"But tell the Geek that he needs a license before toying with class 4 biologic and radiological alarms and the world becomes a nanny state."
Using sensors is not wrong... the more sensors the better, because the more bad things are found and fixed. Sensors can and are also used for legitimate good science (not just toying around with it!).
Controlling what people want to learn (via limiting what sensors they can use or limiting them in any other way) is the real bad in this world and its ironically why we have to deal with a world filled with bullying ideologies who want to control and limit what people think & do, plus also they want to wipe out anyone where refuses to follow their ways.
But try telling that to some who looks down on geeks for standing up for freedom from the ideological bullying terrorists!
Education is the answer and solution to close-mindedness!... its close-minded ideologies that are the problem!. You cannot fix a world of pain caused by close-minded with yet more close-mindedness. Education is the answer.
Ok, so mistaken readings could cause a group panic. Then again, permits for what is basically sensors is a nanny state attitude bordering very much on Big Brother. Once again showing the old idea of the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They want to control everything, as its in peoples best interests. Its the wrong solution. They should be educating people not controlling.
It also shows how much of a diet of fear and panic America is currently suffering. Looks like they are now worrying about people worrying so much that they panic!... that much stress isn't helping anyone in the long run and certainly not a suitable environment within which to choose reactionary new laws and controls.
"So you'd rather have employees hold a company hostage and bleed it of all it's money until the company goes out of business"
When you say "you aren't ENTITLED to overtime" that bit at least, I think is correct. But its not a fair way to treat employees, and so as a result, the employees will make sure the company looses out in other ways. For example, unfairness results in a reduced amount of employee interest in wanting to invest new ideas into a company. That's bad for any company. Companies want and need to encourage people to invest ideas into how to improve the company. If that company fails to improve, then some of its competitors will improve, so its going to be loosing out on a lot of income.
So going back to your main point its not hostage at all. Its simply fair return on investment and unions were a way to hold back some of the excesses of bosses, who would otherwise push their staff around and not be fair.
But these days (in the UK at least) even the mention of "unions" has become associated with "bad". Partly some the old unions did end up getting overly power hungry and controlling (and so behaving just like some bosses unfairness to others), but that doesn't negate the need for unions. There needs to be some feedback to the bosses, to prevent their unfair excesses.
However as these days there are few unions, I think the only way to treat business people is to play them at their own game. Judge a job on its return on investment. If there isn't a fair return on investment, then don't invest. Find a job that will give a better return on investment.
This move by IBM means they want the existing amount of overtime, but they do not want to pay more for it. They value employee effort on the basis of them needing to work the extra hours. I've found a good way to judge a job is to add up all the hours it costs me, including even travelling time, (so all hours I loose out of my life) and then use that to divide the wages down to a true hourly rate. If that true hourly rate is too low, then forget it. Find something better.
(Some programming jobs I've had like working in the games industry, have very bad true hour rates. Almost like wages from a Mc Donalds or a supermarket shelf staking job... yet I earned the bosses of these companies a lot of money... but no more. The funny thing is, I've often heard it called "burn out" in a job where people have had enough of playing by the old rules. Its not burn out at all. It should be called "wise up". Wise up to the games the bosses play. Play them at their own game. If all programmers were more business minded, all our jobs value would increase more in line with the kinds of money e.g. sales people earn. But of course, not all programmers are business minded. So it'll never happen. Some don't even want to be business minded. That's fine for them, but no more for me. As I get older, I need these days, to see a return on investment. (So IBM won't be seeing my CV any time soon.:)
Wikipedia already exists. Wikis are also open source. Knol is reinventing the wheel to make a proprietary wiki for Goggle to then use to do targeted marketing on each article people look at. They then count the articles people are interested in. They also build up a profile of each and every poster, working out what they are interested in. They most likely will also be able to associate each article viewed, with all google searching from their main site via cookies etc. So they are going to be building up an even greater profile of all users of both google and knol.
So far I'm not seeing a good reason to want to use knol, but I'm seeing many reasons to stay away from knol. Each time I hear the Google "do no harm" PR idea, I'm reminded of the old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Google is becoming Big Brother. Yet few people seem to be able to see its slowly happening.
