If We The People(tm) are gonna get off our lazy whining arses and actually combat this shit, then we need insiders.
People who can dig up dirt on high-profile figures, and not even blackmail, just release it. no amount of money can equate to something like a destroyed reputation, or a more informed electorate.
The purpose of all this crap is to crush dissent. Read Nineteen Eighty-Four [by George Orwell, if you live in a remote Hebridean cave]. It can be done imperceptiveley, like stopping you traveling, making credit/loans more expensive or not available, stopping you getting good jobs, etc.
Conspiracy theory? Yes, I could look up proof but I'm too busy. Ford in the UK is one example though, had MI5(6?) filter out anyone who would like a worker's union.
You have [ok, had] freedom. The government and $BIG_CORP stand to gain loads of you lose that freedom and more information about you is readily available.
Do you really want to entrust your freedom and privacy to groups of people with a proven record of corruption, megalomania, disregard for human life, and brutal crushing of disent, who stand to gain plenty from you losing those rights altogether?
- The Guv'na
Hey, you yanks, whats that over there in the toilet bowl? Uh, I think it says, umm... "Con...", "Cons... tit... ut... something". Hmmm nevermind, you probably weren't using it anyway.
Now it's the hard working people of America who are pissing away money on bollocks adverts during the SB. Well actually the Government is going that on their behalf.
Now how about the kind US government running some anti-drink-driving or anti-smoking adverts alongside them? Mmmmnah... didn't think so.
Imagine that, by law, an image of your hard drive must be sent to the government, your DNA swabbed from your input devices, and bugs/keyloggers routineley installed if they find any sign of terrorist or criminal activities or intentions....
Use of any audio/video compression technology other than lisenced and government approved encoding protocols. No matter if you have no pirate material, If you have the ability and tools, you're dangerous enough!
Any expression of dissenting or un-patriotic views or opinions in your messenger histories, message board/newsgroup postings, emails, or slashdot poll votes.
As we all know, no Saudi funded terrorist group could even dream of affording it's own bunch of nutbars to read up on some HOWTOs and sort out their own computers.
The inclusion of Caterpillar also had me thinking.
I would only be have them in there [albeit hesitantly] if the bulldozers were ordered direct by the Israeli army. If the orders came from the government, then that's nothing to put them in there for.
Even so, I very much doubt there's much in the news in the USA about Israeli atrocitys. They include bulldozing through civilian houses, with the people still in them, and then stopping people from searching for survivors. And the American Government funds this. No wonder American Government/Military officials did all they could to keep out of the International Court Of Human Rights.
So, assuming Caterpillar knew the bulldozers were going to the army, it Might be the drive for profit at the expense of ethics, or it could just be ignorance.
While the agreement outlines some copy-protection guidelines, it was drafted without the input of Hollywood or consumer groups, which have strong opinions and powerful friends in government.
Some guy once told me there was a time long ago when the people had strong opinions and powerful friends in government! Heh, fuck knows what he was smoking...
Working at a craphole department store, am I at risk of brain damage? There's two main factors at play here:
A) Constant loud white noise from a powerful aircon vent right above my desk.
B) The following combined:
Hot Chocolate - I believe in miracles
Will Young - Light My fire
kylie - Can't get you outta my head
Deck the halls
Santa clause is comin' to town
And assorted other dross, mostly christmas themed. Admittedly there are some decent songls played. But they're soon not decent when looping every hour, every day.
Help... me...... please.....
Reminds me of building blocks...
on
Low Tech Toys?
·
· Score: 1
I got my nephew a good quality set of nice weighty hemlock pictur/letter/number blocks one christmas.
He soon realised that it was far more fun to chuck the things against the plasterboard wall to see the funny shaped dents they made.
If you want low tech, you might as well make them yourself. Toy manufactuerers tend to stay away from anything with any longevity for the obvious reasons.
Books, a computer, drawing/writing materials, magnifying glass, and some stuff for exercise like a bike or skateboard, etc.
Oh and if you care about your child that much, I wouldnt go near public education. Home tutoring would be my bet, funds permitting.
It's been almost completely concluded that 9/11 happened because of US Intelligence failures.
