I'm not sure how this differs from what you're talking about, functionally?
I'm pretty sure what the GP was asking for was the ability to plaster a link to their site on every page that they edit or significantly contribute to. I think this is a terrible idea for a couple reasons - mainly, it's an unrelated link, and therefore has no place in an encyclopedia article about something else. Allowing the authors of pages to include links to their blogs/affiliate sites/etc creates more unnecessary noise.
Second, it's a volunteer project. Nobody else expects to get paid, but for some reason this person is basically saying that they would only be willing to contribute if it would make them money. There are plenty of people willing to contribute to free encyclopedias for nothing but the satisfaction of having done so - if some people expect more compensation than that - it's probably not the pastime for them.
its being pushed to make law enforcements jod easier. really
You're absolutely right. And law enforcement agencies have almost always been the ones ultimately responsible for violating people's privacy, squelching protected speech, illegally detaining/arresting people without due process, and persecuting groups and individuals on the basis of their political affiliations or views.
When you say something "makes law enforcements jod [sic] easier", you have to consider what we're making it easier for them to do. Are we making it easier for law enforcement to protect people's safety and freedom? If so, cool. But are we simultaneously enabling them to commit the above offenses much more easily and frequently? If so, there's a big problem.
Your point is that sometimes there are issues which affect the whole nation, which individual states are incapable of handling, which is why we need a federal government.
That much is obviously true - sometimes states need to work together to establish standards that can be relied upon nationally. However, it's up to the states to agree to this, and make decisions for themselves about whether and to what degree they'll participate in those standards. In your example, the military, each state has agreed to host recruitment centers, college and high school recruiters, etc because each state supports the US military. Recruitment is a national phenomenon because every state agrees with it, not because the federal government has forced it on them.
Your implication is that when an issue affects the nation as a whole, the national government has the power to make declarations which the states must obey. This isn't true, and would be terrible if it were.
Yes, there are good reasons for policies to be adopted nationally, but it must be through the consent and cooperation of the states, not through the arbitrary dictate of the federal government. Right now, there seem to be many states which are unwilling to accept the National ID standard - therefore the standard should probably be revised and discussed further to address those concerns.
The purchase of someone's credentials by Exxon for this paper, now a public trade, will severely compromise their perceived objectivity.
We may never know. The only way we heard about this was from scientists who refused to take the deal. It's entirely possible that someone else Exxon approached agreed discreetly to this deal, and will not reveal any of their ties when they release their paper disagreeing with the UN study.
Not to be paranoid, but it's likely that if scientists were taking bribes to advance political agendas, it wouldn't be something they would openly acknowledge. It's already a known phenomenon in other fields such as medicine, with drug companies giving huge "unofficial" rewards to researchers who will back their latest blockbuster pharmaceutical, but very difficult to nail individuals and companies who take and give bribes, because neither party wants it to be publicly known - and it's sort of a gray area whether it's a bribe or not.
If scientists were to produce research that shows that man does NOT influence the global climate, then government grant money would dry up for this area, right?
Wrong. Government grant money for research into alternative energy sources, green technologies, etc would dry up (since we wouldn't have to worry about cutting carbon emissions anymore), but research into the nature and progress of global warming would still be just as important and well funded. It might possibly be even more important, since if humans aren't causing global warming then it's a completely unstoppable, inevitable phenomenon that we'll absolutely be affected by no matter what we do.
The globe is warming, even Exxon-Mobil will admit that. If it continues to do so, there may be drastic consequences for humans, and therefore it's something that the government has a vested interest in learning as much about as possible. Even if we weren't causing global warming, it'd still be happening and we would still need many scientists to produce models, projections, etc. of how it will affect the globe so that governments can plan accordingly.
Exxon-Mobil is not offering a bounty to anyone who can disprove human-caused global warming.
Certain scientists were approached privately and offered an exchange: They write a paper disagreeing with the UN climate study, and Exxon will pay them $10,000. The scientists were not asked to prove or disprove anything, simply to express a certain opinion.
Basically, Exxon doesn't know or care if the scientist is correct, or has scientifically proven that humans didn't cause global warming - that's not a requirement for payment. All that's required is that the scientist express the opinion that Exxon-Mobil wants.
Therefore, the entire issue has very little to do with science or the scientific method, because that's not what's going on here. If Exxon were offering funding to researchers who were testing and repeating existing climate change experiments and findings, it would be a little sketchy but we would have to respect their findings and deal with them through further research and peer review. However what Exxon is doing has nothing to do with new research or even testing existing findings, it is simply an attempt to get someone credible to express Exxon's opinion.
I agree with your objection to the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life", as they're kind of glittering generalities - distractions from the issue. They lend themselves to questions like "Who could be against choice?" or "How can you not support life?" which are meaningless and don't advance the debate. I agree that "anti-abortion" is a fair characterization of the self-identifying "pro-life" movement, because it's a pretty neutral description of their entire position. They are against abortion, and don't think people should have them or be allowed to have them, hence anti-abortion.
