Corp A: newspaper Corp B: movie studio Corp C: social cause organization.
Can the government censor Corp A? Can they censor Corp B? Can they censor Corp C?
If the government can censor Corp C but not B, what if corp C produced a movie for their cause?
In your attempt to exclude organizations from inheriting the rights of the people who make up those organizations, you end up granting the government the authority to censor individuals by granting authority over all potential communication mediums beyond simple person to person speech.
The only way to get around that is to either grant very specific exemptions to government authority for certain types of corporations, that's a non starter because it would rely upon the government to define and regulate who falls into those corporations. In addition, it would default to a ban on speech for new communication methods until it was pre-approved for use.
An example of this in practice now is the broadcast television market vs content unregulated markets (internet/subscription/etc). Broadcast television has to pull a lot of punches or content because it falls afoul of the FCC's guidance.
Imagine now, that the FCC were not only regulating so-called vulgar content, but also tasked with evaluating political content! An organization would have to be very careful not to publish too much speech which could be considered 'organization' speech and not 'person speech'.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we really can't declare organizations of people to not inherit the rights of the people who make up those organizations without vastly reevaluating that which forms the very foundation of our system of governance.
My problem isn't any of that however. My problem is THIS travesty from the article:
One tricky part is determining if rogue planet candidates are as massive as the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, further along in stellar evolution but without enough mass to spark the nuclear fusion that causes starlight.
It's so freaking wrong I can't even parse it to bitch about it in any specific manner. And to me, that's the worst thing that could happen. If I can't complain, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
I don't see the problem there, actually.
Stellar evolution: gas, condensation, kinda maybe planet, yet more condensation, fusion ignites, eventually iron core, death of some sort depending on size. So they find the tricky part determining if it's "evolved" enough gas condensation to be a brown dwarf as I understand it.
What's wrong with that?
A few things, some nitpicky, some major:
Nitpicky: Use of the term evolution in that context, but it's not terribly inaccurate. 'Failed star' As if it tried, but just couldn't pull it off.
Major: A decent article shouldn't call something a Brown Dwarf star and define it to be a 'star' which failed to achieve fusion. If it failed to achieve fusion, then it isn't a star, but... a planet;)
Sure, it may not be much fusion, it may only be deuterium, but it is still fusion. A brown dwarf which isn't fusing anymore isn't a 'failed to become a star' star, but a star which has ceased fusion. Not hot enough to be a white dwarf, and cooling to become a black dwarf.
The odd phrasing tripped me up, but the definition was a bit silly.
For example, if you go by their definition of brown dwarf star being a mass which failed to achieve fusion, then a brown dwarf star which isn't in orbit around another star would be 'A ROGUE PLANET', thus the whole premise of trying to differentiate a this object from a brown dwarf star would be utterly meaningless.
Oh I don't think it's just one more step if you are comparing making decisions regarding animals considered property to making decisions as to which other people get to procreate.
And no, evolution is still here. You just don't realize it. It's not some race toward a goal, it's adaptation to the environment and ability to reproduce in that environment. Evolution could lead to people with no left arms beacuse of some weird virus that only afflicts people with left arms.
It's not like it progresses to anything better. And you would be hard pressed to define better for 100% of the population. I'm sure some people actually WOULD welcome genetic changes which rendered women's reproductive organs disabled without intervention. The monthly cycle isn't all that fun and some might consider not having it a welcome tradeoff if that tradeoff was a medical procedure when they wanted to have kids.
That's the weird thing about life. There is no such thing as 'Right'. At least, not universally. So trying to determine that 'genetic traits', even disabilities are sometimes advantageous.
(I realize you aren't arguing AGAINST them reproducing, so please consider this comment a more general response to both you and the people who seem to think that we should be striving to some genetic perfection, as if that concept even made sense)
Not only is it ok to do with people, it's also pretty helpful. In fact, it's pretty much the basis for any demographical assumption.
Hang out at the mall, typically around 4pm-8pm, with a bunch of people aged 14-17 and I can be fairly sure that your texting plan is well utilized.
Take a look at a bus headed towards a slots 'casino'. You can see everyone in the bus but the driver is 60+ years old. Want to wager on the age of the person in the lavatory?
Stop by the maternity ward of a hospital. Glance through the glass and take a guess at the age of the person in the third crib from the right.
The nursery example above I like because for these new stars, there are regions where stars tend to be of similar age, composition, dispersal density. If you look at a region of space where everything is roughly the same age, or same type, or composition, it would be exceptionally odd to find something that was different.
A perfect situation to apply Occam's Razor in my opinion. If everything else is pretty much normal to the region, then you would need a special case to describe something not normal to the area. For example:
1. Planet formed elsewhere, and wandered in just as the stars formed. (Requires extra steps for this to be true, and the original hypothesis to be false)
2. Planet formed before the stars in the region and the stars formed later. (Requires the planet to acquire enough gas to become large, but somehow stopped aggregating matter in a region which has enough to form stars, long enough for OTHER gravitationally strong objects to amass enough to becoem stars)
I can go on, but it gets complex.
A planet forming elsewhere would have an extremely high velocity relative to the velocity of the stars in the region. If you can detect it now, then you can detect it later. And 100 LY is close enough that you wouldn't have to wait long to determine the magnitude of that motion. You would know if it was 'just passing through', and since it is a rogue planet, by definition it isn't caught up with any of the stars and thus 'just passing through means it must be at least as old as the distance from the 'formation region' / velocity. But if it is travelling with the stars of that region, then it is very unlikely that it originated elsewhere and thus the question of "How could a very massive planet form in a region with enough matter to form fully fledged stars PAUSE in it's aggregation of matter?"
First, in the summary you forget to identify the distance: 100ly. Well, that pretty much rules out any worry of a collision even if at such a distance the alignment would be astronomically unlikely to be one which would allow for a collision.
Second, why does anyone care if there is a 'spike' in discussion with the 2012 doomsayers? You think there WOULDN'T be a spike in discussion around December 2012? And who cares if there is? The good news, is that by January, all the 2012 end of the world nonsense will be over (Even if they are right;) )
My problem isn't any of that however. My problem is THIS travesty from the article:
One tricky part is determining if rogue planet candidates are as massive as the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, further along in stellar evolution but without enough mass to spark the nuclear fusion that causes starlight.
It's so freaking wrong I can't even parse it to bitch about it in any specific manner. And to me, that's the worst thing that could happen. If I can't complain, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
You ignore risk. I'm a former Flight Test Engineer. I work with pilots, the best man at my wedding is a professional pilot, and I'll tell you about some aspects which aren't covered in comparisons of start to finish salaries.