Yeah, an intelligence failure like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? As opposed to the US Gov planning to invade Afghanistan before 9-11, to get a nice fat oil pipeline in there, and thus pissing off Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia being the country that almost all the highjackers came from, and the country funding Al Q'aida (sp?), and... err... the country supplying a very large portion of the USA's oil needs.
This TIA thing is research into how to improve it and prevent another 9/11.
War is good for business; there's arms manufacturers to please. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a good explanation, written by "Emannuel Goldstein"(sp?). It is also a nice handy tool to crush dissent. A simplistic example would be the way Ford in the UK filtered out, with the help of the government, "subversives" from job applicants, for fear of union activity. Now we all know how much the US Corporate Government loves worker's unions!
It has nothing to do with spying on anyone. And everything to do with spying on everyone, collectively. Googling for dissenters, if you will.
The only intelligence failure in this world is that of the people happy to just sit on their lazy ignorant arses and be spoonfed the "news" by their governments and Big Corps, instead of taking a few minutes to find out what's really going on.
Sorry if I've hurt anyones delicate idealistic feelings, but it has to be said.
They could be used for surveilance in this age of fear and vigilance. Might work better than the cat with built in microphone+transmitter that had it's first test cut tragicly short.
Yeah you know, I didnt really want to admit it, but a lot of the time, for arbitrary measurements I use imperial. I use metric for precision/scientific stuff. As I said, I realise metric is best, and I believe that all trade should be in metric.
My problem is with the penalties on those traders who don't sell to the public in imperial measures. Its the last link in the chain so whats the big deal? If they put off metric-loving customers, thats their problem.
It's the government being a bit too heavy handed if youask me, and that's what annoys me.
Besides, in the USA it's the bloody Stonecutters keeping the metric system down!
So yes, I go to London from time to time. There are notable exceptions such as the Jubilee line, but mostly it's pretty old and rickety. And I will never forget the first time I travelled peak time at summer time!
Have I been on a comparable system? Yes. The Metro in Istanbul [that's Turkey, a "developing" nation] is an example to the world.
It's cheap, quick, punctual, and comfortable. The stations are nice, well designed, and clean. Now when I say clean, I mean like a friggin operating theatre! Graffiti? None. Absoluteley none. Metal detectors and armed guards included for your peace of mind.:)
Now I'm gonna sit back and wait for grinning prick Blair to toss the tube system, which is deveoping slowly but surely into something from this century, into private hands, like the rail system, post office, etc. Oh hang on it's a "Public - Private Partnership"... Doesn't that sound all lovely, warm and cosy? All this privatisation has an unreported purpose, but I can't be arsed to retype IMF/World Bank documents in this post, and it's outside the topic.
Coming soon to a sky near you: Privatised Air Traffic Control!
record and movie companies claiming that illegal copying of music and movies was costing artists millions and stifling creativity
And there was me thinking it was greedy and financially "troubled"* multinational corporations costing artists [NOT manufactured performers, as are the trend nowadays] their well-deserved share of the pie.
As for stifling creativity, isn't that the music biz being scared to sign up and/or promote anything other than the standard teenie trash we're all sick of, because they can't afford to "risk" any money? I went into HMV the other day, looked at the top 40s, and walked out shaking my head. There's plenty of creativity out there, they're just pissed that they're not making money off of it.
Ali
*They are not troubled, they use creative accounting to keep on-paper profits down, so they don't have to pay much/any tax [maybe even GETTING millions back from the.gov!] and can turn to their employees and say "Uhhh.. troubled year, gonna have to make a few redundancies, take away the free coffee machine, and keep your pay shitty."]
It is cool place to go! The Museum of the Moving Image was great, and hopefully it will be even better when it re-opens.
Then go and experience London Transport itself, and wonder to yourself "Did this bunch really run a friggin empire? How the fuck did they make this mess?"
If you're from anywhere seriously hot, then you might want to try traveling on the London Underground at peak times in summer. You know... for the masochist in you.
If you plan on going anywhere by late at night, you might wanna try to get hold of some sorta firearm or at least a decent blade. If you're gonna rely on the train service to get you home at night, best pack a tent and some supplies in case the trains are up shit creek and you get stranded. rail.kizoom.co.uk is a WAP address that could save your bacon, its the mobile version of the suprisingly useful Railtrack Travel Timetable.
Of course, if you're rich enough you can get a traditional London black cab, but watch that fare!
