Trying to predict the future like this is futile. I bet there were people that said that this 'rock and roll' will never be socially acceptable. And now it's considered cool and glamorous (in your opinion). Why should games be any different? Just look at Japan. It's my understanding that they have a very open view towards gaming. In some cultures, it actually is cool to be a gamer, especially a good one. Why is our culture going to be so immune to accepting this viewpoint?
What society accepts is based on the majority of the population. If the majority of the youth accept something, it stands to reason that society will as well once they grow up and take over the positions of power.
Well, first of all it's actual scientists being taught how to write screenplays. Hopefully they would try to make it as realistic as possible. That aside, I know there are plenty of geeks that grew up watching science fiction shows and that, at least in part, were intrigued by that enough to go into a scientific field of study. So even lots of "movie" science could be beneficial, if done in the right way.
I'm pro choice in almost all cases and I agree that women should be allowed to see their ultrasounds. If they can be swayed enough by a picture of what is growing inside of them, they probably weren't completely sure about the abortion in the first place and maybe should have it. Not to mention it would be quite hypocritical to say a woman has the right to choose abortion but doesn't have the right to see what she is aborting. That said, I take issue with some of the anti-abortion statements in that article. Specifically they say that there is no propaganda involved:
Said Dr. Rhonda Kendrick, a supervising physician at the center, "There's no propaganda involved because what you see is what you get."
Okay sure, sounds good, but then there is this:
Kendrick said she prefers women to wait until they are at least seven weeks pregnant before having an ultrasound, so they can see "they're not just carrying around a blob of tissue. There's a child inside of them."
Oops, I guess we do have some propaganda. In other words, she wants women to wait until the embryo (it's still an embryo until 10 weeks) first starts to resemble a human (7 weeks - the magic number for anti-abortionists). At 7 weeks you can tell that it is a developing life (although usually not enough to say with absolute certainty that it is human). This is also the stage at which pain sensors first appear, thus they can say "See, there are pain sensors - it can feel pain so it's now wrong to kill it." Of course the catch is that the brain does not develop in any significant way until almost 7 months.
In any case, yes women should be allowed to see their ultrasounds when they go in for an abortion. I disagree with advising them to wait until anti-abortionists can most effectively make an argument against the procedure (especially when you pretend that this isn't propaganda).
I find your claim hard to believe, but I might be inclined to do so if you had provided some evidence of such an attack. For the moment, lets just say that this bombing did occur. That still does not mkae the pilot a murderer by default. In all likelyhood, he was not told that he was bombing a building full of women and children. His orders would probably have consisted of "reports indicate Saddam Hussein is hiding in this building, orders are to destroy the target." Calling someone a murderer implies intent. I have friends and family in the military and most of them would not even hunt because they would not want to even kill an animal if it was not necessary. You can make a case against us going to war in the first place all you want (and there is a good chance I would agree with you, if for no other reason than I'd like to have my buddies and cousins back home instead of being shot at), but to imply that our soldiers intend to kill innocents is both grossly incorrect and offensive.
Just so you understand, there is an extremely large difference between your two statements. The targets of the suicide bombers are civilians (the "women and children"). The targets of the US military are the militants shooting at them, and yes occasionally this does result in collateral damage. Purposefully targeting unarmed and innocent civilians is terrorism. Accidental civilian deaths due to the destructive nature of war, as terrible as that is, is not terrorism.
You paint a picture of our troops mowing down civilians in the streets with the guns on attack helicopters or shelling a family while they are eating dinner. This is utterly rediculous and offensive. The fact is, in previous wars it was not uncommon for militaries to just level an entire city with carpet bombing. Now we spend a lot of money on precision weapons. While there are still regretable civilian casualties, they are comparatively small and localized to within a few dozen feet of the target. I guess in your self-righteousness you forgot that many of our soldiers over there are practically kids, the same kids that went to highschool with you and have no more desire to be there than you. But I'm sure you're right, there's nothing your average kid loves to do more than purposefully kill women and children.
This is a really good idea and manufacturers should do it. Still, I have to wonder if Joe Sixpack, after typing in the password 'DH3kn8#6!KJ$*z', would just change it to 'muffy' like all of his other passwords.
Hopefully the novelty will wear off and only the truly obesssive will end up stalking each other, and the rest of us can get on with ignoring each other like we should.