Rate of increase: This is a guess, but I'm pretty sure that a MD reaches a 100k salary long before a pilot reaches a 100k salary. Sure, ending at the same salary sounds comparable, but reaching 100k at age 40 is a hell of a lot better than reaching 100k at age 50.
Job Security Risks. A pilot is subjected to a very high risk that they can lose their career over things which are no fault of their own.
First, I'm going to exclude 'rockstar' positions. Neurosurgeon, Fighter Pilots, and personal pilots for billionaires are fringe cases.
A medical doctor may invest $100k in education and start at a $30k/yr job, but that is pretty much guaranteed to lead to a well paying job later on as long as they do their job. As a doctor, if you follow the rules, you aren't likely to lose your license. If your health deteriorates, it will be a while before you can't function as a doctor, and afterward you can teach/consult/etc. If you lose your hand because you were an idiot and reached into a lawnmower, a general practitioner won't be prevented from doing their job.
Now, lets look at what can happen to a pilot:
Medical Issues: Vision loss? Well, your job is toast. You can keep using glasses for a while, but it doesn't take much beyond simple deterioration to lose your medical cert. Survive cancer? A coworker had melanoma. He had to go for special (and more frequent) medical evaluations as a result. Even though it was surgically removed. The increased scrutiny was permanent. As far as I know, cancer is one of those things that takes a bit longer than an 8 hour flight to progress from 'I feel fine' to 'Drops dead'. Heart conditions sure, melanoma? really? Speaking of heart conditions, hope you don't ever get one. Or lose a hand, or an eye, or have a seizure, or any limb, or...
Old Age: Maybe you love your job, maybe you just need the money. But you are not allowed to work as long as a doctor can work if they choose to do so. So you miss out on many years of that 'high' salary.
Mistakes: A doctor makes a mistake, well, the results can be pretty varied, but consider a family practictioner. He isn't making emergency decisions, maybe he recommends a less effective statin drug than he could. Maybe he misses something critical like a heart murmer. Well, in a couple years, if it isn't caught between then, a single person may experience heart failure (or not). Surgeons are a special case, but it is very rare that a surgeon screws up and kills himself, the patient, and everyone in the room.
So a pilot screws up: Well, lets ignore the obvious killing himself and 100-400 other people. We KNOW that's a serious risk. But what happens if the pilot screws up, but ends up fixing the situation anyway? He is at much greater risk of losing his license than a MD is at losing their license. First, it's EASY to identify when pilots make mistakes. Their actions are defined by checklists, routines, and obvious and instantaneous results. MDs? Well, maybe he missed the heart murmer, or maybe it just wasn't there when he checked. Was that statin less effective? Yeah... maybe, well it's hard to tell.
I'm not trying to list out everything here, but there are some serious drawbacks to being a pilot which can instantly kill your career. And unfortunately, a pilot's career without a license is not worth much.
In general, I agree with you. However I find it to be 'distasteful' that so many patents are not intended to recoup cost and earn money on the invention, but are instead used to block out competition on tangential products.
Inventing a new Wodidgit and patenting it, then demanding royalties from anyone using the new Wodidgit is one thing. However, patenting the interface to the Wodidgit and then preventing anyone from producing compatible support products is one aspect of the patent system I hate.
When I worked for a major defense contractor, one of the biggest draws for acquiring a new contract wasn't that the contractor would be able to produce 30,000 vehicles and earn money on the sale of them. What had them giddy was the fact that they were planning on patenting everything down to the shape of the door hinge so that no one else could EVER support that vehicle except for the original prime contractor. In 20 years, that vehicle would be replaced, and the supply/repair/service market would be dead from the perspective of the original design. In the meantime the original Prime contractor would have a stranglehold on any new 'competitions' because they OWNED the design of the vehicle. Who could submit a bid if they then would have to purchase from the original Prime the designs/models/licenses.
Again, I have no issue with people earning a royalty for their patents, but I think that there should be an exception for support/access/interfaces to that patented object.
In the corporate world with things like the new Apple connector its annoying because it fragments the market and I don't get to choose from ALL of the speaker docks, etc. Instead I get to choose my phone, and then I get to choose from a subset of docks which never seem to have the features/look I want. It divides up the engineering/design world for no good reason.
In the government contractor world, it's really annoying that the government doesn't demand rights to designs/interfaces/etc and provide them back in competitions as GFI. (It never reaches the competition stage many times, because the sole source justification will often state 'xyz company owns the design of abc therefore there is no competitor'.
Yeah... you also missed the part where tipping in cash sucks if you are NOT the server but are also due a percentage of the tips.
I worked as a busboy at a restaurant and I was owed a share of the tips. The 'going' rate for recording tips was 50% of what was received. I was supposed to get a 10% cut of the original tip. So let me tell you that it was really annoying to track just how much the servers were cutting out of my pay when cash was exchanged.
You know, that's simply the byproduct of games being imperfect simulations. It's ok for the most part because games are imperfect simulations, but I get drawn to games which don't reward the twitch aspect as much.
For 'realistic' FPS games, think about how unnatural a flick of the wrist 180 degree turn would look like if executed in real life. In a way, I'd actually like to see some more games which place greater emphasis on tactics and caution than pure leaping through the air make your mouse align the dot and click mechanics. The problem is a lot of the solutions or 'handicaps' imposed such as constricting aiming reticles are unnatural themselves.
Hell, I'm just happy when I can find a game that has friendly fire turned on.
There is a key feature about mobile phones and satellite dishes which makes them highly appealing to people of lower income.
The phones are mobile, and the dishes provide information flow from a region far beyond the local geographic area.
People have a need to 'ingest' news and information. And for a lot of these people, they speak a different language, or are culturally segregated from the local populace. A satellite dish allows them to receive information from their region or group regardless of their current location.
When you rent, or aren't sure just where you will be living in the next 3 months, do you want to go through the process of getting a new landline run to your location? Or activating an old one? Do you then go through the process of telling everyone your new number (number portability is a recent development and may not exist in certain nations)
Or you can get a cell phone and buy minutes. That way you can be contacted, and you can contact people.
If you are homeless and trying to get a job. What do you give out for a phone number? The phone number at your homeless shelter? Who wants to reveal to an employer they are homeless. Instead, they can give people a cell number, and then no one has to know they are homeless, and they can be contacted quickly regardless of which shelter they are currently residing at.
I won't call you an ass. (but I expect someone to come in and move the goalposts from 'cellphone' to 'smartphone')
There is a serious problem of believing in our own hype. It's one thing when the enemy believes that you CAN do something (which you can't, but want them to believe you can), it's a much more dangerous situation where YOU believe you can do something (but cannot reliably do it).
