If you pick another Western democracy (Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, even Canada) they all seem willing to follow the US's lead on removing civil liberties and spy on their citizens. See the recent National ID card for the UK. Plus Canada's too close for comfort if things start flaring up in the US.
If you pick a country most like to be able to stand up to the US (China) -- well, the human rights in China are already not so great.
If you pick a small, third world nation, either they will not be able to protect you, or they have high levels of corruption, etc. Even at best, you are most likely simply delaying the problem until survalance and tracking technology reachs there in another 30-40 years, when your children and grandchildren will have to deal with it.
India has potential, but then again, they also have a semi-hostile nuke-packing neighbor in Pakistan.
So here is the question I ask the great slashdot masses: if an average income citizen wanted to leave the US, to what country should they be applying for immigration?
I don't have a good answer for you. It may be that like in Orwell's book there really is nowhere to go. (Or at least it appears that way in 1984.) Fighting might be our only choice. If that is necessary then so be it but consideration for your family should come first in that decision.
We've got little time left before the borders completely close.
There are only two choice at this point in my opinion:
1) Openly take back the government by hook or by crook. This is costly in life, money, and security but has been shown by other people of the world to work.
or
2) Leave the country until it collapses or someone cleans it up. Depending on how you look at it this could be construed as an abandonment of one's responsibilities as a US citizen but those of you with family and small children, like me, should seriously think about what kind of country they are going to grow up in. If they can't defend themselves then you have to move them elsewhere.
This is one of those times I wish I hadn't been right to wear my tinfoil. I wish I could see a path to be able to remove it. But I don't see that in my lifetime especially if these things get worse as I suspect they will.
In my opinion this is one step before the wall.
(Why isn't this article in the YRO section?)
I await the inevitable mod down by those that think I'm OT, Troll, Overrated, or Flamebait...
Dead Monkeys are to split up again, according to their manager, Lefty Goldblatt. They've been in the business now ten years, nine as other groups. Originally the Dead Salmon, they became for a while, Trout. Then Fried Trout, then Poached Trout In A White Wine Sauce, and finally, Herring. Splitting up for nearly a month, the re-formed as Red Herring, which became Dead Herring for a while, and then Dead Loss, which reflected the current state of the group. Splitting up again to get their heads together, they reformed a fortnight later as Heads Together, a tight little name which lasted them through a difficult period when their drummer was suspected of suffering from death. It turned out to be only a rumor and they became Dead Together, then Dead Gear, which lead to Dead Donkeys, Lead Donkeys, and the inevitable split up. After nearly ten days, they reformed again as Sole Manier, then Dead Sole, Rock Cod, Turbot, Haddock, White Baith, the Places, Fish, Bream, Mackerel, Salmon, Poached Salmon, Poached Salmon In A White Wine Sauce, Salmon-monia, and Helen Shapiro. This last name, their favorite, had to be dropped following an injunction and they split up again. When they reformed after a recordbreaking two days, they ditched the fishy references and became Dead Monkeys, a name which they stuck with for the rest of their careers. Now, a fortnight later, they've finally split up.
It's time to admit that if this country is in a bucket of shit it's because of the REPUBLICANS! Not the Democrats, not the liberals...the problem is YOU.
The problem is not partisan - it's people.
A reduction in knowledge of what our government is doing, the sabotage of the teaching of critical thinking (outcome based education for one), and an overdose of manufactured paranoia has caused people to become hungry for safety and security at the cost of all their liberties.
Defining this issue as partisan is one of the reasons it's hard to wake the sheep up. If you really want to help, rather than just rant about it confront the issues not the facade.
The building of this has been in the works for years - indeed probably before you or I were born. They've been "boiling the frog" for quite some time now and it's almost cooked.
I don't have a solution but I know blaming the spectre of party politics will not solve this.
We saw Spamalot the last week it was in Chicago at the Shubert(sp?) last year and it was pretty funny IMO!
It was actually a good friend's birthday so we bought a block of tickets in the nosebleed section. We laughed our ass off while the rest of the audience kind of just sat there.
It got so bad that we noticed that when the cast would do a good joke they'd glance up to see if we got it because they knew the rest of the crowd wasn't going to.
My only regret was that while we had one of the stuffed fake dead parrot toys with us we could not find a way to catapult it onto the stage due to distance.
I meant Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia. Eueasia has always been our ally.
Careful Citizen or I'll call the Thought Police!