If we are all going to just ignore each other anyways, why have the ability to know every intimate detail of any person's life? If that is the case, the people that will use that power will have a large advantage over those that don't. Thus, we have the system we have now except that those who would control us can now access our information even more easily.
I know that you said that there would be a system in place that would allow you to know if someone looked at your data. The possible complexity and ineffectiveness of such a system aside, there is no such thing as perfect security. At some point, someone will be able to examine your entire life without you even knowing about it. Even if this security system was perfect in that you always had knowledge of people accessing your information, whats to stop some nefarious person from using a puppet? Someone in their employ with a spotless record. You might then just say, "Oh, well that's just John Smith that works at the local church, why would he do anything bad with that information that places me at an anti-government rally last year?" I just do not see how having no anonymity benefits society.
You seem to be implying that those instincts are just as strong during pregnancy as after birth. If this was true then why would there be so many abortions, right or wrong?
I'm not sure that I buy this myself, but I think the argument of why the rich (or powerful) would not want abortions from a sociological standpoint is that they often achieve their power or wealth by walking on the backs of the poor. Less poor people means less cheap labor. In any case, since greater financial power often does equal more political/social power, a larger class of people with power would threaten those that already have it. At least in that sense it's not so farfetched that the powerful would want to do things to increase economic hardship on those below them.
I agree, the essay was interesting - in fact I stated this with the first two words in my original post. He is also quite right that the way things are going we will have a society where surveillance cameras are ubiquitous (although with the way the government has been behaving it will be city number 1 without the choice for moving to city number 2).
My problem was not the fact that he pointed this out but that he didn't say something like "If you don't like all this, it's still possible to prevent it by urging your representatives to oppose such uses." Rather, he flat out says there is nothing you can do to stop this so you better like it, and oh let me wave my hands and paint a nice picture for you so you'll aggree. Someone with a Ph.D. should be enlightened enough to realize that the government only has as much power as the people give it. And as long as the intellectual elites like him (as far as the average citizen would view him) try to obfuscate this, we will end up in his vision of society whether it's good or bad.
The whole argument of whether a human embryo/fetus should be considered alive or not aside, how does it help anyone (besides those in power) to have yet another family forced into poverty and dependence on government support programs?
You've never talked to anyone in such a situation have you? People are stupid. That is many times they think with their hearts rather than their minds. Yes, they may not have wanted it before they gave birth because they were thinking about how it would probably put them into poverty and thus probably hurt the child as well. Once you have given birth though, there is an incredibly strong emotional bond between the mother and child so it becomes extremely difficult to 'give it away'. Even those who planned on adoption from the beginning of pregnancy often have this problem.
Interesting essay but the guys sounds like a bit of an asshole apologist for 'Big Brother'.
For in fact, it is already far too late to prevent the invasion of cameras and databases. The djinn cannot be crammed back into its bottle. No matter how many laws are passed, it will prove quite impossible to legislate away the new surveillance tools and databases. They are here to stay.
Light is going to shine into nearly every corner of our lives.
Why? No one is going to 'legislate away' the development of new surveillance technology but what the hell does that have to do with using it to monitor everyone's activities? Assuming the people can actually rein in the government, laws preventing the use of such technology in any public place by any one for any reason would be easy to pass.
Again he just sounds like an asshole: "Our will is absolute and we will do as we please with your life and no, citizen, you cannot do anything about it because you are just a sheep to be lead by your superiors." Fuck that.
That's true, and I'm not overly worried because if this is used against someone, they'll probably take it to court. Hopefully then a judge with a brain will laugh the employer out of court. What disturbs me though is this: The judge also concluded that the Respondent did not violate the Act... blah blah. The point being that apparently a judge ruled that this is okay. IMHO any judge, federal or otherwise, should have full knowledge of the constitution and its amendments (especially given that it's not even that large of a document).
What I want to know is how this whole thing can possibly be construed as constitutional. You know, that whole First Amendment, Bill of Rights thing. I mean I know the government has regularly been throwing it out piece by piece but this is just getting stupid.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I just don't see how the government, let alone my employer, can say that I cannot peaceably assemble with whomever I choose.