I guess most people fail to see its happening, partly as its so many small steps towards that goal and they also fail to see how such detailed knowledge can be used to give ever more power to the ones with that knowledge. knol isn't going to be just an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. knol is going to be a hunny pot, waiting to profile each thing all of us are interested in.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying it, but as time goes on, I'm sadly becoming more convinced Big Brother is eventually inevitable. Few people can see its happening and no one is going to really stop what companies like Google are doing, as anyone in power wants the power Google is building for itself. They want a part of that power, so they will not stop it. They will do high profile things to make it look like they are controlling and limiting what companies like Google are doing, but in reality, they will not and cannot stop the extent of data mining that's growing year by year. Yet no one in power would really be stupid enough to want to really stop it growing, as its more power for anyone with access to the profiling data.
Ok, so if the Solar System has a dent, paint primer, rust, and no hub caps, then maybe we can at least fill in the dent and then spray paint over it. It may take a while though, so its going to cost you. Would next Thursday be ok?
I agree with you, but I would add that most societies achieve a short lived and unstable balance due to the authoritarians on each side tugging in their own directions, trying to pull power their way. (The big problems throughout history have occurred when one side finds a way to bias power their way). But I don't think there will ever be a time when science breaks free from this tug of war, simple as the authoritarians will never let it free, as the truth can often destabilise their biased positions. They are the last who will ever see they are biased, simply as they do not want to hear they are wrong. Yet all to often, sadly the ultimate goal for some of them isn't about who is right or wrong. To them its not even about who is right or wrong, its simply who has the power.
2 + 2 = 5... (To quote a famous story)
Most of us who just want a quite life and have no interest in power are simply caught in their power struggles and I can't see that will ever change. It can't change as it takes authoritarians to replace authoritarians. Its just the way life is. The people around Wikipedia are just showing that same pattern of behaviour.
"What would this mean for humans? Is it possible to do this to us"
I was thinking that, could it be done?... but then thinking about this line from the article, "administer another, more precise sting right into their victim's brain"... it reminds me of watching Big Brother & other reality shows.
I think the Vic-20 also had what could easily be called multiple shift keys, as it could switching between Graphics and Text mode using the CBM key. Also the Amiga had two extra big A "Amiga" keys which could be used by software to do similar things.
Also multiple shift keys are nothing new at all, as there are many games (on many early home computers) that did this sort of thing going back decades. Even the concept of combos of keys is acting like various combinations of more shift keys.
Planes at takeoff or low level military aircraft would be easier targets with very high power and very directional microwave, which is (relatively) easy to make directional. Although getting enough power is going to require a big machine.
But I think this technology will become almost common military weaponry in the future, especially as so much military hardware is going remote or fully autonomous.
So its taken them 2 years to find out he is running linux. I guess two years to finally turn on a PC (to do some work), is about right for at Microsoft CIO.
... it must have been a rainy day, so he had to take the day off from the golf course. So I guess in the end, tech support reported him, once they found out he can't run Microsoft golf sim on his PC.
Its not unprofessional, but its certainly a less than consistent way to communicate and so its a less than optimally effective way to communicate. But then many industries have their own definitions. For example acronyms from one industry are used in another industry to mean other things etc.. but then unfortunately human communication (and progress) is less than optimal. There are so many optimizations which are possible to tidy up and improve communications. (Come to think of it, it'll be easier if we all spoke the same language around the world, which is another example of the un-optimal nature of human civilization). We need to clean source it all:)
"epic, city-destroying battle between GM cats and GM mice"
and it'll happen fast. Imagine how much stamina these creatures are going to have when breeding!... within a year, we would be up to our eyeballs in the an endless thunder of them fighting and shaging... well we would be, but for all life on earth will be nothing but cats and mice eating everything in their path.
Its not just about SI units. This is about marketing in the context of the tech industry. Within the industry, its known that 1 megabyte is 1048576 bytes etc..
It was a deliberate attempt to make their products look like they had more memory. The sales people at Seagate knew what they were doing, because that is part of the job of sales people, to bias and manipulate information to make products sound more favorable, but these sales people pushed it to far and got caught out.
I like Seagate drives, but I have no sympathy for them getting caught out.
"It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected"
Its not so much the Monty Python form of the Spanish Inquisition and much more like the book 1984. An attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected is in the 1984 book a "Thought Crime". Regardless of if that thought is turned into action or not, its stepping outside of the orthodox. The 1984 book "Thought Police" do not accept any eccentric behavior. Any thought or action which is seen as unorthodox.
