...we should look at is as the world population's inability to communicate is going extinct. Not everything that is old, traditional, or entrenched has the value nostalgia makes us want to apply to it.
I'd argue the same applies to species, some of which just naturally go extinct. Well, I think there should be a group of scientists heavily involved in preserving those species, languages, cultures, even in artificial environment.
There's lots to be learned from what's out there and it'll be bad if we lose it (not apocalyptically bad, but still very bad).
Some people, however keep mixing the need to preserve this in a data store or isolated environment, with the need to artificially reintroduce it in the open wild and force it upon people/nature.
Recently I purchased one of the limited Halo 3 packages. It looked great. But the game wouldn't start! Upon further investigation I remember I microwaved the disk for 3 minutes for no particular reason whatsoever.
I'm still pissed off though. Nowhere on the package it didn't say specifically about microwaving Halo 3.
Well, instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably, you could use that second core and second gig to actually run things you want, rather than nothing but OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.
Are you some sort of Microsoft fanboy there?
Over here Vista requires 256 cores and 1 petabyte of RAM to run tolerably. And then I run Calculator.exe and it stalled. I'm checking every day how the Calculator launch is going and it's painfully slow. It's been over 9 months now and it's done rendering the buttons from 1 to 6, it still has 7 to 9 AND all operators to finish with.
I'm seriously pissed off, if it's not done by 2008 I'll be upgrading to XP.
In the very unlikely case that after 3 fucking years of development
This was a good post, but it's a pity that your command of English is so limited that this gratuitous vulgarity is the best adjective you could choose. Well, I fixed it for you:
In the very unlikely case that after 3 sex abstinence years of development
That's what you meant, right.. At least I think you did:P ?
Didn't Intel just rebrand dropping "Pentium" and going with "Core"?
They won't drop the "Core" brand, just reorganize their aux names in a better fashion, hopefully introducing better Core suffixes in the process, since the current ones don't mean jack.
Once upon a time I would go to a shop to pick an Intel CPU and I cared about only three things: major model (P I/II/III/IV), cache, and frequency.
Now because of frequent architecture changes, differing number of cores, MHz means nothing, cache is misleading (how it's spread between the cores) and architecture.. I've no clue at all which architecture means what.
This is just oversimplified, and while it doesn't give perfect picture of the tech specs, it gives a good overall picture of what is the CPU about. Examples:
Core III 4c 3f 5l (aka Core III 435) -> Third generation Core, 4 cores, ~1.66 GHz, 8mb cache Core III 4c 2f 4l (aka Core III 424) -> Third generation Core, 4 cores, ~1.33 GHz, 4mb cache Core II 2c 7f 4l (aka Core II 274) -> Second generation Core, ~3 GHz, 2 cores
They can have little modifiers for intermediate frequencies such as "+" or "Extreme" but still, it gives you a good overall picture what's the CPU about).
There's only one reason this was done, OO.org is so good at opening Docs it started to threaten Office. It doesn't matter if whether OOXML gets certified, its going to be up to OO.org to reverse engineer it as fast as possible or it will make everyone cry blood.
You're not correct. This is temporary situation. As writers of other OSS Office alternatives have said, it's relatively easy to write a *X (DOCX, XLSX etc) wrapper around their existing * (DOC, XLS) importer, since they're basically the same thing, except one is XML and the other is binary.
Furthermore, Microsoft pushing for it being a standard (and it being a standard) means publicly accessible standards to base your work on, and let's face it: XML with spec is tons better than binary without spec.
What Microsoft wanted to do here is not lock out OSS from importing Office documents. They wanted to 1) ride the "XML is open and interoperable!" wave 2) keep their control on a Office document standard (with ODF they figured they'd not have the control they wanted). 3) Ensure MS Office remains the best suite to open said standard. And what better way than serializing MS Office's own formats (which is works perfectly with) in XML.