"pro-abortion" is a bit of a misnomer though, since many people find abortion distasteful and would personally object to themselves or people they know having one, but think that the government shouldn't remove people's right to have abortions. This is not an unusual position, and these people would certainly object to being called "pro-abortion", since it carries with it the implication that they think abortion is great and encourage people to have them.
The best descriptor that I can come up with is "anti-prohibition of abortion", which may be accurate but is nowhere near catchy enough to be actually used.
I have to admit, though, that I do like the ring of "anti-life" as a fuck-you to all the grandstanding word games - or hell why not just cut to the chase and call it "pro-baby-death"? It's still the same position, no matter what it's called, but the implications and power of the very terms used to describe this debate is interesting.
Tell that to Sony and their noise cancellation headphones.
Noise cancellation is a different game. Detecting and filtering out a constant background hum is much easier than removing a dynamic waveform. Noise cancellation headphones can filter out the sound of your air conditioner perfectly, but probably not a conversation next to you nearly as well.
What about that "echo cancellation" feature you find on all the popular web cam software?
You're right that there are echo cancellation features for many VOIP/teleconferencing type apps. which use the exact principle which was suggested here. However, the sound quality for these apps is usually pretty miserable, because the echo cancellation tends to cut out either too much or too little of the waveform, causing significant distortion. I mean, it's more than good enough to have a conversation with a human - you can understand them fine, but voice recognition software needs a much "cleaner signal" than a human does to extract meaning - it's crappy enough at understanding what's spoken into the mic, let alone an audio stream that's been mangled with noise reduction processing.
I suspect that the type of echo cancellation used for teleconferencing would make the voice recognition accuracy significantly lower. But since someone else pointed out a much more elegant solution (do voice recognition on the outgoing audio stream and filter any commands which match on both outgoing and incoming audio), there's no reason to worry about it anyway:)
That's a really good idea, I'm surprised nobody thought of it!
Well, I guess if we're talking about Microsoft I'm not that surprised. But still, good point.
I think what Yetihehe meant was that if you've got a trojan running on a machine, you already have the ability to run arbitrary code with that user's privileges. Using your trojan to execute voice commands would allow you to...run arbitrary code with that user's privileges - it doesn't grant any further access, and therefore can't be considered an exploit, and it would be unreasonable to think that it could be prevented.
Trojans are usually the end result of the exploit. A security hole is used to run arbitrary commands which download and install the trojan. So the real threat is that an attacker will use voice commands to gain a trojan-based foothold in your system, and then do the rest of their dirty work using conventional means.
Why can't the computer ignore all that sound? It knows it is outputting it so why not filter it?
The sound that is output by the computer sounds similar to us when re-received through the mic and played back, but to the computer it's a totally alien waveform. A lot of distortion happens between when the computer sends a digital signal to the sound card and when it receives an analog signal from your microphone - so basically, the computer may know what it's playing, but it has very little idea how it'll sound when it reaches the mic.
There are advanced filters and algorithms that can try to match and isolate particular patterns and "sounds" within a waveform, but they're not nearly as powerful as CSI would have us believe, and they also require far too much computing power to be run in realtime.
Of course, the obvious low-tech solution to this issue is to wear headphones, as people in recording studios have for decades.
You can draw up all the cases you want about cops abusing x new technology, but if they didn't have x, they probably would have used a club or elbow to the stomach
I get the meme about how technology is just a tool, it can be used for good or evil, etc. In fact, I agree with the implication that it's not the non-lethal pain inducing weapons themselves that are causing these incidents of torture - it's authority figures who abuse their power.
However, there is a very important difference between an old school "non-lethal beating" and a high-tech heat gun nerve frying: Old methods look bad. Seeing cops or soldiers wail on someone provokes an emotional reaction, but high tech weapons don't look as brutal. Similarly, if you've been beaten unfairly, your bruises, broken bones, etc. are highly visible evidence of your bad treatment, and make it easier to hold the attacker accountable. And let me tell you - one of the main things that keep cops and soldiers in line is their fear of being reprimanded by the public or their superiors. As a rule, the easier it is to get away with abuse, the more it will happen.
The improvements that higher tech pain inducing weapons bring are usually:
- Causes greater pain, and
- Doesn't cause permanent damage
So I agree that authority figures torturing people with little reason isn't a new phenomenon, but everytime a tool is developed that makes it easier for them to do it to get away with it, we should be very concerned.
Personally, I can absolutely see uses for these weapons, and wouldn't want to stop their development or production, but I think that the use of non-lethal weapons by authority figures should be monitored and accounted for just as closely as their use of lethal ones.
If someone were going to shoot me, I'd much prefer that they hit me with a "pain ray" than a bullet. That's so obvious it goes without saying, which is why most people tend to think that non-lethal weapons are a good thing with no downside.