So everyone has to step in line with the party orthodox view for fear of being singled out as a traitor to the party view. Democracy cannot truly exist in such a system of managing people.
Its often the case time and time again throughout history where we see this same kind of spiral into a terrible world, where the people in power seek such power over their people, resulting in an ever more extremist behavior of the leaders and therefore mentally corrupted thinking. At its less extreme end, we get people having to accept the party line, in return for being helped to progress (and anyone speaking out against the party line is held back). That's the lower end. As the system of government becomes more extreme, then more and more people get singled out and silenced from speaking out against the party line. (Regardless of whatever the stated and as advertised political system is said to be for that country, the underlying political behavior results in a different political system than the people think they are living in).
Ironically the people who loose out the most, are the other people who seek to get into power at the next election. Which is ultimately the point of the controls. It prevents anyone else getting into power. So the people in power always seek to create this kind of system, as they wish to hold off anyone else from getting a chance to get into power. That's why the ones in power seek to create such a system. Its independent of any party politics. Its basic human nature of the ones who seek to gain power from each other. Most of us who never wish to gain power and simply want a quite life, just get caught up in their power struggles).
But have we really sunk this low?... are we really heading for the 1984 Big Brother world, where technology is used against anyone who may even have any view, which could oppose the current people in power?
My hope is no, as the people who seek to gain power, will not stand for the ones in power implementing systems, which make it unfair for them to compete for power in the future. But I'm not so sure, as the majority of the population don't know a fraction of what most programmers know about what is becoming possible with modern data mining etc... Their lack of technical knowledge prevents them from see the dangers which are so obvious too so many of us.
This power seeking human nature is like a self corrupting mechanism, where the current country leaders loose feedback on their own actions (they will not really listen to be told they are wrong) and so like a machine loosing feedback, go ever further from the central normal state, into an ever more biased state. So like a machine loosing feedback, eventually their systems of control break down, as the ever increasing extremes become untenable for most people to suffer.
The Taliban and the Nazis have demonstrated this. We don't need more of this extreme behavior, we need less of it, to rid the world of extremist views.
We need more truly democratic countries, not the west falling into this trap of loosing such a core aspect of democracy, out of fear of the extremists. Otherwise every country become as bad as what they most fear, but yet fail to see it, as they close off any attempt to give feedback to their system of control.
I just finished compiling a Wolfram's 2,2 Universal Turing Machine as well, but it just flashes a light on and off. I think I'll call it the Wolfram flip flop. So I guess that means the answer to life is somewhere between 0 and 1 ?
"The truth is that us bots prefer Linux because of the GPL"
Being able to see the source code, isn't a bad thing, as you imply. If there's a hole in the code, I would sooner someone find it fast and then it gets fixed, rather than have closed code, which may have a hole in it, which no one knows about. Because given time, someone will find that hole, even if its close sourced (which is no long term protection). What open source gives is effectively better debugging of the code, as it allows people to dig out the faults in it. That's valuable extra testing, not just for that code, but for anything else developed in the future, which is based on that code. Therefore it leads to a more solid code base.
"any editor can set a password on any page that can protect that page from being edited"
Very cool, a law wiki. Now what law do I want to create?... I know, how about making it illegal to walk forwards on a Thursday. Anyone breaking this law, will be locked in stocks and flogged to death, with custard coated kippers.
Hmm... I think I sense a flaw in this law wiki idea.
Some people have a genetic disposition towards an increased probability of developing cancer, however some cancer cases are caused by damage to the body. These cases can happen to anyone.
From that page: "The station carries the London regions of BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1 and Channel 4 in analogue, each with an effective radiated power of 1 MW, as well as all six digital terrestrial television multiplexes."
So imagine 1 Mega Watt... in other words imagine standing next to 1000 electric fires each drawing 1k Watt. That is a lot of radio frequency power and that is just one example of so many sources of RF.
And that's just two sources of changing magnetic fields. There are many others.
No one is suggesting a tinfoil hat, (as you imply), but an increased risk is an increased risk. Medically if there is an increased risk, then that is important to the medical profession, even if it isn't to you maxume.
For example, say there was even just a 0.1% increased risk from say using a mobile phone for 40 years, then even at 0.1% you would expect to have around 2 million new cases of cancer within the 40 year period as a direct result of that source of damage to the body. Of course it would be difficult, (very difficult) to point the finger of blame over a period of 40 years simply at a mobile phone (even if it was say 0.1% which I just use to illustrate the size of the numbers of new cases possible), as there are so many sources of RF (some of which are very high power) its difficult to point at any one of them as the cause.