So basically expect next release of OpenOffice to open those *X formats, expect them again not to do perfect job of it. And pray OOXML doesn't become ISO standard, on the basic merit.. it's just a terrible standard with too much legacy on its back. Otherwise Office 2007 is a great suite.
Microsoft representative sought to downplay the extension, stating 'We wouldn't term it strong, we would describe this as accommodating a certain element who needs more time.'
Hmm...
Journalist: "Did Vista fail?" Microsoft Representative: "I wouldn't say it failed. I'd say it successfully failed in succeeding to fail in successful failure." Journalist: "Oh.. right, exactly what I had in mind!"
It's just so transparent when companies spin things, it hurts. And you know behind the curtains they shout and curse and spit, and say things like this:
"I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) [..] our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, [..] I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products. I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."
And, as you know, this is an actual quote from Jim Allchin's private email to Gates and Ballmer. Regarding Vista. Not quite like their public claims of vicious unstoppable wildfire Vista success, now, is it.
What you're witnessing with those still signing with the major labels, is inertia from a time not so long ago when this was the only possible way to fund studio recording sessions, promotion, concerts and so on.
Can't blame them, times have changed fast. And in fact we're only at the beginning of it.
However, back to reality:
"These guys, like every other artist, WANT their music to be heard. They will be more than happy to let you serve MP3s from eDonkey or Kazaa. P2P and internet radio are all the indies have."
Question is: why would I, average pop-music fan (for example), care to download some indie's unpopular music? Popular is cool, and labels still have the power to force "coolness" down teenagers' throats through some channels.
This then, spikes demand, and causes plenty of P2P downloads of said artist.
Funny, just before I read your comment I was thinking almost the same thing: After how many comments I've seen about people who have sworn to wait to adopt Vista until an SP1, MS should just push out *something* -- unicode support in the calculator!-- and call it SP1.
Yes, we are waiting for SP1. But if it's a turd, we'll just keep waiting for SP2 you know. People aren't idiots.
If Microsoft REALLY wants to save Vista, they need to introduce one more editon: Vista LE ("Liberty Edition") -- $199, bootable from CD, freely installable on any 2 computers owned by the individual, installable and runnable on an unlimited number of virtual machines, as long as the host machine is running Vista as well, and an unlimited number of "floating" installations that can be activated for up to 30 hours at a time, with the catch that if you activate machine #3 for 30 hours and don't de-activate it, you can't activate machine 3b until the original 30 hours have elapsed. Oh, and every last bit of kernel-level DRM including protected audio and video paths COMPILED OUT. Of course, this means you won't be able to run WinDVD or view premium protected content... but nobody who buys VistaLE will really care, because we'd never buy DRM'ed content anyway.
Hehe, that was fun. Completely random random request labelled as "what MS should do to REALLY save Vista!". So, first question is how do you fit a 6 GB of an OS monster on a CD?
But wait, if Microsoft REALLY wants to save Vista, they need to give out free ice cream. Branded with the Vista logo. It's also very important inside it has 4 flavors, banana, cherry, chocolate, and mint. It should absolutely have black chocolate on top. I think also some hazel nuts inside? It's absolutely crucial that they be hazel nuts. If they go cheap and replace with peanuts, Vista will FAIL!
Seriously though, your perception of people's perception of Novell is skewed, since you're on Slashdot. Over here Novell is related to Microsoft, and hence causes knee jerk reactions by most of the commenters.
Novell isn't attracting so much negative feedback out of here.
How about they release their own distribution of Linux/BSD/whatever, and then make all of their other apps work great on that (as well as backwards compatible).
This single sentence highlights at least 5 different weaknesses in your development experience, 2 in your business experience, few in your IT history experience, and fanboyism clouding your common sense.
How about you post plausible things if you'll bother? If Slashdot was a forum for coming up with sci-fi scenarios, then I'm all for exploring impossible options, but damn...
The problem is with Microsoft's development processes. Its ineffiency bloats the operating system and bogs down the speed and quality of the development. Moving on to a new operating system will result in the 'same' product.