There is a huge downside. Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons have a massive potential for abuse. Let me relate a few stories:
I saw some cops who had caught a shoplifter outside a supermarket. They had him in cuffs and he was being verbally obnoxious, though not physically dangerous. He made an admittedly very offensive racial insult at one of the cops. She walked right up to him, got out her mace, and blasted him right in the face. He collapsed choking, vomiting, unable to breathe, but the EMTs on the scene were prohibited from helping the guy because it was a non-lethal weapon: his health wasn't actually being threatened.
A student at UCLA who committed the non-violent, non-threatening offense of refusing to show ID, was restrained and shocked repeatedly with a taser. It was caught on video, and the cops were very obviously using the taser as a tool for forcing compliance, not defending themselves against danger. The officer's comment in that article "If he was able to walk out of here, I think he was OK," is especially telling about the police attitude toward taser use.
Non-lethal weapons have the potential to be used in the same way as lethal weapons - namely using force to prevent someone from harming you. But they can also do something that lethal weapons cannot - they can be used for what is effectively torture: the inflicting of serious pain for very minor reasons. Lethal weapons cannot be used this way because shooting or stabbing someone has a very severe, permanent, and noticeable effect.
Officers or soldiers who shoot someone have a lot of explaining to do. There is an identifiable wound, a permanent harm done to them, and because it's easier to hold someone accountable for shooting someone, officers and soliders are much more reserved and judicious in their use of lethal weapons. By contrast, non-lethal weapons are used essentially at a whim, because the perceived severity of their action is both to themselves and the public eye, much lower.
Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons are torture - there's simply no way around it. There are undeniably certain circumstances when torture is preferable to execution, but we must think very carefully about how and where we introduce tools of torture to be used by our military and police - their use must be taken every bit as seriously as lethal weapons.
I'm also not a doctor, so perhaps I should wait for someone more informed to respond, but I'm pretty sure that the blood brain barrier prevents molecule-sized particles from crossing from the bloodstream into the brain. So it might be effective against tiny toxic molecules, but not against a largish chunk of plaque or micro-bot.
The concern is that the bot will clog up a blood vessel, stopping or severely limiting blood flow to an area of the brain. Unfortunately, it would only take a very short time for this blockage to kill the brain area, therefore making the bot biodegradable wouldn't help things much.
It only takes ONE society on the ENTIRE planet to through off the balance again and start wars.
That's true. One society that decides to start war is practically guaranteeing that an opposing power structure will coalesce to oppose them. In our history, we've seen this happen many times. But, notably, we've also seen the exact opposite happen with nuclear weapons.
We currently have many governments with the power to vaporize each other, yet they don't do it. The reason they don't do it isn't noble or pacifist, it's self-interested and obvious: If you try to destroy your enemies, they try to destroy you, and what you'll be left with is a whole bunch of destruction.
Looking at our historical relationship to war, I'd assume it was a no-brainer that we would nuke each other off the planet. After all, all it takes is one asshole with a nuclear weapon, right? But so far we haven't - nobody has, because for some reason the threshold of destruction is just too high. Part of this, I think, has to do with the fact that the decision-makers stand to be actually personally impacted by the use of nuclear weapons - perhaps if governmental structures were altered such that leaders had to risk their own lives in the conflicts they fomented, we'd see a significant change in modern warfare (this is obviously unlikely, but not at all impossible).
So basically, I think it's absolutely possible to move that threshold lower - to introduce global memes which move other forms of violence into that "taboo" category. Like chemical or biological arms, landmines, etc. This is a start along the path to at least dramatically reducing the scale of wars, and perhaps ultimately creating the global sentiment that war itself is, on a basic level just like nukes, only less.
And yes, there are lots of power structures in existence which aren't compatible with these ideas and wouldn't go along with them, but I think the evidence is there that it's at least possible for the entire world without exception is able to restrain itself and avoid a certain especially violent action. The rest is just technicalities.
Wow, this is great, I always wondered how to tell what's good and what's evil. You know, I always thought there were these "grey areas", and I considered things from multiple perspectives...a real bummer when you just want to figure out who's evil.
But here on Slashdot is the very person who knows! Could you expand your list to cover politicians, rap groups, and shampoo brands? I'm eager to get started passing judgment on those around me!
As long as two people can get into a fight in a bar there will always be war.
Other animals don't make war.
Of course, other animals definitely do kill each other, and not just for food. Animals kill for sport, out of aggression or fear, for territory, etc. But they don't make war.
War is industrialization, mass-production, and most importantly strong authority, all applied to the natural tendency of people to kill. War is the cold mechanization of violence.
One can make a very arguable case that people will always kill, and I tend to agree. But the question of whether people will always form massive hierarchical structures which methodically and rationally cause as many deaths as possible - this is more debatable.
Massive power structures are required for real war to be waged. Primarily, the participants have been governments, but we've also seen religious sects make war (for example the crusades, or more recently the "Islamic Jihad"), and perhaps one day in the future we'll see a corporation make war.
I do not believe that massive power structures are inherent to human nature, as there are many societies which avoid them. There's obviously some kind of tendency to form strong governments and establish territorial borders, but I don't think it's strong enough to justify the assertion that it'll always be the unchangeable status quo.