But if there is an increased risk, then solutions can be engineered into future designs. Currently they are not considered, as its simply believed that only ionising frequencies can cause cancer (e.g. UV, XRays, Gamma Rays etc...) and so it would just add extra cost to avoid something which is believed to not cause harm.
What I was saying is that potentially the other frequencies can also be an additional risk factor. Something this RFID research could well help to show add evidence to that case it is possible for non-ionising RF to be a source of harm to biology.
This work on RFID could provide an clue to the biological effects of non-ionising frequencies. The currently accepted idea about RF is that non-ionising frequencies are safe. However it is known that cancers can be caused by chemicals causing or disrupting some free radicals. However a changing magnetic field can induce current flow in a conductor. The body while resistive, can still conduct a current. Hence provide a mechanism to disrupt free radicals.
Therefore, making the body conduct a current many times over a long period of time, could then provide an alternative mechanism to increase the chance of cancer.
(Think of it a bit like electroplating something. A small amount of current, can cause a build up over time etc.. although in reality, its going to be many substances and far more complex combinations in a body and the body actively changing and processing substances etc..).
Inducing current conduction in a body, could provide an alternate mechanism, to increase the probability of cancer, by disrupting some required free radicals, that are used and required in normal body processes. The risk factors would vary with frequency, power etc., but it is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
"But tell the Geek that he needs a license before toying with class 4 biologic and radiological alarms and the world becomes a nanny state."
... the more sensors the better, because the more bad things are found and fixed. Sensors can and are also used for legitimate good science (not just toying around with it!).
... its close-minded ideologies that are the problem!. You cannot fix a world of pain caused by close-minded with yet more close-mindedness. Education is the answer.
Using sensors is not wrong
Controlling what people want to learn (via limiting what sensors they can use or limiting them in any other way) is the real bad in this world and its ironically why we have to deal with a world filled with bullying ideologies who want to control and limit what people think & do, plus also they want to wipe out anyone where refuses to follow their ways.
But try telling that to some who looks down on geeks for standing up for freedom from the ideological bullying terrorists!
Education is the answer and solution to close-mindedness!
Ok, so mistaken readings could cause a group panic. Then again, permits for what is basically sensors is a nanny state attitude bordering very much on Big Brother. Once again showing the old idea of the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They want to control everything, as its in peoples best interests. Its the wrong solution. They should be educating people not controlling.
... that much stress isn't helping anyone in the long run and certainly not a suitable environment within which to choose reactionary new laws and controls.
It also shows how much of a diet of fear and panic America is currently suffering. Looks like they are now worrying about people worrying so much that they panic!
"So you'd rather have employees hold a company hostage and bleed it of all it's money until the company goes out of business"
... yet I earned the bosses of these companies a lot of money ... but no more. The funny thing is, I've often heard it called "burn out" in a job where people have had enough of playing by the old rules. Its not burn out at all. It should be called "wise up". Wise up to the games the bosses play. Play them at their own game. If all programmers were more business minded, all our jobs value would increase more in line with the kinds of money e.g. sales people earn. But of course, not all programmers are business minded. So it'll never happen. Some don't even want to be business minded. That's fine for them, but no more for me. As I get older, I need these days, to see a return on investment. (So IBM won't be seeing my CV any time soon. :)
When you say "you aren't ENTITLED to overtime" that bit at least, I think is correct. But its not a fair way to treat employees, and so as a result, the employees will make sure the company looses out in other ways. For example, unfairness results in a reduced amount of employee interest in wanting to invest new ideas into a company. That's bad for any company. Companies want and need to encourage people to invest ideas into how to improve the company. If that company fails to improve, then some of its competitors will improve, so its going to be loosing out on a lot of income.
So going back to your main point its not hostage at all. Its simply fair return on investment and unions were a way to hold back some of the excesses of bosses, who would otherwise push their staff around and not be fair.
But these days (in the UK at least) even the mention of "unions" has become associated with "bad". Partly some the old unions did end up getting overly power hungry and controlling (and so behaving just like some bosses unfairness to others), but that doesn't negate the need for unions. There needs to be some feedback to the bosses, to prevent their unfair excesses.