It's the management. A good part of their programmers are really talented. But top level management makes the strategy around the business effect they want (better lock-in, succumbing to Hollywood's DRM demands, trying to out-flash OSX etc.).
Then developers have to match the faulty business plan by turning it into a product. Doesn't work this way. Sometimes, Microsoft puts up technologies down-up, and this is where they shine. It's easy to tell apart both of those..NET was not initially created to be what it is today. It grew naturally and started to fit more roles into development of both server and client technologies that Microsoft ever predicted. That's a good example of great Microsoft technology.
Office 2007 is also another great example of a product well done (now we know there are some bugs to be worked out, but they're definitely working on it). The productivity gain and ease of use for those willing to spend 2-3 hours retraining themselves are amazing. It's the first time I could say I love my Office software.
Visual Studio is amazing development platform. Microsoft trusts their developers there, since it's software by developers for developers.
Counter examples include ironically OOXML. It was rushed and served pure business purpose, so developers put no heart in it. They just serialized the aging DOC binary format and the results are catastrophic (for something that wants to be a "standard").
Another counter example is Windows itself. They have amazing set of technologies in Vista which are horribly assembled and misused in attempt to create a product matching Microsoft's business agenda.
Microsoft have already abandoned Vista, they canceled their huge marketing campaign for a much more down-beat one, and they allowed people to downgrade to XP. That's what you can expect most from them in this situation.
The numbers do suggest that electronic equipment needs to be more efficient.
You don't know that before seeing the full pie chart. How much do other common tasks and equipment fair on this scale?
Internet and Desktop PC-s perform thousands of roles crucial for our daily lives, given how many millions of computers and Internet end-points operate, and how many uses those have, 9% is certainly not that much. We'd definitely have worse carbon emissions if it wasn't for the remote data transmission Internet allows.
Also "needs to be more efficient" can be misleading too just watching the %. Imagine all equipment got twice more efficient overnight. You'd look at the % and see the same numbers. But the absolute numbers have changed.
Also: since we're talking about carbon emissions, we need to factor in other carbon emission sources than electricity production. I imagine as US goes more and more after nuclear plants for their electricity, the carbon footprint of electricity generation will fall, and hence also the effect of devices using electricity will fall.
It's just not simple enough. I'm still not that impressed with the 9%.
I love they gave you +5 Overacting, but no, this is not "the goddamned end of the universe".
No, no one will be arrested because a flag. Don't you realize what this system is supposed to do. Reduce the amount of material that has to go through human eyes. If IBM software can flag suspicious activity, then police officers will monitor mostly the flagged videos, and work only a FRACTION of those flagged videos (if a human eye decides activity is suspicious.. then it may really be).
The problem isn't the fact they try to automate it. There are two other distinctive issues:
1. The fact they installed cameras everywhere. This is an actual problem, but, not the "end of the universe". You're already under control in public places, there are people EVERYWHERE around you, and they SEE you. If there were no cameras, would you feel ok to pull your pants down in the middle of the street? No. So, beside the people around you, few guys monitoring the cameras will also see you. Not that big of a deal.
2. Second problem is they put too much hope on software detecting suhspicious behaviour. That's a joke. We're AT LEAST, and I say AT LEAST, super-duper-optimistic, 20 years away from being able to create a system smart enough to detect suspicious with good accuracy. This means IBM's system will have big number of false positives, and big number of false negatives. In the former case, it means it won't be as effective in reducing the number of material a human eye has to go through. That's not a big problem but makes throwing so much money into a poor system worth question. In the latter case though, it means monitoring guys trusting the system too much and not watching the NON FLAGGED videos, and missing on ACTUAL suspicious activity which doesn't look suspicious to a computer system.
I think the history is that the courts have allowed temporary wartime injustices like this in the past
US is in war with someone almost all the time, what a convenient setup.
