[Top Gun]

Originally posted by CODEDOG ND
The Tracking Device:  I don't have a problem with it, when you have people that live in your country that are from another country making them easier to track, and if they leave then it can be removed and if they become a citizen then as well it can be removed.  Children can't make logical descesions or distinguish the difference between reality and imagination, so at that time parents should have ALL say in what happens to the child.  A test of reasoning or a certain age should be determined to allow the chip to be removed.  I doubt most of us care if the government sees your bum from some camera in space since most are law abiding citizens and have nothing really to hide.  I don't know if you UKer's seen the American version of CNN lately, but there has been a lot of "copycat" abductions lately with several ending in death.  CA's new Amber Alert System yesterday did prevent two girls from being killed, after they were sexaully assaulted by an abductor who was shot by police, but I bet that was just a rare case where the system actually worked.  

Oh whoop de doo, CNN says that all there's a lot of crime that must mean that we have to be chipped and tracked like cattle Crime is a symptom of a free society. The inconvenience and loss of freedom suffered by a great many more people is worse than any amount of crime could ever be. Law enforcement officers should protect the public and laws should be designed to protect the public. We should not have to follow a law unless it does just that and should not be dictated to us.

Mass surveilence is the sociological answer to a Padded cell, for everyone, no matter if they've actually comitted a crime or not.


Who are these so called "Criminals"? People who crack Digital Restrictions Management systems, pot smokers, fornicators (if you live in the South or Mid West), polygamists? Let's put them all in Prison without trial and throw away the key, that'll teach them for being such enimies of freedom

[vyper]

crack Digital Restrictions Management systems, pot smokers, fornicators (if you live in the South or Mid West), polygamists,

those who drink alcohol, mp3 users, people who look at p0rn, those with a bit national pride, etc.


'ere I fall into a few of these categories!



EDIT: ARGH! WHY DO I KEEP SCREWING UP MY VB CODE TONIGHT?!

[CODEDOG ND]

Originally posted by Top Gun





Who are these so called "Criminals"? People who crack Digital Restrictions Management systems, pot smokers, fornicators (if you live in the South or Mid West), polygamists? Let's put them all in Prison without trial and throw away the key, that'll teach them for being such enimies of freedom

Umm maybe murders, rapist, thieves,and serial killers?

[CP5670]

Communism could be a utopia for all if it's managed in caring hands (with the corporation striving to better things for the people rather than make a profit). Don't forget we're not talking about civil liberties, we're talking about the liberty of private enterprize which also means the liberty of the rich (with wealth passed on through the family) to get richer off the backs of the people, to manipulate the press to further their own ideas, to push their iseas onto people through propaganda or mematics. Of course if a highly powerful full communist government succumbed to corruption, things would be terrible.

That would be very nice, but the only way that such a corporation can exist is if it is a direct arm of the government, in which case it would not really be a corporation at all in the traditional sense, since the only reasons corporations exist at all is to make money. You are right about the last part, but if steps are taken to ensure that these huge, sprawling MS-like business do not come up everywhere (and they are primarily the ones responsible for the corruption, since most of the money is concentrated in them) it should work out okay in the end.

A responsible Communist government would respect the civil liberties of the people they're supposed to empower. The problem with a lot of communist governments in the past is that they've treated Marx's ideology as a religion rather than developing and evolving it.

Well that depends; the goal in the end of a government should be a two-fold one of the continued survival of its society (the people) and the progress of knowledge, and civil liberties of certain types may or may not contribute to either of the goals. But if a capable computer is running things, it should be able to determine the details quite easily and find a solution. You are right that some governments have stuck to Marx like a religion but then again, there has not been any true communist nation in the world (i.e. in the way of Marx's original vision) and they have all turned into some sort of messed up power struggle in the end; this can be attributed to the current cultural system's dictations and so just needs to time to work out currently.

those who drink alcohol, mp3 users, people who look at p0rn, those with a bit national pride, etc.

'ere I fall into a few of these categories!

All of these types of people you guys mentioned are simply the end products of the cultural system of today. The culture is spread by its widespread acceptance, creating a bit of a vicious circle, but these circles evolve and break up over the centuries and can be subtly influenced anyway by propaganda-style techniques.

[Top Gun]

Originally posted by CP5670
That would be very nice, but the only way that such a corporation can exist is if it is a direct arm of the government, in which case it would not really be a corporation at all in the traditional sense, since the only reasons corporations exist at all is to make money.

Sorry, The Corporation was the name given to local authorities who ran municipal services (waste disposal, enviranmental health, local road maintainence, local buses/trains/underground/trams etc and owned rented accomodation.

Umm maybe murders, rapist, thieves,and serial killers?

Most women/men are raped by people who are well known to them and they can identify. Mass surveilence wouldn't help in most of those cases.


Serial killers have mental conditions that cause them to commit crimes, most serial killers are very blatant about their killings. The ones that aren't are a very rare ocourance.


Thievs have to have a motive to steal something, address that motive and instances of theft will be cut dramatically. Have you ever seen any millionaire theives?

[CODEDOG ND]

Originally posted by Top Gun


Most women/men are raped by people who are well known to them and they can identify. Mass surveilence wouldn't help in most of those cases.

 

But it would help in catching them.  That is what they are trying to do.  Unless you can see the future there is little you can do before the crime is commited but the perp can always be caught, unless they are dead of course.