The deification of special forces in popular culture is very dangerous. These people are human beings, physically fit and specially trained to be sure, but regular human beings with an immense logistical system to support them.
I worry tremendously because the general population (and government leaders) will permit actions which while technically possible, are tremendously risky from the perspective of national interests. We blind ourselves with our successes and can easily slip into a might makes right belief system. I feel that we hear far too often the phrase 'teach em a lesson'.
Believing that we can or should 'teach lessons' through the use of our special forces is incredibly dangerous and actions like the raid to kill Osama should only be undertaken sparingly because not only is the risk high, but without maintaining the moral highground it will become an incredibly dangerous world when OTHER actors being to reach out and 'teach' their own 'lessons' on a similar scale.
Don't forget the $3 administrative fee, the $0.95 kiosk fee, the $1.25 green transition fee, the $3 federal compliance surcharge, and the $2.85 regulatory cost surcharge.
A game cabinet being refurbished by replacing, repairing worn out parts is a hell of a lot less complex than attempting to repair a system which has intentionally wiped it's memory of the important software and likely burned out irreplaceable portions of it's internal circuitry.
Yeah, you can theoretically rebuild portions of it, but if you have the technology to rebuild such things... well you already have the technology to BUILD such things in the first place.
You don't understand. This isnt about Samsung vs Apple. This is about Apple vs the UK.
A judge is god of his courtroom. Just as the saying goes don't fight the police, fight in court. Well the followup to that is don't taunt a judge in his domain.
Feel free to request a review of a judicial order, but you better be starting to comply immediately if you aren't granted a temporary stay on the order pending review.
A judge has the authority to toss your ass in jail if he thinks you show contempt for the court. Unless you are in the US and trying to perform civil disobedience in order to have standing to constitutionally challenge a law, its always bad to piss of a judge.
The judge can also find you in contempt even if you follow the exact letter of the law. That's why they are called judges. We give them the authority to use judgement in applying most laws. They can ruin your day.
Unless it is a student loan and the beneficiary is a cosigner.
Normally I'd argue that the cosigner does own that debt as well, but the point of a cosigner is due to the fact that students often have no credit rating, and thus the cosigner is agreeing to make sure that the payments are met in case the person turns out to be a deadbeat. It really wasn't intended to be to ensure that the payments were met in case the person turns out to be dead.
At specific phases of the video with phase selection as an output of a hash of a UID for the video do something like this:
Alter the hue/intensity or some visual element of the video in a single quadrant of the frame for a period of 5 seconds. In a 60 second timeframe, you will have 12 segments, and unless I need more coffee, by altering just one of the quadrants per segment, you should have 5^12 possible values for that 'watermark'. (over 244 million unique values)
This type of watermarking would be resiliant.
1. Lots of variables means lots of bits for encoding. Add in some error correction to account for the video being cropped, or subdivided.
2. Varying the time of code insertion by hash means the maker will always know exactly where to look for the code. Combined with the knowledge of what the code should be (if you have a suspect, you check his ID first), you can make a lot of assumptions. Even if compression errors or scrubbing attempts obliterate portions of the code, statistical analysis can show that even 'erasure' of the watermark results in patterns which can only be generated when a specific code is erased. (I've seen a few shops in my day) An example is encrypted data. One of the biggest cues that something is encrypted isn't that it appears to be white noise, but that the white noise itself is too perfectly random. Obviously there are circumventions for this, but the subject of this are pirates and not the NSA and thus not likely to be using sophisticated obfuscation techniques.
3. It is VERY unlikely that people will know to, or how to remove watermarking based on differential variation of visual features. To a person, a slight deviation in hue of a portion of a video frame with respect to the rest of the frame is invisible. To a machine which knows where to look, it can be as obvious as a bright orange octagon superimposed over the center of the frame. Ie: people aren't going to know there is something to remove, let alone where or what.
4. This is just something I'm typing up over my lunch break without really trying to hard. I believe that this type of watermarking would resist degredation of the data due to compression, is impossible to detect without intentionally looking for it with sophisticated analysis techniques, and isn't likely to be removable if even minor protections are added. In other words, I'm sure there are people better at this than I am and could come up with some rather robust watermarking systems, but even those shouldn't require PhD levels of expertise.
One simple way to increase robustness is to alter a second variable based on the first. ie: if hue is up, intensity is down. (or down only on an XOR with timestamp of the watermarking which is unknown to the video user but known to the producer). Encode that variable as something other than the quadrant, and it becomes much harder to detect by unsophisticated means.
That said, there ARE tools and professionals out there who CAN devise ways to detect watermarking, but again, I'm talking about the kind of person who PAYS for this stuff despite the vast amount that is available for free. I don't think they are thinking that hard about this.
Some programs DO need access to some sensitive information. For example, a text messaging application obviously needs to be able to send text messages. However, such a program should NOT be sending text messages without me knowing it. (or accessing the internet, etc)
What I want, is the ability to 'flag' certain accesses such that if a program attempts to send a text message, it is either logged, or I am notified of the action. I'd then be able to know if an app which rightfully does need that permission, is using it in an unacceptable manner.
For example: One app requests permission to access my contact information. Normally that is a flat rejection on my part. However, the app developer made the statement in the app description that the app will only access the contacts if the user activates a specific feature. Currently however, I do not know of a way to verify that the app would behave and ONLY access the contacts upon user initiation. It has the permission, it currently doesn't 'need' to ask again, and that's what bugs me.
There are plenty of other apps which have a legitimate need to access the internet, gps data, etc. But most of them don't need that data ALL the time.
Anyone know of a way to control, or at least monitor that behavior? I know I could always run some sort of network sniffer for internet connections, but for things internal to the phone like contacts, or data access, I don't know how that would work.
The same way DNA only proves that a specific DNA sequence was present at the place swabbed. However, when it is combined with other pieces of evidence it becomes a stronger indicator that the person is the one utilizing the ID / IP address.
ie: an IP address on it's own doesn't mean anything, but an IP address which is assigned to a router which also happens to be logging into accounts, posting personal messages, and for some reason also has a photo of the person sitting at their computer at that time is actually solid evidence.
However, the strength of identification is irrelevant. They identified him as the defendent, he didn't show up. The judge was likely legally required to find in favor of the plaintiff with a default judgement.
He COULD have made statements like yours, and they would have to consider it. However, by not showing up, it all became irrelevant.