So basically, the President has no power to take out civil liberties and break the constitution... buuut he has the power to start a war, declare wartime, and THEN he can do whatever the hell he feels like.
The TV movie Category 6: Day of Destruction went into details that US power plants are vulnerable to remote attacks, and featured such a guy who managed to make generators self-destruct from his home PC (he died when connectivity was cut off, and realising what he did, he went to the power plant to fix things locally, but too late).
And there we go, 3 years later the government wakes up to the threat as well.
Guess my advice to government fellows is: watch more TV, it'll raise your IQ. OMG the irony:(
A tax may not harm the internet but it can mean some will lose their access. Right now some can barely afford access but with a tax they no longer will be able to afford it.
That's not true. Any US citizen can afford 20 USD for his internet connection, can't he. Dial-up and the slower broadband connections still count as "access" in my eye.
Sure, they might not be able to play HD DVD over the Internet at that speed, but I hardly consider waiting a bit more to download your movie something that can wreck society... Or... wait... maybe this can wreck society... Man, what sad, sad things humans have turned into:P
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite sure how yet, but have a feeling that SUV's are in part responsible for this.
That's true, but it's not on purpose, I swear to God. Somehow, there are always people from rare language groups standing on the way of my SUV.
...we should look at is as the world population's inability to communicate is going extinct.
Not everything that is old, traditional, or entrenched has the value nostalgia makes us want to apply to it.
I'd argue the same applies to species, some of which just naturally go extinct. Well, I think there should be a group of scientists heavily involved in preserving those species, languages, cultures, even in artificial environment.
There's lots to be learned from what's out there and it'll be bad if we lose it (not apocalyptically bad, but still very bad).
Some people, however keep mixing the need to preserve this in a data store or isolated environment, with the need to artificially reintroduce it in the open wild and force it upon people/nature.
Recently I purchased one of the limited Halo 3 packages. It looked great. But the game wouldn't start! Upon further investigation I remember I microwaved the disk for 3 minutes for no particular reason whatsoever.
I'm still pissed off though. Nowhere on the package it didn't say specifically about microwaving Halo 3.
Well, instead of requiring a dual-core CPU and 2+GB to run tolerably, you could use that second core and second gig to actually run things you want, rather than nothing but OS-related eye-candy and DRM crapware.
Are you some sort of Microsoft fanboy there?
Over here Vista requires 256 cores and 1 petabyte of RAM to run tolerably. And then I run Calculator.exe and it stalled. I'm checking every day how the Calculator launch is going and it's painfully slow. It's been over 9 months now and it's done rendering the buttons from 1 to 6, it still has 7 to 9 AND all operators to finish with.
I'm seriously pissed off, if it's not done by 2008 I'll be upgrading to XP.
This was a good post, but it's a pity that your command of English is so limited that this gratuitous vulgarity is the best adjective you could choose. Well, I fixed it for you:
In the very unlikely case that after 3 sex abstinence years of development
That's what you meant, right.. At least I think you did
Didn't Intel just rebrand dropping "Pentium" and going with "Core"?
... 9f (~3.66GHz) ..] [amount of cache: 1l (512kb), 2l (1mb), 3l (2mb), 4l (4mb)...]
They won't drop the "Core" brand, just reorganize their aux names in a better fashion, hopefully introducing better Core suffixes in the process, since the current ones don't mean jack.
Once upon a time I would go to a shop to pick an Intel CPU and I cared about only three things: major model (P I/II/III/IV), cache, and frequency.
Now because of frequent architecture changes, differing number of cores, MHz means nothing, cache is misleading (how it's spread between the cores) and architecture.. I've no clue at all which architecture means what.
