Or use an R/C blimp to stay aloft for days. And silently. A dark and silent drone blimp might fly undetected on a moonless night, even at just a few meters above the surface. Equipped with a FLIR camera you could gather all sorts of evidence. Or you could make the blimp look like a hanging plant and have it perch against just about any surface. Or use the plane or blimp to drop surveillance bugs that could include camera's, microphones, and transmitters to spy just about anywhere. By the time the bug is identified the damage to the target may already be done.
Imagine a bug camouflaged as a lump of coal dropped down a chimney. Or an R/C surveillance car dropped down a chimney to rove around inside a building. There may be some technical challenges, but definitely within the capabilities of a determined and skilled hobbyist. The possibilities are only limited by creativity. Makes you wonder what the CIA is up to these days.
Expect to see more stories like these in the future. Before long, all of your old appliances that had displays and controls will now be nothing more than a box with a logo. All communication will be via blue tooth and wifi, and your smartphone or other compatible device will be the interface and display. The controller inside your appliance will probably be the same type of microprocessor used in your smartphone. Even classic "dumb" devices will soon have this capability, so you will be able to walk up to just about anything, hold your smartphone up to it, and see what it is, what it is doing, how it is doing it, and what changes you can make to it.
Isn't this the argument used by religious nut jobs on Jihad or Crusade, burning heretics at the stake or stoning infidels to death? "God created them, then God told me to destroy them. Who am I to question the will of the creator or the authority of his holy scriptures?"
Likewise, if my daddy owned slaves and the children of those slaves, and if my daddy bequeathed those slaves to me in his will at his death, then those slaves and children of those slaves become my property. Who has the right to deny me of property that was legally transferred to me (assuming pre-1860's US laws in southern states). Just because it is "legal" or fits well with some pre-existing theory of ethics, law, or property, does not mean that specific new situations should never be examined in a whole new light. Slavery is wrong not just because the Union won the Civil War, but because slavery is wrong.
There are a lot of other things that are wrong but still legal, and even presumed by many to be ethical, but I won't get into that here today. But the presumption that ownership or creation confers some sort of universal god-like status is erroneous. Regardless of your opinion, people are not just going to stand by and let it happen. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi. Who's going to come to your rescue if you torture your creations in your lab and the revolt against you?
I am working on a patent for a special product just for this purpose. It is a blend of Polyurethane and feces packaged tightly into your typical courier parcel. When the receiver cuts through the thick outer packaging tape it will be virtually impossible to avoid perforating the interior bag of contents. With only the slightest nick the contents begin to expand as it makes contact with air, forcing the rest of the bag to open further, which exposes more air to the contents, thus forcing almost all of the contents to expand rapidly to a size several times larger than the parcel it arrived in.
Even if the person opening the package drops the box and jumps back quickly, in all likelihood the area where the box lands will be a complete mess. And if we're lucky this will include their mouse and keyboard.
If you have a moral conviction against sending poo in the mail then maybe you could ship them a boxed hive of Africanized bees.
We already have a forth branch. It is small, and not only economical, it actually generates its own revenue, and not through confiscatory taxation. It is the Federal Reserve. It's "jurors" are appointment by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Too bad they only get to vote on interest rates.
The government is too complex and favors the rich because we keep voting for rich lawyers who then choose to compensate themselves with executive salaries. They make the law complex to advance their own profession. Take estate taxes for instance - rich people never pay them because they have their lawyers draft detailed estate plans long before they die. Estate taxes are instead paid by the stupid, the lazy, the ordinary people who win lotteries or are compensated with millions of dollars after an industrial accident.
And don't listen to rich people complain about entitlement programs. Google "medicaid planning" to see all the lawyers that help the rich hide their money so they can get medicaid to pay their nursing home bills. Middle class families who don't have this medicaid planning are forced to "spend down" everything they have, including their 401k savings (and even bankruptcy won't take away your 401k savings). Google "offshore banking" and "asset protection" and you can see that the complex laws are written to control the middle class but there are always loopholes for the rich.