On a serious note here - doesn't this sound exactly like something The Ministry of Truth would be doing? Wasn't this the whole point of "the photograph" in that story? He knew the photograph existed but when he looked for it it was not there.
1984 is an overused example but that doesn't make it a bad one.
We have to choose. Our resources are very finite. If a thousand projects want time on a large-scale particle collider, and there's only room for ten, we have to choose which ten. We do not have the resources to build a hundred new CERN:s. The same goes for research in general - and society in general, which always has been about managing scarcity in one way or another. It's about resource allocation; money is just a convenient unit for keeping track.
I won't debate this but I will say that this alone is yet another good reason for getting off this rock and finding a good way to produce materials and complex systems without serious cost or effort. We need more space and we need more stuff - the universe is full of both. Maybe eventually nanotech or something similar will solve this but I don't see it happening in my lifetme.
Yes it would be nice if anybody could do anything they wanted with no limits - including having multiple duplicate earths; what do you suggest if one group wants to dig up an archeological find to study it, and another wants to keep it in wait for better analysis methods, for example? One group will have to give up their proposal, and someone will have to make the decision.
I never said choice wasn't necessary I just said it shouldn't be related to money in any way.
And scientists are people. We want money and job security. We want health insurance, we want clothes for our kids, and we want a secure retirement, just like everybody else. If you want science to be some kind of monk-like self-depriving calling rather than a fun, absorbing, fascinating - but still - career, then you're looking at losing well over 99% of all practicioners in the field.
It occurs to me that I missed addressing this. And that you are correct. The problem comes when people enter science fields BECAUSE of the money not because they love science. At least from my point of view.
I can't deny that support of families, health, and the nicer things in life should not be overlooked. In fact lack of those things is part of the problem with the field of science today. If a researcher didn't have to worry about those things then they would be free to focus on their research. That's where I'm going with this.
Unfortunately the only solutions to this that I can see end up either tainting the reseach or creating a caste system of scientists vs. non-scientists. Neither is desireable. Do you have a solution in mind?
Right? Why? Does not the people with the money have a right to decide what to fund? Or do you suggest any project, whether promising or utterly ridiculous, get funded equally?
Remind me again - how many years ago was it "ridiculous" that a man could not fly like a bird? Or reach the moon? Hmmm? Often times some of the most ridiculous areas of research deliver some absolutely stunning results. To not support those would be turning our back on history and closing off whole avenues of discovery.
It's not about lying - I am suggesting no such thing. What I am saying is that there are many ways of approaching any given project, and people will select the approach that lets them do what they want, even if that might not be the best way to actually approach it.
Fair enough. I'm just of the opinion that one shouldn't have to misrepresent anything they do. And yes I know that it is sometimes necessary to buy that box of $1000 "chairs" and return them to fund the real $1000 piece of equipment but it should be the exception. Instead we seem to be moving to where it has become the rule.
Sorry, but "I'm a specialist, so I don't have to know how to market myself" doesn't hold up for a femtosecond. Why do you think so many job postings in the sciences list grant writing ability as desirable? People who can convince others to give them money for something will generally do a lot better than those who can't.
You are right on all your points and I accept all of them. However that doesn't make the situation right. Nor will I agree that it ever will be as long as money is a motivator.
It would be really nifty if all the scientists had steady paychecks, and Bush had to hold a bake sale when he wanted to create a new cabinet-level department of the federal government, but oh well.:(
I only hope I live to see a day where the world is not focused on money and conflict. I don't expect to live that long in my lifetime. I find that a sad thing...
For the rest of us, doing science does mean getting funding - not only for equipment, travel, conferences and the rest, but also for the rather important, if mundane, reason that it's good to be able to pay for food and rent. Being homeless and begging for food tends to put a crimp in your research, whether you're really interested in your work or not.
Point. But that doesn't make it right. Science, and indeed any research, should never in my opinion depend on cashflow. As far as I'm concerned it colors the research.
But take heart - people are working on what they find interesting and worthwhile. It really is amazing how far you can stretch descriptions of your actual work to make it fit whatever is the flavor of the day. Take just about any two subjects - models of neuarl plasticity in the accessory basal amygdala and feminist influences in nineteenth-century reinterpretations of Chaucer, say - and any good researcher working in either field will be perfectly able to seek money earmarked for the other.
I won't take heart unless they start teaching people properly again. We're low on the intellectual totem pole for many reasons. And teaching "flashy" science rather than basics is one of them.