If I were them I'd adopt a simple scheme:
Core [major model: I/II/III/IV/V/VI..] [number of cores: 1c, 2c, 4c..] [frequency: 1f (~1ghz), 2f (~1.33GHz), 3f (~1.66 GHz)
This is just oversimplified, and while it doesn't give perfect picture of the tech specs, it gives a good overall picture of what is the CPU about. Examples:
Core III 4c 3f 5l (aka Core III 435) -> Third generation Core, 4 cores, ~1.66 GHz, 8mb cache
Core III 4c 2f 4l (aka Core III 424) -> Third generation Core, 4 cores, ~1.33 GHz, 4mb cache
Core II 2c 7f 4l (aka Core II 274) -> Second generation Core, ~3 GHz, 2 cores
They can have little modifiers for intermediate frequencies such as "+" or "Extreme" but still, it gives you a good overall picture what's the CPU about).
Come on Intel, it's not that complex, now, is it?
There's only one reason this was done, OO.org is so good at opening Docs it started to threaten Office. It doesn't matter if whether OOXML gets certified, its going to be up to OO.org to reverse engineer it as fast as possible or it will make everyone cry blood.
You're not correct. This is temporary situation. As writers of other OSS Office alternatives have said, it's relatively easy to write a *X (DOCX, XLSX etc) wrapper around their existing * (DOC, XLS) importer, since they're basically the same thing, except one is XML and the other is binary.
Furthermore, Microsoft pushing for it being a standard (and it being a standard) means publicly accessible standards to base your work on, and let's face it: XML with spec is tons better than binary without spec.
What Microsoft wanted to do here is not lock out OSS from importing Office documents. They wanted to 1) ride the "XML is open and interoperable!" wave 2) keep their control on a Office document standard (with ODF they figured they'd not have the control they wanted). 3) Ensure MS Office remains the best suite to open said standard. And what better way than serializing MS Office's own formats (which is works perfectly with) in XML.
So basically expect next release of OpenOffice to open those *X formats, expect them again not to do perfect job of it. And pray OOXML doesn't become ISO standard, on the basic merit.. it's just a terrible standard with too much legacy on its back. Otherwise Office 2007 is a great suite.
Microsoft representative sought to downplay the extension, stating 'We wouldn't term it strong, we would describe this as accommodating a certain element who needs more time.'
Hmm...
Journalist: "Did Vista fail?"
Microsoft Representative: "I wouldn't say it failed. I'd say it successfully failed in succeeding to fail in successful failure."
Journalist: "Oh.. right, exactly what I had in mind!"
It's just so transparent when companies spin things, it hurts. And you know behind the curtains they shout and curse and spit, and say things like this:
"I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) [..] our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, [..] I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products. I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."
And, as you know, this is an actual quote from Jim Allchin's private email to Gates and Ballmer. Regarding Vista. Not quite like their public claims of vicious unstoppable wildfire Vista success, now, is it.
What you're witnessing with those still signing with the major labels, is inertia from a time not so long ago when this was the only possible way to fund studio recording sessions, promotion, concerts and so on.
Can't blame them, times have changed fast. And in fact we're only at the beginning of it.
However, back to reality:
"These guys, like every other artist, WANT their music to be heard. They will be more than happy to let you serve MP3s from eDonkey or Kazaa. P2P and internet radio are all the indies have."
Question is: why would I, average pop-music fan (for example), care to download some indie's unpopular music? Popular is cool, and labels still have the power to force "coolness" down teenagers' throats through some channels.
This then, spikes demand, and causes plenty of P2P downloads of said artist.
Before RIAA did anything about it, we all doubted what we're doing with music torrents is illegal and may get us in trouble.
Now, RIAA, after many years and millions of USD working on the issue, confirmed it's in fact perfectly safe for us to carry on.
Thank you, RIAA!
If one click is not obvious, what about the multi-click checkouts used worldwide.
The patent office is just begging to be abused, since by curiosity of law, everyone else is the victim of this, but them.
Maybe it's not 'ability' to learn but 'desire' instead.
Cue in the "LEAVE COCKROACHES ALONE! They're just insects! You gotta be happy they learn at night you bastards!" jokes.
The people who conducted this study said in an interview:
"An interesting question is why the animal would not want to learn at that particular time of day. We have no idea."
