tharpdevenport wrote:You know, you got me thinking: Siri can't even get things right all the time from voice commands, yet there was K.I.T.T. who seemed to never misunderstand Michael, unless it was some human concept or idea that K.I.T.T. couldn't know from just accessing memory banks.
You know...I've never actually used Siri. Not once. Was very impressed to use a voice texting tool that operated through Google via this $29 tablet, though. Took the spoken word and turned it to text...like the original Battlestar Galactica dreamed up. (But then...another Glen Larson production. With yet another forward thinking view point.)
tharpdevenport wrote:Americans don't need permission to buy a gun. They have to pass background checks if they buy a gun from a gun dealer, otherwise they can buy guns from friends, have guns passed down to them from family, other ways.
That is a very good point, indeed. It went outside the scope of my narrowly controlled comment about ways of limiting guns to the hands of the public. And only helps to point out how the 'mythical genie' was long ago released from it's bottle. When the public has so many avenues to obtain guns and even make bullets at home, it's nearly impossible for any legal force to ever eliminate them.
tharpdevenport wrote:Well, that's the thing, see. Owning a firearm is a Constitutional right, but what is not a right is the American government regulating a private entity because it sees what they are doing as a threat to how they try and regulate protected freedoms.
And, should America ever truly fall and the dangerously rumored U.K. ever take over, the 'Right to Bare Arms' is their very first targeted right to forcefully take away. If that notion should ever come to be, I would be justified to be very afraid of 'the new government'. America is nowhere near perfect and has been undermined for way too many years. But, there are far worse things that could come to pass. It's an easy trap to think that the current status quo of the world has played out it's power plays. That's the furthest thing from the truth. Everything we know can change; albeit slowly in a matter of decades or centuries or in minutes with a well executed power play. Why, not so many years ago, a few lawyers changed a few words in a few laws. To summarize that, the whole economy system nearly crashed. A swift, silent blow from the iconic pen that could do as much damage as a whole army.
One where a child can't just obtain Mommy's credit card and place 'GUN' into the virtual shopping cart.
tharpdevenport wrote:
I'm sorry, but this is absurdist.
In real life even if a kid gets ahold of her mommy or daddy's credit card, they still have to have the pin number, they still have to fill in information they won't readily know, the order still appears on the card statement which the card holder will see, the items has to be shipped, delivered and somebody there has to get the package and if a kid will be in school during that time. And even then there's the issue of bullets.
And seriously -- no child is going to get their parent's credit card, go online, and order a gun. Maybe Hollywood wants people to think that happens, but in real life that's as likely as me walking into Wal-Mart and being offered a check for a million dollars for being the millionth customer.
Oh...let's see here. I'm going into e-bay for this example. Typing in gun,
water. (No point in being scared about what real gun listings may come up.)
Ahhh...found quite a few. Choosing price point. And...one penny with free shipping. (Really, Hong Kong? How you make money off of just a singular penny???) Erm...I'll go with the .88 cent/free shipping version, as that one is 'buy it now'.
Alright. Clicking on the 'Buy it now' button. Choosing how to pay. Click. Click. And, done. In a week or so, I'll have a plastic gun. No pins or questions asked.
Not such a jump away from the user being some intelligent kid with a desire to shoot over a responsible adult, an ordering process being NOT-e-Bay but the Dark Web, the money source NOT being PayPal but BitCoin, the delivery system NOT being USPS but by a flying drone and the gun NOT being pre-made to squirt water but in a little canister to be printed on a jail broken 3D printer. Honestly, I'm just a little bit scared at how easy that really could be.
Well, terrorists have no problems getting firearms, granade launches, explosives or various kinds, or the materials to make I.E.D.'s right now. Then there's the issue of terrorists actually being able to even print out guns, what with most of them having no access to electricity.
Well, you've got me, there. I have relatively little idea about the conditions that terrorists tend to exist at. No idea at all how hard it is for them to get a hold of car batteries, inverters and solar cells or generators. I'm clueless as to how some can get crazy loads of money to invest in even crazier ideas on conducting terrorism. But, when there are people out there, trying to bring computing to the middle of a third world nation by making Linux machines that have natural sunlight screens that may wind up as apart of our future mobile devices and solar cells/cranks for power sources, plus use low altitude satellites for rural land internet, I wouldn't be sure about anything needing a steady supply from an AC land line, these days.
Also, found a portable 3D printer with internal battery pack.
https://youtu.be/IKdMRYLMx4M?t=5m54s Mobilized tech is becoming ever easier with each passing year.
Yes, they have people that talk to passengers at various stages, from getting in to the airport, to boarding, looking for suspscious activity, certain types of people, and talking and quizzing them sometiems even multiple times. As a result there have been extremely few incidents over a long time. Meanwhile here in my country (the U.S.), the T.S.A. have consistantly failed at finding guns and weapons smuggled through airport screening, treat people like terrorists for having toothpaste or even daring to film their bad attitudes, sexual assaults to various degrees, old ladies and children forced to strip naked (one old lady in public, as I recall), stealing passenger's property, and causing hellish wait times
So glad I never have the need to fly anywhere. Sounds dreadful.
tharpdevenport wrote:Besides, the way that some with power want America to become, we'll all be needing permission to do too much more then breathe. But that's a whole novel for great science fiction to venture into.
Exactly. People in various positions of power, whether Congressional or just people in positions of authority that other people in power listen to...
There's a whole lot of scary concepts, just floating about, out there. It's a wonder our world continues to spin at all.
