I'm not advocating a killing spree, but have you considered that you might be partially responsible for the harm done by NOT killing certain people? Would you be responsible for zombie apocalypse if you did NOT kill patient 0 before they became a zombie hanging your consience on 'killing is wrong'?
Logic gives you the pegs you need to hang your conscience on. Lack of logic is a choice, and the choice not to be logical hangs with one's conscience from the same peg. The systems of pegs the four baddies mentioned above gave their followers to hang their conciences on were flimsy compared to the systems most people hang their consiences on. The baddies' peg systems only withstood because the four baddies brutally discouraged scrutiny of them.
You might be the best realtor in the world, but you'd probably never guess that the homebuyer was looking for zombie attach defensibility. Probably would never ask.
Well, there are legitimate practical reasons why an ID number of some kind would be convenient even without Social Security, though I think Social Security of some kind is a good idea too. I thought the above was a good idea until I read someone's comment that the problem with SSNs isn't the number itself but the way it's used as an authentication credential. I think a better solution would be to have long lived ID numbers as we do today, but publish a publicly available database with all the numbers and the names of the people they belong to. That way, their use as an authentication credential would be eliminated. ( you can't use it as authenticatin because it's publically available ). One might worry that for instance websites would all then want your name and social security number, and that might prevent you from doing things like opening two gmail accounts, but that's not likely to happen because there is still no way to prove that you own the id number you claim to own when filling out a form
people would complain that 'I can't sign up because some other dude already signed up using my ID number and they weren't me.'
Really, the fact that 123-45-6789 belongs to a John H Doe is not a privacy invasion since there is still no way to connect that fact to you personally.
It would be a self policing protocol so to speak. Make the number completely useless for anything other than it's intended use and nobody will use it for anything else. Do this by making it public. The government can attach (private) data to it, and so can anyone else in their own databases, but they need not let that data out.
Of course leaked data from various sources could all be attached to the same number easily.
The other thing is, what to use for authentication when that is needed? Some places make you show up physically and use an ID card. That would work. If that's too much trouble, then maybe they don't really need to know who you really are. And you could obtain an authenticatable ID from a source that has done a physical ID check to be used online if you so choose that could be used for multiple purposes, so the effort for physical ID check would be a one time thing - reusable.
It's a security risk to let an ID out that could be used to tie leaked information about you out to the world. But that's an individual choice. At least destroying the SSN number's use as an authenticated ID keeps the govenment out of it. If there weren't an SSN, there would be another privately run authenticated numbering system in place to take it's place in no time. Let it happen I say.. At least it will work, and really be secure instead of SSN + mother's maiden name can get you whatever you want. That's ridiculous. It might even be worth it to publish mother's maiden name just to wipe that one out.
They had that story yesterday, your spec would be as complicated and hard to verify the correctness of as the OS.
Now if we had a Formal specification verifier, we could use a Formal Specification Verifier Verifier to verify the correctness of IT, then use a Formal Specification Verifier Verifier Verifier....
I read a comment that the problem is not the number but it being used for authentication credentials.
How true. The answer is still simple, requiring even less will - the government should publicise all social security numbers in a freely available database. Then they become completely worthless as authentication credentials, and the practice will cease.
How about we scrap SSN's and have transaction ids. The taxpayer gives whatever business their current transaction id, then requests a new one from the government invalidating the old one. That old one is then only worth a damn from the time it was issued to the time a new one was requested. The government keeps a list of all your transaction ids, and the dates during which they were valid. NO SSN REQUIRED. Care would be taken not to issue the same transaction_id while it is still valid for someone else ( only one person at a time can have a given transaction id ).
The government should issue a new social security number via a website on demand to any citizen that requests one. The government would always have your current number on file to use for it's purposes, and anyone else would be left with an invalid number. The value of social security number for nefarious purposes would decrease. Of course government records of all previous ssns would be kept, so that for instance a loan that you took out two years ago could still be traced to you if need be, but if someone claimed that you took a loan out under that SSN a week ago, when you changed your SSN a year ago to something else would be denied the ability to fsck up your credit.
