The pluses are evident.

Post #33,020 by Ashton 3/21/02 2:24:58 PM Reply	The pluses are evident. Now, what about the negatives? Note that every "new" thing ever conceived in hopes of a payoff, marketed in hopes of creating a new need: is perfectly portrayed only in terms of the pluses. "Scale and relativity" means: a discussion of the pluses AND minuses, over the short term (in Murica: the 90 day 'quarter' on whose performance we base EVERY bizness decision) ..AND long term. I believe Brandioch was merely placing this particular gadget into a semblance of long term implications. Would you like to consider these - or not? Take guns: almost anyone is capable of imagining.. a situation in which possession of one of these might ... ... SYA. Others imagine the other cases too; where such possession leads to a tragedy, family- stupid reaction- or countless Other occasions for error. So yes - we Can imagine a possible need for a gun. But we can also imagine the effects if, for believing the FIRST imagination exclusively: Why, we could create a society so violent in its imagery, so Me-Me-Me obsessed with say, ownership of unlimited amounts of goods and, so devoid of trust in one's fellows that - anyone NOT-armed would find selves in daily peril! (Couldn't happen Here, of course...) Like the gun - one can imagine the effects of the Authoritarians as are ever amongst us, upon first the optional and then ... ... mandatory deployment.. er, for our Comfort & Convenience\ufffd, natch. Like the Millennium Patriot Babble-'laws' rescinding of the Constitution. Is that a sufficient example of the sometimes even short-term processes of - dwelling on only One-side of an idea? Ashton Every two-edged sword has ummm Two Edges \ufffd 2002 by Obviousman
Post #33,038 by Mike 3/21/02 4:36:42 PM Reply	Odd Brandioch: >>It's always easy to trade your freedom and privacy for a SENSE of security. >>But are you REALLY any safer than you were? Effectively? I'm answering......."yes I think you can make a case that you are safer because of it". I explained why. "Oh but its all very well to consider just one side of the debate....." is an unmeasured response. Particularly, if you want to give Brandioch the lattitude of just about the most forgiving interpretation possible. >>I believe Brandioch was merely placing this particular gadget into a >>semblance of long term implications. Would you like to consider these - >>or not? What an excellent idea. Shall we drop the whole thing about whether its just a SENSE of security and whether one is truly safer then? Let's look at both the pros AND the cons. Okay.....I said it was "definitely open to abuse". I think I'm gonna stick with that for now and see how it goes. I guess I'm just not all that enamoured with the "big brother" presumptions which people immediately jump to. And it is soooooooo facile to jump on the big brother bandwagon. If certain posts here are to be believed....we need to lighten the hell up and stop worrying about these fictitious terrorists who (supposedly) want to kill people........and besides its HIGHLY unlikely that they will get you. So just fergettabardit. HOWEVER........big bro tracking the precise location of Americans while they tend to their largely vacuous, dull, uninteresting, trite, meaningless, banal activities all leading up to the next shopping erection on Saturday.......NOW THAT'S VERY LIKELY.....and something to get concerned about. Because......well.....errrrrrm.....well its not private is it? And we all know that "privacy" is very important because our mothers would want some when they went to the shitter. "Privacy" means that we can rent naughty videos and masturbate in peace......and "privacy" means we are free to do those things which are crucial to the defense of our freedoms and just about everything we stand for....... like Oprah and Howard Stern and kicking other people in the nuts in video games. In fact, privacy is the cornerstone of our society. This is why the police are never allowed to search my house, ask where I was on Halloween, or search my world-reknowned collection of bat piss which I keep in mason jars under stairs. This is why people are not allowed to write invasive and derogatory paperbacks about famous people. This is why photographers are not allowed to pursue Hollywood superstars. This is why the president could never be asked to show his tattooed pecker, or Monica to show her tattooed ass - after all its private isn't it? (Okay I made up the bit about Monica....but it makes me horney to think about it). This is why you are allowed to refuse a search at the airport if you don't particularly care for it. This is why you don't really have to tell the IRS what you earned last year. This is why you are allowed to take whatever drugs you want to. This is why CC television is not allowed to record our movements at the tollbooths, ATMs, major intersections. We have privacy dammit.....and GPS could wreck all that. All technology (and other stuff besides) can be used for both good and bad. This is an excellent point you make. It reminds me that my grandparents were petrified at the idea of having a toilet INSIDE the house. They thought it was unhygenic and disgusting to make a smell "indoors". They actually preferred to have an outhouse at the end of the yard. Not sure exactly how this ties in yet.......but I wanted to tell the story anyway. Ah yes.....I remember....when we are done with GPS, I would like to discuss the potential impacts of indoor toilets on privacy and whether Big Brother really was watching us when we ......ya know......did poopies. -Mike Hmmmmmm....two references to my elders taking a crap in the same post. -- William Shatner's Trousers --
Post #33,045 by Ashton 3/21/02 4:57:38 PM Reply	Cackle.. OK OK !!___________________Cackle.. Yeah, maybe just another nail in a coffin already nailed, stapled, glued & screwed. (But there's a phone inside, in case you were still alive when the lid went on.) Maybe it comes down to another piece of doggerel - the only thing technology can't control is technology. Since we won't / can't vet gizmos in advance of their multiplying like Tribbles, after the originator has left for his island in the Carib.. {sigh} we might as well relax and enjoy the play. (But somewhere down the line, we're gonna have to figure out WTF we think we mean by 'security' - since the most secure place of all IS inside that padded coffin with only the fone-line... Itself a risk: should you use it to listen to someone's AM radio all day) Chicken Little et al.
Post #33,073 by wharris2 3/21/02 7:23:46 PM Reply	Terrorists wrong argument The problem I have with universal involuntary GPS is the possibilities of hacking or human engineering into whatever is being tracked. (And I'm sure it'll be hacked at some point or another.) Suppose some MacTribesman gets pissed off at me because I make a disparaging remark like "Oh, those Mac people, they're too GUI and too stupid to know enough to hack a GPS"? If, wonder of wonders, they actually do hack into a GPS network, or (more likely) they bribe someone to get my GPS info, they can then stalk me, find me, trash my house, break my legs, whatever. Or, say I get married but later get into a bitter, bitter, divorce? My wife uses this GPS-hack - or even just plain general human veniality to have someone at the GPS tracking headquarters tell her - to learn when I'm heading over for visitation with my (hypothetical) kids and vanishes before I get there? No, I don't like forced new features. I want to know what I'm being given, what privacy options there are, and what I can turn on or off, and GPS is one of those I want to be able to be in full control of. I agree that potential terrorists have no interest in me except as a statistic when the blow something up. It's the other privacy threats that I'm bothered by. "I didn't know you could drive to Europe." -- An eavesdropper, piping in when he overheard a conversation about someone who had driven to Montreal.
Post #33,204 by Mike 3/22/02 8:02:30 PM Reply	Actually... ...that's a good point you make about pissed off people possibly being able to track you down and then ...... <insert appropriate nightmare scenario here>. I honestly hadn't considered that before now. -- William Shatner's Trousers --

Welcome to IWETHEY!