The plaintiff could have named literally ANYONE, and as long as they proved that they served the notice to that entity in the legal manner, this judgement would have been the same if that entity did not respond.
You could, in theory, file a suit against Donald Trump, and claim that hacked your computer, and purchased 500 songs through Amazon. If you show that Donald Trump was informed of the pending case in a manner which the judge deems sufficient and Donald Trump does not respond, you WOULD win that case with a default judgement.
It's a good lesson to all of us to never ignore ANY legal summons, and always make sure that you have explicit documentation for any judgement or dismissal, or payment. Hell, I've kept the receipt for a paid parking ticket for years because it's only a database typo away from Paid: Y to Paid: N (and a hell of a lot of late fees)
I've known people who had computer databases reinstate criminal charges against them due to unclear record keeping. In one case, the case was a double charge. The man plea bargained to plead guilty to one charge and the other charge would be dropped. 50 years later, when the records were digitized, the input process took the guilty plea and applied it to both charges originally recorded. The result was that the database now identifies this man as having plead guilty to BOTH charges.
The scary part, is that the Judge, the Prosecutor, the Defense Attorney, the Secretary, and even the Police Officer passed away over 30 years ago. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any paperwork of the plea (and the attorney's records are probably long gone as well)
He only found out when he applied for a concealed weapons permit, and they rejected him for 'lying' about having no convictions. He knows it is wrong, but how the hell does he go about fighting it without paying hundreds of dollars to a lawyer to correct the record. He is approaching 70 years old, and just decided that it's not worth fighting because he can't afford to.
His experience is why I'm exceptionally paranoid regarding any legal interaction and save documents for years beyond the normal recommended retention periods.
In standard Slashdot fashion, I'm going to suggest something that ISN'T what the author requested, but it is something I found very useful.
In our office, we have an HP digital 'sender'. It is little more than a glorified sheet feed scanner, but it is VERY useful for me. I take a lot of handwritten notes in meetings, and I'm never using the same notepad or pen. The result is that while I'd love to automatically digitize my notes on the fly, there would be many times in which I would forget the digital pen and be stuck with 2-3 sheets of paper that required extra effort to digitize (if it was possible).
Relying on the scanner station is actually VERY simple. I just grab my notes, drop them into the sheet feeder, and press the button (preset for me). in about 2s/page, the machine scans my notes, converts it to a PDF, and either emails it to me or stores in my LAN receiving folder. I'm not sure if the station can do OCR on the fly (I'm sure some do), but a simple script can kick off an OCR job whenever a file is received from the document scanner.
The entire process can be unattended, and for me, I just grab my notes and drop them right into the shredder. (It took me about a month of notes before I trusted the machine not to mess up).
However, it works pretty well once you get it going. My notes get stored as a PDF, and I don't have to worry about compatability with a pen/tablet or batteries, or losing the pen, or buying special paper.
It's not a perfect solution, but I've found it very useful, and if you don't find a compatible digitizing pen, this might be a fallback option, albeit a non-portable option.
Of course, you are correct. Assuming of course, that pretty much everything else is equal or better. Unless there is a critical problem to avoid, or a specific need which is not currently possible, then improved accuracy may be worse if you consider it from the perspective of changing what works.
I've run into issues like this with systems I've designed (for the DoD). I accidentally let slip that a performance boost was possible. Well, of course a few months down the line I was expected to include that as a requirement. There was no real reason to include the performance boost, the current requirement was sufficient to cover all potential CONOPS, and it really got into what I call the "Star Trek Operations" (Reroute power through the tertiary oscillator to inverse the deflector....) ie: pulling off the cover and messing with the internals to get a 10% performance boost in an 'oh crap' situation. The problem was that the current performance was sufficient, and the boost required engineering work to implement. The result was a more expensive product that provided more performance than necessary.
With something like 1m of accuracy over the width of the pacific, it sounds great in terms of 'Well, you will miss that 1 meter if you try to pass within 0.9m of a rock. The reality is, 'We have take an extra hour at some point to check our actual position based on known signals.' I wouldn't be surprised if there were 'beacons' pre-positioned which would allow for recalibration if such a thing were actually necessary. Hell, you could probably just use existing info sources (offshore rigs, data cables, passive sonar measurements) to verify your location based on pre-recorded data.
Would 1m of accuracy be worth upgrading the entire logistics chain, updating the massive amount of software that is likely tuned to the current gyros, train the sailors to use/repair/replace....
There is just so much cost that will occur even if everything else is equal.
Even if something is a law, it is still subordinate to the Constitution.
The Congress can (and do) pass many laws which are later struck down as unConstitutional. In fact, there is nothing to prevent them from doing so, nor is there any actual penalty other than potential bad press. In fact, the 'bad press' could be 'good press' depending on their constituency. Consider the flag burning laws. These were struck down as unConstitutional but are sometimes used by the sponsor of the bill as a campaign point. It all depends on the perspective of the people who elect a particular representative/senator.
What you are getting confused by (and rightfully so) is what constitutes 'plain sight'. Certainly a combination x-ray/sonic/recombiner of reflected/refracted light which operated from a van outside a home but can produce an image as if the officer were inside the home would be viewed as not 'plain sight', it augments the senses of the officers as would be typically expected. However, does that augmentation pertain to chemical indicators which may be floating out of the home?
It's a grey area, and that's why the court is evaluating it.
It is going to be an ever repeating case as technology makes previously impossible techniques ubiquitous. It's a byproduct of the fact that many of our laws and protections were written based on current capability and intentionally or unintentionally ignored the potential for abuse as the world changes.
It's why we have the weird bi-polarism in the US government at the moment where it respects that a letter in a paper envelope is inviolate without a warrant but an electronic message sitting in your inbox is 'non-private'.
To bring that a step further - say everybody and their dog (yeah, I went there) could, in fact, look through your walls and admire you and your fiance's silhouettes - do you still believe that 'curtains closed' would be a solid legal basis for indicting those who watch you through those walls and precluding authorities from doing so unless they had a warrant?
You are completely misinterpreting the concept of 'expectation of privacy'. Technical capability to perform an act does not imply that such an act is legal.
A very good example of this is US Mail. It is trivially simple to examine the contents of a First Class mail envelope. The container itself is nothing more than a single sheet of paper. Certainly it is much easier to defeat that barrier than it is to use your 'X-ray vision' through walls example. Yet consider the fact that even this most trivial of privacy measures is STRONGLY protected by the 4th Amendment. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it, why not get it straight from the Government:
"First-Class letters and parcels are protected against search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and, as such, cannot be opened without a search warrant." -Direct quote from the USPS.gov website.