A middle class jury making the laws would lead to a simple tax code, uncomplicated laws, smaller government, and more equitable social programs. Loopholes for the rich would disappear since the laws would not be written by the rich.
If they can draft you to fight and die on a foreign battlefield, why not draft you to serve as a lawmaker? How many guys came back from Vietnam with no job prospects during the stagflation of the 1970's. For their service I do think jurors who devote more than three months toward a single case should be entitled to a supplementary pension. Congress has been giving themselves a pension for decades, even those who serve only one term, so why not the same for a jury?
I disagree that college education or land ownership or who your daddy was should have any effect on who get's to serve. An entrance exam could be designed and administered by the first jury of the sanity check branch could be put into place to exclude individuals who would not be competent to serve.
As for your single-parent example, even our current jury duty system has exemptions for single parents and others with hardship. For what it is worth, though, even serving as a juror on a criminal trail can have career consequences. See link below for a jury case in the UK that lasted two whole years: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2005/jun/12/workandcareers.observercashsection.
I have the opposite idea. No term limits and no re-elections. Every politician stays in office for as long as he or she is doing the right thing. Those who believe he should be removed from office can cast a vote to remove him or her from office, but this vote can be rescinded and re-applied as often as desired, giving the official the chance to comply with the demands of his constituents. Once the number of recall votes exceeds 50% of the number of active registered voters under his jurisdiction then the politician is put on notice that he may be removed from office and replaced by any challenger that accumulates 50% of the number of eligible votes from the registered voters. There would be no planned election days. Every voter could back a candidate at any time and keep his vote behind that candidate for as long as he would choose, and could change his preference at any time. Undecided voters could choose neutrality for any office they had the right to vote for, but then they would have to accept the decision of the active voters who backed actual candidates. Voters would be required to renew their registration annually, but not all on the same date - but more like renewing the inspection sticker on an automobile. This would weed out citizens that were no longer actively engaged in the democratic process. In this sense voters would maintain and continuously update their registration more like maintaining a web based profile rather than casting ballots at the end of a campaign.
The problem with single terms is that once in office there is no incentive to follow the will of the people. Once in office a single term candidate could push his own radical agenda or the agenda of his future employer. There are already too many bureaucrats that take cushy jobs at the companies they were appointed to regulate after they leave office. The same is even true of judges that take on higher paying jobs as arbitrators working for private arbitration firms. These judges spend their years in office making decisions in favor of the businesses the judges hope to work for as arbitrators. Their decision record is more effective than any job interview alone could ever be.
I think many, including myself, have to agree with you. For those who are on the lower end of the economic totem pole, is there not more incentive to use illegal drugs, drugs that can make you not care about how poor you are, and then if you get caught using or selling, then you get to be sheltered, clothed, educated, and - evidently - entertained? If you are already a selfish, lazy, low-life, you already have too much incentive to break the law and get caught. And if you don't get caught, well, why not try to keep mugging and stealing to profit yourself? You have nothing to lose.
I sometimes wonder if this dis-incentive that is built into our criminal justice system isn't a major factor for the incredible population that is in our prison system right now. Yet if anyone suggests that the public should reach out to these populations BEFORE they end up in prison, all you hear in response are complaints about taxpayer money "wasted" on the special interests, or that such public assistance creates a welfare state of lazy people that leach off the system, or suggestions that politician's that try to create such programs are COMMUNISTS with an agenda to destroy white, Christian America.
OK, but how much military and economic aid does the US give to Israel, and other Semitic nations for that matter? If that aid stimulates their economy, enabling their citizens to pay taxes, taxes to build prisons, etc. - then you can trace this matter straight back to the US taxpayer. If there is a scheme in place where prisoners generate enough economic output to pay the full price for these gaming systems, then I do not object. What Israelis do to prisoners in their country is their business.