As for stretching your focus to get funding - if you lie to do your job then your job will become a lie. There are exceptions to this but I've seen it happen in all walks of life so I hold it to be fairly accurate.
These enterprising youth are just picking up on this at an early age, and leveraging it in their favour. Buzzword-compliance probably won't get them beyond a certain point career-wise, but it's interesting to see it having some effect at the beginning.
But they shouldn't have to do this. This isn't something they should need to know to be scientists and researchers. Period.
Science should be about studying things because you want to understand them better or know more about them. Money shouldn't enter into it.
Unfortuantely money seems to be the prime motivator for research lately. This is unfortunate because it will probably cause many many great things about the universe to be missed in favor of what's "popular" at the time.
why bother when you dont have driver support outside that of what the intel osx supports, since thats why the trusted platform stuff is there...
So you're telling me that all those developers that wrote drivers for PPC OS X (Macam, etc.) are going to sit still and do nothing? I'd bet against that idea personally.
Hardware "Trusted Computing" might slow them down a bit but nothing software based will even reduce their momentum much at all.
Am I the only one who thought it would be a working PC, with the case made out of legos? That'd be a lot cooler, IMHO. The mouse might be a little annoying to hold, though...
You mean something like this? Or maybe you prefer Mac?:-)
It's not a matter of standing up or not. Most customers/users don't care.
While I can't fault this destinction I do not feel that the two are mutually exclusive.
I do feel that most people would care if they were properly informed of the consequences of their actions or in this case inaction. Currently very few people are taught to avail themselves of the information they need in life or to even question that they might need such information.
Regardless these people in question that do know and did stand up need to be recognized.
I still don't get it. The company made a decision and implemented it. The users didn't like the decision and the masses flocked elsewhere. The company said "oh shit." and reversed the decision.
Because it rarely ever happens lately. Most customers/users won't stand up to a large corporation. These people should be commended IMHO so other people follow their example when dealing with cr@p like this.
Don't like what a company is doing? Vote with your feet or your money. Nothing else will change them. It may be hard at first but it _does_ work most of the time. These people are an example of such.
Until you integrate the decrypter into the driver circuitry, and the driver circuitry into the same semiconductor as the panel itself. Then you have to do semiconductor scale soldering, which I'd imagine would foil all but the most 1337 pirate.
Point. But this would also seriously increase the price of an LCD in our current technology structure.
And the one thing they *IAA don't want to lose is sales for any reason.
Besides - by the time this sort of thing becomes common there will either be global companies that produce this stuff without the restrictions or we'll be at a technology point where people can start producing stuff like this themselves. I hope anyway... Maybe a little wishful thinking on that second part but provided we don't destroy ourselves we should see a serious increase in the complexity of technology in the next ten years or so. That would bring us to at least nanotech IMHO.
Why do you think they're trying to phase out CRTs? An LCD display is a lot harder to crack.
Ummm...having looked into quite a few LCDs over the years I doubt a real pirate would be slowed by an LCD.
Seriously though - if you can open the LCD you can most likely get to the direct lines then piggyback off those to copy the signal to something unprotected. It would take some significant amount of work due to the addressing involved in an HD display but it would still be doable.
Anti-piracy methods are only good until a pirate grabs a compiler or a soldering iron.
I stand corrected as I count SNOPES as a fairly reliable information source.
It does raise another serious issue though - out of the full population only 60,000 homes are survey'd? I find this far too small a data sample for properly determining this data trend even if the surveys are done monthly. With data collection and sorting what it is they could certainly increase their sample size and still get timely results.
And yes I know this goes hand in hand with the arguments as to the TLAs and their ability to gather/sort data. I'm not saying we need a sample size that large but something larger than 60k homes is needed in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
But where to go?
If you pick another Western democracy (Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, even Canada) they all seem willing to follow the US's lead on removing civil liberties and spy on their citizens. See the recent National ID card for the UK.
Plus Canada's too close for comfort if things start flaring up in the US.
If you pick a country most like to be able to stand up to the US (China) -- well, the human rights in China are already not so great.
If you pick a small, third world nation, either they will not be able to protect you, or they have high levels of corruption, etc. Even at best, you are most likely simply delaying the problem until survalance and tracking technology reachs there in another 30-40 years, when your children and grandchildren will have to deal with it.
India has potential, but then again, they also have a semi-hostile nuke-packing neighbor in Pakistan.