So no, even if it were trivially easy to surveil, such surveillance must be within the bounds of the Constitution.
Slashdot Mirror
So how do you reconcile this eventual outcome:
Corp A: newspaper
Corp B: movie studio
Corp C: social cause organization.
Can the government censor Corp A? Can they censor Corp B? Can they censor Corp C?
If the government can censor Corp C but not B, what if corp C produced a movie for their cause?
In your attempt to exclude organizations from inheriting the rights of the people who make up those organizations, you end up granting the government the authority to censor individuals by granting authority over all potential communication mediums beyond simple person to person speech.
The only way to get around that is to either grant very specific exemptions to government authority for certain types of corporations, that's a non starter because it would rely upon the government to define and regulate who falls into those corporations. In addition, it would default to a ban on speech for new communication methods until it was pre-approved for use.
An example of this in practice now is the broadcast television market vs content unregulated markets (internet/subscription/etc). Broadcast television has to pull a lot of punches or content because it falls afoul of the FCC's guidance.
Imagine now, that the FCC were not only regulating so-called vulgar content, but also tasked with evaluating political content! An organization would have to be very careful not to publish too much speech which could be considered 'organization' speech and not 'person speech'.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we really can't declare organizations of people to not inherit the rights of the people who make up those organizations without vastly reevaluating that which forms the very foundation of our system of governance.
A few things, some nitpicky, some major:
Nitpicky:
Use of the term evolution in that context, but it's not terribly inaccurate.
'Failed star' As if it tried, but just couldn't pull it off.
Major: ... a planet ;)
A decent article shouldn't call something a Brown Dwarf star and define it to be a 'star' which failed to achieve fusion. If it failed to achieve fusion, then it isn't a star, but
Sure, it may not be much fusion, it may only be deuterium, but it is still fusion. A brown dwarf which isn't fusing anymore isn't a 'failed to become a star' star, but a star which has ceased fusion. Not hot enough to be a white dwarf, and cooling to become a black dwarf.
The odd phrasing tripped me up, but the definition was a bit silly.
For example, if you go by their definition of brown dwarf star being a mass which failed to achieve fusion, then a brown dwarf star which isn't in orbit around another star would be 'A ROGUE PLANET', thus the whole premise of trying to differentiate a this object from a brown dwarf star would be utterly meaningless.
Oh I don't think it's just one more step if you are comparing making decisions regarding animals considered property to making decisions as to which other people get to procreate.
And no, evolution is still here. You just don't realize it. It's not some race toward a goal, it's adaptation to the environment and ability to reproduce in that environment. Evolution could lead to people with no left arms beacuse of some weird virus that only afflicts people with left arms.
It's not like it progresses to anything better. And you would be hard pressed to define better for 100% of the population. I'm sure some people actually WOULD welcome genetic changes which rendered women's reproductive organs disabled without intervention. The monthly cycle isn't all that fun and some might consider not having it a welcome tradeoff if that tradeoff was a medical procedure when they wanted to have kids.
That's the weird thing about life. There is no such thing as 'Right'. At least, not universally. So trying to determine that 'genetic traits', even disabilities are sometimes advantageous.
(I realize you aren't arguing AGAINST them reproducing, so please consider this comment a more general response to both you and the people who seem to think that we should be striving to some genetic perfection, as if that concept even made sense)
You just reminded me of something far scarier than the 2012 Mayan doomsayers when nothing happens.
What if, by pure dumb luck, something DOES happen? You know, I'd almost welcome Armageddon because there would be no living with them then.
Not only is it ok to do with people, it's also pretty helpful. In fact, it's pretty much the basis for any demographical assumption.
Hang out at the mall, typically around 4pm-8pm, with a bunch of people aged 14-17 and I can be fairly sure that your texting plan is well utilized.
Take a look at a bus headed towards a slots 'casino'. You can see everyone in the bus but the driver is 60+ years old. Want to wager on the age of the person in the lavatory?
Stop by the maternity ward of a hospital. Glance through the glass and take a guess at the age of the person in the third crib from the right.
The nursery example above I like because for these new stars, there are regions where stars tend to be of similar age, composition, dispersal density. If you look at a region of space where everything is roughly the same age, or same type, or composition, it would be exceptionally odd to find something that was different.
A perfect situation to apply Occam's Razor in my opinion. If everything else is pretty much normal to the region, then you would need a special case to describe something not normal to the area. For example:
1. Planet formed elsewhere, and wandered in just as the stars formed. (Requires extra steps for this to be true, and the original hypothesis to be false)
2. Planet formed before the stars in the region and the stars formed later. (Requires the planet to acquire enough gas to become large, but somehow stopped aggregating matter in a region which has enough to form stars, long enough for OTHER gravitationally strong objects to amass enough to becoem stars)
I can go on, but it gets complex.
A planet forming elsewhere would have an extremely high velocity relative to the velocity of the stars in the region. If you can detect it now, then you can detect it later. And 100 LY is close enough that you wouldn't have to wait long to determine the magnitude of that motion. You would know if it was 'just passing through', and since it is a rogue planet, by definition it isn't caught up with any of the stars and thus 'just passing through means it must be at least as old as the distance from the 'formation region' / velocity. But if it is travelling with the stars of that region, then it is very unlikely that it originated elsewhere and thus the question of "How could a very massive planet form in a region with enough matter to form fully fledged stars PAUSE in it's aggregation of matter?"
First, in the summary you forget to identify the distance: 100ly. Well, that pretty much rules out any worry of a collision even if at such a distance the alignment would be astronomically unlikely to be one which would allow for a collision.
Second, why does anyone care if there is a 'spike' in discussion with the 2012 doomsayers? You think there WOULDN'T be a spike in discussion around December 2012? And who cares if there is? The good news, is that by January, all the 2012 end of the world nonsense will be over (Even if they are right ;) )
My problem isn't any of that however. My problem is THIS travesty from the article:
One tricky part is determining if rogue planet candidates are as massive as the "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, further along in stellar evolution but without enough mass to spark the nuclear fusion that causes starlight.
It's so freaking wrong I can't even parse it to bitch about it in any specific manner. And to me, that's the worst thing that could happen. If I can't complain, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
You ignore risk. I'm a former Flight Test Engineer. I work with pilots, the best man at my wedding is a professional pilot, and I'll tell you about some aspects which aren't covered in comparisons of start to finish salaries.
Rate of increase: This is a guess, but I'm pretty sure that a MD reaches a 100k salary long before a pilot reaches a 100k salary. Sure, ending at the same salary sounds comparable, but reaching 100k at age 40 is a hell of a lot better than reaching 100k at age 50.