Well good, maybe that will stir up some competition to fuel more development in spaceflight technology. If that happens, then hopefully the government will leave NASA alone and give the engineers the chance to build something without politics and without too much concern for budget.
Maybe this is what you meant (although if it is, you worded it in an odd way), but actually what most people get from their WAN connection doesn't come close to their wireless speed. My cable connection is 6Mbps downstream which is significantly less than even a.11b connection speed (assuming full speed). And on my.11g router, I consistantly get speeds of at least 42Mbps, 7 times the speed of my cable modem (down of course... the up is pathetic).
Have you considered turning off SSID broadcast and turning on WEP? Even security as basic as that should be more than enough to stop your neighbors, and it's built right in to your wireless router.
Well, it would be good for transferring files between PCs on your home network (although my backbone is still just 100Mbps...). But really, I think this would be even better for setting up ubiquitous wireless all over a town or an even larger area. I mean how cool would it be to have that much bandwidth all the time, wherever you are, wirelessly!
Slashdot Mirror
Trying to predict the future like this is futile. I bet there were people that said that this 'rock and roll' will never be socially acceptable. And now it's considered cool and glamorous (in your opinion). Why should games be any different? Just look at Japan. It's my understanding that they have a very open view towards gaming. In some cultures, it actually is cool to be a gamer, especially a good one. Why is our culture going to be so immune to accepting this viewpoint?
What society accepts is based on the majority of the population. If the majority of the youth accept something, it stands to reason that society will as well once they grow up and take over the positions of power.
Hye, don't diss the sexy movie astro-physicists. Amanda Tapping makes me want to be one! :)
Well, first of all it's actual scientists being taught how to write screenplays. Hopefully they would try to make it as realistic as possible. That aside, I know there are plenty of geeks that grew up watching science fiction shows and that, at least in part, were intrigued by that enough to go into a scientific field of study. So even lots of "movie" science could be beneficial, if done in the right way.
In any case, yes women should be allowed to see their ultrasounds when they go in for an abortion. I disagree with advising them to wait until anti-abortionists can most effectively make an argument against the procedure (especially when you pretend that this isn't propaganda).
I find your claim hard to believe, but I might be inclined to do so if you had provided some evidence of such an attack. For the moment, lets just say that this bombing did occur. That still does not mkae the pilot a murderer by default. In all likelyhood, he was not told that he was bombing a building full of women and children. His orders would probably have consisted of "reports indicate Saddam Hussein is hiding in this building, orders are to destroy the target." Calling someone a murderer implies intent. I have friends and family in the military and most of them would not even hunt because they would not want to even kill an animal if it was not necessary. You can make a case against us going to war in the first place all you want (and there is a good chance I would agree with you, if for no other reason than I'd like to have my buddies and cousins back home instead of being shot at), but to imply that our soldiers intend to kill innocents is both grossly incorrect and offensive.
Just so you understand, there is an extremely large difference between your two statements. The targets of the suicide bombers are civilians (the "women and children"). The targets of the US military are the militants shooting at them, and yes occasionally this does result in collateral damage. Purposefully targeting unarmed and innocent civilians is terrorism. Accidental civilian deaths due to the destructive nature of war, as terrible as that is, is not terrorism.
You paint a picture of our troops mowing down civilians in the streets with the guns on attack helicopters or shelling a family while they are eating dinner. This is utterly rediculous and offensive. The fact is, in previous wars it was not uncommon for militaries to just level an entire city with carpet bombing. Now we spend a lot of money on precision weapons. While there are still regretable civilian casualties, they are comparatively small and localized to within a few dozen feet of the target. I guess in your self-righteousness you forgot that many of our soldiers over there are practically kids, the same kids that went to highschool with you and have no more desire to be there than you. But I'm sure you're right, there's nothing your average kid loves to do more than purposefully kill women and children.
This is a really good idea and manufacturers should do it. Still, I have to wonder if Joe Sixpack, after typing in the password 'DH3kn8#6!KJ$*z', would just change it to 'muffy' like all of his other passwords.
Hopefully the novelty will wear off and only the truly obesssive will end up stalking each other, and the rest of us can get on with ignoring each other like we should.
If we are all going to just ignore each other anyways, why have the ability to know every intimate detail of any person's life? If that is the case, the people that will use that power will have a large advantage over those that don't. Thus, we have the system we have now except that those who would control us can now access our information even more easily.
