What's surprising is that nobody here thinks this is an inherently sexist device. Don't men suffer from overeating as well? What about a jock strap that monitors them? Eating disorders are not strictly a female problem, and technology that is unisex has, at least in my experience, fared far better in the market place. How successful has Microsoft been at developing a computer "for women"? It hasn't been. It's a terrible and stupid idea; just like designing a car "for women" has been in that industry.

Attaching the device to a bra would be alright, but integrating it into it pretty much spells its doom on the market. About the only thing that's marketed to women I buy besides clothing is deodorant... because for some very strange reason, men seem to enjoy smelling like they swam through a high school chemistry lab's discarded waste.

Funny how patent reform took so long because of that exact description of the individuals involved, and how copyright mutated from being a public service to a industrial weapon to be used on one's business enemies. And all in the name of innovation. And now here we stand again, wondering why America can't innovate, why China is catching up and kicking our ass in more and more areas every year, and yet the thought never occurs: Maybe we need to burn the mansions to the ground, round up and execute the lawyers, and redistribute the wealth so that America returns its promise of the American Dream to its people, now long-held in forced captivity out of fear of terrorists, foreign powers, domestic powers, and in fact every fear to be popularized has been met with the exact same response: Giving the wealthy more money.

We've dug our own graves. Either we lay down in it in dignified prose, or we throw the people who demanded we dig down those holes instead. But don't think for a second this is a problem unique to the nuclear industry.

Show me someone building an airplane. Oh sorry, you need an FAA license for that... and they're talking about even taking away our toy airplanes because they can be turned into drones. How about a rocket? Ha ha, here's a form from the BATF for your background check to own "personal explosive devices". Flying car? Forget it... you can't even build a regular car in your garage now without running afoul of regulations. The only Big Thing to come out of this country in the last forty years that Joe Average had any hope of penetrating this hopelessly dense bureaucracy was the internet... and look how quickly patent and copyright law mutated to repress any attempt at innovation there. Now we're weaving digital restrictions into the very fabric of the network, building in kill switches, and militarizing it.

You want a solution? I got one: Round up all the rich people, shove them in trains, and ship them to concentration camps, and don't let them leave until every penny has been squeezed out of them. Yeah, it's the same thing the Nazis did. Yeah, I'm going there. Because they did manage to do one thing for Germany: It got them out from under the foot of other countries who were sucking their economy dry from WWI and preventing any industrialization. And then Hitler came along and he gave Germany everything he promised: A strong economy, everyone back to work, and independence. Of course, there was a catch...

But I welcome anyone to put a serious alternative on the table for how you can combat wealth inequity on a scale not seen since the industrialization of this country, and at current rates in a few decades will have us sliding backwards into wealth inequity rates not seen since the Dark Ages. I can think of precious few examples in human history where the poor numbered so many and the rich, through peaceful means, gave up their wealth. It is, traditionally, a very bloody affair.

"what could possibly go wrong" post

or the "not invented here" post.

yeah geostationary orbit sounds like way far way, but maybe could be from satellites oribiting ~500km over the blue dot

with satellites, big doses of uncontained radioactive materials? Shouldn't such materials be "glowing" to sensitive sensors from the space or something ?

This is the major problem with the Tor network. I ran a node for a while, but the traffic packet sizes and timing all indicated users watching videos rather than doing something useful like advocating for freedom of speech. I've had Tor users hack my web sites and troll on-line meetings for blind people. As far as I can tell, most Tor users seem to be serious ass holes. So, I stopped running my node.

I have a less secure idea for how to do this that would encourage good behavior, but there's little interest on the Tor forum or Freedombox forum. Basically, instead of trying to hide what you do, only hide who you are. If you engage in behavior acceptable to a significant number of your peers, then they could help sponsor your anonymity. If you think on-line gambling should be allowed, you could sponsor some Americans who aren't allowed. If you think China should let their people speak freely without worrying about their Government locking them up, then you could sponsor Chinese political blogging. Normally, Tor "exit nodes" are run by people who believe strongly in freedom, but to protect themselves, they are careful not to look at any of the network traffic from their nodes. If they looked, and saw a child porn ring, they'd legally have to report it. In the modified network, node operators would be encouraged to monitor traffic, report anything illegal in their location to authorities, and report any activity outside a person's claimed need for anonymity to the network, lowering the number of exit nodes willing to carry their traffic. A web-of-trust network could be used to determine how much you should trust someone requesting an exit node.

This scheme would work very well with electronic money, using the original Ripple protocol. I doubt this would meet RMS's requirements, but I think it would be a fantastic step in the right direction. It's less secure because you're network traffic between sessions is associated with the same secret identity, allowing attackers to determine patterns of behavior far more easily. However, the people we all want to support are already doing this. There are famous political bloggers blogging from inside oppressive countries. If you want to use your right to free speech to make a difference, you have to attract a following, and that means having a public identity that people can follow. The only people this system would really hurt are those who wish to act out of the light of any public scrutiny at all.

As Thomas Jefferson said, when you do a thing, imagine the whole world is watching and act accordingly. I think all we need is a little more reality behind the whole world is watching part, and a little more anonymity. You wouldn't need everyone to support you to remain anonymous, but you couldn't PO the whole world either.