So here is the question I ask the great slashdot masses: if an average income citizen wanted to leave the US, to what country should they be applying for immigration?
I don't have a good answer for you. It may be that like in Orwell's book there really is nowhere to go. (Or at least it appears that way in 1984.) Fighting might be our only choice. If that is necessary then so be it but consideration for your family should come first in that decision.
We've got little time left before the borders completely close.
There are only two choice at this point in my opinion:
1) Openly take back the government by hook or by crook. This is costly in life, money, and security but has been shown by other people of the world to work.
or
2) Leave the country until it collapses or someone cleans it up. Depending on how you look at it this could be construed as an abandonment of one's responsibilities as a US citizen but those of you with family and small children, like me, should seriously think about what kind of country they are going to grow up in. If they can't defend themselves then you have to move them elsewhere.
This is one of those times I wish I hadn't been right to wear my tinfoil. I wish I could see a path to be able to remove it. But I don't see that in my lifetime especially if these things get worse as I suspect they will.
In my opinion this is one step before the wall.
(Why isn't this article in the YRO section?)
I await the inevitable mod down by those that think I'm OT, Troll, Overrated, or Flamebait...
Dead Monkeys are to split up again, according to their manager, Lefty Goldblatt. They've been in the business now ten years, nine as other groups. Originally the Dead Salmon, they became for a while, Trout. Then Fried Trout, then Poached Trout In A White Wine Sauce, and finally, Herring. Splitting up for nearly a month, the re-formed as Red Herring, which became Dead Herring for a while, and then Dead Loss, which reflected the current state of the group. Splitting up again to get their heads together, they reformed a fortnight later as Heads Together, a tight little name which lasted them through a difficult period when their drummer was suspected of suffering from death. It turned out to be only a rumor and they became Dead Together, then Dead Gear, which lead to Dead Donkeys, Lead Donkeys, and the inevitable split up. After nearly ten days, they reformed again as Sole Manier, then Dead Sole, Rock Cod, Turbot, Haddock, White Baith, the Places, Fish, Bream, Mackerel, Salmon, Poached Salmon, Poached Salmon In A White Wine Sauce, Salmon-monia, and Helen Shapiro. This last name, their favorite, had to be dropped following an injunction and they split up again. When they reformed after a recordbreaking two days, they ditched the fishy references and became Dead Monkeys, a name which they stuck with for the rest of their careers. Now, a fortnight later, they've finally split up.
It's time to admit that if this country is in a bucket of shit it's because of the REPUBLICANS! Not the Democrats, not the liberals...the problem is YOU.
The problem is not partisan - it's people.
A reduction in knowledge of what our government is doing, the sabotage of the teaching of critical thinking (outcome based education for one), and an overdose of manufactured paranoia has caused people to become hungry for safety and security at the cost of all their liberties.
Defining this issue as partisan is one of the reasons it's hard to wake the sheep up. If you really want to help, rather than just rant about it confront the issues not the facade.
The building of this has been in the works for years - indeed probably before you or I were born. They've been "boiling the frog" for quite some time now and it's almost cooked.
I don't have a solution but I know blaming the spectre of party politics will not solve this.
Forgive me all for responding to a Troll but:
They haven't come for the Jews.
No. But they've come for the Muslims
They haven't come for the Communists.
No. Because it's profitable to ignore them.
They haven't come for the trade unionists.
No. Because they no longer matter.
And they haven't come for you.
They won't bother because we don't matter.
We saw Spamalot the last week it was in Chicago at the Shubert(sp?) last year and it was pretty funny IMO!
It was actually a good friend's birthday so we bought a block of tickets in the nosebleed section. We laughed our ass off while the rest of the audience kind of just sat there.
It got so bad that we noticed that when the cast would do a good joke they'd glance up to see if we got it because they knew the rest of the crowd wasn't going to.
My only regret was that while we had one of the stuffed fake dead parrot toys with us we could not find a way to catapult it onto the stage due to distance.
Your Sig:
Boycott Google - Everything you've ever searched for is permanently associated with your IP address. Fun!
Do you have a link for this? Just curious because I must have a hole in my tinfoil to have missed this.
I meant Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia. Eueasia has always been our ally.
Careful Citizen or I'll call the Thought Police!
On a serious note here - doesn't this sound exactly like something The Ministry of Truth would be doing? Wasn't this the whole point of "the photograph" in that story? He knew the photograph existed but when he looked for it it was not there.