Killing off large swaths of the population all over Earth to make it more "sustainable".
Ah...what stupid thing did they call that? Plan 2000? Year 2000? Century 2000? Only the chosen 'cream of the crop' are to survive some man made super disaster disguised as war or some BS fantasy. Problem is, the ones being fed this stuff are also fingering the same powers that have made things like ICBM's and other super weapons. Geez...should I dig up that smuggled out footage from a ritual at some government camp where presidents and power types attend? It's kind of like a mixture of college hazing, mixed in with some really screwed up concepts that are the fuel for nightmares.
Putting cameras and microphones in everybody's home to monitor them and many other things. If you think I made any of that up (anybody reading that), boy do you not know some of the scary elitist in this country who not only think they know better than you, but that they have to imprison or kill you off for your own good and the people's own good.
What? You mean they haven't already tricked us all into doing that with the cameras???
*jup types as there's a pre-mounted camera on top of the screen, poised to look him in the eyes.*
Some years back, I was at a concert and was wasting time with a Game Boy in hand. One of the security people approached and asked if I had any recording devices. I assured her the Game Boy couldn't take video and that satisfied her. But, then I thought about it. This DS (I will forever and ever be calling them Game Boys. Name branding, like every soda is a Coke.) has a camera aimed outwards and another at my face. Why both? Honestly. I'm not sure the whole point of the second one. But, I was also carrying a 3DS for when the DS ran low. That has three more camera eyes. And the Cel-Phone had one. The true cam-corder (that wasn't out) qualified as a sixth. And I had even another camera device on my body. Seven cameras. And that was just for the portables.
So many of these modern computers have pre-mounted eyes, squarely above their monitors. Sure. Internet chat streaming convenience. Nah. Big Brother monitoring, more likely. (Be it US of A or M$ or someone else.) They all even have microphones. And so many tend to seek out any connection points. (I tested out that tablet's 'speak to text' feature at the beach to see if it was doing it internally or relaying my voice to a main frame. The thing acted extremely laggy. Giving me my suspected answer. But...that was it. It was still getting some stray internet access. Didn't ask me or anything. Pre-geared to always be on-line. I can so easily see something like Google making these terabyte transcripts of everyone's lives for the use of who-knows-what via all this tech. They gave whole Gigabytes of e-mail to anyone whom asked. (Probably for a centralized point of Big Brothering,
suspectfully.))
And then there is this user's entry about the time when he was setting up a brand new Apple computer. In the same room, he had a far older Mac that had come with one of those remote chat cameras. Old enough that it had tell tale LED's for power and activity. According to him, this camera wasn't really used and he never ran the program for chatting. But, for the first time...in a long time...those LED's just switched on. As if the new computer had accessed a back door to the older machine...
to have a look around the new place. The government doesn't need to create a law that puts cameras into residential homes. When the things come on some of the most popular electronics that people want...under the guise of being a feature of convenience.
And, to think...I actually thought it was funny when the traffic signals had BOTH the video cameras AND the stop light cameras in place. Because one wasn't replacing the other at all. Oh, I've long suspected that some kind of super computer was running billions of facial ID's to log the comings and goings of people, 24/7 with that stuff.
Quite right. Just look at members of the Democrat party on the Senate floor last this week. Despotism in action. Various members want to not only even you second amendment right, but get rid of that pesky little thing called due process of the law. Soem of them, including Presidential hopeful Clinton, want to limit or even suspect and approve freedom of speech. Except for them -- they're special, you see; they get to have guns or security personnel with guns, they get to say whatever inane *?$# comes to their mind, they get to have due process, etc., etc., etc.
Politicians wanting all the power and control over everyone else? You don't say? And here I am, thinking that the only people in Washington, D.C. were there to do nothing but serve the good people of the country and always had completely honest agendas.
As a teacher I held in high regards would have stated it, "I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them." It be nice to think that some are there with good hearts and want to make a difference. But, let's put a KR twist on this. Michael Knight resided about as far away from Washington, D.C. as he possibly could without stepping on Magnum P.I.'s toes. It seems rather unlikely that the powerhouse of the country has too many Michael Knight types, trying to make this world into a better place for all. More likely, the power of the jobs to be found there, attract those with underlying goals of a great variety of dirty things. And some of the things they might do to achieve their agendas are probably best not thought about.
Having grown up, embracing the more black and white style of writing like from our beloved Glen A Larson, I tend to push off the government agendas of the world, leaving that point of view for the likes of Tom Clancy.
The potential exists for those with ill intent to use anything to harm others. The reality however is that currently terrorists aren't looking to print guns, as various reports from experts said they want or are trying to:
[*]Get a nuclear device. The radicals stated targhets: #1: Israel, #2: The U.S.
[*]Get nuclear material and set off suit-case sized dirty bombs.
[*]Home-made bombs like that of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
[*]Germ warfare.
[*]And an E.M.P. (like north Korea is practicing to do right now, to the U.S.). Which, by the way, woudl eliminate the use of a 3D printer.
So sadly so. So. Sadly. So.
One insight from science fiction warns that any species advanced enough to create super weapons is either doomed to self annihilation by a select point of advancement or learn how to surpass the need for all forms of violence. It is merely a foot race to see which side reaches the finishing line, first.
You are hereby requested and required to flog yourself repeatedly for even saying
"Demolition Man". Bad poster! Go to your room!
Let's all laugh at the subject matter, instead. Shall we?
https://youtu.be/efzCBvq3Q98?list=PLvbw ... saaD9w3E1R