I think I see a flaw in your cunning argument: First, all trades are honest as long as it is not made under duress. And any macroeconomic teacher will tell you that in a trade both people get something they want, so the more trade you have, the better the economy is. People are operating under a wide variety of misconceptions regarding high speed trading, and only a few of the criticisms are valid. High speed trades mean that the value of a given stock or financial offering is much closer to the line where supply and demand cross. It results in less money being wasted either because the price is too high, or too low. What high speed trading does, in essence, is reduce the delta. Conceptualize a curved line, and then consider a number of equally-spaced rectangles under each approximating the volume of the curve. The more rectangles you have, the more accurate you can recreate that curve. High speed trading simply improves the delta of the supply and demand curves, so that the spread above and below the point where supply and demand cross is very small.

People get confused between high frequency trading and algorithmic trading. High frequency trading carries benefits for both buyer and seller. Algorithmic trading, on the other hand, can and has resulted in huge losses. Like most algorithms exposed to unexpected input, they behave erratically and in unanticipated ways, and once one algorithm goes off the rails, as it were, it can lead to a cascade failure where different financial agents within the system also see something that was unanticipated and then in turn fail. Because these algorithms control a lot of different financial products, these cascade failures can spread and crash entire markets, dozens of stocks, etc.

There are valid criticisms for algorithmic trading. I see none for high speed trading, however. And I do not know why people banter about about "dishonest" trading -- the trades themselves are public record, and only executed because the seller and buyer agreed on a price. There is no coercion or manipulation in the trade itself. The dishonesty in the system comes in over or under-valuation of a financial instrument, or from insider trading. This is external to the trade system itself, and comes from people using information not publicly available, or from deceptive accounting practices.

But here again, the algorithms themselves, nor the computers executing trades, are responsible, and using them is neither dishonest nor something that "only the rich" can afford to do; Sites like e-trade offer consumers a wide variety of tools which can execute high speed trades when various conditions in the market occur, such as the price rising above, or falling below, certain points, and these systems are available for use by the everyday person for reasonable fees. The dishonesty in the system is largely on the CEOs, senior management, and accountants, who collude to profit at others expense.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the systems themselves, and I really wish people would stop spreading the idea that there's this mythical beast living in data centers in New York gobbling up poor people's money -- those live in the Penthouse, not the basement.

wouldn't an embedded in the cpu xeon phi version, lack the necessary GDDR4/5 which exists in the PCI-express card version with its 200-300GB/s of throughput, and be forced to just access the main computer RAM at about 40-50GB/s?

That only succeeds in informing them that your number goes to a live person, and further that said person isn't taking their calls; That's a good way to get out of the collections department and into legal. And legal will just take out a court order for the money against you ex parte in many states. You'll find your bank account zeroed and good luck fighting back then, since you won't be able to pay the court fees to file a counter-suit, or retain a lawyer.

Poor people are at a distinct disadvantage in our justice system. Whether the court action is legitimate or not, without money you can't prevail. And odds are, the money you'll spend will never be recovered.

A good idea in theory, but not in practice. They don't remove your number when detecting a fax machine at first. It takes multiple attempts; as you said, if they're using anything decent... then they know you're a residential line, and if they have no other phone number, it'll typically assume it's a dual-purpose line and keep you on the list.

These robo-dialers are listening for particular frequencies that are in the human vocal range -- that's why when you pick up and say hello there's a slight pause. That's because it is routing it to a person... they know that, say, only 1 in 50 will pickup, so they make 50 calls whenever someone becomes available.. and route the 1 that answers to the available rep.

Hanging a fax machine off the line will keep it from going to a person, but it won't get you dropped from the list; not if it's a residential line. now if it's your work phone... it'll probably do the job quite nicely.

... And then there was a very long collection of wikipedia quotes, confirming that, indeed, America is still numero uno. One. Top dog. Best in class. Aced it. Nailed it. America - Fuck Yeah.

As far as the OP claiming this would result in military action, yes. We're not only the biggest economy on the planet, we also have the biggest military. Nobody's gonna fuck with us over some punk kid making public what every country on the planet already knew in private: We all spy on each other.

This is a tempest in a teapot. Sorry.

Snowden no longer can be given credit for anything; He released everything he stole months ago. Everything else has been due to jockeying for position by other governments and politicians keen on gaining an economic or political edge over their opponents. Which is what they'd be doing anyway, since its their job.

The only thing Snowden still commands is his name. He's like a brand identity, like Coca-cola. Slap his name on everything, because that's what people recognize...

Oh hardly. This is a tempest in a teapot. Every country spies, but they have the good sense not to get caught out on it. Now these NSA "revelations" have just become cannon fodder for anyone with an agenda. To suggest it'll lead to military action though is far-fetched to say the least. This is how international politics play out. It's nothing of any real import.

Many people gain by seeing the US cock-blocked in certain economies. Cisco was on track to grow 12% this quarter and instead shrunk by 6% -- as a major telecommunications provider, Snowden and this NSA business have cost them billions. And those billions have gone to its competitors.

All this talk isn't about the military, but about the economy. Anything that can be used to give other countries an edge against the largest country's economy is going to be leveraged to its fullest.

This is an excellent example of traffic analysis and how you can leak your identity based just on the nature of the transaction. It makes me wonder why bitcoin users do not routinely engage in 1:1 transactions simply to frustrate traffic analysis.

Well, since porn has usually been a driver for technology... It goes without saying... being able to taste the sex will be one use this technology will soon be put to. And if they can perfect the taste of flavored latex... the sky is the limit. -_- I know you think I'm joking, but I'm not -- VHS versus Betamax. VHS won because Betamax wouldn't license to porn producers. Technology is replete with examples of our insatiable hedonistic appetites driving it to profit and success over its competitors, who tried to maintain "the high ground".