A better way to put it is to say that the main highways have billions of lanes, and you can pay for wider on-ramps.
I think there's an important point that this analogy misrepresents: Net neutrality isn't about the infrastructure itself, it's about the arbitrary control of that infrastructure. In a non-neutral net, if you pay for "premium" access the ISP doesn't run more fiber out to your house to increase your bandwidth. The bandwidth is already there, you're just granted permission to use it, or granted the right to clobber other people's packets to get yours sent sooner.
You're essentially paying to have the highway patrol pull over cars that are in your lane, so that you can go at top speed at all times. Drivers who haven't paid off the highway patrol will still get where they're going, but it'll be a lot slower since they're forced to yield at all times to those who can pay. The non-premium drivers can have perfectly good roads and perfectly fast cars, but as long as there's an authority who can arbitrarily grant and revoke the right to go fast in exchange for bribes, they'll be going as slow as that authority wants.
if you are qualified to be accepted into college, you are probably already making more than minimum wage.
Doing what, writing english essays?:) The qualifications for getting into college are mostly having a high GPA, and performing well on the SAT. I'm not aware of too many good paying jobs that consider that a qualification. Granted, some kids start businesses and money-making ventures early, but plenty of smart, hard working kids don't develop well-paying jobs skill until college or afterward.
"decent" should be defined as what the market can support.
If the market can't support it, maybe there's something wrong with the market, not the people.
I find faith in "the market" almost as troubling as I find faith in "the Lord". If a mechanism of "the market" seems to be producing observable benefits to the working poor, then by all means, let's keep our hands off. But real-life unregulated markets tend to drive the lowest wages lower and lower, until the people working them are truly struggling to survive on what they're paid.
I think that at this point, where many people are suffering from poverty because of the dynamics of "the market", it's necessary to step in and establish a wage floor which guarantees that people who work full-time will be able to take care of their basic human needs.
Putting the priorities of an abstract economic model above the needs of actual suffering people is misguided.
There is no entitlement involved with earning a decent wage.
I guess this kind of gets down to a fundamental moral question. I believe that although some people are more educated, hard working, etc than others - and should be rewarded accordingly, ultimately everyone deserves what are considered basic human rights.
For example, I don't think it's fair to let people freeze to death simply because they can't afford a place to stay. I don't think it's fair to let people waste away from easily treatable illnesses because they can't pay for treatment. These are the consequences of allowing companies to offer super-low wages - and don't say the market will raise the wages itself, because there's practically infinite evidence to the contrary.
You seem to believe the opposite - that if someone's labor isn't worth as much as it costs them to pay for food, clothes, medicine, and shelter, then they deserve to go without one or all of those things - essentially that people have no basic entitlement to human rights.
Like I said, it's a fundamental disagreement and it seems unlikely I can change your mind, I just wanted to illustrate further the implications of your philosophy.
A large portion of the US workforce has no rent or living expenses... Pure disposable income.
It's nice that you and the people you know had all your basic needs (food, clothes, medicine, shelter, education) taken care of by your parents, and therefore had "pure disposable income". I and most people I know did too, so it's easy to understand why we believe all kids live like this.
But unfortunately, it isn't universally the case - even in the US. Children (or young adults 14-17) sometimes work to supplement a low family income, especially in cities with high costs of living.
Even if they don't turn their paycheck over to mom and dad, many kids aren't working to buy fashionable shoes and video games. Kids often work because they want to go to college, but their parents are unwilling or unable to afford it.
Just because (most) kids aren't in danger of becoming homeless doesn't mean they're not entitled to a decent wage.
Perhaps a more factually accurate title would be Paypal sees enforcing their bureaucratic - and in this case illogical - corporate policies as a higher priority than allowing a legitimate charity access to its own money.
To me, even this fairly factual description is still pretty angering. I think that hyperbole often cripples the arguments of people who have truly good points, because everyone just thinks "Oh, they're just exaggerating!". In this case, the actual situation is fucked up enough that there's no need to inflate it with unsupportable claims.
Say it plain, and let the Slashdot trolls take care of the hyperbole:)
If the game was a tasteful discourse on the Columbine shootings, and it was named "Tasteful Discourse on the Columbine shootings," that's reasonable, but with a title like that, what else could you expect about the game other than an offensive piece of garbage.
Anyone who judges the merit of art or political discourse on the basis of whether it's "tasteful" can kiss my distasteful, profane, but ultimately insightful ass.
you could take that FLOSS house, mod it, remove the next-owner-can-transfer/mod/copy permissions, and basically make it a closed source thing.
Anyone can take open source code, modify it, and try to sell it. However, they'd be violating the copyright on the code, and vulnerable to legal action. There aren't any technical solutions to GPL violations either - the code is out there, and people can abuse it any way they want.
The license, and the legal bearing that it carries is what makes something open source. If I make an object in SL and license it under the GPL, other users are legally required to follow that license, whether or not they are technically able to violate it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how this differs from what you're talking about, functionally?