Unrelated to technology, but still cool is The British Museum. It's in great financial difficulty at the moment, but full of treasures. It might make a nice change.
The methods of morphing already discussed are mainly simply distorting the image, and that's easy enough.
If you are running with high-resolution pictures, and using computer monitors as your setup then the effect will have to be very natural looking. I'm running 1280x1024 on an 18inch/457mm (viewable) NEC and I can easily pick out single pixel details. But then it's a friggin bright CRT and I do have my eyes about 18inches from the glass.
I suspect that beyond a certain point people will see where the skin [i.e. image] is distorted, by the sharpness of details, clarity, shadows, wrinkles etc. For more natural looking images with higher distortion I would suggest you find a way for the program to either clone sections of skin to cover wider ares, or cull certain areas to reduce size, without the actual scale of the image being to badly affected. Things like hairs, blemishes, skin tone and shadows might be a problem, but shouldnt be impossible to sort out.
Witha bit of luck and smart coding, that should help features look smaller rather than shrunk, and bigger rather than stretched.
I prefer the metric system, it makes sense, in ways already mentioned here. What I do not agree with, is our Government forcing shops to sell stuff in metric units, and fining retailers for selling stuff in imperial units...
What the fuck? Nobody is getting ripped off, the supply chain all the way to the shop shelf is metric, but the customers are forced to buy stuff measured in metric units; does it matter? NO! My rant is about the government fining and jailing private traders who sell in imperial measures. They are just pleasing customers! And metric units are always there to be used if desired.
When I worked at a timber yard, long after the metrication debacle, most customers still used imperial measures. They were brought up on them, simple as that. Thus, 8foot X 4foot shhets became 1220x2440mm sheets, and 10feet became 3050mm. Great for mental arithmetic exercise.
They could have educated people about both systems, and let people choose. Within a few decades the imperial system could be done away with quite easily. But no, it has to be shoved down our throaghts in almost no time at all!
So here are my five big ideas adjusted by The Guv'na for how technology will reshape our daily regime in 2012:
The Internet is everywhere -- and a religion.
Almost every object we own that uses electricity will be connected to the Internet in 2012, yet we will rarely be aware of this near-universal connectivity, because so much of the conversation will be machine-to-government communication. A minority religion has appeared that worships the internet, and is rapidly growing thanks to favours and funds from the US government and corporations.
You'll no longer be surprised to get a call from the repair center at Sears or Maytag saying you're gonna screw up the internal sensors with all that fetishwear and that your washing machine is using too much hot water and needs adjustment -- information the washing machine has sent through the Net, without any action of your part, back to the factory where it was built, and several marketing corporations.
All present and accounted for -- always.
Instant messaging is popular, in part, because IM software tells you which of your friends are online waiting to chat, and relays all messaging to the government's "carnivore" database, though this is strenuously denied. This concept, formally known as ``presence,'' will be extended to all forms of electronic communication.
Family, friends, government agencies and co-workers will be able to instantly see where you are, thanks to wireless phones even tinier than what's available today and other devices with built-in GPS locators. You'll be able to specify how you wish to be reached: by text if you're busy, by voice or video if you're free. Between now and 2012, expect major controversy about the government, employers, schools and advertisers having access to your ``presence.''
Walk now, pay later.
Stores without doors will rely on RFID, or radio-frequency identification, tags to keep track of staff, inventory and payment. These tiny semiconductors communicate a small amount of information, such as a product serial number, when queried by inexpensive transmitter/receivers. Only recently selling for several dollars, RFID chips should cost only a few cents next year and will be smaller than a grain of rice.
In 2012, RFID chips will sell for less than a penny and be printed onto packaging and price tags -- the beginning of the end for cash registers. You walk into a store, put what you want in a bag and walk out the door. An RFID transmitter/receiver in the entryway instantly totals up your purchases and makes a deduction from the RFID credit card in your wallet, and tells the pentagon what you purchased. If nothing else, RFID could have spared Winona Ryder her recent and very embarrassing shoplifting arrest.
Prime time is your time.
Every cable and satellite television receiver will include a hard disk for recording shows, and those disks will have a minimum capacity of one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, enough to store hundreds of hours of high-definition programming and unskippable advertisements, determined by your purchasing and viewing habits.