Don't we get enough competition from Chinese labor camps with high suicide rates (Google "I-pad factory"), do workers in the free world have to compete against indentured servitude within our own borders? I'm all for prison labor to gain a measure of self sufficiency, but if prisons were made into profitable factories then the powers that be would have too much incentive to put more (possibly innocent) citizens in prison and increase their sentences.
Mr. Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Obama:
If you are represented by legal counsel, please direct this letter to your attorney immediately and have your attorney notify us of such representation.
We are writing to notify you that your unlawful use of a process to respond to software patent petitions infringes upon our client’s exclusive patent(s). Accordingly, you are hereby directed to
It's hard to slip past the HR filter without listing programming languages on your resume. Once you get to your interview then tell them how awesome you are and you don't even need a language - you can program anything!
OK, so instead of cold, tired, scared recruits with overpowered assault rifles standing guard in the dark of night we're going to have jittery, cold, tired, scared recruits with overpowered assault rifles standing guard in the dark of night. Lovely.
Which is exactly why the Constitution protects the right of citizens to bear arms. Otherwise all you have are foxes and coyotes negotiating over the rights of rabbits. Anyone who says hunting rifles and handguns can't stop tanks and jets should visit Libya. Syria is next.
I'm not suggesting we need an insurrection in the USA, but people need to protect their right to bear arms to make sure it never gets that bad.
And if California can't generate enough revenue to track and prevent disasters and they get wiped off the map, the rest of the US doesn't suffer at all?
We can privatize the nuclear weapons and facilities. The corporations can sell them to the highest bidder. There are no problems that free enterprise can't solve. The market demand for nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf and the Korean Peninsula is higher than ever, and such an economic stimulus would create more jobs at home as people scramble to hire contractors to build fallout shelters and stock up on provisions.
And while we're going back to 1776, repealing taxes and regulation as we go, let's also reinstate the tragedy of the commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons, such as the overgrazing of the open range that lead to the starvation of entire herds of cattle and bankruptcy for many large cattle operations, or the hunting of American bison to near extinction, or the pollution of municipal water supplies from untreated sewer water. If you expect the states to pick up the slack then you are just shifting costs and taxes. You'll have more state government, more state taxes, and more state regulation. And then we will have 50 states agencies for every possible concern and each system may be completely incompatible with the others. If you're "taxed enough already", just wait til the party gets started.
I'm getting a little tired of hearing about the glory days of the Constitution before all those "darn amendments". Sorry, but slavery, the unprovoked invasion of Native American nations, cholera from polluted water, and debtors prisons are not my idea of progress.
Thanks for driving home my point that actual "corporations" DO need a government to create them, contrary to what was posted higher up in this discussion. Courts refer to corporations as legal fiction, as in "let's pretend this piece of paper owns these assets and is liable for them." Without government all you have is a mob of people working together in an organized structure to make a profit. Maybe that's why the term MOB is synonymous with MAFIA.
Dude - wake up and read your history. WWII ended more than 60 years ago. I've been to Germany several times and I've never meet a single Nazi. If I want to meet a Nazi I have to fly back to America and attend a white supremacist rally.
It's funny that Japan and Germany were both rebuilt by America and the Allies under the Marshall Plan. Too bad these guys weren't let lose onto the US system when they came back. We're still stuck with English units of measurement while the rest of the world is on metric.
I hold the opinion that as the government regulation of corporations decreases the tendency of corporations to operate more like the Mafia increases. Enron and Madoff are good examples of what happens when regulations slacken just a little. I would hate to see what a nation would look like if it were run by corporations without any democratic government oversight.
why do the tea partiers insist that Somalia is the best example of the type of government the US should emulate? I would have thought Japan, Germany, or maybe even China might have been a better choice to model from.