Yep, and people who think they have a measure for it usually have an agenda, and define success according to their agenda. If they want more people like X in the world then being like X ends up being their working definition of success.
Encrypting one's entire filesystem ( especially on a laptop ) is a common corporate policy to prevent a stolen laptop from resulting in bad guys getting company data. Having such software installed is common for legitimate reasons.
A promising looking p2p data storage system which meets your requirements is this: http://www.madore.org/~david/misc/freespeech.html. It's based on the fact that the same data can be interpreted in more than one way. 128k of bytes can be interpreted by another 128k of bytes as an MP3 song fragment, or by yet another 128 k of bytes as an illegal list of credit card numbers.
There is supposed to be a requirement that a patent not be awarded if the idea would be obvious to anyone skilled in the area. Seeing as XML was designed to have 'applications' such as word processor document formats how is this not obvious? It's like having a patent on cutting boards with a saw. The saw has instructions for cutting boards, and was designed and built to cut boards, so it seems to me that the OBVIOUS thing to do with a saw would be to cut a board, and having purchased the saw, it just doesn't seem right to pay someone royalties for having the bright idea of using a saw designed to cut boards to cut boards.
So there's obvious propaganda, but that doesn't mean there isn't non-obvious propaganda. Non-obvious propaganda wouldn't be obvious.
Some complaints are no doubt safe to make in China, and the chinese have an idea what kinds are OK and which are sensitive topics.
If you're not forced to be pissed at your government or be an activist because the government's not getting in the way of you living a normal life, then you probably aren't going to choose to complain that loudly. The chinese government can seriously disrupt a FEW people's lives, but they don't mess with the majority. So if they want to demolish your house to make way for a new Gee Whiz whatever, you're out of luck, but most likely it's not going to be your house they demolish. Most of the people don't have their houses demolished so most are happy enough. That's what I was trying to say.
I mean seriously.
I've got quite a few chinese friends, and several western friends
that live in china, and ALL of them. ALL of them. ALL OF THEM.
All of them are happy with whats going on 99% of the time, sure there
are weird things that happen and all that, but when is anyone every
completely happy with the government?
Westerners who have grown up in a free society think they are innoculated against ever falling for state propaganda. They see examples of propaganda posters / propaganda films from ages past and think: yeah, maybe if I grew up looking at that shit every day I might believe it, but that stuff would never fool someone who's seen enough truth to know what it tastes like. I think this is wrong. The propaganda you've seen is like the commercials of the 1950s. EXTREMELY PRIMITIVE compared to the stuff they have today. I'm not surprised at all Westerners in China find it reasonable - for one thing if it weren't MOSTLY reasonable the trains wouldn't run on time, and they basically do in China.
I think you could say that everyone is happy 99% of the time anywhere where the trains run on time. But without the voices of ordinary people represented I have grave concerns as to where the remaining interests/forces will take china. With those ordinary people who could say HEY WAIT A MINUTE, THIS IS STUPID, silenced, the chinese corporate and state interests, already more entwined than they are in most of the western world where this is also a problem go unchecked.
This seems to be a camp that charges parents for admission for their kids, (without connection to the state?). The first thing I thought when I saw 'Chinese Internet Addiction Camp' was that the kid must have said something online to piss off the authorities and they shut him up 'for his own good' in an 'Internet Addiction Camp' ( read political re-education camp ).
Especially as Internet Addiction / pathalogical internet use / pornography etc seems to be being played up Chinese media of late, I suspect the government of shenanigans until proven otherwise given the character of the Chinese government.
Maybe the Chinese government has learned to be more subtle in it's control of late, realising that shutting people up for speaking out against the government makes them look bad? Here are some possiblities that the burden of proof is on the Chinese government to disprove.
The Chinese government probably outlaws porn and manipulates public opinion to create a class of generally dispised internet perverts it can persecute. The general opinion is that when someone is locked up for looking at porn it is something they did to themselves and which they deserve.
In fact whenever someone gets locked up for doing something on the internet, the public likely assumes they were locked up for looking at porn. It may even be that in many cases they WERE looking at porn because the government might not prosecute porn looking unless there is something else that pisses them off. Many people may have an incriminating hard drive full of porn thinking that they've gotten away with it and somehow gamed the system. They are now at the mercy of the state.