However as these days there are few unions, I think the only way to treat business people is to play them at their own game. Judge a job on its return on investment. If there isn't a fair return on investment, then don't invest. Find a job that will give a better return on investment.
This move by IBM means they want the existing amount of overtime, but they do not want to pay more for it. They value employee effort on the basis of them needing to work the extra hours. I've found a good way to judge a job is to add up all the hours it costs me, including even travelling time, (so all hours I loose out of my life) and then use that to divide the wages down to a true hourly rate. If that true hourly rate is too low, then forget it. Find something better.
(Some programming jobs I've had like working in the games industry, have very bad true hour rates. Almost like wages from a Mc Donalds or a supermarket shelf staking job
"Two thoughts come to mind" etc...
Wikipedia already exists. Wikis are also open source. Knol is reinventing the wheel to make a proprietary wiki for Goggle to then use to do targeted marketing on each article people look at. They then count the articles people are interested in. They also build up a profile of each and every poster, working out what they are interested in. They most likely will also be able to associate each article viewed, with all google searching from their main site via cookies etc. So they are going to be building up an even greater profile of all users of both google and knol.
So far I'm not seeing a good reason to want to use knol, but I'm seeing many reasons to stay away from knol. Each time I hear the Google "do no harm" PR idea, I'm reminded of the old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Google is becoming Big Brother. Yet few people seem to be able to see its slowly happening.
I guess most people fail to see its happening, partly as its so many small steps towards that goal and they also fail to see how such detailed knowledge can be used to give ever more power to the ones with that knowledge. knol isn't going to be just an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. knol is going to be a hunny pot, waiting to profile each thing all of us are interested in.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying it, but as time goes on, I'm sadly becoming more convinced Big Brother is eventually inevitable. Few people can see its happening and no one is going to really stop what companies like Google are doing, as anyone in power wants the power Google is building for itself. They want a part of that power, so they will not stop it. They will do high profile things to make it look like they are controlling and limiting what companies like Google are doing, but in reality, they will not and cannot stop the extent of data mining that's growing year by year. Yet no one in power would really be stupid enough to want to really stop it growing, as its more power for anyone with access to the profiling data.
Ok, so if the Solar System has a dent, paint primer, rust, and no hub caps, then maybe we can at least fill in the dent and then spray paint over it. It may take a while though, so its going to cost you. Would next Thursday be ok?
I agree with you, but I would add that most societies achieve a short lived and unstable balance due to the authoritarians on each side tugging in their own directions, trying to pull power their way. (The big problems throughout history have occurred when one side finds a way to bias power their way). But I don't think there will ever be a time when science breaks free from this tug of war, simple as the authoritarians will never let it free, as the truth can often destabilise their biased positions. They are the last who will ever see they are biased, simply as they do not want to hear they are wrong. Yet all to often, sadly the ultimate goal for some of them isn't about who is right or wrong. To them its not even about who is right or wrong, its simply who has the power.
... (To quote a famous story)
2 + 2 = 5
Most of us who just want a quite life and have no interest in power are simply caught in their power struggles and I can't see that will ever change. It can't change as it takes authoritarians to replace authoritarians. Its just the way life is. The people around Wikipedia are just showing that same pattern of behaviour.
"What would this mean for humans? Is it possible to do this to us"
... but then thinking about this line from the article, "administer another, more precise sting right into their victim's brain" ... it reminds me of watching Big Brother & other reality shows.
I was thinking that, could it be done?
I think the Vic-20 also had what could easily be called multiple shift keys, as it could switching between Graphics and Text mode using the CBM key. Also the Amiga had two extra big A "Amiga" keys which could be used by software to do similar things.
Also multiple shift keys are nothing new at all, as there are many games (on many early home computers) that did this sort of thing going back decades. Even the concept of combos of keys is acting like various combinations of more shift keys.
Either that or a gigantic prehistoric Sea Monkey.
http://www.sea-monkeys.com/html/aboutsm/whatarethey.html
I would like to see a fish tank full of them!
Planes at takeoff or low level military aircraft would be easier targets with very high power and very directional microwave, which is (relatively) easy to make directional. Although getting enough power is going to require a big machine.
...
But I think this technology will become almost common military weaponry in the future, especially as so much military hardware is going remote or fully autonomous.