I'm pretty sure what the GP was asking for was the ability to plaster a link to their site on every page that they edit or significantly contribute to. I think this is a terrible idea for a couple reasons - mainly, it's an unrelated link, and therefore has no place in an encyclopedia article about something else. Allowing the authors of pages to include links to their blogs/affiliate sites/etc creates more unnecessary noise.
Second, it's a volunteer project. Nobody else expects to get paid, but for some reason this person is basically saying that they would only be willing to contribute if it would make them money. There are plenty of people willing to contribute to free encyclopedias for nothing but the satisfaction of having done so - if some people expect more compensation than that - it's probably not the pastime for them.
its being pushed to make law enforcements jod easier. really
You're absolutely right. And law enforcement agencies have almost always been the ones ultimately responsible for violating people's privacy, squelching protected speech, illegally detaining/arresting people without due process, and persecuting groups and individuals on the basis of their political affiliations or views.
When you say something "makes law enforcements jod [sic] easier", you have to consider what we're making it easier for them to do. Are we making it easier for law enforcement to protect people's safety and freedom? If so, cool. But are we simultaneously enabling them to commit the above offenses much more easily and frequently? If so, there's a big problem.
Your point is that sometimes there are issues which affect the whole nation, which individual states are incapable of handling, which is why we need a federal government.
That much is obviously true - sometimes states need to work together to establish standards that can be relied upon nationally. However, it's up to the states to agree to this, and make decisions for themselves about whether and to what degree they'll participate in those standards. In your example, the military, each state has agreed to host recruitment centers, college and high school recruiters, etc because each state supports the US military. Recruitment is a national phenomenon because every state agrees with it, not because the federal government has forced it on them.
Your implication is that when an issue affects the nation as a whole, the national government has the power to make declarations which the states must obey. This isn't true, and would be terrible if it were.
Yes, there are good reasons for policies to be adopted nationally, but it must be through the consent and cooperation of the states, not through the arbitrary dictate of the federal government. Right now, there seem to be many states which are unwilling to accept the National ID standard - therefore the standard should probably be revised and discussed further to address those concerns.
The purchase of someone's credentials by Exxon for this paper, now a public trade, will severely compromise their perceived objectivity.
We may never know. The only way we heard about this was from scientists who refused to take the deal. It's entirely possible that someone else Exxon approached agreed discreetly to this deal, and will not reveal any of their ties when they release their paper disagreeing with the UN study.
Not to be paranoid, but it's likely that if scientists were taking bribes to advance political agendas, it wouldn't be something they would openly acknowledge. It's already a known phenomenon in other fields such as medicine, with drug companies giving huge "unofficial" rewards to researchers who will back their latest blockbuster pharmaceutical, but very difficult to nail individuals and companies who take and give bribes, because neither party wants it to be publicly known - and it's sort of a gray area whether it's a bribe or not.
If scientists were to produce research that shows that man does NOT influence the global climate, then government grant money would dry up for this area, right?
Wrong. Government grant money for research into alternative energy sources, green technologies, etc would dry up (since we wouldn't have to worry about cutting carbon emissions anymore), but research into the nature and progress of global warming would still be just as important and well funded. It might possibly be even more important, since if humans aren't causing global warming then it's a completely unstoppable, inevitable phenomenon that we'll absolutely be affected by no matter what we do.
The globe is warming, even Exxon-Mobil will admit that. If it continues to do so, there may be drastic consequences for humans, and therefore it's something that the government has a vested interest in learning as much about as possible. Even if we weren't causing global warming, it'd still be happening and we would still need many scientists to produce models, projections, etc. of how it will affect the globe so that governments can plan accordingly.
Exxon-Mobil is not offering a bounty to anyone who can disprove human-caused global warming.
Certain scientists were approached privately and offered an exchange: They write a paper disagreeing with the UN climate study, and Exxon will pay them $10,000. The scientists were not asked to prove or disprove anything, simply to express a certain opinion.
Basically, Exxon doesn't know or care if the scientist is correct, or has scientifically proven that humans didn't cause global warming - that's not a requirement for payment. All that's required is that the scientist express the opinion that Exxon-Mobil wants.
Therefore, the entire issue has very little to do with science or the scientific method, because that's not what's going on here. If Exxon were offering funding to researchers who were testing and repeating existing climate change experiments and findings, it would be a little sketchy but we would have to respect their findings and deal with them through further research and peer review. However what Exxon is doing has nothing to do with new research or even testing existing findings, it is simply an attempt to get someone credible to express Exxon's opinion.
I agree with your objection to the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life", as they're kind of glittering generalities - distractions from the issue. They lend themselves to questions like "Who could be against choice?" or "How can you not support life?" which are meaningless and don't advance the debate. I agree that "anti-abortion" is a fair characterization of the self-identifying "pro-life" movement, because it's a pretty neutral description of their entire position. They are against abortion, and don't think people should have them or be allowed to have them, hence anti-abortion.
