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Comment Re:We need a new class of IP protections for perso (Score 3, Insightful) 146

They'll ignore it, or the contract for your phone will require you click through an agreement to let them do as they will. Even if that fails, they'll do it anyway. A fine here and there is nothing compared to the powe of knowing where every person, car, motorcycle and eventually bicycle on the planet is. It's THE power, knowing where everyone is, what they read, what they say, and who they associate with. Every nation on the planet, every corporation, every secret and public police will never let this go. Ever notice how Wikileaks is the only new org on the planet that gets real leaks? There is a reason for that. They brag openly to reporters they don't need a warrant to know who's been talking to them. We are sewn shut.

Comment We've been screaming about this since 2001 (Score 3, Interesting) 146

Or at least I have. I remember being screamed and voted down on Slashdot because I was insisting the GPS and other location data was being accessed and would be given out to just about anyone, panic monger and paranoid lunatic that I am.
Amazing how people don't want to see what is right in front of them.

Comment Personal computing? It's dead. (Score 1) 159

In the beginning was the One Box, with many terminals, and that's what the "cloud" is: mainframes and centralized control. Personal computing died in 2001 when all Intel/AMD chips encrypted the BIOS. "Your" computer isn't yours. It belongs to whomever rolls up the BIOS, in the end. Hacking that encryption is a DMCA crime, and a violation of some contract you "signed", though many will pop up and say it isn't.
If you own a PC made before 2001, you may have a personal computer. After that, PCs and portable computing belong to corporations.
It's been long enough, more than, for a couple of generations to not have heard of any of this. And they won't going forward. This is the aquarium water they breathe.
I recall in Heinlein's "Friday", Friday Jones asked the networked computer she had been using for research a simple question: Who owns you? In a refreshing display of honesty, it refused to answer the question. Heinlein was a deep one.

Comment Re:Summary missing key detail (Score 1) 150

The brains are being artificially deadened by the blockers in the solution, per the article. They are probably thinking about what happens if they took those out...

No reason for a brain to die. Supply it with what it needs, and it can stay alive...who know how long. If you can feed the auditory and retinal input, you'd have something that has no haptic reality, but can still think, see, hear. Neural cybernetic links are doable.

Death as we always define it is nonsense. If the brain is alive, death doesn't come. We let the brain die when the body dies because of traditions so laser-etched into our souls that the body is the person. You don't die when your heart stops. The heart is a pump. You die when your brain dies. Sobering to think that the newly-dead person you are seeing in front of you maintains consciousness for a minute or so, in the dark and quiet we all get to greet at the end.

Comment For those of you not up on any of this (Score 1, Interesting) 271

For those of you not up on any of this, the data is extremely odd as the blockage started at the start of the Trump administration. Trump is under investigation for collusion with a foreign power, bribery by a foreign power, being compromised by a foreign power. Russia, specifically Putin.
The ongoing investigation is pretty much a slam dunk. Trump has been acting extremely oddly towards Putin; giving public warning of an attack, giving special attention to relieving him of sanctions both active and in legislation, being active in removing the oil-drilling block of Exxon-Mobil that's worth a trillion bucks through Tillerson, the CEO turned Secretary of State.
If it turns out the FISA application denials are primarily about Russia, we have a serious national security issue. We need to find out how, or if, the President or his people put their hand in this process and why and who the FISA warrants were about. If he's covering for the Russians again, as seems totally in keeping with his behavior, it's one more impeachable offense, if not criminal.

Comment I remember being lectured this was impossible (Score 2) 126

I remember, years back on Slashdot and other sites, being lectured about my naivete and ignorance when I argued we were opening our veins by making everything operable by computers and RFID and cards.
I am arguing the same now with automating driving, making car controls computer-based rather than mechanical, and linking cars together wirelessly. A half-dead termite can see what's coming. We can't give up profits and convenience even in the face of certain hacking and disaster. (It's a disaster when it happens to YOU).

Comment Re:Idiot post about Silicon Valley (Score 2) 458

The future is autonomous cars. (it ain't gonnna happen. This is tech bro hubris, we can't make people-level AI now)
100% robot factories are possible. (Nope. Elon figured that out.)
The free market fixes all problems. (facepalm Pickety's Capital, Klein's Shock Doctrine)
The Singularity is coming. (bad science fiction by people who grew up on movie sci fi)
Everyone needs to be retrained in _______ and all will be well. We've had tech employment disruptions before and people recovered fine after; progress goes on.(Many died and will die in poverty and no one cares to notice; that's why the "data" is so optimistically skewed)

All are not supported by anything but mutual belief and constant reinforcement.

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