Even if the person has no porn whatsoever, the fact tha most people locked up for internet crimes are being locked up for porn means that they will be assumed to have been looking at porn when they are locked up. China doesn't appear to be limiting political dissention, but only porn. Sure limiting porn is a restriction of rights, and probably a wrong thing to do, but it's a minor thing, nobody thinks much less of the Chinese government for doing so, especially since the policy is probably popular within China.
With these youths, maybe they have pissed off the authorities, and their parents have been given the choice to send their children to 'Internet Addiction Camps' paying for it out of their own pockets or their children will be prosecuted for some more serious trouble their youthfully brash fingers have typed online.
The public sees some fat stupid teens wasting their life playing games who are saved by sending them to 'Rehab' when in fact they are being subjected to Orwellian 're-education' without the bad publicity for China that less subtle means would entail.
Given the character of the Chinese government the burden of proof is on them to prove otherwise.
Maybe the fact that it can't be defended is meant to be the object lesson here. Go ahead, and TRY to defend it, and see how your ass is kicked around the block.
Altruistic behavior is selfish in some cases. Sometimes sacrificing your own life is the most selfish thing to do, and sometimes it's a mistake.
I choose not to contribute to the cult of back patting that often leads 'the best of us' to be sacrificed to the rest of us. Maybe someone with the imagination, compassion and guts to risk their life for their fellow people should not be consumed in such a way?
Oh, it's an honor to jump in the volcano, and we all appreciate your bravery and self sacrifice, we'll think of you when the volcano god is appeased, and it rains and our crops grow. We all wish we were as good as you. Thanks so much. (maybe that person about to jump needs to hear what I'm saying rather than what 'community minded' people are saying and stop being so damn good (tasty)). That way they might not end up eaten ( figuratively ) by everyone else.
Maybe then 'everybody' taken as a whole might 'rise' in some way if it happens enough.
Self sacrifice requires relatively low self esteem/worth. You have to believe that your own sacrifice is worth the gain. For instance, sacrificing for your fellow means you have to rather not live otherwise ( low self worth ), will gain something worth more than your life via the sacrifice requiring you to value yourself less than whatever you *believe* you would gain etc. Sometimes low self esteem/low self worth is the CORRECT assessment, and hence sometimes self sacrifice can be correct (selfish).
The logic behind the self sacrifice need not be sound and the facts fed into that logic need not be correct, and indeed it's not necessary for logic to have been used at all in the decision to sacrifice one's self for the action to be correct. However, it seems that those best able to sacrifice themselves ( which can be a most subtle self interested act ) are also prone to being taken advantage of by back patters who would like to reap the benefits of their self sacrifice.
These people ought to be given the advantage of a little street smarts education, since it would be interesting to see what such people would do with themselves if they survived.
And the community isn't a human being. It's a phenomenon that occurs when there are a bunch of people together. As a nonhuman, it doesn't have rights.
Ok, I finally had time to go back and re-read your comment. I see you did temper it at the end. Frankly I scanned down and found the hateful statement I was expecting ( trolling for? ) and pasted it in. Kudos to you for actually tempering the remark with a 'well that's how I feel, but I recognise this as probable crap, so here's a few plausable reasons why what my emotion wants isn't a good idea'. Still, I was expecting the emotional response because that's what you get all the time when you're someone like me. Except online with psuedonymity, I take care not to let people know what I'm thinking because of this sort of thing. It would get me clobbered. Shame on me for not really reading the rest of the post as carefully as I should have.
This was about the idea of sending a fleet of ocean going water filter ships to clean up the garbage patch at great expense. I'm all for not throwing more shit in the ocean. I doubt that would be noticeably expensive.
It's supposed to show you which pages resemble what you typed. Yes, and 'Macs are more expensive than Windows' does resemble 'Windows is more expensive than Macs' . They are basically a permutation of the words. If there are many pages saying Macs are more expensive than Windows and none saying the opposite ( because it's actually true that Macs are more expensive than Windows ) then they SHOULD pop up in response to the query.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not advocating a killing spree, but have you considered that you might be partially responsible for the harm done by NOT killing certain people? Would you be responsible for zombie apocalypse if you did NOT kill patient 0 before they became a zombie hanging your consience on 'killing is wrong'?