Slashdot Mirror
Or use an R/C blimp to stay aloft for days. And silently. A dark and silent drone blimp might fly undetected on a moonless night, even at just a few meters above the surface. Equipped with a FLIR camera you could gather all sorts of evidence. Or you could make the blimp look like a hanging plant and have it perch against just about any surface. Or use the plane or blimp to drop surveillance bugs that could include camera's, microphones, and transmitters to spy just about anywhere. By the time the bug is identified the damage to the target may already be done.
Imagine a bug camouflaged as a lump of coal dropped down a chimney. Or an R/C surveillance car dropped down a chimney to rove around inside a building. There may be some technical challenges, but definitely within the capabilities of a determined and skilled hobbyist. The possibilities are only limited by creativity. Makes you wonder what the CIA is up to these days.
Expect to see more stories like these in the future. Before long, all of your old appliances that had displays and controls will now be nothing more than a box with a logo. All communication will be via blue tooth and wifi, and your smartphone or other compatible device will be the interface and display. The controller inside your appliance will probably be the same type of microprocessor used in your smartphone. Even classic "dumb" devices will soon have this capability, so you will be able to walk up to just about anything, hold your smartphone up to it, and see what it is, what it is doing, how it is doing it, and what changes you can make to it.
Isn't this the argument used by religious nut jobs on Jihad or Crusade, burning heretics at the stake or stoning infidels to death? "God created them, then God told me to destroy them. Who am I to question the will of the creator or the authority of his holy scriptures?"
Likewise, if my daddy owned slaves and the children of those slaves, and if my daddy bequeathed those slaves to me in his will at his death, then those slaves and children of those slaves become my property. Who has the right to deny me of property that was legally transferred to me (assuming pre-1860's US laws in southern states). Just because it is "legal" or fits well with some pre-existing theory of ethics, law, or property, does not mean that specific new situations should never be examined in a whole new light. Slavery is wrong not just because the Union won the Civil War, but because slavery is wrong.
There are a lot of other things that are wrong but still legal, and even presumed by many to be ethical, but I won't get into that here today. But the presumption that ownership or creation confers some sort of universal god-like status is erroneous. Regardless of your opinion, people are not just going to stand by and let it happen. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi. Who's going to come to your rescue if you torture your creations in your lab and the revolt against you?
I am working on a patent for a special product just for this purpose. It is a blend of Polyurethane and feces packaged tightly into your typical courier parcel. When the receiver cuts through the thick outer packaging tape it will be virtually impossible to avoid perforating the interior bag of contents. With only the slightest nick the contents begin to expand as it makes contact with air, forcing the rest of the bag to open further, which exposes more air to the contents, thus forcing almost all of the contents to expand rapidly to a size several times larger than the parcel it arrived in.
Even if the person opening the package drops the box and jumps back quickly, in all likelihood the area where the box lands will be a complete mess. And if we're lucky this will include their mouse and keyboard.
If you have a moral conviction against sending poo in the mail then maybe you could ship them a boxed hive of Africanized bees.
We already have a forth branch. It is small, and not only economical, it actually generates its own revenue, and not through confiscatory taxation. It is the Federal Reserve. It's "jurors" are appointment by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Too bad they only get to vote on interest rates.
The government is too complex and favors the rich because we keep voting for rich lawyers who then choose to compensate themselves with executive salaries. They make the law complex to advance their own profession. Take estate taxes for instance - rich people never pay them because they have their lawyers draft detailed estate plans long before they die. Estate taxes are instead paid by the stupid, the lazy, the ordinary people who win lotteries or are compensated with millions of dollars after an industrial accident.
And don't listen to rich people complain about entitlement programs. Google "medicaid planning" to see all the lawyers that help the rich hide their money so they can get medicaid to pay their nursing home bills. Middle class families who don't have this medicaid planning are forced to "spend down" everything they have, including their 401k savings (and even bankruptcy won't take away your 401k savings). Google "offshore banking" and "asset protection" and you can see that the complex laws are written to control the middle class but there are always loopholes for the rich.