Except for special events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards, no one will watch TV shows at the time they are transmitted, and conventional 30-second commercials will be rare because advertisers won't pay when most viewers can hit the fast-forward button. Major broadcast networks and traditional prime-time programming will be fading, with most ad-free entertainment sold through either a monthly subscription or a pay-per-view fee.
Finally, we can swear at our computers and they will "understand" us, relaying our comments to Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement Program.
I'm recycling a prediction from 1992 that didn't come true this year but just might happen by 2012: Reliable speech recognition will allow computers, phones and household appliances to understand our spoken commands and inform the government of our mutterings when we are reading the news.
{end edited portions}
Ok so some of those might be tongue-in-cheek, but I still say it'll be closer! Who knows, I might just be revisiting this post myself in 2012... Spooky.
I have the 512kbit service and it rocks! 128kbit and 1Mbit also available. Only a few problems: Occasionally stroppy "transparent" HTTP Proxy, and sometimes the cable box buggers up, but thats the TV side of it, but does mean I have to turn it off and back on to get control and a normal picture back, thus losing my connection.
Never had speed problems, but then again there doesn't seem to be many people around here [Surrey, Stockbroker belt] online. I've slammed them for 20 gig of ISO's in a week and they don't seem to mind, unlike some ISP's I've heard of.
Also, do you remember the unmetered ISP RedHotAnt, which was raided by Trading Standards officers? Well, their problems were at least compounded by their entire network compromised. Well, at least the cracker's mum turned off the bruteforce box and gave them a ~24 hour stay of execution, which pissed him right off. Don't you just hate it when you're at a mate's house and he's havin an argument with his parents?...
Slashdot Mirror
If We The People(tm) are gonna get off our lazy whining arses and actually combat this shit, then we need insiders.
People who can dig up dirt on high-profile figures, and not even blackmail, just release it. no amount of money can equate to something like a destroyed reputation, or a more informed electorate.
The purpose of all this crap is to crush dissent. Read Nineteen Eighty-Four [by George Orwell, if you live in a remote Hebridean cave]. It can be done imperceptiveley, like stopping you traveling, making credit/loans more expensive or not available, stopping you getting good jobs, etc.
Conspiracy theory? Yes, I could look up proof but I'm too busy. Ford in the UK is one example though, had MI5(6?) filter out anyone who would like a worker's union.
You have [ok, had] freedom. The government and $BIG_CORP stand to gain loads of you lose that freedom and more information about you is readily available.
Do you really want to entrust your freedom and privacy to groups of people with a proven record of corruption, megalomania, disregard for human life, and brutal crushing of disent, who stand to gain plenty from you losing those rights altogether?
- The Guv'na
Hey, you yanks, whats that over there in the toilet bowl? Uh, I think it says, umm... "Con...", "Cons... tit... ut... something". Hmmm nevermind, you probably weren't using it anyway.
Sadly... I was misinformed as to the commercial break content of the superbowl.
;-)
With marijuana, you can't prove that. Sure you may harvest seeds but where did they come from?
Usually yeah, but I've made amends...
Seeds: "POWER PLANT(r) - Dutch Passion, PO Box 1579, 1000 BN Amsterdam" They aint on the axis of evil at the time of writing.
Todays show was brought to you by the word "Hydroponics" and the number 420! Sponsored by OverGrow.
Peace,
Ali
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5517
Now it's the hard working people of America who are pissing away money on bollocks adverts during the SB. Well actually the Government is going that on their behalf.
Now how about the kind US government running some anti-drink-driving or anti-smoking adverts alongside them? Mmmmnah... didn't think so.
Ali
Imagine that, by law, an image of your hard drive must be sent to the government, your DNA swabbed from your input devices, and bugs/keyloggers routineley installed if they find any sign of terrorist or criminal activities or intentions....
Such as:
Naturally, copies of your drive image will always be sent immediateley to the proper authorities for America's protection.
As we all know, no Saudi funded terrorist group could even dream of affording it's own bunch of nutbars to read up on some HOWTOs and sort out their own computers.
Have A Nice Day!(tm)
Ali
The inclusion of Caterpillar also had me thinking.
I would only be have them in there [albeit hesitantly] if the bulldozers were ordered direct by the Israeli army. If the orders came from the government, then that's nothing to put them in there for.