The interview was conducted during the day. I leave you with your own conclusions on the similarity between cockroaches and some people.
Cockroaches are active at night. Why on Earth we need a study for this.
How do you learn if I wake you up at 3 am in the morning?
Funny, just before I read your comment I was thinking almost the same thing: After how many comments I've seen about people who have sworn to wait to adopt Vista until an SP1, MS should just push out *something* -- unicode support in the calculator!-- and call it SP1.
Yes, we are waiting for SP1. But if it's a turd, we'll just keep waiting for SP2 you know. People aren't idiots.
If Microsoft REALLY wants to save Vista, they need to introduce one more editon: Vista LE ("Liberty Edition") -- $199, bootable from CD, freely installable on any 2 computers owned by the individual, installable and runnable on an unlimited number of virtual machines, as long as the host machine is running Vista as well, and an unlimited number of "floating" installations that can be activated for up to 30 hours at a time, with the catch that if you activate machine #3 for 30 hours and don't de-activate it, you can't activate machine 3b until the original 30 hours have elapsed. Oh, and every last bit of kernel-level DRM including protected audio and video paths COMPILED OUT. Of course, this means you won't be able to run WinDVD or view premium protected content... but nobody who buys VistaLE will really care, because we'd never buy DRM'ed content anyway.
Hehe, that was fun. Completely random random request labelled as "what MS should do to REALLY save Vista!". So, first question is how do you fit a 6 GB of an OS monster on a CD?
But wait, if Microsoft REALLY wants to save Vista, they need to give out free ice cream. Branded with the Vista logo. It's also very important inside it has 4 flavors, banana, cherry, chocolate, and mint. It should absolutely have black chocolate on top. I think also some hazel nuts inside? It's absolutely crucial that they be hazel nuts. If they go cheap and replace with peanuts, Vista will FAIL!
Novell may not be on everyone's favorite list
:) (check my sig)
You don't say
Seriously though, your perception of people's perception of Novell is skewed, since you're on Slashdot. Over here Novell is related to Microsoft, and hence causes knee jerk reactions by most of the commenters.
Novell isn't attracting so much negative feedback out of here.
How about they release their own distribution of Linux/BSD/whatever, and then make all of their other apps work great on that (as well as backwards compatible).
This single sentence highlights at least 5 different weaknesses in your development experience, 2 in your business experience, few in your IT history experience, and fanboyism clouding your common sense.
How about you post plausible things if you'll bother? If Slashdot was a forum for coming up with sci-fi scenarios, then I'm all for exploring impossible options, but damn...
The problem is with Microsoft's development processes. Its ineffiency bloats the operating system and bogs down the speed and quality of the development. Moving on to a new operating system will result in the 'same' product.
.NET was not initially created to be what it is today. It grew naturally and started to fit more roles into development of both server and client technologies that Microsoft ever predicted. That's a good example of great Microsoft technology.
It's the management. A good part of their programmers are really talented. But top level management makes the strategy around the business effect they want (better lock-in, succumbing to Hollywood's DRM demands, trying to out-flash OSX etc.).
Then developers have to match the faulty business plan by turning it into a product. Doesn't work this way. Sometimes, Microsoft puts up technologies down-up, and this is where they shine. It's easy to tell apart both of those.
Office 2007 is also another great example of a product well done (now we know there are some bugs to be worked out, but they're definitely working on it). The productivity gain and ease of use for those willing to spend 2-3 hours retraining themselves are amazing. It's the first time I could say I love my Office software.
Visual Studio is amazing development platform. Microsoft trusts their developers there, since it's software by developers for developers.
Counter examples include ironically OOXML. It was rushed and served pure business purpose, so developers put no heart in it. They just serialized the aging DOC binary format and the results are catastrophic (for something that wants to be a "standard").
Another counter example is Windows itself. They have amazing set of technologies in Vista which are horribly assembled and misused in attempt to create a product matching Microsoft's business agenda.
