Posts by Charles 9

Yes, I do get it. What I'm saying is that the big big plan is to make it so that modern society comes part and parcel with Big Brother via the backdoor. How will you buy a dumb TV, for example, when there aren't any left because TV standards will REQUIRE an interactive TV just to pick up the channels? You can't use analog TVs by themselves anymore because all channels for digital, for example. That's just the first step.

And it'll apply to all appliances soon, using powerline networking or whispernets if need be to get around anything cleverdicks/smartypants try to block the networking (and using suicide circuits to break the devices if you try to kill the radio chips).

You forget the times BEFORE that, where industrial pigments and sanitation weren't so abundant, plus most people grew their own food or bartered from the neighbors who also grew them. As I recall, back then life expectancies STILL weren't over 50.

I'D like to suggest that, to them, it's not a mess; it's the desired result. It's also the human condition; you versus the neighbors. And unless you want to go back to hairshirts, making everything you need from scratch, no electricity or running water and life expectancies under 50, you pretty much have to bend over.

"A UL for software needs to occur. We need to give software the same legal status as hardware and allow software companies to be sued. No more 50 page disclaimers. Software needs the same legal status as any hardware device, like a car."

How do you deal with the China angle, though? China has sovereignty, and most of the devices come through gray markets where regulation doesn't really exist.

Re: Stop training users not to update!

So what happens when you're caught between Scylla and Charybdis: you CAN'T update because it'll break, but you MUST update because it's already broken, and you're obligated to use the device for legal, contractual, or practical (as in it's the ONLY one that'll work with your setup) reasons?

Re: How about what BT/VM do?

"Which is why some of us keep saying the solution is to make such security provisions mandatory. You want to sell your stuff here? This is what you have to do.

To some extent it levels the playing field - those costs are common to all products. And for manufacturers who can't afford that, maybe they're best kept out of the market. If they were selling cars would you consider it acceptable to omit bakes to enable them to compete on price?"

You ever thought about the Law of Unintended Consequences? Instead of keeping them out, you'll just move them to the lawless badlands of the gray and black markets. If people want them badly enough, they'll be provided in spite of God, Man, or the Devil. See Prohibition.

Re: Physical handshaking

"NFC comes to mind. Easy, cheap, extremely short range (almost contact only, if you want), and good enough to home routers and such."

Someone points a Yagi antenna at it. Range significantly increased.

Re: White goods

"Manufacturers passing the buck to non-technical customers are doing just that passing the buck for their poorly implemented products."

They're passing the buck because that's what customers want. At least with cars they run on government-run-and-regulated roads. But a router runs in the privacy of one's home, so how are you going to possibly enforce an Internet license?

Re: How about what BT/VM do?

Plus it doesn't help if the manufacturer is on razor-thin margins such that 2-3 cents per devices pivots it into unprofitable. And yes, many DO run on razor-thin margins as it's the ONLY way to compete. And that's against companies that have alternate revenue streams and can actually loss-lead.

Any auto-update mechanism can be abused. Didn't someone hijack Windows Update in the past?

Re: Simple.

You can't automate shoes since it's the legs that do the actual locomotion, and legs can be some powerful things making them hard to control.

Re: Right of way

I was always taught the Right of Way means the right to travel across a specific area before others. Thus cars IN an intersection have the right of way over those coming to it, why straight-goers have right of way over turners, why emergency vehicles at work (sirens on) have right of way over other cars on the same road, and so on. Because it can apply at intersections, too, this applies both to cross traffic and to pedestrians. Pedestrians can be granted right of way under certain conditions, like during school hours or when a school bus, crossing guard, or police officer asserts.

Re: physics

"besides an AI will likely calculate the odds of stopping in time and decide to change lanes and slow down, avoiding the pedestrian entirely without compromising speed by much, bypassing the whole point., less they do something stupid, like change direction, into the lane the automated vehicle was moving into in too short of distance for it to avoid them, then they deserve the darwin award for being that dumb and dead."

Suppose it's a single-lane or the other lane's occupied? Or it's a human cordon where there's nowhere to divert (and these can stop human drivers)?

Re: But we will know who they are

And as the weather gets colder I imagine those lunatics will start committing crimes wanting to get jailed since jail will be preferable to being out in the cold; at least jail has a roof and laws protecting against cruelty while incarcerated.

Re: Yes, it IS a game of chicken.

"Or maybe add a manual override -- and then we're back to where we are now."

The main problem is the Laws of Robotics. At their core, we don't want robots harming us through action or inaction. By that standard, they'll never win against trolls who abuse the Laws. Any robots that don't won't be in use for long because of our self-preservation instinct.