That said there are ways to screen out some RF. For example
http://www.techtickerblog.com/2006/04/14/paint-will-turn-your-cell-phone-off/
"Maybe they found out he's running Debian or Ubuntu at home"
... it must have been a rainy day, so he had to take the day off from the golf course. So I guess in the end, tech support reported him, once they found out he can't run Microsoft golf sim on his PC.
And from this, it looks like he has been in the job since summer 2005.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/dec05/12-05Scott.mspx
So its taken them 2 years to find out he is running linux. I guess two years to finally turn on a PC (to do some work), is about right for at Microsoft CIO.
Its not unprofessional, but its certainly a less than consistent way to communicate and so its a less than optimally effective way to communicate. But then many industries have their own definitions. For example acronyms from one industry are used in another industry to mean other things etc.. but then unfortunately human communication (and progress) is less than optimal. There are so many optimizations which are possible to tidy up and improve communications. (Come to think of it, it'll be easier if we all spoke the same language around the world, which is another example of the un-optimal nature of human civilization). We need to clean source it all :)
"epic, city-destroying battle between GM cats and GM mice"
... within a year, we would be up to our eyeballs in the an endless thunder of them fighting and shaging ... well we would be, but for all life on earth will be nothing but cats and mice eating everything in their path.
and it'll happen fast. Imagine how much stamina these creatures are going to have when breeding!
From the article "These animals are rather aggressive, we've noticed."
So if we have to GM our cats, I want some as well, so I can fight off the cat and mouse!
Its not just about SI units. This is about marketing in the context of the tech industry. Within the industry, its known that 1 megabyte is 1048576 bytes etc..
It was a deliberate attempt to make their products look like they had more memory. The sales people at Seagate knew what they were doing, because that is part of the job of sales people, to bias and manipulate information to make products sound more favorable, but these sales people pushed it to far and got caught out.
I like Seagate drives, but I have no sympathy for them getting caught out.
"It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected"
... are we really heading for the 1984 Big Brother world, where technology is used against anyone who may even have any view, which could oppose the current people in power?
Its not so much the Monty Python form of the Spanish Inquisition and much more like the book 1984. An attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected is in the 1984 book a "Thought Crime". Regardless of if that thought is turned into action or not, its stepping outside of the orthodox. The 1984 book "Thought Police" do not accept any eccentric behavior. Any thought or action which is seen as unorthodox.
So everyone has to step in line with the party orthodox view for fear of being singled out as a traitor to the party view. Democracy cannot truly exist in such a system of managing people.
Its often the case time and time again throughout history where we see this same kind of spiral into a terrible world, where the people in power seek such power over their people, resulting in an ever more extremist behavior of the leaders and therefore mentally corrupted thinking. At its less extreme end, we get people having to accept the party line, in return for being helped to progress (and anyone speaking out against the party line is held back). That's the lower end. As the system of government becomes more extreme, then more and more people get singled out and silenced from speaking out against the party line. (Regardless of whatever the stated and as advertised political system is said to be for that country, the underlying political behavior results in a different political system than the people think they are living in).
Ironically the people who loose out the most, are the other people who seek to get into power at the next election. Which is ultimately the point of the controls. It prevents anyone else getting into power. So the people in power always seek to create this kind of system, as they wish to hold off anyone else from getting a chance to get into power. That's why the ones in power seek to create such a system. Its independent of any party politics. Its basic human nature of the ones who seek to gain power from each other. Most of us who never wish to gain power and simply want a quite life, just get caught up in their power struggles).
But have we really sunk this low?
My hope is no, as the people who seek to gain power, will not stand for the ones in power implementing systems, which make it unfair for them to compete for power in the future. But I'm not so sure, as the majority of the population don't know a fraction of what most programmers know about what is becoming possible with modern data mining etc... Their lack of technical knowledge prevents them from see the dangers which are so obvious too so many of us.
This power seeking human nature is like a self corrupting mechanism, where the current country leaders loose feedback on their own actions (they will not really listen to be told they are wrong) and so like a machine loosing feedback, go ever further from the central normal state, into an ever more biased state. So like a machine loosing feedback, eventually their systems of control break down, as the ever increasing extremes become untenable for most people to suffer.
The Taliban and the Nazis have demonstrated this. We don't need more of this extreme behavior, we need less of it, to rid the world of extremist views.