A middle class jury making the laws would lead to a simple tax code, uncomplicated laws, smaller government, and more equitable social programs. Loopholes for the rich would disappear since the laws would not be written by the rich.
If they can draft you to fight and die on a foreign battlefield, why not draft you to serve as a lawmaker? How many guys came back from Vietnam with no job prospects during the stagflation of the 1970's. For their service I do think jurors who devote more than three months toward a single case should be entitled to a supplementary pension. Congress has been giving themselves a pension for decades, even those who serve only one term, so why not the same for a jury?
I disagree that college education or land ownership or who your daddy was should have any effect on who get's to serve. An entrance exam could be designed and administered by the first jury of the sanity check branch could be put into place to exclude individuals who would not be competent to serve.
As for your single-parent example, even our current jury duty system has exemptions for single parents and others with hardship. For what it is worth, though, even serving as a juror on a criminal trail can have career consequences. See link below for a jury case in the UK that lasted two whole years: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2005/jun/12/workandcareers.observercashsection.
I have the opposite idea. No term limits and no re-elections. Every politician stays in office for as long as he or she is doing the right thing. Those who believe he should be removed from office can cast a vote to remove him or her from office, but this vote can be rescinded and re-applied as often as desired, giving the official the chance to comply with the demands of his constituents. Once the number of recall votes exceeds 50% of the number of active registered voters under his jurisdiction then the politician is put on notice that he may be removed from office and replaced by any challenger that accumulates 50% of the number of eligible votes from the registered voters. There would be no planned election days. Every voter could back a candidate at any time and keep his vote behind that candidate for as long as he would choose, and could change his preference at any time. Undecided voters could choose neutrality for any office they had the right to vote for, but then they would have to accept the decision of the active voters who backed actual candidates. Voters would be required to renew their registration annually, but not all on the same date - but more like renewing the inspection sticker on an automobile. This would weed out citizens that were no longer actively engaged in the democratic process. In this sense voters would maintain and continuously update their registration more like maintaining a web based profile rather than casting ballots at the end of a campaign.
The problem with single terms is that once in office there is no incentive to follow the will of the people. Once in office a single term candidate could push his own radical agenda or the agenda of his future employer. There are already too many bureaucrats that take cushy jobs at the companies they were appointed to regulate after they leave office. The same is even true of judges that take on higher paying jobs as arbitrators working for private arbitration firms. These judges spend their years in office making decisions in favor of the businesses the judges hope to work for as arbitrators. Their decision record is more effective than any job interview alone could ever be.
I think many, including myself, have to agree with you. For those who are on the lower end of the economic totem pole, is there not more incentive to use illegal drugs, drugs that can make you not care about how poor you are, and then if you get caught using or selling, then you get to be sheltered, clothed, educated, and - evidently - entertained? If you are already a selfish, lazy, low-life, you already have too much incentive to break the law and get caught. And if you don't get caught, well, why not try to keep mugging and stealing to profit yourself? You have nothing to lose.
I sometimes wonder if this dis-incentive that is built into our criminal justice system isn't a major factor for the incredible population that is in our prison system right now. Yet if anyone suggests that the public should reach out to these populations BEFORE they end up in prison, all you hear in response are complaints about taxpayer money "wasted" on the special interests, or that such public assistance creates a welfare state of lazy people that leach off the system, or suggestions that politician's that try to create such programs are COMMUNISTS with an agenda to destroy white, Christian America.
OK, but how much military and economic aid does the US give to Israel, and other Semitic nations for that matter? If that aid stimulates their economy, enabling their citizens to pay taxes, taxes to build prisons, etc. - then you can trace this matter straight back to the US taxpayer. If there is a scheme in place where prisoners generate enough economic output to pay the full price for these gaming systems, then I do not object. What Israelis do to prisoners in their country is their business.