Microsoft have already abandoned Vista, they canceled their huge marketing campaign for a much more down-beat one, and they allowed people to downgrade to XP. That's what you can expect most from them in this situation.
The numbers do suggest that electronic equipment needs to be more efficient.
You don't know that before seeing the full pie chart. How much do other common tasks and equipment fair on this scale?
Internet and Desktop PC-s perform thousands of roles crucial for our daily lives, given how many millions of computers and Internet end-points operate, and how many uses those have, 9% is certainly not that much. We'd definitely have worse carbon emissions if it wasn't for the remote data transmission Internet allows.
Also "needs to be more efficient" can be misleading too just watching the %. Imagine all equipment got twice more efficient overnight. You'd look at the % and see the same numbers. But the absolute numbers have changed.
Also: since we're talking about carbon emissions, we need to factor in other carbon emission sources than electricity production. I imagine as US goes more and more after nuclear plants for their electricity, the carbon footprint of electricity generation will fall, and hence also the effect of devices using electricity will fall.
It's just not simple enough. I'm still not that impressed with the 9%.
I love they gave you +5 Overacting, but no, this is not "the goddamned end of the universe".
No, no one will be arrested because a flag. Don't you realize what this system is supposed to do. Reduce the amount of material that has to go through human eyes. If IBM software can flag suspicious activity, then police officers will monitor mostly the flagged videos, and work only a FRACTION of those flagged videos (if a human eye decides activity is suspicious.. then it may really be).
The problem isn't the fact they try to automate it. There are two other distinctive issues:
1. The fact they installed cameras everywhere. This is an actual problem, but, not the "end of the universe". You're already under control in public places, there are people EVERYWHERE around you, and they SEE you. If there were no cameras, would you feel ok to pull your pants down in the middle of the street? No. So, beside the people around you, few guys monitoring the cameras will also see you. Not that big of a deal.
2. Second problem is they put too much hope on software detecting suhspicious behaviour. That's a joke. We're AT LEAST, and I say AT LEAST, super-duper-optimistic, 20 years away from being able to create a system smart enough to detect suspicious with good accuracy. This means IBM's system will have big number of false positives, and big number of false negatives. In the former case, it means it won't be as effective in reducing the number of material a human eye has to go through. That's not a big problem but makes throwing so much money into a poor system worth question. In the latter case though, it means monitoring guys trusting the system too much and not watching the NON FLAGGED videos, and missing on ACTUAL suspicious activity which doesn't look suspicious to a computer system.
I think the history is that the courts have allowed temporary wartime injustices like this in the past
:)
US is in war with someone almost all the time, what a convenient setup.
So basically, the President has no power to take out civil liberties and break the constitution... buuut he has the power to start a war, declare wartime, and THEN he can do whatever the hell he feels like.
I love it
The TV movie Category 6: Day of Destruction went into details that US power plants are vulnerable to remote attacks, and featured such a guy who managed to make generators self-destruct from his home PC (he died when connectivity was cut off, and realising what he did, he went to the power plant to fix things locally, but too late).
:(
And there we go, 3 years later the government wakes up to the threat as well.
Guess my advice to government fellows is: watch more TV, it'll raise your IQ. OMG the irony
USA coming out with an announcement they threaten to attack themselves if they don't stop their own nuclear plans.
I mean, USA of all knows best, that building nuclear power plants is just a facade. They plan to nuke themselves!
A tax may not harm the internet but it can mean some will lose their access. Right now some can barely afford access but with a tax they no longer will be able to afford it.
... wait... maybe this can wreck society... Man, what sad, sad things humans have turned into :P
That's not true. Any US citizen can afford 20 USD for his internet connection, can't he. Dial-up and the slower broadband connections still count as "access" in my eye.
Sure, they might not be able to play HD DVD over the Internet at that speed, but I hardly consider waiting a bit more to download your movie something that can wreck society... Or