1984 is an overused example but that doesn't make it a bad one.
We have to choose. Our resources are very finite. If a thousand projects want time on a large-scale particle collider, and there's only room for ten, we have to choose which ten. We do not have the resources to build a hundred new CERN:s. The same goes for research in general - and society in general, which always has been about managing scarcity in one way or another. It's about resource allocation; money is just a convenient unit for keeping track.
I won't debate this but I will say that this alone is yet another good reason for getting off this rock and finding a good way to produce materials and complex systems without serious cost or effort. We need more space and we need more stuff - the universe is full of both. Maybe eventually nanotech or something similar will solve this but I don't see it happening in my lifetme.
Yes it would be nice if anybody could do anything they wanted with no limits - including having multiple duplicate earths; what do you suggest if one group wants to dig up an archeological find to study it, and another wants to keep it in wait for better analysis methods, for example? One group will have to give up their proposal, and someone will have to make the decision.
I never said choice wasn't necessary I just said it shouldn't be related to money in any way.
And scientists are people. We want money and job security. We want health insurance, we want clothes for our kids, and we want a secure retirement, just like everybody else. If you want science to be some kind of monk-like self-depriving calling rather than a fun, absorbing, fascinating - but still - career, then you're looking at losing well over 99% of all practicioners in the field.
It occurs to me that I missed addressing this. And that you are correct. The problem comes when people enter science fields BECAUSE of the money not because they love science. At least from my point of view.
I can't deny that support of families, health, and the nicer things in life should not be overlooked. In fact lack of those things is part of the problem with the field of science today. If a researcher didn't have to worry about those things then they would be free to focus on their research. That's where I'm going with this.
Unfortunately the only solutions to this that I can see end up either tainting the reseach or creating a caste system of scientists vs. non-scientists. Neither is desireable. Do you have a solution in mind?
Right? Why? Does not the people with the money have a right to decide what to fund? Or do you suggest any project, whether promising or utterly ridiculous, get funded equally?
Remind me again - how many years ago was it "ridiculous" that a man could not fly like a bird? Or reach the moon? Hmmm? Often times some of the most ridiculous areas of research deliver some absolutely stunning results. To not support those would be turning our back on history and closing off whole avenues of discovery.
It's not about lying - I am suggesting no such thing. What I am saying is that there are many ways of approaching any given project, and people will select the approach that lets them do what they want, even if that might not be the best way to actually approach it.
Fair enough. I'm just of the opinion that one shouldn't have to misrepresent anything they do. And yes I know that it is sometimes necessary to buy that box of $1000 "chairs" and return them to fund the real $1000 piece of equipment but it should be the exception. Instead we seem to be moving to where it has become the rule.
Sorry, but "I'm a specialist, so I don't have to know how to market myself" doesn't hold up for a femtosecond. Why do you think so many job postings in the sciences list grant writing ability as desirable? People who can convince others to give them money for something will generally do a lot better than those who can't.
:(
You are right on all your points and I accept all of them. However that doesn't make the situation right. Nor will I agree that it ever will be as long as money is a motivator.
It would be really nifty if all the scientists had steady paychecks, and Bush had to hold a bake sale when he wanted to create a new cabinet-level department of the federal government, but oh well.
I only hope I live to see a day where the world is not focused on money and conflict. I don't expect to live that long in my lifetime. I find that a sad thing...
For the rest of us, doing science does mean getting funding - not only for equipment, travel, conferences and the rest, but also for the rather important, if mundane, reason that it's good to be able to pay for food and rent. Being homeless and begging for food tends to put a crimp in your research, whether you're really interested in your work or not.
Point. But that doesn't make it right. Science, and indeed any research, should never in my opinion depend on cashflow. As far as I'm concerned it colors the research.
But take heart - people are working on what they find interesting and worthwhile. It really is amazing how far you can stretch descriptions of your actual work to make it fit whatever is the flavor of the day. Take just about any two subjects - models of neuarl plasticity in the accessory basal amygdala and feminist influences in nineteenth-century reinterpretations of Chaucer, say - and any good researcher working in either field will be perfectly able to seek money earmarked for the other.
I won't take heart unless they start teaching people properly again. We're low on the intellectual totem pole for many reasons. And teaching "flashy" science rather than basics is one of them.
As for stretching your focus to get funding - if you lie to do your job then your job will become a lie. There are exceptions to this but I've seen it happen in all walks of life so I hold it to be fairly accurate.
