It appears that Big Brother's ubiquitous eyes will be slanted. They'll be sending frames to china every time they get net.

The US would LOVE to own that spaceport; they'd jump at the chance with promisses of lots of money. Kazakhstan would immediately be eligible for all sorts of federal grants, loans, and development incentives. The people of Kazakhstan would see a big influx of businesses and jobs, along with social programs and charities, tripping over eachother in the rush to exploit, uh, provide for the new markets. I think it would be a huge win all around. Except perhaps for Russia.

Then there really would be "Americans" who could say "I can see Russia from my front porch!"

We all vote for Civilization. Most people are holding back just because they realize lifetimes are finite.

I have been awaiting this for years for my (and everyone's) personal convenience. Yes, we will come up with all sorts of laws and violations, privileges and abuses, and some people will inevitably be wronged. Cars and trucks emit carcinogens but no one is championing going back to horses. Every single comment I've read has been all about the bugaboo paranoia, yet the vast majority of people will benefit from this.

I am specifically talking about replacing credit cards and cash. Combine location tracking and high quality facial recognition, put it in a "cash register," and I won't need to carry a wallet. No more PINs, no more swipe or bump of a card, no signature needed (I sign them with a backwards squiggle anyway.) I can't lose my face, and you can't steal it from me. No need to pass germs between checkout clerks and customers. Robbery of many kinds would drop, since the stores will have less cash on hand. But mostly I just want to not have to carry a wallet or type in a PIN in places where many others can watch.

Seriously, like everything else this has both good and bad aspects to it, but the good outweighs the bad by magnitudes here. Stop whining and start proposing appropriate laws and enforcements: It's easier to ride this horse in the direction its going 'cause it ain't gonna stop.

One morning our net was SLOW. Turned out most of our 200+ computers were participating in a DOS attack on a computer in Texas. We traced back where the infection started, checked the logs on that computer, and found the source.

Then we called his mother.

She unplugged his PC and told us she'd deal with him when he got home from school.

I did explorers back in '74. I sat at Bell Labs in Holmdel, nj and played Hunt The Wumpus on computers 50 miles away. Got to write any programs I wanted, any language I cared to tackle, on state of the art mainframes, with willing tutors for whatever direction I chose. Didn't realize the spectacular opportunity I was missing 'till much later. I'd give Explorers two thumbs up, except that I think they belong up the bigoted Boy Scouts of America's ass.

Losing your keys is far easier than losing your face.

I've been looking forward to decent facial recognition for decades. Especially in "cash registers." No more PINs, signatures, passwords to make up and then remember, no card swiping, bumping, etc. Heck; no cards at all in my wallet for loss or picking. Despite following "The Dead" back in the day, no, you can't steal my face. Just smile at the camera and go. Want to log in? My desktop should just follow me around wherever the nearest screen is. No more carrying a keychain (or barcode chain). My car should just recognise me and not be willing to start for anyone else without checking with me first. Same thing with the locks on my house. Tech like this is a good thing. How it gets used should be controlled and applied ethically, not just shot down with a luddite approach in the name of privacy. Go back to your shrill call to "Think of the children."

I mean, I REALLY want it. I like it so much that I want my phone to continuously send a stream of keystrokes, URLs, and any other data that fits into their protocol directly to their servers, even if I have to stuff it directly from a random number generator. Hell, can I get 3 or 4 streams going at once? How about ten or more from my PC, tablet, and laptop too? My GPS numbers can demonstrate faster than light travel around the planet! Perhaps a direct feed rebroadcast from live news sites might help them fill their databases. They want data - let's flood them with it until their data is so full of garbage that no one will buy it.

Apparently, you haven't been there. In the US people who get antibiotics take them for the full time span prescribed. They kill ALL the target bugs. In Europe, the attitude is to take them for just a few days until you feel better, leaving the strongest of the bugs around to breed a more resistant population.

The chip has eight cores, they all work, but you can only use six. The other two are reserved for the DHS and cronies. I, for one, do NOT welcome our dual-core overlords.

(I've always wanted to start a conspiracy theory.)

It already is. I'd like to have it consolidated where I can review it and address any issues that arise. Including opting out of parts or all of it. Location data like this would necessarily be under privacy protection laws, so some company in Minnesota can't get info on my location unless I initiate some form of contact with them.

All the comments so far have been focused on why it won't work or will be a problem (I'm not counting the snarky ones.) How about you geniuses come up with workable suggestions? I've thought for years that we need a trust based system. Every method for authentication is fallible and hackable, so we need to use a mix of them. Every time my face is on camera (red light camera, store security camera, the web cam two cubicles over...), it should be verified that I match previous facial recognitions. Every time I speak any microphone within range should authenticate my voice. Automatic tracking of my cellphone and car should contribute. One very important factor is location tracking - if I am at work I can't be authenticated at the gas station unless enough time has passed for me to get there, even if my credit card is swiped. Every validation of my identity should raise the trust level, and it should decay over time so new authentications need to be continuously collected. That way passwords can contribute, but using one in the wrong place or time when I am demonstrably somewhere else will be denied and noticed. Yes I can still buy stuff over the net with a credit card, IF authentication says that request came from a device I am using AND I provide another token (i.e. password) or verify that purchase on another nearby device, raising the trust level in my location and intent to purchase. As long as it has a short-term and long-term memory, trust based authentication like this can handle the variations in humans from catching a cold or encountering a life-changing situation. Truly, location tracking with decay and continuous updates contributing to a calculable level of verifiable identity is the best we can do. Funny to say, but it is no longer black and white in this digital age.