Job Security Risks. A pilot is subjected to a very high risk that they can lose their career over things which are no fault of their own.
First, I'm going to exclude 'rockstar' positions. Neurosurgeon, Fighter Pilots, and personal pilots for billionaires are fringe cases.
A medical doctor may invest $100k in education and start at a $30k/yr job, but that is pretty much guaranteed to lead to a well paying job later on as long as they do their job. As a doctor, if you follow the rules, you aren't likely to lose your license. If your health deteriorates, it will be a while before you can't function as a doctor, and afterward you can teach/consult/etc. If you lose your hand because you were an idiot and reached into a lawnmower, a general practitioner won't be prevented from doing their job.
Now, lets look at what can happen to a pilot:
Medical Issues: Vision loss? Well, your job is toast. You can keep using glasses for a while, but it doesn't take much beyond simple deterioration to lose your medical cert. Survive cancer? A coworker had melanoma. He had to go for special (and more frequent) medical evaluations as a result. Even though it was surgically removed. The increased scrutiny was permanent. As far as I know, cancer is one of those things that takes a bit longer than an 8 hour flight to progress from 'I feel fine' to 'Drops dead'. Heart conditions sure, melanoma? really? Speaking of heart conditions, hope you don't ever get one. Or lose a hand, or an eye, or have a seizure, or any limb, or ...
Old Age: Maybe you love your job, maybe you just need the money. But you are not allowed to work as long as a doctor can work if they choose to do so. So you miss out on many years of that 'high' salary.
Mistakes: A doctor makes a mistake, well, the results can be pretty varied, but consider a family practictioner. He isn't making emergency decisions, maybe he recommends a less effective statin drug than he could. Maybe he misses something critical like a heart murmer. Well, in a couple years, if it isn't caught between then, a single person may experience heart failure (or not). Surgeons are a special case, but it is very rare that a surgeon screws up and kills himself, the patient, and everyone in the room.
So a pilot screws up: Well, lets ignore the obvious killing himself and 100-400 other people. We KNOW that's a serious risk. But what happens if the pilot screws up, but ends up fixing the situation anyway? He is at much greater risk of losing his license than a MD is at losing their license. First, it's EASY to identify when pilots make mistakes. Their actions are defined by checklists, routines, and obvious and instantaneous results. MDs? Well, maybe he missed the heart murmer, or maybe it just wasn't there when he checked. Was that statin less effective? Yeah... maybe, well it's hard to tell.
I'm not trying to list out everything here, but there are some serious drawbacks to being a pilot which can instantly kill your career. And unfortunately, a pilot's career without a license is not worth much.
In general, I agree with you. However I find it to be 'distasteful' that so many patents are not intended to recoup cost and earn money on the invention, but are instead used to block out competition on tangential products.
Inventing a new Wodidgit and patenting it, then demanding royalties from anyone using the new Wodidgit is one thing. However, patenting the interface to the Wodidgit and then preventing anyone from producing compatible support products is one aspect of the patent system I hate.
When I worked for a major defense contractor, one of the biggest draws for acquiring a new contract wasn't that the contractor would be able to produce 30,000 vehicles and earn money on the sale of them. What had them giddy was the fact that they were planning on patenting everything down to the shape of the door hinge so that no one else could EVER support that vehicle except for the original prime contractor. In 20 years, that vehicle would be replaced, and the supply/repair/service market would be dead from the perspective of the original design. In the meantime the original Prime contractor would have a stranglehold on any new 'competitions' because they OWNED the design of the vehicle. Who could submit a bid if they then would have to purchase from the original Prime the designs/models/licenses.
Again, I have no issue with people earning a royalty for their patents, but I think that there should be an exception for support/access/interfaces to that patented object.
In the corporate world with things like the new Apple connector its annoying because it fragments the market and I don't get to choose from ALL of the speaker docks, etc. Instead I get to choose my phone, and then I get to choose from a subset of docks which never seem to have the features/look I want. It divides up the engineering/design world for no good reason.
In the government contractor world, it's really annoying that the government doesn't demand rights to designs/interfaces/etc and provide them back in competitions as GFI. (It never reaches the competition stage many times, because the sole source justification will often state 'xyz company owns the design of abc therefore there is no competitor'.
Bugs the hell out of me.
Yeah. File the paperwork and then bitch AFTER it gets denied. Then you have a story. Before then, gripe on an internet forum.
Yeah... you also missed the part where tipping in cash sucks if you are NOT the server but are also due a percentage of the tips.
I worked as a busboy at a restaurant and I was owed a share of the tips. The 'going' rate for recording tips was 50% of what was received. I was supposed to get a 10% cut of the original tip. So let me tell you that it was really annoying to track just how much the servers were cutting out of my pay when cash was exchanged.
You know, that's simply the byproduct of games being imperfect simulations. It's ok for the most part because games are imperfect simulations, but I get drawn to games which don't reward the twitch aspect as much.
For 'realistic' FPS games, think about how unnatural a flick of the wrist 180 degree turn would look like if executed in real life. In a way, I'd actually like to see some more games which place greater emphasis on tactics and caution than pure leaping through the air make your mouse align the dot and click mechanics. The problem is a lot of the solutions or 'handicaps' imposed such as constricting aiming reticles are unnatural themselves.
Hell, I'm just happy when I can find a game that has friendly fire turned on.
There is a key feature about mobile phones and satellite dishes which makes them highly appealing to people of lower income.
The phones are mobile, and the dishes provide information flow from a region far beyond the local geographic area.
People have a need to 'ingest' news and information. And for a lot of these people, they speak a different language, or are culturally segregated from the local populace. A satellite dish allows them to receive information from their region or group regardless of their current location.
When you rent, or aren't sure just where you will be living in the next 3 months, do you want to go through the process of getting a new landline run to your location? Or activating an old one? Do you then go through the process of telling everyone your new number (number portability is a recent development and may not exist in certain nations)
Or you can get a cell phone and buy minutes. That way you can be contacted, and you can contact people.
If you are homeless and trying to get a job. What do you give out for a phone number? The phone number at your homeless shelter? Who wants to reveal to an employer they are homeless. Instead, they can give people a cell number, and then no one has to know they are homeless, and they can be contacted quickly regardless of which shelter they are currently residing at.
I won't call you an ass. (but I expect someone to come in and move the goalposts from 'cellphone' to 'smartphone')
There is a serious problem of believing in our own hype. It's one thing when the enemy believes that you CAN do something (which you can't, but want them to believe you can), it's a much more dangerous situation where YOU believe you can do something (but cannot reliably do it).