Don't we get enough competition from Chinese labor camps with high suicide rates (Google "I-pad factory"), do workers in the free world have to compete against indentured servitude within our own borders? I'm all for prison labor to gain a measure of self sufficiency, but if prisons were made into profitable factories then the powers that be would have too much incentive to put more (possibly innocent) citizens in prison and increase their sentences.
why my kids won't get anything more high-tech than a Commodore 64 until they are 18 and accountable for their own actions and contractual agreements.
November 1, 2011
Mr. Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Obama:
If you are represented by legal counsel, please direct this letter to your attorney immediately and have your attorney notify us of such representation.
We are writing to notify you that your unlawful use of a process to respond to software patent petitions infringes upon our client’s exclusive patent(s). Accordingly, you are hereby directed to
CEASE AND DESIST ALL PATENT INFRINGEMENT.
It's hard to slip past the HR filter without listing programming languages on your resume. Once you get to your interview then tell them how awesome you are and you don't even need a language - you can program anything!
OK, so instead of cold, tired, scared recruits with overpowered assault rifles standing guard in the dark of night we're going to have jittery, cold, tired, scared recruits with overpowered assault rifles standing guard in the dark of night. Lovely.
Which is exactly why the Constitution protects the right of citizens to bear arms. Otherwise all you have are foxes and coyotes negotiating over the rights of rabbits. Anyone who says hunting rifles and handguns can't stop tanks and jets should visit Libya. Syria is next.
I'm not suggesting we need an insurrection in the USA, but people need to protect their right to bear arms to make sure it never gets that bad.
Once the dollar collapses paying off the debt will be much easier.
So how is an army of unemployed soldiers going to help our economy?
And if California can't generate enough revenue to track and prevent disasters and they get wiped off the map, the rest of the US doesn't suffer at all?
We can privatize the nuclear weapons and facilities. The corporations can sell them to the highest bidder. There are no problems that free enterprise can't solve. The market demand for nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf and the Korean Peninsula is higher than ever, and such an economic stimulus would create more jobs at home as people scramble to hire contractors to build fallout shelters and stock up on provisions.
And while we're going back to 1776, repealing taxes and regulation as we go, let's also reinstate the tragedy of the commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons, such as the overgrazing of the open range that lead to the starvation of entire herds of cattle and bankruptcy for many large cattle operations, or the hunting of American bison to near extinction, or the pollution of municipal water supplies from untreated sewer water. If you expect the states to pick up the slack then you are just shifting costs and taxes. You'll have more state government, more state taxes, and more state regulation. And then we will have 50 states agencies for every possible concern and each system may be completely incompatible with the others. If you're "taxed enough already", just wait til the party gets started.
I'm getting a little tired of hearing about the glory days of the Constitution before all those "darn amendments". Sorry, but slavery, the unprovoked invasion of Native American nations, cholera from polluted water, and debtors prisons are not my idea of progress.
Thanks for driving home my point that actual "corporations" DO need a government to create them, contrary to what was posted higher up in this discussion. Courts refer to corporations as legal fiction, as in "let's pretend this piece of paper owns these assets and is liable for them." Without government all you have is a mob of people working together in an organized structure to make a profit. Maybe that's why the term MOB is synonymous with MAFIA.
Dude - wake up and read your history. WWII ended more than 60 years ago. I've been to Germany several times and I've never meet a single Nazi. If I want to meet a Nazi I have to fly back to America and attend a white supremacist rally.
It's funny that Japan and Germany were both rebuilt by America and the Allies under the Marshall Plan. Too bad these guys weren't let lose onto the US system when they came back. We're still stuck with English units of measurement while the rest of the world is on metric.
I hold the opinion that as the government regulation of corporations decreases the tendency of corporations to operate more like the Mafia increases. Enron and Madoff are good examples of what happens when regulations slacken just a little. I would hate to see what a nation would look like if it were run by corporations without any democratic government oversight.
why do the tea partiers insist that Somalia is the best example of the type of government the US should emulate? I would have thought Japan, Germany, or maybe even China might have been a better choice to model from.