Logic gives you the pegs you need to hang your conscience on. Lack of logic is a choice, and the choice not to be logical hangs with one's conscience from the same peg. The systems of pegs the four baddies mentioned above gave their followers to hang their conciences on were flimsy compared to the systems most people hang their consiences on. The baddies' peg systems only withstood because the four baddies brutally discouraged scrutiny of them.
You might be the best realtor in the world, but you'd probably never guess that the homebuyer was looking for zombie attach defensibility. Probably would never ask.
Well, there are legitimate practical reasons why an ID number of some kind would be convenient even without Social Security, though I think Social Security of some kind is a good idea too. I thought the above was a good idea until I read someone's comment that the problem with SSNs isn't the number itself but the way it's used as an authentication credential. I think a better solution would be to have long lived ID numbers as we do today, but publish a publicly available database with all the numbers and the names of the people they belong to. That way, their use as an authentication credential would be eliminated. ( you can't use it as authenticatin because it's publically available ). One might worry that for instance websites would all then want your name and social security number, and that might prevent you from doing things like opening two gmail accounts, but that's not likely to happen because there is still no way to prove that you own the id number you claim to own when filling out a form people would complain that 'I can't sign up because some other dude already signed up using my ID number and they weren't me.'
Really, the fact that 123-45-6789 belongs to a John H Doe is not a privacy invasion since there is still no way to connect that fact to you personally.
It would be a self policing protocol so to speak. Make the number completely useless for anything other than it's intended use and nobody will use it for anything else. Do this by making it public. The government can attach (private) data to it, and so can anyone else in their own databases, but they need not let that data out.
Of course leaked data from various sources could all be attached to the same number easily.
The other thing is, what to use for authentication when that is needed? Some places make you show up physically and use an ID card. That would work. If that's too much trouble, then maybe they don't really need to know who you really are. And you could obtain an authenticatable ID from a source that has done a physical ID check to be used online if you so choose that could be used for multiple purposes, so the effort for physical ID check would be a one time thing - reusable.
It's a security risk to let an ID out that could be used to tie leaked information about you out to the world. But that's an individual choice. At least destroying the SSN number's use as an authenticated ID keeps the govenment out of it. If there weren't an SSN, there would be another privately run authenticated numbering system in place to take it's place in no time. Let it happen I say.. At least it will work, and really be secure instead of SSN + mother's maiden name can get you whatever you want. That's ridiculous. It might even be worth it to publish mother's maiden name just to wipe that one out.
They had that story yesterday, your spec would be as complicated and hard to verify the correctness of as the OS.
Now if we had a Formal specification verifier, we could use a Formal Specification Verifier Verifier to verify the correctness of IT, then use a Formal Specification Verifier Verifier Verifier....
I read a comment that the problem is not the number but it being used for authentication credentials.
How true. The answer is still simple, requiring even less will - the government should publicise all social security numbers in a freely available database. Then they become completely worthless as authentication credentials, and the practice will cease.
How about we scrap SSN's and have transaction ids. The taxpayer gives whatever business their current transaction id, then requests a new one from the government invalidating the old one. That old one is then only worth a damn from the time it was issued to the time a new one was requested. The government keeps a list of all your transaction ids, and the dates during which they were valid. NO SSN REQUIRED. Care would be taken not to issue the same transaction_id while it is still valid for someone else ( only one person at a time can have a given transaction id ).
The government should issue a new social security number via a website on demand to any citizen that requests one. The government would always have your current number on file to use for it's purposes, and anyone else would be left with an invalid number. The value of social security number for nefarious purposes would decrease. Of course government records of all previous ssns would be kept, so that for instance a loan that you took out two years ago could still be traced to you if need be, but if someone claimed that you took a loan out under that SSN a week ago, when you changed your SSN a year ago to something else would be denied the ability to fsck up your credit.
Yep, and people who think they have a measure for it usually have an agenda, and define success according to their agenda. If they want more people like X in the world then being like X ends up being their working definition of success.