The deification of special forces in popular culture is very dangerous. These people are human beings, physically fit and specially trained to be sure, but regular human beings with an immense logistical system to support them.
I worry tremendously because the general population (and government leaders) will permit actions which while technically possible, are tremendously risky from the perspective of national interests. We blind ourselves with our successes and can easily slip into a might makes right belief system. I feel that we hear far too often the phrase 'teach em a lesson'.
Believing that we can or should 'teach lessons' through the use of our special forces is incredibly dangerous and actions like the raid to kill Osama should only be undertaken sparingly because not only is the risk high, but without maintaining the moral highground it will become an incredibly dangerous world when OTHER actors being to reach out and 'teach' their own 'lessons' on a similar scale.
It's a racket.
Don't forget the $3 administrative fee, the $0.95 kiosk fee, the $1.25 green transition fee, the $3 federal compliance surcharge, and the $2.85 regulatory cost surcharge.
A game cabinet being refurbished by replacing, repairing worn out parts is a hell of a lot less complex than attempting to repair a system which has intentionally wiped it's memory of the important software and likely burned out irreplaceable portions of it's internal circuitry.
Yeah, you can theoretically rebuild portions of it, but if you have the technology to rebuild such things... well you already have the technology to BUILD such things in the first place.
You don't understand. This isnt about Samsung vs Apple. This is about Apple vs the UK.
A judge is god of his courtroom. Just as the saying goes don't fight the police, fight in court. Well the followup to that is don't taunt a judge in his domain.
Feel free to request a review of a judicial order, but you better be starting to comply immediately if you aren't granted a temporary stay on the order pending review.
A judge has the authority to toss your ass in jail if he thinks you show contempt for the court. Unless you are in the US and trying to perform civil disobedience in order to have standing to constitutionally challenge a law, its always bad to piss of a judge.
The judge can also find you in contempt even if you follow the exact letter of the law. That's why they are called judges. We give them the authority to use judgement in applying most laws. They can ruin your day.
Unless it is a student loan and the beneficiary is a cosigner.
Normally I'd argue that the cosigner does own that debt as well, but the point of a cosigner is due to the fact that students often have no credit rating, and thus the cosigner is agreeing to make sure that the payments are met in case the person turns out to be a deadbeat. It really wasn't intended to be to ensure that the payments were met in case the person turns out to be dead.
Simple watermark:
At specific phases of the video with phase selection as an output of a hash of a UID for the video do something like this:
Alter the hue/intensity or some visual element of the video in a single quadrant of the frame for a period of 5 seconds. In a 60 second timeframe, you will have 12 segments, and unless I need more coffee, by altering just one of the quadrants per segment, you should have 5^12 possible values for that 'watermark'. (over 244 million unique values)
This type of watermarking would be resiliant.
1. Lots of variables means lots of bits for encoding. Add in some error correction to account for the video being cropped, or subdivided.
2. Varying the time of code insertion by hash means the maker will always know exactly where to look for the code. Combined with the knowledge of what the code should be (if you have a suspect, you check his ID first), you can make a lot of assumptions. Even if compression errors or scrubbing attempts obliterate portions of the code, statistical analysis can show that even 'erasure' of the watermark results in patterns which can only be generated when a specific code is erased. (I've seen a few shops in my day) An example is encrypted data. One of the biggest cues that something is encrypted isn't that it appears to be white noise, but that the white noise itself is too perfectly random. Obviously there are circumventions for this, but the subject of this are pirates and not the NSA and thus not likely to be using sophisticated obfuscation techniques.
3. It is VERY unlikely that people will know to, or how to remove watermarking based on differential variation of visual features. To a person, a slight deviation in hue of a portion of a video frame with respect to the rest of the frame is invisible. To a machine which knows where to look, it can be as obvious as a bright orange octagon superimposed over the center of the frame. Ie: people aren't going to know there is something to remove, let alone where or what.
4. This is just something I'm typing up over my lunch break without really trying to hard. I believe that this type of watermarking would resist degredation of the data due to compression, is impossible to detect without intentionally looking for it with sophisticated analysis techniques, and isn't likely to be removable if even minor protections are added. In other words, I'm sure there are people better at this than I am and could come up with some rather robust watermarking systems, but even those shouldn't require PhD levels of expertise.
One simple way to increase robustness is to alter a second variable based on the first. ie: if hue is up, intensity is down. (or down only on an XOR with timestamp of the watermarking which is unknown to the video user but known to the producer). Encode that variable as something other than the quadrant, and it becomes much harder to detect by unsophisticated means.
That said, there ARE tools and professionals out there who CAN devise ways to detect watermarking, but again, I'm talking about the kind of person who PAYS for this stuff despite the vast amount that is available for free. I don't think they are thinking that hard about this.
That only part of the problem.
Some programs DO need access to some sensitive information. For example, a text messaging application obviously needs to be able to send text messages. However, such a program should NOT be sending text messages without me knowing it. (or accessing the internet, etc)
What I want, is the ability to 'flag' certain accesses such that if a program attempts to send a text message, it is either logged, or I am notified of the action. I'd then be able to know if an app which rightfully does need that permission, is using it in an unacceptable manner.
For example: One app requests permission to access my contact information. Normally that is a flat rejection on my part. However, the app developer made the statement in the app description that the app will only access the contacts if the user activates a specific feature. Currently however, I do not know of a way to verify that the app would behave and ONLY access the contacts upon user initiation. It has the permission, it currently doesn't 'need' to ask again, and that's what bugs me.
There are plenty of other apps which have a legitimate need to access the internet, gps data, etc. But most of them don't need that data ALL the time.
Anyone know of a way to control, or at least monitor that behavior? I know I could always run some sort of network sniffer for internet connections, but for things internal to the phone like contacts, or data access, I don't know how that would work.
The same way DNA only proves that a specific DNA sequence was present at the place swabbed. However, when it is combined with other pieces of evidence it becomes a stronger indicator that the person is the one utilizing the ID / IP address.
ie: an IP address on it's own doesn't mean anything, but an IP address which is assigned to a router which also happens to be logging into accounts, posting personal messages, and for some reason also has a photo of the person sitting at their computer at that time is actually solid evidence.
However, the strength of identification is irrelevant. They identified him as the defendent, he didn't show up. The judge was likely legally required to find in favor of the plaintiff with a default judgement.
He COULD have made statements like yours, and they would have to consider it. However, by not showing up, it all became irrelevant.
The plaintiff could have named literally ANYONE, and as long as they proved that they served the notice to that entity in the legal manner, this judgement would have been the same if that entity did not respond.
