because for example a good pair of shoes will last much longer than a bad pair that you'll have to replace much sooner.

Thing is there is no correlation between quality and cost.

I've had $100 runners fall apart within months. I've had $2 runners bought at the chinese night market last 4 years. (I had a belt bought the same night for under a buck fall apart the first time I tried using it. But I have inexpensive belts from inexpensive stores that have been with me since high school and are still just fine.

Like you I'm willing to pay more for better. But as often as not I'm paying more for same.

I can buy a car charger online for $2. I can buy another charger online for $10 and its just as good as the OEM one. I can walk into a local cellular store and buy their 'store brand' charger for $35 and find out its the SAME charger as the $2 one. Or I can pay $50 and get an OEM charger from Samsung or Apple etc and its just as good as the $10 generic online one but with a brand name logo and smarter packaging.

So I have to pay 25 times as much to reliably get a few nickels worth of resisters and slightly higher grade plastic? Because anything less, and I'm risking counterfiet goods or horrifically inferior product... but the difference between quality and junk is less than a $1 worth of actual parts/cost.

OK, perhaps not a "warrant" but surely the US has some sort of "production order" where the court says "give us the records you have" http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/c... ? Perhaps they don't, or maybe that is only in civil cases during discovery.

As it stands, to my knowledge, one only has to turn over any physical records / devices.

However, if those records are encrypted, and the password committed to memory, the witness can invoke the 5th amendment, and exercise their right to remain silent, and refuse to disclose the password. Of course, its not settled, and orders to decrypt data have been issued by the courts and are being appealed... for example.

http://www.cnet.com/news/doj-w...

As for Canada - a production order is typically issued to a 3rd party custodian of documents -- e.g. bank records, phone records, etc. And if they are encrypted the 3rd party is required to decrypt them as part of producing them. But the 3rd party isn't the subject of the invetigation, production orders aren't aren't issued against the defendant directly, that I can tell.

That is, the police cannot hand ME an order demanding that I actively produce my own phone records for them. Nor do i think a production order would compel me to disclose the password to my own phone or laptop.

Logging capabilities may be ubiquitous, but logs that would be useful in a criminal case, much less so.

There is another article on slashdot today about compelling parolees to wear bracelets that can determine if they fired a gun by using accelerometers and analyzing that information.

I can imagine all manner of prosthesis that might contain accelerometers where analyzing the diagnostic logs could be used to as evidence that you were moving or at rest, what sort of activity you were engaged in (walking, running, shooting, climbing, jumping, whether you got into a fight, or fell into a pool, got knocked down, picked up something heavy, swung it, or threw it...)

once they get a warrant for the password,

One cannot 'get a warrant for the password', at least in civilized countries :)

If the logs are so vital to the operation of the device

They would be like the logs on your car. They are not vital to the operation. But they do make troubleshooting a lot easier.

there are going to be ways of getting at them that do not depend on a security system that the user can forget or misplace

If the user forgets or misplaces it, it can be reset, but the encrypted history would be lost.

and if they are not vital to the operation, then the security minded will remove or turn off that feature

The security-minded will not necessarily have that option. Can you turn off the ODBII logging on your car? Not easily. Its not a simple end-user operated switch you can flick. The average person is completely unable to. Sure its possible and people repogramming and modifying cars for racing etc can probably do it.

But that doesn't mean the average person can do it, just because they want to. And what if your car isn't something modders are in... or lets set aside cars, and recall that we're talking medical implants ... flashing custom firmware onto your prosthetics ... that's going to be WAY outside the average persons ability or comfort zone.

or the maker would not put it in in the first place.

If the patient reports a problem, diagnostic logs will be absolutely invaluable information. Its doubtful any one making sophisticated electronic/computerized prognostics isn't going to have logging capabilities.

You could definitely walk seamlessly, using the keyboard, in Ultima Underworld,

Wow, you are right. I only played it years ago, and didn't get that far. I remember using really clumsy mouse controls. Apparently UW uses szxc isntead of wasd, with w as run, and a/d as turn.

You could also run and swim,

Swimming wasn't really that interesting though, it was surface only. Making it little more than viewport elevation change, with a sound effect.

It had inclines and leaning walls, also something Doom lacked.

True.

Ultima Underworld was not a 2D maze. Look at the first screenshot in the wikipedia article for instance.

That screenshot looks no better than Doom's '2.5D', but I agree UW was actually doing more sophisticated rendering, since you could look up and down, and had angles etc.

But despite being technically more true 3D than Doom, the effect was less impressive, overall.

Doom, by restricting the view angle, was able skip or precalculate a ton of stuff, enabling it to deliver full screen action with a decent framerate. UW was confined to like 1/4 of the screen. Add to that the tricks Doom pulled with lighting and skyboxes and it was just a lot more impressive.

Perhaps a bigger element of it being a 'revolution' was that Doom ep1 was shareware, so everyone had it. And it was multiplayer. So it was installed in high school computer labs, and in offices etc.

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?