We need more truly democratic countries, not the west falling into this trap of loosing such a core aspect of democracy, out of fear of the extremists. Otherwise every country become as bad as what they most fear, but yet fail to see it, as they close off any attempt to give feedback to their system of control.
Ah but soon we will have the epaper office ... just don't use it for toilet paper.
What's the point in blowing up just a room, when I could blow up entire city with half the number of chips.:-P
256 is a more stable computer number than 128
I just finished compiling a Wolfram's 2,2 Universal Turing Machine as well, but it just flashes a light on and off. I think I'll call it the Wolfram flip flop. So I guess that means the answer to life is somewhere between 0 and 1 ?
"The truth is that us bots prefer Linux because of the GPL"
Being able to see the source code, isn't a bad thing, as you imply. If there's a hole in the code, I would sooner someone find it fast and then it gets fixed, rather than have closed code, which may have a hole in it, which no one knows about. Because given time, someone will find that hole, even if its close sourced (which is no long term protection). What open source gives is effectively better debugging of the code, as it allows people to dig out the faults in it. That's valuable extra testing, not just for that code, but for anything else developed in the future, which is based on that code. Therefore it leads to a more solid code base.
"I don't think you've found a flaw with the concept of this law wiki"
I think I've found a flaw in your ability to detect when people are joking!
"any editor can set a password on any page that can protect that page from being edited"
... I know, how about making it illegal to walk forwards on a Thursday. Anyone breaking this law, will be locked in stocks and flogged to death, with custard coated kippers.
Very cool, a law wiki. Now what law do I want to create?
Hmm... I think I sense a flaw in this law wiki idea.
"just open it up to any commercial flights"
You can't open it up to commercial flights. Everyone who's seen a bond film knows the bad guys need their own private airstrip.
Some people have a genetic disposition towards an increased probability of developing cancer, however some cancer cases are caused by damage to the body. These cases can happen to anyone.
m itting_station
... in other words imagine standing next to 1000 electric fires each drawing 1k Watt. That is a lot of radio frequency power and that is just one example of so many sources of RF.
"wimpy radio"
Say that about something like for example, the transmitter at Crystal Palace.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_trans
From that page: "The station carries the London regions of BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1 and Channel 4 in analogue, each with an effective radiated power of 1 MW, as well as all six digital terrestrial television multiplexes."
So imagine 1 Mega Watt
Then you have for example power lines e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line
And that's just two sources of changing magnetic fields. There are many others.
No one is suggesting a tinfoil hat, (as you imply), but an increased risk is an increased risk. Medically if there is an increased risk, then that is important to the medical profession, even if it isn't to you maxume.
For example, say there was even just a 0.1% increased risk from say using a mobile phone for 40 years, then even at 0.1% you would expect to have around 2 million new cases of cancer within the 40 year period as a direct result of that source of damage to the body. Of course it would be difficult, (very difficult) to point the finger of blame over a period of 40 years simply at a mobile phone (even if it was say 0.1% which I just use to illustrate the size of the numbers of new cases possible), as there are so many sources of RF (some of which are very high power) its difficult to point at any one of them as the cause.
But if there is an increased risk, then solutions can be engineered into future designs. Currently they are not considered, as its simply believed that only ionising frequencies can cause cancer (e.g. UV, XRays, Gamma Rays etc...) and so it would just add extra cost to avoid something which is believed to not cause harm.
What I was saying is that potentially the other frequencies can also be an additional risk factor. Something this RFID research could well help to show add evidence to that case it is possible for non-ionising RF to be a source of harm to biology.
This work on RFID could provide an clue to the biological effects of non-ionising frequencies. The currently accepted idea about RF is that non-ionising frequencies are safe. However it is known that cancers can be caused by chemicals causing or disrupting some free radicals. However a changing magnetic field can induce current flow in a conductor. The body while resistive, can still conduct a current. Hence provide a mechanism to disrupt free radicals.
Therefore, making the body conduct a current many times over a long period of time, could then provide an alternative mechanism to increase the chance of cancer.
(Think of it a bit like electroplating something. A small amount of current, can cause a build up over time etc.. although in reality, its going to be many substances and far more complex combinations in a body and the body actively changing and processing substances etc..).
Inducing current conduction in a body, could provide an alternate mechanism, to increase the probability of cancer, by disrupting some required free radicals, that are used and required in normal body processes. The risk factors would vary with frequency, power etc., but it is possible.
Here's some more info if you are interested...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_radicals