These enterprising youth are just picking up on this at an early age, and leveraging it in their favour. Buzzword-compliance probably won't get them beyond a certain point career-wise, but it's interesting to see it having some effect at the beginning.
But they shouldn't have to do this. This isn't something they should need to know to be scientists and researchers. Period.
Science should be about studying things because you want to understand them better or know more about them. Money shouldn't enter into it.
Unfortuantely money seems to be the prime motivator for research lately. This is unfortunate because it will probably cause many many great things about the universe to be missed in favor of what's "popular" at the time.
So basically what these kids are learning is that they should only be studying subjects that wow and amaze or are in contention.
So much for the lowly germ unless it's causing an epidemic or the lowly bug unless they're swarming.
Regular science goes by the wayside for the "Reality TV" version of science.
why bother when you dont have driver support outside that of what the intel osx supports, since thats why the trusted platform stuff is there...
So you're telling me that all those developers that wrote drivers for PPC OS X (Macam, etc.) are going to sit still and do nothing? I'd bet against that idea personally.
Hardware "Trusted Computing" might slow them down a bit but nothing software based will even reduce their momentum much at all.
Bingo!
And it was exactly that color too!
At least I believe that was the number. It's been a long time. It had a tape drive instead of a floppy.
I learned BASIC at the age of 6 or 7 as well as Wumpus, Trek, and others.
Then I moved and went to public school and promptly forgot everything I learned until Junior High. B-(
Am I the only one who thought it would be a working PC, with the case made out of legos? That'd be a lot cooler, IMHO. The mouse might be a little annoying to hold, though...
:-)
You mean something like this? Or maybe you prefer Mac?
It's not a matter of standing up or not. Most customers/users don't care.
While I can't fault this destinction I do not feel that the two are mutually exclusive.
I do feel that most people would care if they were properly informed of the consequences of their actions or in this case inaction. Currently very few people are taught to avail themselves of the information they need in life or to even question that they might need such information.
Regardless these people in question that do know and did stand up need to be recognized.
I still don't get it. The company made a decision and implemented it. The users didn't like the decision and the masses flocked elsewhere. The company said "oh shit." and reversed the decision.
Because it rarely ever happens lately. Most customers/users won't stand up to a large corporation. These people should be commended IMHO so other people follow their example when dealing with cr@p like this.
Don't like what a company is doing? Vote with your feet or your money. Nothing else will change them. It may be hard at first but it _does_ work most of the time. These people are an example of such.
Until you integrate the decrypter into the driver circuitry, and the driver circuitry into the same semiconductor as the panel itself. Then you have to do semiconductor scale soldering, which I'd imagine would foil all but the most 1337 pirate.
Point. But this would also seriously increase the price of an LCD in our current technology structure.
And the one thing they *IAA don't want to lose is sales for any reason.
Besides - by the time this sort of thing becomes common there will either be global companies that produce this stuff without the restrictions or we'll be at a technology point where people can start producing stuff like this themselves. I hope anyway... Maybe a little wishful thinking on that second part but provided we don't destroy ourselves we should see a serious increase in the complexity of technology in the next ten years or so. That would bring us to at least nanotech IMHO.
Why do you think they're trying to phase out CRTs? An LCD display is a lot harder to crack.
Ummm...having looked into quite a few LCDs over the years I doubt a real pirate would be slowed by an LCD.
Seriously though - if you can open the LCD you can most likely get to the direct lines then piggyback off those to copy the signal to something unprotected. It would take some significant amount of work due to the addressing involved in an HD display but it would still be doable.
Anti-piracy methods are only good until a pirate grabs a compiler or a soldering iron.
I would have to dig up the book but I am pretty sure The Andromeda Strain dates from the mid to late 60's at the earliest.
Actually I think he's referring to a 1970's story more than a 1950's. Specifically Mutant 59 - The Plastic Eaters. Not a bad read really.
That's an urban legend. Unemployment level is determined by survey.
Read for yourself: http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm
I stand corrected as I count SNOPES as a fairly reliable information source.
It does raise another serious issue though - out of the full population only 60,000 homes are survey'd? I find this far too small a data sample for properly determining this data trend even if the surveys are done monthly. With data collection and sorting what it is they could certainly increase their sample size and still get timely results.
And yes I know this goes hand in hand with the arguments as to the TLAs and their ability to gather/sort data. I'm not saying we need a sample size that large but something larger than 60k homes is needed in my opinion.