Encrypting one's entire filesystem ( especially on a laptop ) is a common corporate policy to prevent a stolen laptop from resulting in bad guys getting company data. Having such software installed is common for legitimate reasons.
A promising looking p2p data storage system which meets your requirements is this: http://www.madore.org/~david/misc/freespeech.html. It's based on the fact that the same data can be interpreted in more than one way. 128k of bytes can be interpreted by another 128k of bytes as an MP3 song fragment, or by yet another 128 k of bytes as an illegal list of credit card numbers.
There is supposed to be a requirement that a patent not be awarded if the idea would be obvious to anyone skilled in the area. Seeing as XML was designed to have 'applications' such as word processor document formats how is this not obvious? It's like having a patent on cutting boards with a saw. The saw has instructions for cutting boards, and was designed and built to cut boards, so it seems to me that the OBVIOUS thing to do with a saw would be to cut a board, and having purchased the saw, it just doesn't seem right to pay someone royalties for having the bright idea of using a saw designed to cut boards to cut boards.
My favorite number is 5318008, and lo and behold, google returns it as the top result.
Not a joke. They'd never pull landlines here ( in the US ) because then there'd be no replacement for them.
Ok, they're pulling landlines, so no DSL? What do they have in nordic countries, government paid for fiber to the home?
So there's obvious propaganda, but that doesn't mean there isn't non-obvious propaganda. Non-obvious propaganda wouldn't be obvious.
Some complaints are no doubt safe to make in China, and the chinese have an idea what kinds are OK and which are sensitive topics.
If you're not forced to be pissed at your government or be an activist because the government's not getting in the way of you living a normal life, then you probably aren't going to choose to complain that loudly. The chinese government can seriously disrupt a FEW people's lives, but they don't mess with the majority. So if they want to demolish your house to make way for a new Gee Whiz whatever, you're out of luck, but most likely it's not going to be your house they demolish. Most of the people don't have their houses demolished so most are happy enough. That's what I was trying to say.
Dude:
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius
Umm.. no...
Westerners who have grown up in a free society think they are innoculated against ever falling for state propaganda. They see examples of propaganda posters / propaganda films from ages past and think: yeah, maybe if I grew up looking at that shit every day I might believe it, but that stuff would never fool someone who's seen enough truth to know what it tastes like. I think this is wrong. The propaganda you've seen is like the commercials of the 1950s. EXTREMELY PRIMITIVE compared to the stuff they have today. I'm not surprised at all Westerners in China find it reasonable - for one thing if it weren't MOSTLY reasonable the trains wouldn't run on time, and they basically do in China.
I think you could say that everyone is happy 99% of the time anywhere where the trains run on time. But without the voices of ordinary people represented I have grave concerns as to where the remaining interests/forces will take china. With those ordinary people who could say HEY WAIT A MINUTE, THIS IS STUPID, silenced, the chinese corporate and state interests, already more entwined than they are in most of the western world where this is also a problem go unchecked.
This seems to be a camp that charges parents for admission for their kids, (without connection to the state?). The first thing I thought when I saw 'Chinese Internet Addiction Camp' was that the kid must have said something online to piss off the authorities and they shut him up 'for his own good' in an 'Internet Addiction Camp' ( read political re-education camp ).
Especially as Internet Addiction / pathalogical internet use / pornography etc seems to be being played up Chinese media of late, I suspect the government of shenanigans until proven otherwise given the character of the Chinese government.
Maybe the Chinese government has learned to be more subtle in it's control of late, realising that shutting people up for speaking out against the government makes them look bad? Here are some possiblities that the burden of proof is on the Chinese government to disprove.
The Chinese government probably outlaws porn and manipulates public opinion to create a class of generally dispised internet perverts it can persecute. The general opinion is that when someone is locked up for looking at porn it is something they did to themselves and which they deserve.
In fact whenever someone gets locked up for doing something on the internet, the public likely assumes they were locked up for looking at porn. It may even be that in many cases they WERE looking at porn because the government might not prosecute porn looking unless there is something else that pisses them off. Many people may have an incriminating hard drive full of porn thinking that they've gotten away with it and somehow gamed the system. They are now at the mercy of the state.
