We used to think there would be a small amount with planets and that we were really unique. Now, not so much.

I'm not sure we ever really believed that. Now we just have proof.

I think a lot of us expected extra solar planets to be common, and that even extra-terrestrial life will prove to be fairly common. But for me, at least, the open questions are how common higher life forms are, and whether 'sentience' is a common evolutionary solution... or relatively rare / unique...

Ok, lets take a slightly different approach.

Would you submit to the government mandating that you wear a camera and other monitoring equipment or have it implanted, provided that they need a warrant to read its contents?

Can you think of ANY negative implications of that? What are they? (Assume for the sake of the argument that the implantation process itself is simple, painless, and complication free.)

What's the difference between that and a disabled person requiring a prosthetic to be made whole?

The solution, by the way, is simple enough. Mandate that the prosthetics encrypt the monitoring data, and require a password from the owner to decrypt. That effectively shields the cyborg.

The problem is the consumer isn't in a position to demand this feature. And the vendor is unlikely to feel competitive pressures to provide it. So it won't come about unless we mandate it.

But only a small minded individual lumps all of the good people in with the bad.

Or all the bad with the good.

The purpose of my post was to contrast the perception of police and soldier. One is revered the other reviled, but they are in many respects much the same.

We badmouth the police all the time, but anyone says anything even slightly negative about a soldier, and people come out of the woodwork, to fall over themselves to thank them for their service.

That's all I intended to say. Its as much an attack on soldiers as it is a defense of the police. I really meant it as neither. I just find the contrast strange. Undeserved adulation heaped on soldiers... undeserved scorn heaped on police.

I sat on the side of the road in Basrah and shared a bag of Skittles with a young girl, 6-7 years old

How many more young girls were left orphans thanks to our presence there? By most scientific estimates, the civilian casualties of the Iraq war greatly exceeded the numbers of people ever killed by Saddam. Did we leave the country in better shape than we found it? Are fewer civilians dying of violence each year thanks to our actions there or has it gotten worse? ISIS is killing children and burying people alive... would ISIS be what it is today if we hadn't gone after Saddam?

Its not the soldiers fault. I don't blame them. They go where they are sent and do what they are told.

But don't try and tell me they are "fighting to defend my freedom from censorship" etc when we've sent them half way around the world to a country that never posed a real threat, whatsoever, even in the slightest to my freedom.

EVEN if Saddam had nuclear weapons, EVEN if he had the ability to reach the continental US, hell... EVEN if he'd actually managed detonate one and level an American city, and as bad as that would suck beyond words, EVEN THEN with a smoking crater on the continental US, he STILL would have posed little threat to America itself, its ideals, independence, or its governance.

Attacking Iraq, was so pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-emptive to any real threat that you might as well pay the soldiers to sit in a swamp slapping mosquitos; and tell yourself your preventing an arnageddon plague, and thereby protecting my freedom.

To those serving and served, I thank you for volunteering to that vocation, and for being willing to put your life on the line to defend our freedom. But at the same time, not every tour you actually are assigned is really in that capacity. Most aren't. They're political shows, protecting corporate money.

I sometimes wonder how you really reconcile the work you are so frequently tasked with doing with the actual job of defending the country that you signed up for. Or do you really deep down believe that every tour is about American freedom?

I'm not saying Doom wasn't revolutionary, but 3D wasn't the reason. And saying it wasn't remotely possible is easily disproved.

Yeah. It was. Doom came out at a time when most 3D was little more than wireframe (Flight Simulator, LHX Attack Chopper, etc ), or still renders. (Links Golf), or various first person in a plainly 2D maze (Wolf3D, Ultima Underworld, Might and Magic 3...)

Then Doom showed up, and it was a revolution.

The moving platforms, the stair cases (and not just staircases away, but to platforms within the larger room, there windows between rooms, lights and shadow effects and the capper: the skyboxes -- you could see outside throw skylights, windows, even outdoor courtyards... it all combined to make the illusion complete --- it was still really a 2D maze at its heart, but the illusion of being in a 3D world was literally jaw dropping at the time.

Ultima online was impressive in its own right, but it had NOTHING on Doom. UO was claustrophobic, and it was very "square". It was an advancement forward, but they just are not remotely in the same league. UO was also still an Ultima RPG at its heart; it was much slower paced, the 3d viewport was confined to a small pane instead of being nearly the full screen, and the movement controls were odious (mouse click driven) which did not immerse you in being there. So in UO you still sort of stepped through it room by room step by step- click by click. That's how it was designed.

