I'm not saying to strip ALL information away, but certainly in the above cases, none of them would be improved, from an objective point of view, by the jury knowing the ethnicity of either party, for example?
Or by being able to tell, by a person's language, accent, or clothing what economic demographic they come from?

Obviously, some information critical to the exposition of the case would be necessary. I'm saying to use technology to strip away the inessentials as much as possible, to remove the widely recognized racial, social, and economic biases everyone brings into the jury box.

Is this story sort of like the ones that told us how 'pirate downloaders' and 'the internet' were going to bankrupt the music industry and drive musicians into the poorhouse?

Let me call Kanye and Rihanna, see if maybe I could send them a donation and help them out a little bit? Those poor kids, just struggling to get by. Like the whole music industry....clearly, they're doomed.

I'm going to the Mall today.
I'll be there from about 4pm until about 8.

See you there, bitches.

Curiously, you still managed to avoid discussing (or more specifically, disputing) his facts, which was precisely the previous poster's point?

...I'd like to see technology deliver a true veil of ignorance between juries and prosecutor/defendant/court.
It would be the job of prosecutor, defendant (under the eye of the judge) to present a basic outline of events with neuter models in a visualized space. Witnesses could be questioned and cross examined in real time, but with the judge having a time delay circuit allowing the to excise any non relevant information to the case...defendant would not be a white man or black woman, just "defendant", etc.

I actually live near a REAL one.

http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blo...

No, seriously, it's a hole in the ground, into which half of a decent-sized river dumps.
They have put everything from dye, to pingpong balls, to (amusingly) a car - and none of it has ever come up anywhere.

That quote from Banks (damn I actually miss him) illustrates that as much as academe might sneer at 'space opera' as not "real literature", this man demonstrated in one observation a better, more fundamental understanding of the development of civilizations than several shiploads of professors and a whole ark of anthropology grad students.

...that he will be strongly in favor of whatever the audience is in favor of in whatever venue he's speaking (because he won't really talk to Republicans anyway, so in that sense self-selecting).

Honestly, where do you live that consumers would tolerate having to ask the clerk to hand them stuff?

Here in the midwest US, sure, that's true for small high value electronics, jewelry, and cosmetics - none of which is commonly packaged like this, as you observed. Then again, they are what, 1% of purchase transactions?

Not to mention that the game is very sensitive to (perceived) reward levels.
Tweak some values up or down (or you don't even have to tweak the actual rewards, simply the perception of reward values) and the outcomes can vary radically.

Moreover, I think we can all agree that when it comes to mating strategies - which are really the only one that matters, evolutionarily - choices are not always based on cerebral, cogent weighting of costs, benefits, risks, and rewards...more often "opportunity", "desire", and frankly, "alcohol".

"Privacy" as formulated in 2015 is frankly a fairly modern concept. As much as people seem to assert "we used to have privacy" I suspect it was about as real as the 'Father Knows Best' prototypical TV family - ie not really.

For the bulk of human existence, we have lived in small family or clan groups. This meant that everyone not only knew everything about you, but (usually) everything about everyone you were related to, and your ancestors. Had a crazy g'great grandfather that got caught cheating on his wife? Everyone knows, and likely expects that you're not terribly faithful either. Mother was a drunk? Everyone knows, and expects you're probably a drunk too. You said bad things about the clan chief, odds are eventually he knew. You were not only responsible for what you said or believed, you were frequently called to account for it (fairly or not).

Privacy - the very concept of anonymity - was extraordinarily limited until literacy was widespread, and even then the idea that you'd write something and nobody knew who wrote it was ridiculous really until the printing press, and even then the number of people involved meant your risk of discovery probably was a steeper curve than your audience breadth until the modern era, and small-shop copy machines/mimeographs.

I don't see Gamma Ray Bursters, ergo, list is poppycock.

Yet if you gave readers the opportunity to turn on/off visible comments, I wonder which would win?

I'm almost certain most people would leave the comments, after all, you don't have to read them. Which then suggests that no, it really IS more about protecting themselves as the sole authority, because monologue is so much easier than dialogue.

Blame your fellow humans.
Believe me, companies would rather NOT have to spend more $ for expensive shell packaging, but its very challenging nature of opening significantly reduces pilferage and shoplifting.

"When you have a family, you'll understand the need for a simple NAS loaded with your media and simple to use screens for your family accessing it."
You mean, aside from my four kids in their late teens and twenties? :)

The funny thing is, with my 'early adopter' media server setup, yes, it's a little kludgy sometimes, but - at the risk of inflaming /.'s "how dare you suggest girls are less techy than boys" crew - even my girls (who couldn't give a crap about computers) know somewhat how/why this stuff works, such that they help fix their friends' systems when they're at their homes.

Then again, I'm the guy who bought them the components for a sweet desktop gaming rig specifically so we could build it together and they'd learn something about the process.