Originally posted by Top Gun



Serial killers have mental conditions that cause them to commit crimes, most serial killers are very blatant about their killings. The ones that aren't are a very rare ocourance.
 

And tracking known suspects would help police a lot more than having people tail them 24/7.

Originally posted by Top Gun


Thieves have to have a motive to steal something, address that motive and instances of theft will be cut dramatically. Have you ever seen any millionaire theives?

The motive of most theives is to get something they don't want to pay for.  And again tracking known suspects would help a lot.  And then again, removal of the right hand would help as well.  Millionaires have no need to steal, but some trailer trash that needs some quick cash does have a perfect motive.

[Kellan]

Originally posted by CODEDOG ND
The motive of most theives is to get something they don't want to pay for.  And again tracking known suspects would help a lot.  And then again, removal of the right hand would help as well.  Millionaires have no need to steal, but some trailer trash that needs some quick cash does have a perfect motive.

And so you would rather monitor these people than try and alleviate their poverty, which is their motive for theft.

And Top Gun, about the computer government: a computer doesn't neccessarily always do what it's programmed to. I didn't 'tell' my computer to display the Blue Screen Of Death or to corrupt my FS2 mission. In addition, the creation of an inflexible computer system would mean that ideas that were increasingly culturally outmoded were imposed on society. That, or some kind of totalitarian stagnation. Making such a computer system compliant with ever-changing society would be a full-time job in itself.

Besides all that, any machine that humans built could not be truly logical in a pure mathematical sense - anything built by the hand of an imperfect being is bound itself to be imperfect. Since humanity itself obstructs logical thought, how could humans be expected to express complete logic to the computer in the first place?

You may also find that it's perception of mathematical logic does not sit well with your perception of what is logical. So for example a computer programmed to function from a base of maintaining civil rights may not support these chips, but from CP5670's 'productivity' base of logic it would certainly be more productive for society as a whole if everyone was monitored to prevent unnecessary time-wasting, reduce the costs of crime and so on.

Computers as a means of government might be worth investigating but I find it amusing that you place so much faith in a system that exists only hypothetically.

[CP5670]

Sorry, The Corporation was the name given to local authorities who ran municipal services (waste disposal, enviranmental health, local road maintainence, local buses/trains/underground/trams etc and owned rented accomodation.

That is interesting; I didn't know that, but then it is just a matter of words. A corporation of that sort would not really be a corporation at all in the way we think of it today.

Computers as a means of government might be worth investigating but I find it amusing that you place so much faith in a system that exists only hypothetically.

The usual reason: the current system has failed us, and the new one would appear to work better from judging from the theories we have so far.

[Top Gun]

Originally posted by Kellan


And Top Gun, about the computer government: a computer doesn't neccessarily always do what it's programmed to. I didn't 'tell' my computer to display the Blue Screen Of Death  

That's due to Microsoft's crappy programming, Mac OS, Solaris, BSD, Linux (whatever flavour), VMS, BeOS and others don't blue screen.

[Kellan]

Originally posted by CP5670
The usual reason: the current system has failed us, and the new one would appear to work better from judging from the theories we have so far.

Or:

"The grass is always greener on the other side."

[Stryke 9]

Top Gun: I can't vouch for the others, but the MAC OS is every bit as unstable as Windows. The only reason it doesn't have a blue screen of death is that it usually just locks up (and is impossible to reboot without pulling the plug, since Mac power buttons are software-regulated), and when it doesn't it goes black. But that's not a blue screen describing the problem, is it? It's fantastic that you have to track it on your own.

[Top Gun]

Which version are you talking about? OS X's Darwin should never crash in a million years, I'm not sure about the GUI. (KDE 2 has locked up on me twice in six months) but from all accounts the BSD style darwin is rock solid.

[Top Gun]

Originally posted by CODEDOG ND
The motive of most theives is to get something they don't want to pay for.  And again tracking known suspects would help a lot.  And then again, removal of the right hand would help as well.  Millionaires have no need to steal, but some trailer trash that needs some quick cash does have a perfect motive.

So now we're racist as well. The fact that a tiny minority of people have been living in Vulgar excess from the day they were born*  and certain people are in virtually unescapable poverty traps means we're any more justified in locking them up for stealing than they are for actually doing the stealing?


Until society is totally meritocratic then then we don't have a moral (allowing for some fluctuation between whatever people have interpreted as moral) leg to stand on when talking about theft.




*and even self made millionaires are just lucky. There's no positive correlation between affluence and work and intelligence.

[Kellan]

Originally posted by Top Gun
So now we're racist as well.

Trailer trash don't constitute a race.

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Kellan


Trailer trash don't constitute a race.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh
COLD

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Top Gun


So now we're racist as well.

Trailer Trash (i agree with Kellan somewhat) could be black, white, brown, green, yellow, etc.

"Trailer Trash" does not refer to a certain race

[Top Gun]

They're still a vulnerable minority group.

[Stealth]

true, true

[CP5670]

well, one could also say that mass-murderer McVeigh-style guys are also a vulnerable minority group...

[Kellan]

Originally posted by Top Gun
They're still a vulnerable minority group.

I'm just striving for better linguistic expression to avoid misunderstandings and your words being used against you. Throwing around inappropriate comments about racism is not going to help solve problems but give people a reason to ignore you as inaccurate/crazy.