Doom was big open spaces, with loops, and corners, and obstacles to hide behind. The controls put you there. And you could RUN.

Nothing else was comparable.

1: Thank you for serving. Just remember that you and other soldiers like yourself (myself included) sacrificed their rights, in order to protect the rights of the people that are taking to this board to incite hate.

Funny that when its police, its nothing but cops with power complexes abusing their position. Fascist pigs who close ranks to protect their own abuses, and all that.

Or do you pipe up to tell us how they are they are the thin blue line putting their lives on the line to protect our freedoms from those who would commit crimes against us, take our things, harm us, force us to live in fear in our own homes...? No?

But if its veterens? Well... all of them, each and every one, is the noblest hero putting his life on the line to protect our rights. Any suggestion that any soldier is anything less? That they might be dim, facsist, power/violence loving... forget that... those guys all work for the police.

Just imagine a police officer who was also a veteran... could such a paradox even exist without imploding the universe?

People like that will never understand all that went into giving them the right to say what they want to say without fear of repercussion.

Comparing the ethics of the revolution to the invadion of Iraq etc? I certainly don't blame the veterans for the war in Iraq -- but nothing they did there did anything to preserve my freedom. They shouldn't have been sent there. Iraq posed no existential nor even significant threat to America. Nobody was there fighting for my right to speak freely.

But yes, I agree with you 100% about lego mindstorms as place to get started, and even get pretty advanced.

Yep. I wouldn't be happy, but then again I wouldn't be happy if they searched my home and found the bodies, but I would submit.

The 5th amendment is about government over-reach. If you assume the government is only looking for dead-bodies, and the only people hiding them are criminals then its easy to get swept up behind the idea that anything the governement can get a warrant for is fair game. Only criminals will be punished.

But there should be some limits. Even if that means some times some criminals don't get caught, because the alternative leads to a grossly oppressive state.

McCarthy style communist witch hunts etc. Your prosthetic eye, rats you out, and everyone else who was there.

The password to your private files? Too bad for you that you lost your hands in the war, we can just replay your password right out of your prosthetic fingers.

There SHOULD be some limits on what the government can take from us, even with a warrant.

Historically, the limit was defined at testimony. But in today's world, maybe that's not quite enough. I'm fine with DNA evidence, but object to their ability to store it in databases regardless of how it was collected, and I'm appalled that being related to a criminal whose been collected amounts to a collection of your own DNA.

"We found DNA... no full match in the system, but we know he's related to this guy who was arrested once for shoplifting -- he wasn't the guy, but they took his dna and now its in the system... but I digress... they share a grandparent... so its his cousin. We checked birth records ... he has 2, one lives in this city... so we're picking him up now..."

That's effectively being in a DNA database for not being particularly closely related to a guy who didn't do anything wrong.

what is available in different companies,

In different *countries*

Netflix for example, maintains separate servers with a separate library for Canada.

(And therefore complying with canadian content rules for the libary would not be particularly difficult)

Likewise, the Canadian government is not just impotent but incompetent to think they could actually control foreign entities

Of course they can. They can block netflix traffic at the canadian border.

And if netflix operates servers within canada, then those will be subject to the laws of canada.

Seems to me Canada can effectively regulate netflix for "canadian content requirements" if it wishes.

Whether this is 'good for canada' or "good for the internet" remains open questions, but it would be consistent with the regulation in place already for broadcast / cable tv, and the idea that they can't do it for select large internet streaming services is ridiculous. They most certainly can - half the work is done for them.

Due to licensing agreements for the content, major streamers already "arbitrarily" limit and restrict what is available in different companies, so all the infrastructure to do it is already in place. Incorporating a layer of government regulation wouldn't be particularly onerous.

I disagree with the Canadian content requirements, (although I do endorse the governments efforts to promote Canadian content); so I'm against what the government is proposing here. However, that doesn't mean its impractical for them to do it.

One months notice cancellation policies are pretty much industry standard.

That isn't a reduced right of privacy, the RIGHT is identical

Semantics. They are effectively subject to being monitored by their prosthetics for big brother.