I know that you said that there would be a system in place that would allow you to know if someone looked at your data. The possible complexity and ineffectiveness of such a system aside, there is no such thing as perfect security. At some point, someone will be able to examine your entire life without you even knowing about it. Even if this security system was perfect in that you always had knowledge of people accessing your information, whats to stop some nefarious person from using a puppet? Someone in their employ with a spotless record. You might then just say, "Oh, well that's just John Smith that works at the local church, why would he do anything bad with that information that places me at an anti-government rally last year?" I just do not see how having no anonymity benefits society.
You seem to be implying that those instincts are just as strong during pregnancy as after birth. If this was true then why would there be so many abortions, right or wrong?
I'm not sure that I buy this myself, but I think the argument of why the rich (or powerful) would not want abortions from a sociological standpoint is that they often achieve their power or wealth by walking on the backs of the poor. Less poor people means less cheap labor. In any case, since greater financial power often does equal more political/social power, a larger class of people with power would threaten those that already have it. At least in that sense it's not so farfetched that the powerful would want to do things to increase economic hardship on those below them.
I agree, the essay was interesting - in fact I stated this with the first two words in my original post. He is also quite right that the way things are going we will have a society where surveillance cameras are ubiquitous (although with the way the government has been behaving it will be city number 1 without the choice for moving to city number 2).
My problem was not the fact that he pointed this out but that he didn't say something like "If you don't like all this, it's still possible to prevent it by urging your representatives to oppose such uses." Rather, he flat out says there is nothing you can do to stop this so you better like it, and oh let me wave my hands and paint a nice picture for you so you'll aggree. Someone with a Ph.D. should be enlightened enough to realize that the government only has as much power as the people give it. And as long as the intellectual elites like him (as far as the average citizen would view him) try to obfuscate this, we will end up in his vision of society whether it's good or bad.
The whole argument of whether a human embryo/fetus should be considered alive or not aside, how does it help anyone (besides those in power) to have yet another family forced into poverty and dependence on government support programs?
You've never talked to anyone in such a situation have you? People are stupid. That is many times they think with their hearts rather than their minds. Yes, they may not have wanted it before they gave birth because they were thinking about how it would probably put them into poverty and thus probably hurt the child as well. Once you have given birth though, there is an incredibly strong emotional bond between the mother and child so it becomes extremely difficult to 'give it away'. Even those who planned on adoption from the beginning of pregnancy often have this problem.
Again he just sounds like an asshole: "Our will is absolute and we will do as we please with your life and no, citizen, you cannot do anything about it because you are just a sheep to be lead by your superiors." Fuck that.
That's true, and I'm not overly worried because if this is used against someone, they'll probably take it to court. Hopefully then a judge with a brain will laugh the employer out of court. What disturbs me though is this: The judge also concluded that the Respondent did not violate the Act... blah blah. The point being that apparently a judge ruled that this is okay. IMHO any judge, federal or otherwise, should have full knowledge of the constitution and its amendments (especially given that it's not even that large of a document).
Just don't have pixelated sex anywhere in the store and you'll be alright. Otherwise you might get sued into oblivion for displaying such smut.
Well good, maybe that will stir up some competition to fuel more development in spaceflight technology. If that happens, then hopefully the government will leave NASA alone and give the engineers the chance to build something without politics and without too much concern for budget.
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
What do you mean? African or European swallow?
Maybe this is what you meant (although if it is, you worded it in an odd way), but actually what most people get from their WAN connection doesn't come close to their wireless speed. My cable connection is 6Mbps downstream which is significantly less than even a .11b connection speed (assuming full speed). And on my .11g router, I consistantly get speeds of at least 42Mbps, 7 times the speed of my cable modem (down of course... the up is pathetic).
Have you considered turning off SSID broadcast and turning on WEP? Even security as basic as that should be more than enough to stop your neighbors, and it's built right in to your wireless router.
Maybe I'm just not thinking enough about this, but why would faster speeds be any more dangerous than existing wireless technology?
Well, it would be good for transferring files between PCs on your home network (although my backbone is still just 100Mbps...). But really, I think this would be even better for setting up ubiquitous wireless all over a town or an even larger area. I mean how cool would it be to have that much bandwidth all the time, wherever you are, wirelessly!