Even so, I very much doubt there's much in the news in the USA about Israeli atrocitys. They include bulldozing through civilian houses, with the people still in them, and then stopping people from searching for survivors. And the American Government funds this. No wonder American Government/Military officials did all they could to keep out of the International Court Of Human Rights.
So, assuming Caterpillar knew the bulldozers were going to the army, it Might be the drive for profit at the expense of ethics, or it could just be ignorance.
Ali
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02dece
That list is an eye-opener!
Ali
Smoke some weed! It'll feel just like The Land Of Carmack :)
Oh, but not the weed around Chernobyl. That was planted to mop up the heavy metals. Don't smoke that. It would probably suck...
Ali
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
(Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell)
Ali
"There's an enormous segment of the population that are appreciating these ads."
OK hands up those people...
Ali
Some guy once told me there was a time long ago when the people had strong opinions and powerful friends in government! Heh, fuck knows what he was smoking...
Ali
Working at a craphole department store, am I at risk of brain damage? There's two main factors at play here:
A) Constant loud white noise from a powerful aircon vent right above my desk.
B) The following combined:
And assorted other dross, mostly christmas themed. Admittedly there are some decent songls played. But they're soon not decent when looping every hour, every day.
Help... me...... please.....
I got my nephew a good quality set of nice weighty hemlock pictur/letter/number blocks one christmas.
He soon realised that it was far more fun to chuck the things against the plasterboard wall to see the funny shaped dents they made.
If you want low tech, you might as well make them yourself. Toy manufactuerers tend to stay away from anything with any longevity for the obvious reasons.
Books, a computer, drawing/writing materials, magnifying glass, and some stuff for exercise like a bike or skateboard, etc.
Oh and if you care about your child that much, I wouldnt go near public education. Home tutoring would be my bet, funds permitting.
Ali
It's been almost completely concluded that 9/11 happened because of US Intelligence failures.
Yeah, an intelligence failure like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? As opposed to the US Gov planning to invade Afghanistan before 9-11, to get a nice fat oil pipeline in there, and thus pissing off Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia being the country that almost all the highjackers came from, and the country funding Al Q'aida (sp?), and... err... the country supplying a very large portion of the USA's oil needs.
This TIA thing is research into how to improve it and prevent another 9/11.
War is good for business; there's arms manufacturers to please. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a good explanation, written by "Emannuel Goldstein"(sp?). It is also a nice handy tool to crush dissent. A simplistic example would be the way Ford in the UK filtered out, with the help of the government, "subversives" from job applicants, for fear of union activity. Now we all know how much the US Corporate Government loves worker's unions!
It has nothing to do with spying on anyone. And everything to do with spying on everyone, collectively. Googling for dissenters, if you will.
Try this: The disinfo quiz. And this: The ACLU Quiz.
The only intelligence failure in this world is that of the people happy to just sit on their lazy ignorant arses and be spoonfed the "news" by their governments and Big Corps, instead of taking a few minutes to find out what's really going on.
Sorry if I've hurt anyones delicate idealistic feelings, but it has to be said.
Ali
Now they can be born with exceptional hearing!
They could be used for surveilance in this age of fear and vigilance. Might work better than the cat with built in microphone+transmitter that had it's first test cut tragicly short.
Ali
Yeah you know, I didnt really want to admit it, but a lot of the time, for arbitrary measurements I use imperial. I use metric for precision/scientific stuff. As I said, I realise metric is best, and I believe that all trade should be in metric.
My problem is with the penalties on those traders who don't sell to the public in imperial measures. Its the last link in the chain so whats the big deal? If they put off metric-loving customers, thats their problem.
It's the government being a bit too heavy handed if youask me, and that's what annoys me.
Besides, in the USA it's the bloody Stonecutters keeping the metric system down!
Ali
having been a camp counsellor at a computer camp for two summers.
So is the first "camp" redundant, part of your official job title, or did you find it advantagious to offer council in an effeminate manner?
Ali
So yes, I go to London from time to time. There are notable exceptions such as the Jubilee line, but mostly it's pretty old and rickety. And I will never forget the first time I travelled peak time at summer time!
:)
Have I been on a comparable system? Yes. The Metro in Istanbul [that's Turkey, a "developing" nation] is an example to the world.