"pro-abortion" is a bit of a misnomer though, since many people find abortion distasteful and would personally object to themselves or people they know having one, but think that the government shouldn't remove people's right to have abortions. This is not an unusual position, and these people would certainly object to being called "pro-abortion", since it carries with it the implication that they think abortion is great and encourage people to have them.
The best descriptor that I can come up with is "anti-prohibition of abortion", which may be accurate but is nowhere near catchy enough to be actually used.
I have to admit, though, that I do like the ring of "anti-life" as a fuck-you to all the grandstanding word games - or hell why not just cut to the chase and call it "pro-baby-death"? It's still the same position, no matter what it's called, but the implications and power of the very terms used to describe this debate is interesting.
Tell that to Sony and their noise cancellation headphones.
:)
Noise cancellation is a different game. Detecting and filtering out a constant background hum is much easier than removing a dynamic waveform. Noise cancellation headphones can filter out the sound of your air conditioner perfectly, but probably not a conversation next to you nearly as well.
What about that "echo cancellation" feature you find on all the popular web cam software?
You're right that there are echo cancellation features for many VOIP/teleconferencing type apps. which use the exact principle which was suggested here. However, the sound quality for these apps is usually pretty miserable, because the echo cancellation tends to cut out either too much or too little of the waveform, causing significant distortion. I mean, it's more than good enough to have a conversation with a human - you can understand them fine, but voice recognition software needs a much "cleaner signal" than a human does to extract meaning - it's crappy enough at understanding what's spoken into the mic, let alone an audio stream that's been mangled with noise reduction processing.
I suspect that the type of echo cancellation used for teleconferencing would make the voice recognition accuracy significantly lower. But since someone else pointed out a much more elegant solution (do voice recognition on the outgoing audio stream and filter any commands which match on both outgoing and incoming audio), there's no reason to worry about it anyway
That's a really good idea, I'm surprised nobody thought of it!
Well, I guess if we're talking about Microsoft I'm not that surprised. But still, good point.
I think what Yetihehe meant was that if you've got a trojan running on a machine, you already have the ability to run arbitrary code with that user's privileges. Using your trojan to execute voice commands would allow you to...run arbitrary code with that user's privileges - it doesn't grant any further access, and therefore can't be considered an exploit, and it would be unreasonable to think that it could be prevented.
Trojans are usually the end result of the exploit. A security hole is used to run arbitrary commands which download and install the trojan. So the real threat is that an attacker will use voice commands to gain a trojan-based foothold in your system, and then do the rest of their dirty work using conventional means.
Why can't the computer ignore all that sound? It knows it is outputting it so why not filter it?
The sound that is output by the computer sounds similar to us when re-received through the mic and played back, but to the computer it's a totally alien waveform. A lot of distortion happens between when the computer sends a digital signal to the sound card and when it receives an analog signal from your microphone - so basically, the computer may know what it's playing, but it has very little idea how it'll sound when it reaches the mic.
There are advanced filters and algorithms that can try to match and isolate particular patterns and "sounds" within a waveform, but they're not nearly as powerful as CSI would have us believe, and they also require far too much computing power to be run in realtime.
Of course, the obvious low-tech solution to this issue is to wear headphones, as people in recording studios have for decades.
You can draw up all the cases you want about cops abusing x new technology, but if they didn't have x, they probably would have used a club or elbow to the stomach
I get the meme about how technology is just a tool, it can be used for good or evil, etc. In fact, I agree with the implication that it's not the non-lethal pain inducing weapons themselves that are causing these incidents of torture - it's authority figures who abuse their power.
However, there is a very important difference between an old school "non-lethal beating" and a high-tech heat gun nerve frying: Old methods look bad. Seeing cops or soldiers wail on someone provokes an emotional reaction, but high tech weapons don't look as brutal. Similarly, if you've been beaten unfairly, your bruises, broken bones, etc. are highly visible evidence of your bad treatment, and make it easier to hold the attacker accountable. And let me tell you - one of the main things that keep cops and soldiers in line is their fear of being reprimanded by the public or their superiors. As a rule, the easier it is to get away with abuse, the more it will happen.
The improvements that higher tech pain inducing weapons bring are usually:
- Causes greater pain, and
- Doesn't cause permanent damage
So I agree that authority figures torturing people with little reason isn't a new phenomenon, but everytime a tool is developed that makes it easier for them to do it to get away with it, we should be very concerned.
Personally, I can absolutely see uses for these weapons, and wouldn't want to stop their development or production, but I think that the use of non-lethal weapons by authority figures should be monitored and accounted for just as closely as their use of lethal ones.
A short shock of pain is better than being shot
If someone were going to shoot me, I'd much prefer that they hit me with a "pain ray" than a bullet. That's so obvious it goes without saying, which is why most people tend to think that non-lethal weapons are a good thing with no downside.
There is a huge downside. Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons have a massive potential for abuse. Let me relate a few stories:
I saw some cops who had caught a shoplifter outside a supermarket. They had him in cuffs and he was being verbally obnoxious, though not physically dangerous. He made an admittedly very offensive racial insult at one of the cops. She walked right up to him, got out her mace, and blasted him right in the face. He collapsed choking, vomiting, unable to breathe, but the EMTs on the scene were prohibited from helping the guy because it was a non-lethal weapon: his health wasn't actually being threatened.