Even if the person has no porn whatsoever, the fact tha most people locked up for internet crimes are being locked up for porn means that they will be assumed to have been looking at porn when they are locked up. China doesn't appear to be limiting political dissention, but only porn. Sure limiting porn is a restriction of rights, and probably a wrong thing to do, but it's a minor thing, nobody thinks much less of the Chinese government for doing so, especially since the policy is probably popular within China.
With these youths, maybe they have pissed off the authorities, and their parents have been given the choice to send their children to 'Internet Addiction Camps' paying for it out of their own pockets or their children will be prosecuted for some more serious trouble their youthfully brash fingers have typed online.
The public sees some fat stupid teens wasting their life playing games who are saved by sending them to 'Rehab' when in fact they are being subjected to Orwellian 're-education' without the bad publicity for China that less subtle means would entail.
Given the character of the Chinese government the burden of proof is on them to prove otherwise.
It's not a public statement if it's pseudonmymous. It's just sport.
I wish I had mod points to mod parent up insightful.
Maybe the fact that it can't be defended is meant to be the object lesson here. Go ahead, and TRY to defend it, and see how your ass is kicked around the block.
Altruistic behavior is selfish in some cases. Sometimes sacrificing your own life is the most selfish thing to do, and sometimes it's a mistake. I choose not to contribute to the cult of back patting that often leads 'the best of us' to be sacrificed to the rest of us. Maybe someone with the imagination, compassion and guts to risk their life for their fellow people should not be consumed in such a way? Oh, it's an honor to jump in the volcano, and we all appreciate your bravery and self sacrifice, we'll think of you when the volcano god is appeased, and it rains and our crops grow. We all wish we were as good as you. Thanks so much. (maybe that person about to jump needs to hear what I'm saying rather than what 'community minded' people are saying and stop being so damn good (tasty)). That way they might not end up eaten ( figuratively ) by everyone else. Maybe then 'everybody' taken as a whole might 'rise' in some way if it happens enough. Self sacrifice requires relatively low self esteem/worth. You have to believe that your own sacrifice is worth the gain. For instance, sacrificing for your fellow means you have to rather not live otherwise ( low self worth ), will gain something worth more than your life via the sacrifice requiring you to value yourself less than whatever you *believe* you would gain etc. Sometimes low self esteem/low self worth is the CORRECT assessment, and hence sometimes self sacrifice can be correct (selfish). The logic behind the self sacrifice need not be sound and the facts fed into that logic need not be correct, and indeed it's not necessary for logic to have been used at all in the decision to sacrifice one's self for the action to be correct. However, it seems that those best able to sacrifice themselves ( which can be a most subtle self interested act ) are also prone to being taken advantage of by back patters who would like to reap the benefits of their self sacrifice. These people ought to be given the advantage of a little street smarts education, since it would be interesting to see what such people would do with themselves if they survived. And the community isn't a human being. It's a phenomenon that occurs when there are a bunch of people together. As a nonhuman, it doesn't have rights.
Ok, I finally had time to go back and re-read your comment. I see you did temper it at the end. Frankly I scanned down and found the hateful statement I was expecting ( trolling for? ) and pasted it in. Kudos to you for actually tempering the remark with a 'well that's how I feel, but I recognise this as probable crap, so here's a few plausable reasons why what my emotion wants isn't a good idea'. Still, I was expecting the emotional response because that's what you get all the time when you're someone like me. Except online with psuedonymity, I take care not to let people know what I'm thinking because of this sort of thing. It would get me clobbered. Shame on me for not really reading the rest of the post as carefully as I should have.
This was about the idea of sending a fleet of ocean going water filter ships to clean up the garbage patch at great expense. I'm all for not throwing more shit in the ocean. I doubt that would be noticeably expensive.
It's supposed to show you which pages resemble what you typed. Yes, and 'Macs are more expensive than Windows' does resemble 'Windows is more expensive than Macs' . They are basically a permutation of the words. If there are many pages saying Macs are more expensive than Windows and none saying the opposite ( because it's actually true that Macs are more expensive than Windows ) then they SHOULD pop up in response to the query.