Comment Already gone (Score 5, Insightful) 304
If you feel the need to use these tools, your relationship is already in trouble.
I'm also thinking Facebook might be interested in this for general advertising tracking like the above. They do offer voice calls now. If these companies all share voiceprints it would largely be game over from being tracked.
Except if you're not dumb enough to use any of this stupid garbage, which is useless in the first place.
You should see the looks I get when I tell people I specifically do not have a Facebook account. It's like I'm telling them I don't use a telephone.
How can we be expected to respect law enforcement when they pull crap like that?
Because they'll kill you if you don't.
The problem with getting though with crime is that it means the police is expected to be though. And this is how though guys act. This is, always has been, and always will be, the price you pay for demanding "thoughness": you'll get fascism.
Americans brought this on themselves.
Well, sure, but brute force only works for so long and in certain circumstances. The more people lose respect for and become hostile to the police, the less the police will be able to keep order. "Do what I say or I'll kill you" is not a stable mode of operation in the long term.
What I learned that help me do this, was how to learn. Start teaching that, and you will find they are prepared for whatever comes down the line in the future. Stop making automatons.....
But then they might go learn what they want to learn, and not what big business needs them to learn. Can't have that!
Still, one could make the case that many more people need to learn how to program (am I an old geezer already if I hate the term "to code" for this particular activity?) than to become professional programmers, just like many more people historically needed to learn how to write than to become professional writers.
I don't think that analogy holds up. Everyone needs to know how to write to be able to get through life in the modern world. Why does the barista who made my coffee this morning, or the woman down the hall in the marketing department need to know how to write a computer program? They don't. Heck, I'm a Sys Admin and I don't know how to program! Sure, I understand the basic concepts of what coding is and can write a shell script or a batch file (I'm getting into Powershell too). But I don't consider that programming.
From what I see everyday, people would be better off knowing how the technology they use everyday works. They have no idea, from what I can see. People should understand the relationship between clients, servers and networks, what a file system is, etc.; basic computer concepts. Maybe kids these days already know that stuff. But judging from the questions I'm asked on a regular basis, people see their smartphone as a little magic box with a touchscreen. That seems dangerous to me, since it leaves them vulnerable to unscrupulous people with more understanding of the tech.
I know everyone loves to hate on "Cloud", but it serves as a great and easy option for off-site backups. That being said, if you are dumb enough to rely only on the cloud for backups with no local copies backed up, then you deserve everything that is coming your way when your cloud service mysteriously drops off the face of the earth.
Part of this is that many of us have suits coming up to us all the time saying this or that should be in the Cloud. They have no idea what they're talking about or whether the Cloud is an applicable solution. They just know it's the new hotness and think their boss will be impressed if they do things in the Cloud. We then have to explain why it may not be the best solution, and risk being seen as an obstacle to leveraging the Cloud. Plus, the Cloud is marketing speak and is annoying to those of us who like to talk about what we're actually talking about.
Cloud
It's true that they kill birds. But so do cars and skyscrapers. And I'd wager that coal - between the waste disposal, emitted mercury, and mining - kills birds, too.
They kill fewer birds that windows glass or cats, and no one is up in arms about cats. It's not really an issue.
The outcome of everyone solving their own narrow short-term problems and never really revisiting the solutions is the sea of accidental complexity we now operate in, and which we all recognize is a problem.
It strikes me that this describes our economic system as well.
probably less than you mind makes you believe
What a well reasoned argument. You've clearly thought this through.
Except the Communist Party of China.
The U.S. progressives are trying to model the system after theirs.
The party may be called Communist, but China is State Run Capitalist, not Communist.
So using large notes makes you abnormal? It's not illegal to be abnormal? Because, that's where you're headed with your statement.
That's where we're headed as a society.
In contrast, as a normal person, I've used EUR 100 and EUR 500 bills regularly to take care of, well, large transactions that need to be confirmed and delivered faster than a bank transfer would allow (and when the people involved rile at paying 3% for credit card fees, or aren't set up to take credit cards in the first place), like paying vendors, or hotel bills outside of big cities.
This is another good point. Without cash, every transaction will have an added tax paid to the payment processor. Think your "no-fee" credit card is really free? You're paying for it one way or another in the form of higher prices. Visa, or whomever, has to wet its beak in every transaction. It's one more way the financial industry skims off the top of the economy. They would love to get rid of cash. Then every time anyone bought anything they'd get paid.
nowadays I only use my debitcard and have nearly never cash on me, the card is not free and costs about 35$ a year I would not mind a cash-free economy as there are free services here that you can transfer money to people just based on their mobile phone number thou I see that the most poor would suffer the most and not the criminals that can trade in different ways, the beggers/homeless that does not have bank accounts and the street artitsts, I dont mind thoose and it would be a shame that they would have it harder
If and when cash goes away, we are all screwed; even more screwed that we already are. Without cash there are no more anonymous transactions. But even more importantly, there will be a middle-man in every transaction you make. Remember when Visa and Mastercard decided they didn't want to process payments to Wikileaks? You can expect more of that.
Just like the curtailment of our rights isn't a big deal in everyday life, it may not seem like a big deal to have to pass through an intermediary every time you want to buy something. But what happens when you want to donate to a cause that is a thorn in the government's side? Every company folds in the face of national security letters. It's already a crime to materially support terrorism. And protesters are already considered terrorists by law enforcement. It's not unthinkable that your donation to the EFF could bring men in dark suits to your door, or put you on a no-fly list. Think I'm paranoid? That's what they said when I said everyone was being spied upon.
Money (debt, more specifically) is already a means of control. Once there's a searchable record of all your financial transactions, you won't be able to do anything the government doesn't want you to do.
Not only in Finland! I've heard that in the United States aswell the police is very proactive about taking notes out of circulation.
Civil forfeiture has got to be the biggest truckload of bullshit I have heard in a while. So now the state can just take my money because of what they think I might do with it? How can we be expected to respect law enforcement when they pull crap like that?
Suggest you just sit there and wait till life gets easier.