A student at UCLA who committed the non-violent, non-threatening offense of refusing to show ID, was restrained and shocked repeatedly with a taser. It was caught on video, and the cops were very obviously using the taser as a tool for forcing compliance, not defending themselves against danger. The officer's comment in that article "If he was able to walk out of here, I think he was OK," is especially telling about the police attitude toward taser use.
Non-lethal weapons have the potential to be used in the same way as lethal weapons - namely using force to prevent someone from harming you. But they can also do something that lethal weapons cannot - they can be used for what is effectively torture: the inflicting of serious pain for very minor reasons. Lethal weapons cannot be used this way because shooting or stabbing someone has a very severe, permanent, and noticeable effect.
Officers or soldiers who shoot someone have a lot of explaining to do. There is an identifiable wound, a permanent harm done to them, and because it's easier to hold someone accountable for shooting someone, officers and soliders are much more reserved and judicious in their use of lethal weapons. By contrast, non-lethal weapons are used essentially at a whim, because the perceived severity of their action is both to themselves and the public eye, much lower.
Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons are torture - there's simply no way around it. There are undeniably certain circumstances when torture is preferable to execution, but we must think very carefully about how and where we introduce tools of torture to be used by our military and police - their use must be taken every bit as seriously as lethal weapons.
I'm also not a doctor, so perhaps I should wait for someone more informed to respond, but I'm pretty sure that the blood brain barrier prevents molecule-sized particles from crossing from the bloodstream into the brain. So it might be effective against tiny toxic molecules, but not against a largish chunk of plaque or micro-bot.
The concern is that the bot will clog up a blood vessel, stopping or severely limiting blood flow to an area of the brain. Unfortunately, it would only take a very short time for this blockage to kill the brain area, therefore making the bot biodegradable wouldn't help things much.
It only takes ONE society on the ENTIRE planet to through off the balance again and start wars.
That's true. One society that decides to start war is practically guaranteeing that an opposing power structure will coalesce to oppose them. In our history, we've seen this happen many times. But, notably, we've also seen the exact opposite happen with nuclear weapons.
We currently have many governments with the power to vaporize each other, yet they don't do it. The reason they don't do it isn't noble or pacifist, it's self-interested and obvious: If you try to destroy your enemies, they try to destroy you, and what you'll be left with is a whole bunch of destruction.
Looking at our historical relationship to war, I'd assume it was a no-brainer that we would nuke each other off the planet. After all, all it takes is one asshole with a nuclear weapon, right? But so far we haven't - nobody has, because for some reason the threshold of destruction is just too high. Part of this, I think, has to do with the fact that the decision-makers stand to be actually personally impacted by the use of nuclear weapons - perhaps if governmental structures were altered such that leaders had to risk their own lives in the conflicts they fomented, we'd see a significant change in modern warfare (this is obviously unlikely, but not at all impossible).
So basically, I think it's absolutely possible to move that threshold lower - to introduce global memes which move other forms of violence into that "taboo" category. Like chemical or biological arms, landmines, etc. This is a start along the path to at least dramatically reducing the scale of wars, and perhaps ultimately creating the global sentiment that war itself is, on a basic level just like nukes, only less.
And yes, there are lots of power structures in existence which aren't compatible with these ideas and wouldn't go along with them, but I think the evidence is there that it's at least possible for the entire world without exception is able to restrain itself and avoid a certain especially violent action. The rest is just technicalities.
Wow, this is great, I always wondered how to tell what's good and what's evil. You know, I always thought there were these "grey areas", and I considered things from multiple perspectives...a real bummer when you just want to figure out who's evil.
But here on Slashdot is the very person who knows! Could you expand your list to cover politicians, rap groups, and shampoo brands? I'm eager to get started passing judgment on those around me!
Imagine 30 years from now a band putting the World Trade Center in flames on a cover.
You mean like this?
Admittedly, though, they had the idea before 9/11.
As long as two people can get into a fight in a bar there will always be war.
Other animals don't make war.
Of course, other animals definitely do kill each other, and not just for food. Animals kill for sport, out of aggression or fear, for territory, etc. But they don't make war.
War is industrialization, mass-production, and most importantly strong authority, all applied to the natural tendency of people to kill. War is the cold mechanization of violence.
One can make a very arguable case that people will always kill, and I tend to agree. But the question of whether people will always form massive hierarchical structures which methodically and rationally cause as many deaths as possible - this is more debatable.
Massive power structures are required for real war to be waged. Primarily, the participants have been governments, but we've also seen religious sects make war (for example the crusades, or more recently the "Islamic Jihad"), and perhaps one day in the future we'll see a corporation make war.
I do not believe that massive power structures are inherent to human nature, as there are many societies which avoid them. There's obviously some kind of tendency to form strong governments and establish territorial borders, but I don't think it's strong enough to justify the assertion that it'll always be the unchangeable status quo.