If you wear your Google Glasses or carry a GPS tracker (ie. cell phone) or have medical devices that record logs of some sort, those devices could serve to incriminate or exculpate (great word, eh?) you whereas someone without those types of devices would obviously not be incriminated or exculpated

One has the option to turn them off and/or leave them at home. The guy with a pacemaker doesn't have that luxury. The guy with the prosthetic eyes shouldn't be in a position where he has to choose between privacy or sight.

I guess it would suck to be a eye-implant thief

That's the low hanging fruit.

" I would imagine that since the vast majority of people, in the vast majority of cases, are innocent of the crimes they are suspects of, such implants would tend to provide proof of innocence more often than mistaken evidence of guilt "

That boils down to little more than a restatement of "If your innocent then you have nothing to hide".

I will admit little sympathy for cases where true evidence of guilt is obtained through proper search warrants - that's how it should work.

Then come the day when we can stick a needle in your brain and dump your memories out as video, you would submit to that, as long as they had a warrant?

There is actually precedent for protected communications like that.

That's not really a precedent for implanted electronics. Although its at least tangentially related.

But its more a special case of telecom / wiretap laws as anything to do with medical devices.

Frankly, we don't know anything about how these theoretical brain implants would operate

Your brain implants is futuristic and extreme. What about much more mundane situations that are already a medical reality. The diagnostic/logging capabilities of current implanted medical devices is already something that could potentially be searched with a warrant.

Should that categorically be protected against search?

Just because you choose to hide the recorder inside your own body -- whether it's surgically implanted or just up your arse -- doesn't change the legal argument

Perhaps it should change the legal argument.

What if your 'cybernetics' are simple pacemaker that log's diagnostic information, tracking your heart rate over time. That information could be used as evidence of your physical state -- look his heart rate was elevated at the time of the crime, when we allege he shot the victim and then ran.

My heart can't provide testimony against me, no matter how many search warrants the police execute. Why should someone with a bad heart have to submit his pacemakers diagnotic information to police scrutiny, in exchange for life (even if the police need a warrant to get it).

And that's using technology today. 20 years from now, a man with a cybernetic replacement limb -- does he have no privacy? A police warrant pulling the limbs diagnostic logs, could establish that yup at 10:14 on Wednesday the arm was raised, and the index finger exerted force equal to the trigger pull weight of the gun believed to be the murder weapon... the jury will like that.

And you are right the current law, makes that a-ok. But its a good question whether that should be a-ok. Should a person have to choose between being made whole but having a 'bug' installed on them that can queried for information by the police with a warrant; or being disabled (limbless, blind, deaf, ...) or perhaps its no choice at all, perhaps without the enhancement they die (artificial heart, liver, etc).

An implanted cell phone is no different, legally, than any other cell phone.

Here's a far better example:

Suppose your eyes were destroyed, and you had cybernetic eyes implanted. Suppose those eyes logged various operational diagnostic information for the last couple weeks on internal memory, information that can be used to determine things like when you were asleep, when you were awake, when you were indoors vs outside in sunlight, etc.

Should the police be able to get a warrant for that information?

If so, then a blind person with cybernetic eyes has a reduced right to privacy over regular humans. His eyes can essentially testify and provide evidence against him on demand, mine can't, no matter how many warrants the police obtain.

It raises a very interesting question, really.

Muslims, at least not on TV.

"Little Mosque on the Prairie" took the piss out of Muslim's on a regular basis, from the inside.

And shows like 24 etc pretty much setup "Muslims" as a one dimensional stereotypes not really any different than 'dumb vain blond' or 'dumb football jock' stereotypes...they get "dumb terrorist muslim".

All gas-engine cars are quite similar, and thus the same mechanic can work on most of them without much trouble

Parts are not interchangeable, and the more brands you service the wider your parts inventory has to be. Sure they all order in for the major stuff, but at least the most common regular consumables have to be on hand.

And experience is very vehicle specific. If you know how to change a clutch in a VW Jetta that doesn't mean you know how to change a clutch in an Ford Taurus.

The principles are the same, but if you work on VWs all day, you'll almost know by muscle memory what exactly needs to be removed in what order, what bolts are where, what else should be checked while you are "in there", etc. Switch cars, sure you can change a clutch but it will take longer and be less efficient.

But a Tesla has some major differences that would require some significant training, and probably a number of new tools to work with them. This makes me think dealers would be either less willing to service Teslas, or would cut corners in doing so.

Definitely agree. But one would think the same would be true of a dealer servicing the Nissan Leaf etc.