It's cheap, quick, punctual, and comfortable. The stations are nice, well designed, and clean. Now when I say clean, I mean like a friggin operating theatre! Graffiti? None. Absoluteley none. Metal detectors and armed guards included for your peace of mind.
Now I'm gonna sit back and wait for grinning prick Blair to toss the tube system, which is deveoping slowly but surely into something from this century, into private hands, like the rail system, post office, etc. Oh hang on it's a "Public - Private Partnership"... Doesn't that sound all lovely, warm and cosy? All this privatisation has an unreported purpose, but I can't be arsed to retype IMF/World Bank documents in this post, and it's outside the topic.
Coming soon to a sky near you: Privatised Air Traffic Control!
Ali
And there was me thinking it was greedy and financially "troubled"* multinational corporations costing artists [NOT manufactured performers, as are the trend nowadays] their well-deserved share of the pie.
As for stifling creativity, isn't that the music biz being scared to sign up and/or promote anything other than the standard teenie trash we're all sick of, because they can't afford to "risk" any money? I went into HMV the other day, looked at the top 40s, and walked out shaking my head. There's plenty of creativity out there, they're just pissed that they're not making money off of it.
Ali
*They are not troubled, they use creative accounting to keep on-paper profits down, so they don't have to pay much/any tax [maybe even GETTING millions back from the
It is cool place to go! The Museum of the Moving Image was great, and hopefully it will be even better when it re-opens.
Then go and experience London Transport itself, and wonder to yourself "Did this bunch really run a friggin empire? How the fuck did they make this mess?"
If you're from anywhere seriously hot, then you might want to try traveling on the London Underground at peak times in summer. You know... for the masochist in you.
If you plan on going anywhere by late at night, you might wanna try to get hold of some sorta firearm or at least a decent blade. If you're gonna rely on the train service to get you home at night, best pack a tent and some supplies in case the trains are up shit creek and you get stranded. rail.kizoom.co.uk is a WAP address that could save your bacon, its the mobile version of the suprisingly useful Railtrack Travel Timetable.
Of course, if you're rich enough you can get a traditional London black cab, but watch that fare!
Unrelated to technology, but still cool is The British Museum. It's in great financial difficulty at the moment, but full of treasures. It might make a nice change.
Happy travels...
Ali
The methods of morphing already discussed are mainly simply distorting the image, and that's easy enough.
If you are running with high-resolution pictures, and using computer monitors as your setup then the effect will have to be very natural looking. I'm running 1280x1024 on an 18inch/457mm (viewable) NEC and I can easily pick out single pixel details. But then it's a friggin bright CRT and I do have my eyes about 18inches from the glass.
I suspect that beyond a certain point people will see where the skin [i.e. image] is distorted, by the sharpness of details, clarity, shadows, wrinkles etc. For more natural looking images with higher distortion I would suggest you find a way for the program to either clone sections of skin to cover wider ares, or cull certain areas to reduce size, without the actual scale of the image being to badly affected. Things like hairs, blemishes, skin tone and shadows might be a problem, but shouldnt be impossible to sort out.
Witha bit of luck and smart coding, that should help features look smaller rather than shrunk, and bigger rather than stretched.
Ali
I remeber the furore over the conversion to the metric system well. I was working and the lowest crappiest most poorly managed lame-arse crumbling sorry fucking excuse for a cheapo shit-hole supermarket at the time.
I prefer the metric system, it makes sense, in ways already mentioned here. What I do not agree with, is our Government forcing shops to sell stuff in metric units, and fining retailers for selling stuff in imperial units...
What the fuck? Nobody is getting ripped off, the supply chain all the way to the shop shelf is metric, but the customers are forced to buy stuff measured in metric units; does it matter? NO! My rant is about the government fining and jailing private traders who sell in imperial measures. They are just pleasing customers! And metric units are always there to be used if desired.
When I worked at a timber yard, long after the metrication debacle, most customers still used imperial measures. They were brought up on them, simple as that. Thus, 8foot X 4foot shhets became 1220x2440mm sheets, and 10feet became 3050mm. Great for mental arithmetic exercise.
They could have educated people about both systems, and let people choose. Within a few decades the imperial system could be done away with quite easily. But no, it has to be shoved down our throaghts in almost no time at all!