A better way to put it is to say that the main highways have billions of lanes, and you can pay for wider on-ramps.
I think there's an important point that this analogy misrepresents: Net neutrality isn't about the infrastructure itself, it's about the arbitrary control of that infrastructure. In a non-neutral net, if you pay for "premium" access the ISP doesn't run more fiber out to your house to increase your bandwidth. The bandwidth is already there, you're just granted permission to use it, or granted the right to clobber other people's packets to get yours sent sooner.
You're essentially paying to have the highway patrol pull over cars that are in your lane, so that you can go at top speed at all times. Drivers who haven't paid off the highway patrol will still get where they're going, but it'll be a lot slower since they're forced to yield at all times to those who can pay. The non-premium drivers can have perfectly good roads and perfectly fast cars, but as long as there's an authority who can arbitrarily grant and revoke the right to go fast in exchange for bribes, they'll be going as slow as that authority wants.
if you are qualified to be accepted into college, you are probably already making more than minimum wage.
:) The qualifications for getting into college are mostly having a high GPA, and performing well on the SAT. I'm not aware of too many good paying jobs that consider that a qualification. Granted, some kids start businesses and money-making ventures early, but plenty of smart, hard working kids don't develop well-paying jobs skill until college or afterward.
Doing what, writing english essays?
"decent" should be defined as what the market can support.
If the market can't support it, maybe there's something wrong with the market, not the people.
I find faith in "the market" almost as troubling as I find faith in "the Lord". If a mechanism of "the market" seems to be producing observable benefits to the working poor, then by all means, let's keep our hands off. But real-life unregulated markets tend to drive the lowest wages lower and lower, until the people working them are truly struggling to survive on what they're paid.
I think that at this point, where many people are suffering from poverty because of the dynamics of "the market", it's necessary to step in and establish a wage floor which guarantees that people who work full-time will be able to take care of their basic human needs.
Putting the priorities of an abstract economic model above the needs of actual suffering people is misguided.
There is no entitlement involved with earning a decent wage.
I guess this kind of gets down to a fundamental moral question. I believe that although some people are more educated, hard working, etc than others - and should be rewarded accordingly, ultimately everyone deserves what are considered basic human rights.
For example, I don't think it's fair to let people freeze to death simply because they can't afford a place to stay. I don't think it's fair to let people waste away from easily treatable illnesses because they can't pay for treatment. These are the consequences of allowing companies to offer super-low wages - and don't say the market will raise the wages itself, because there's practically infinite evidence to the contrary.
You seem to believe the opposite - that if someone's labor isn't worth as much as it costs them to pay for food, clothes, medicine, and shelter, then they deserve to go without one or all of those things - essentially that people have no basic entitlement to human rights.
Like I said, it's a fundamental disagreement and it seems unlikely I can change your mind, I just wanted to illustrate further the implications of your philosophy.
A large portion of the US workforce has no rent or living expenses... Pure disposable income.
It's nice that you and the people you know had all your basic needs (food, clothes, medicine, shelter, education) taken care of by your parents, and therefore had "pure disposable income". I and most people I know did too, so it's easy to understand why we believe all kids live like this.
But unfortunately, it isn't universally the case - even in the US. Children (or young adults 14-17) sometimes work to supplement a low family income, especially in cities with high costs of living.
Even if they don't turn their paycheck over to mom and dad, many kids aren't working to buy fashionable shoes and video games. Kids often work because they want to go to college, but their parents are unwilling or unable to afford it.
Just because (most) kids aren't in danger of becoming homeless doesn't mean they're not entitled to a decent wage.
Perhaps a more factually accurate title would be Paypal sees enforcing their bureaucratic - and in this case illogical - corporate policies as a higher priority than allowing a legitimate charity access to its own money.
:)
To me, even this fairly factual description is still pretty angering. I think that hyperbole often cripples the arguments of people who have truly good points, because everyone just thinks "Oh, they're just exaggerating!". In this case, the actual situation is fucked up enough that there's no need to inflate it with unsupportable claims.
Say it plain, and let the Slashdot trolls take care of the hyperbole
If the game was a tasteful discourse on the Columbine shootings, and it was named "Tasteful Discourse on the Columbine shootings," that's reasonable, but with a title like that, what else could you expect about the game other than an offensive piece of garbage.
Anyone who judges the merit of art or political discourse on the basis of whether it's "tasteful" can kiss my distasteful, profane, but ultimately insightful ass.
you could take that FLOSS house, mod it, remove the next-owner-can-transfer/mod/copy permissions, and basically make it a closed source thing.
Anyone can take open source code, modify it, and try to sell it. However, they'd be violating the copyright on the code, and vulnerable to legal action. There aren't any technical solutions to GPL violations either - the code is out there, and people can abuse it any way they want.
The license, and the legal bearing that it carries is what makes something open source. If I make an object in SL and license it under the GPL, other users are legally required to follow that license, whether or not they are technically able to violate it.