmakers grapple with the opposing interests that make demands for copyright change and use of public resources such as the airwaves.
Anything that plugs into a 110/220V outlet has the potential to kill you. You are going on faith that it won't.
I plugged myself into 110V once. Beware!
"purchased threw a reputable source"?
Really?
I've played that sentence through my screen reading software 3 times and it sounds fine to me.
But I trust your screen reading software as far as I can through it.
Even obsessive compulsive people are generally not that focused, nor do they attempt equal parts character assassination, discussion downplay and strawmen.
You've only seen the tip of the iceberg, in terms of obsessive posting maniacs. Cold Fjord has a long ways to go to rival someone like APK that can post over 100 off-topic posts in a single story (some with fewer than a couple dozen or so on topic posts).
Ah; but the difference between Cold Fjord and APK is that Cold Fjord actually stays on-topic and always picks *something* out of the parent post to reply to, even if it doesn't always have much to do with the overall conversation and leads to derailment. He still has a pretty impressive volume when damage control is required, but his intent appears to be different than APK's.
I suppose someday, someone will do their PhD on Slashdot thread contents....
Anyone remember Tivo? How is this different?
Actually, he makes a good point. Putting something on the public airwaves is a public performance -- not just from the performance side, but fully public, in that you cannot limit the audience.
While the content obviously doesn't suddenly land in the public domain because of this, it could be argued that only content in the public domain should be allowed to be broadcast like this, as unless you view the copyright frame, it is just information being broadcast where everyone can see/hear it. If I went down to a street corner and started acting out shakespeare, or singing a song I wrote even, and someone recorded it, I'd have absolutely nothing I could do about that. If they then rebroadcast that recording, my content would be covered by copyright, but they would have copyright on the recording itself.
Similarly, programming sent over the airwaves cannot be restricted in as far as who receives it, nor what they do with that -- but the content embedded in the programming still belongs to the copyright holder.
I think there was a reason he was asking it as a question. I think I somewhat answered that question in my reply.
Except you see that's total bullshit. The "exchange" for using the public airwaves is billions in licensing fees paid to the government, not providing you with content for free. They don't owe you jack.
Second, if you take away their revenue stream(ie ads), then they will stop paying for those airwaves and stop producing content.
Not quite right... sure they have to pay licensing fees to the government... those fees are paid for a LICENSE. Said license says what they can and cannot do with the public radio spectrum. One of the conditions is broadcast of public content. The license says nothing about the broadcasters being guaranteed to make a profit. The airwaves don't suffer if someone's not using them -- especially now with digital broadcasting, where most of the airwaves are going dark anyway.
Really, the solution is somewhat obvious: commercials have to be entertaining. Commercial entities need to start working with script writers more closely. Product placement needs to improve.
They need more of an old-school or sesame street model instead of this "jam 38 minutes of overly compressed loud programming that people don't want to watch into an hour of programming".
Can you imagine if this was done in audio CDs? One CD having 38 minutes of ads with 7 songs wedged in between at lower volume levels?
I don't worry about giving anyone ideas on this, as audio CDs are almost as popular as audio cassettes these days.
Did the author of the summary read the article? The article for some reason mentions individualized video feeds for every American which is unrealistic and nothing like the sort of thing anyone has said the NSA is recording.
12,000 PB is far, far larger than the 272 PB estimated to hold all US domestic phone calls for a year, plus the foreign and international calls (which people forgot the NSA captures).
I recommend people read the archive.org description of the problem of archiving phone calls (TL;DR 272 PB) and DJB's article on cryptanalysis (PDF) (TL;DR NSA isn't stupid).
The author of the summary was Cold Fjord -- that's all we really need to say.
I work in the monitoring space. But looking at newspapers rather than people.
We get fairly well structured content. And searching it is hard and that is with TEXT content. You want to do that but add speech-to-text in the mix?
The quality of such a database would be crap. It may be useful AFTER the fact when you have a starting point (HE blew up the , who has he spoken too? Oh disposable phones. Not so helpful) but not to start analyzing The Masses. I don't see it.
There's nothing to see until you hit a certain mass of interrelational data, at which point your graph matches start showing interesting correlations. As soon as you start depending on the content to define the structure, you've lost. You want to depend only on the metadata to define the content. Who cares about whether the phone was disposable? What you really want is all calls made to/from that phone, and where that connects to. Then you see that in certain situations, the same person is communicating with an awful lot of disposable phones, and that communication suddenly stopped yesterday. Flag goes up, and content of communication is searched.
The problem is, that while this does limit the search footprint (and storage footprint), it marginalizes FPs, it doesn't eliminate them. And now that FP is being deep-delved instead of quickly passed off as unimportant as would previously happen.
They must be grabbing bulb content data. Attachment, Googles cloud printed documents, email content, and a shed load of photos and spreadsheets etc.
Actually, they're likely storing a lot less -- they're creating an associative web. This means that if they're doing 2 degrees of separation, they need to create 2 degrees of links between every bit of data they're archiving. All that meta-metadata adds up, and probably uses up more of the storage space than the actual data itself. Of course, they probably also have round robin pools of data and flags that capture it for analysis/long-term storage based on patterns found in the relationships. This way, while they're SEEING all the data, they don't need to store everything. Who knows? maybe they're using Google's transcription tech to compress audio too -- doesn't have to be accurate, as it's just context for the relational data, and they can use it to trigger audio capture in the cases where it might actually be useful.
Again, not to downplay what they're doing -- the data they're collecting, combined with the way they're likely storing it, will enable them to know more about what motivates individuals/how they relate to others than the individuals likely know about themselves. No need to capture the realtime data to do that.