I'm only 20 and I remember the metric system being taught at school: Cubits, digits, palms, etc...
Ali
So here are my five big ideas adjusted by The Guv'na for how technology will reshape our daily regime in 2012:
The Internet is everywhere -- and a religion.
Almost every object we own that uses electricity will be connected to the Internet in 2012, yet we will rarely be aware of this near-universal connectivity, because so much of the conversation will be machine-to-government communication. A minority religion has appeared that worships the internet, and is rapidly growing thanks to favours and funds from the US government and corporations.
You'll no longer be surprised to get a call from the repair center at Sears or Maytag saying you're gonna screw up the internal sensors with all that fetishwear and that your washing machine is using too much hot water and needs adjustment -- information the washing machine has sent through the Net, without any action of your part, back to the factory where it was built, and several marketing corporations.
All present and accounted for -- always.
Instant messaging is popular, in part, because IM software tells you which of your friends are online waiting to chat, and relays all messaging to the government's "carnivore" database, though this is strenuously denied. This concept, formally known as ``presence,'' will be extended to all forms of electronic communication.
Family, friends, government agencies and co-workers will be able to instantly see where you are, thanks to wireless phones even tinier than what's available today and other devices with built-in GPS locators. You'll be able to specify how you wish to be reached: by text if you're busy, by voice or video if you're free. Between now and 2012, expect major controversy about the government, employers, schools and advertisers having access to your ``presence.''
Walk now, pay later.
Stores without doors will rely on RFID, or radio-frequency identification, tags to keep track of staff, inventory and payment. These tiny semiconductors communicate a small amount of information, such as a product serial number, when queried by inexpensive transmitter/receivers. Only recently selling for several dollars, RFID chips should cost only a few cents next year and will be smaller than a grain of rice.
In 2012, RFID chips will sell for less than a penny and be printed onto packaging and price tags -- the beginning of the end for cash registers. You walk into a store, put what you want in a bag and walk out the door. An RFID transmitter/receiver in the entryway instantly totals up your purchases and makes a deduction from the RFID credit card in your wallet, and tells the pentagon what you purchased. If nothing else, RFID could have spared Winona Ryder her recent and very embarrassing shoplifting arrest.
Prime time is your time.
Every cable and satellite television receiver will include a hard disk for recording shows, and those disks will have a minimum capacity of one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, enough to store hundreds of hours of high-definition programming and unskippable advertisements, determined by your purchasing and viewing habits.
Except for special events such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards, no one will watch TV shows at the time they are transmitted, and conventional 30-second commercials will be rare because advertisers won't pay when most viewers can hit the fast-forward button. Major broadcast networks and traditional prime-time programming will be fading, with most ad-free entertainment sold through either a monthly subscription or a pay-per-view fee.
Finally, we can swear at our computers and they will "understand" us, relaying our comments to Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement Program.
I'm recycling a prediction from 1992 that didn't come true this year but just might happen by 2012: Reliable speech recognition will allow computers, phones and household appliances to understand our spoken commands and inform the government of our mutterings when we are reading the news.
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Ok so some of those might be tongue-in-cheek, but I still say it'll be closer! Who knows, I might just be revisiting this post myself in 2012... Spooky.
Ali
Is because I patented magnetic wheels and steel roads!
Magnetic roads and steel wheels patent pending.
Ali
Because of the TERRORISTS!
In china and the USA, the governments are the terrorsists. ;-)
Ali
I have the 512kbit service and it rocks! 128kbit and 1Mbit also available. Only a few problems: Occasionally stroppy "transparent" HTTP Proxy, and sometimes the cable box buggers up, but thats the TV side of it, but does mean I have to turn it off and back on to get control and a normal picture back, thus losing my connection.
Never had speed problems, but then again there doesn't seem to be many people around here [Surrey, Stockbroker belt] online. I've slammed them for 20 gig of ISO's in a week and they don't seem to mind, unlike some ISP's I've heard of.
Also, do you remember the unmetered ISP RedHotAnt, which was raided by Trading Standards officers? Well, their problems were at least compounded by their entire network compromised. Well, at least the cracker's mum turned off the bruteforce box and gave them a ~24 hour stay of execution, which pissed him right off. Don't you just hate it when you're at a mate's house and he's havin an argument with his parents?...
Ali