You could, in theory, file a suit against Donald Trump, and claim that hacked your computer, and purchased 500 songs through Amazon. If you show that Donald Trump was informed of the pending case in a manner which the judge deems sufficient and Donald Trump does not respond, you WOULD win that case with a default judgement.
It's a good lesson to all of us to never ignore ANY legal summons, and always make sure that you have explicit documentation for any judgement or dismissal, or payment. Hell, I've kept the receipt for a paid parking ticket for years because it's only a database typo away from Paid: Y to Paid: N (and a hell of a lot of late fees)
I've known people who had computer databases reinstate criminal charges against them due to unclear record keeping. In one case, the case was a double charge. The man plea bargained to plead guilty to one charge and the other charge would be dropped. 50 years later, when the records were digitized, the input process took the guilty plea and applied it to both charges originally recorded. The result was that the database now identifies this man as having plead guilty to BOTH charges.
The scary part, is that the Judge, the Prosecutor, the Defense Attorney, the Secretary, and even the Police Officer passed away over 30 years ago. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any paperwork of the plea (and the attorney's records are probably long gone as well)
He only found out when he applied for a concealed weapons permit, and they rejected him for 'lying' about having no convictions. He knows it is wrong, but how the hell does he go about fighting it without paying hundreds of dollars to a lawyer to correct the record. He is approaching 70 years old, and just decided that it's not worth fighting because he can't afford to.
His experience is why I'm exceptionally paranoid regarding any legal interaction and save documents for years beyond the normal recommended retention periods.
In standard Slashdot fashion, I'm going to suggest something that ISN'T what the author requested, but it is something I found very useful.
In our office, we have an HP digital 'sender'. It is little more than a glorified sheet feed scanner, but it is VERY useful for me. I take a lot of handwritten notes in meetings, and I'm never using the same notepad or pen. The result is that while I'd love to automatically digitize my notes on the fly, there would be many times in which I would forget the digital pen and be stuck with 2-3 sheets of paper that required extra effort to digitize (if it was possible).
Relying on the scanner station is actually VERY simple. I just grab my notes, drop them into the sheet feeder, and press the button (preset for me). in about 2s/page, the machine scans my notes, converts it to a PDF, and either emails it to me or stores in my LAN receiving folder. I'm not sure if the station can do OCR on the fly (I'm sure some do), but a simple script can kick off an OCR job whenever a file is received from the document scanner.
The entire process can be unattended, and for me, I just grab my notes and drop them right into the shredder. (It took me about a month of notes before I trusted the machine not to mess up).
However, it works pretty well once you get it going. My notes get stored as a PDF, and I don't have to worry about compatability with a pen/tablet or batteries, or losing the pen, or buying special paper.
It's not a perfect solution, but I've found it very useful, and if you don't find a compatible digitizing pen, this might be a fallback option, albeit a non-portable option.
Of course, you are correct. Assuming of course, that pretty much everything else is equal or better. Unless there is a critical problem to avoid, or a specific need which is not currently possible, then improved accuracy may be worse if you consider it from the perspective of changing what works.
I've run into issues like this with systems I've designed (for the DoD). I accidentally let slip that a performance boost was possible. Well, of course a few months down the line I was expected to include that as a requirement. There was no real reason to include the performance boost, the current requirement was sufficient to cover all potential CONOPS, and it really got into what I call the "Star Trek Operations" (Reroute power through the tertiary oscillator to inverse the deflector....) ie: pulling off the cover and messing with the internals to get a 10% performance boost in an 'oh crap' situation. The problem was that the current performance was sufficient, and the boost required engineering work to implement. The result was a more expensive product that provided more performance than necessary.
With something like 1m of accuracy over the width of the pacific, it sounds great in terms of 'Well, you will miss that 1 meter if you try to pass within 0.9m of a rock. The reality is, 'We have take an extra hour at some point to check our actual position based on known signals.' I wouldn't be surprised if there were 'beacons' pre-positioned which would allow for recalibration if such a thing were actually necessary. Hell, you could probably just use existing info sources (offshore rigs, data cables, passive sonar measurements) to verify your location based on pre-recorded data.
Would 1m of accuracy be worth upgrading the entire logistics chain, updating the massive amount of software that is likely tuned to the current gyros, train the sailors to use/repair/replace....
There is just so much cost that will occur even if everything else is equal.
Even if something is a law, it is still subordinate to the Constitution.
The Congress can (and do) pass many laws which are later struck down as unConstitutional. In fact, there is nothing to prevent them from doing so, nor is there any actual penalty other than potential bad press. In fact, the 'bad press' could be 'good press' depending on their constituency. Consider the flag burning laws. These were struck down as unConstitutional but are sometimes used by the sponsor of the bill as a campaign point. It all depends on the perspective of the people who elect a particular representative/senator.
What you are getting confused by (and rightfully so) is what constitutes 'plain sight'. Certainly a combination x-ray/sonic/recombiner of reflected/refracted light which operated from a van outside a home but can produce an image as if the officer were inside the home would be viewed as not 'plain sight', it augments the senses of the officers as would be typically expected. However, does that augmentation pertain to chemical indicators which may be floating out of the home?
It's a grey area, and that's why the court is evaluating it.
It is going to be an ever repeating case as technology makes previously impossible techniques ubiquitous. It's a byproduct of the fact that many of our laws and protections were written based on current capability and intentionally or unintentionally ignored the potential for abuse as the world changes.
It's why we have the weird bi-polarism in the US government at the moment where it respects that a letter in a paper envelope is inviolate without a warrant but an electronic message sitting in your inbox is 'non-private'.
To bring that a step further - say everybody and their dog (yeah, I went there) could, in fact, look through your walls and admire you and your fiance's silhouettes - do you still believe that 'curtains closed' would be a solid legal basis for indicting those who watch you through those walls and precluding authorities from doing so unless they had a warrant?
You are completely misinterpreting the concept of 'expectation of privacy'. Technical capability to perform an act does not imply that such an act is legal.
A very good example of this is US Mail. It is trivially simple to examine the contents of a First Class mail envelope. The container itself is nothing more than a single sheet of paper. Certainly it is much easier to defeat that barrier than it is to use your 'X-ray vision' through walls example. Yet consider the fact that even this most trivial of privacy measures is STRONGLY protected by the 4th Amendment. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it, why not get it straight from the Government:
"First-Class letters and parcels are protected against search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and, as such, cannot be opened without a search warrant."
-Direct quote from the USPS.gov website.
So no, even if it were trivially easy to surveil, such surveillance must be within the bounds of the Constitution.