"For anyone that doesn't want to actually 'drive' their own car in preference to sitting back and letting it get to their destination, they may as well get on a tram,bus ,light railway system."

Except it doesn't work door to door, which is the big appeal of this system, and no taxis are too expensive for most people to use as a commute.

Re: Automated lifts will never catch on

That won't work as the lawyers will get involved. I think this actually happened once. Can't recall if the victim survived the encounter.

Re: Budweiser Light is like making love to a beautiful woman in a canoe...

I'm not. But they outnumber you. Plus I recall taste has little to do with the alcohol content, thus other popular "beers" among the party crowds are malt liquors, particularly in 40's. And let's not forget the cheap "bum wines" people drink when they just wanna get drunk quick, taste be damned.

"Is there any irony in that an anagram of otto is toot, which is a little lame for the sound of the horn on 40 tonne's of steel steaming down the highway."

I thought the reason for the name was because Otto is a Palindrome.

"Supermarkets tend to do their own deliveries to stores with all products on one truck and each truck doing multiple drops other than to the very largest superstores."

That may be true with groceries but alcohol is a controlled substance. Due to licensing issues (license to brew, license to deliver, license to sell, etc.), beer tends to be delivered from authorized (and licensed) distributors with chains of trust going all the way up to the original brewers. These brewers deliver to many different stores with different profiles: from the small mom-and-pop, to the typical C-store, to your average supermarket, to the big-box hypermarkets, and each load is different in both size and composition. One size can't fit all because of the demographics.

Re: Budweiser Light is like making love to a beautiful woman in a canoe...

"That Yanks wouldn't know a good beer if it was tipped over their heads?"

Then explain the craft beer movement.

What this tells me is that Yanks are telling more robust brews to take a hike. They don't WANT a strong brew. They want something light while still giving them the relaxing effect of alcohol (thus they don't want water). Put it this way. This is beer to them and they'll keep it, thank you. If they want stronger beer, they'll buy stronger beer from the local craft brewer, but that's not their bottle of brew, so put a cap on it.

Re: Budweiser Light is like making love to a beautiful woman in a canoe...

But it's NOT water. AND it sells. Even in the presence of more robust beers. AND it's not the cheapest beer, either. So what does that tell you?

Indeed, what's to stop these sentries being owned themselves and turned into bots?

Re: Give you £100, you act as a government should, it becomes £200, £300 and more.

"Ah, yes. Currency hoarding. So the financial industry is just sitting on the cash and swimming around like Scrooge McDuck? #economicsfail"

No, resource hoarding, which they use some of the currency to acquire. The richest of the richest tend to own lots of real estate. Land is a tangible, inherently valuable, and perpetually scarce resource. You can probably find other such resources. Then what happens is that 99% of the population are scrambling for the 1% of volatile land still up for grabs. Or as I like to put it, twelve people stuck in the middle of a hot, arid desert with only one bottle of water. No matter how you slice it, it can't end well.

Re: Ummm

The problem here is that even services are increasingly automated: tk th ed point you only need so many people, period, and all the rest are unnecessary.

Re: Wide-ranging?

Not if they offer to switch out your disc. The key element is being able to replace your original if necessary. Now, according to this, it's not illegal to rip and transcode your CD, but (1) it MUST stay with you, and (2) you STILL need to keep your original.

Re: Did I read that right?

Put it this way. You can sell on an official copy (original media or an authorized download), NOT an unofficial copy (backup). Downloaded copies are assumed to be from digital distribution or so on, so a physical medium is not assumed, which is why this is allowed. Otherwise, you need your originals (or if they're screwed, a replacement set which the seller MUST provide for you). You sell this unofficial copy, you sell the license that goes with it, meaning any unofficial copies are void and must be erased/destroyed as per the license (this line of reasoning was what nailed Vernor of Vernor v. Autodesk on appeal--the copies he sold off had been voided because they were part of a lease agreement and were meant to be returned because an update had been delivered to the original client).

Re: Games?

Eighth-generation consoles all use BluRays. Those discs have a hardened undercoat because the media layer can be pretty close to that undercoat. I've found that if something scratched hard enough to mar the undercoat, you're probably screwed already.

Re: Hey, really neat!

"There is value in exchange of ideas. There is virtually none in just shouting "that won't work" over and over."

But sometimes, like the Traveling Salesman Problem, there's just no practical solution. Well, apart from creating a new kind of human being...

Re: UPNP is convenient.

And my point is that turnkey solutions are what the customers want. Good or ill, that's where they're paying, so sink or swim. The fact the gray market is booming shows that regulation won't help, much like Prohibition. The customer won't care unless it kills them.