PositiveID Corporation, a developer of medical technologies for diabetes management, clinical diagnostics and bio-threat detection, announced today that it has received an order for its VeriChip(TM) microchip to be used for disaster preparedness and emergency management in Israel by an integration partner.
The VeriChip radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2004 for patient identification. The VeriChip can also be used to assist in the management of emergency situations and disaster recovery in conjunction with a customized camera capable of receiving both RFID scanned data and GPS data wirelessly, and a Web-enabled database for gathering and storing information and images captured during emergency response operations.
The Company’s integration partner intends to provide the microchips to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the State of Israel’s military force.
Marc Poulshock, PositiveID’s Vice President of Business Development, said, “We believe there are many important applications for the VeriChip and our associated intellectual property including next-generation identification and bio-sensing capabilities. Our partner is looking to help healthcare organizations, militaries including the IDF, and governments with their disaster preparedness and emergency response needs.”
Seth D. Baum, Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman
(Submitted on 22 Apr 2011 (v1), last revised 16 Aug 2011 (this version, v2))
Abstract: While humanity has not yet observed any extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), contact with ETI remains possible. Contact could occur through a broad range of scenarios that have varying consequences for humanity. However, many discussions of this question assume that contact will follow a particular scenario that derives from the hopes and fears of the author. In this paper, we analyze a broad range of contact scenarios in terms of whether contact with ETI would benefit or harm humanity. This type of broad analysis can help us prepare for actual contact with ETI even if the details of contact do not fully resemble any specific scenario.
It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
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This is AE911Truth’s new 9/11 documentary on the mysterious destruction of World Trade Center Building #7 on 9/11/01. Join actor, Ed Asner, and architect, Richard Gage, AIA, as they narrate an unfolding story that decimates the official account (“collapse due to normal office fires”) of this 47 story high-rise which was destroyed on the afternoon of 9/11 in record time: top to bottom in under 7 seconds – and at free-fall acceleration for a third of its fall.
This is AE911Truth’s best shot at a professionally produced 15 minute informative and engaging WTC 7 documentary – designed for newcomers. It is free. Please spread far and wide.
The documentary includes several of the dozens of technical and building experts that were interviewed and that appear in our forthcoming full length documentary – 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out. Altogether of course there are more than 1,500 Architects & Engineers that have signed the AE911Truth petition calling for a new investigation of the destruction of all 3 high-rises at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Special thanks to the AE911Truth volunteer video crew!
We are proud to partner with the 9/11 family members and first responders of RememberBuilding7.org in the 10th Anniversary Campaign to raise awareness about WTC 7 in cities across America.
Please visit http://RememberBuilding7.org and decide what you can do to help the campaign.
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Here is a great compilation of mainstreM news outlets reporting on unidentified flying objects. Obviously it is propaganda for project blue beam, as there is no mention of tin foil hats at all.
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And here is a video of someone calling for a fake alien invasion to save the american economy.
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There’s no shortage of ideas on how to help the faltering economy, but Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has come up with what has to be the oddest suggestion yet: Fake a looming invasion from outer space. In an interview with CNN, Krugman cited “a Twilight Zone episode in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time… we’d need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.” According to Krugman’s tossed-off theory, we’d need a massive buildup to counter the apparently looming invasion. “[If] inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months.” (Watch the video below). Valid hypothesis… or just plain silly?
Check out the project blue beam links on this site for more information.
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9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out is the exciting new documentary film by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Watch the four-minute trailer above. Then share it with all your friends via Facebook, email, etc.
Next, download the press release and forward it to media organizations in your area.
The documentary premieres the first week of September in theaters all across the country and around the world. Be sure to screen the documentary in your community and use our customizable premiere posters.
The new DVD 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out will ship the first week of September. Order your copy today while supplies last and to guarantee your shipment before September 11!
Send your East Canadian and New York friends to the World Premiere with special introductions by Richard Gage, AIA, in Toronto on September 7, and in New York on the afternoon of September 11. The Toronto premiere is occurring in conjunction with The Toronto Hearings, a 9/11 evidence-based conference which follows on September 8-11 – and concurrently with the popular nearby Toronto Film Festival.
Cashless society, a familiar expression. Everyone has heard it at least once in their lives. Whether you are conscious of the expression or not, it has been thrown around countless times over the last few decades. The words themselves evoke imagery of popular science fiction films, set in the not-too-distant future. If one was to loosen the grip of reality for just a moment, movies like Minority Report and Demolition Man have already painted a clear picture as to what society is to expect for the future of commerce. But what do the words actually mean? What will a cashless society actually necessitate to breach the realm of science fiction and explode into our reality?
Of Gods and Titans
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is symbolic of forethought, and that was his gift to mankind. Prometheus stole the fire of the gods and gave it to man, as man was not born with any natural defenses for survival except our unique ability to think. This one gift however is a double edged sword.
“That which can warm us, can also incinerate us”, warns Edwin Black, investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author.
Dressed from head to toe in a sharp black suit, you can immediately tell Edwin Black means business. His silver tie cuts sharply between his jet black jacket, almost matches his hair exactly. Most famous for his investigative expose of the atrocities committed by one of the world’s most powerful corporations, IBM, I let his persona and achievements speak for themselves. He has been nominated ten times for a Pulitzer prize and has won many other prestigious awards for his investigative work.
What is money? Edwin Black exemplified the historical root of what we know today as money. “You got something, I want it. Am I going to kill you for it? Or am I going to trade you for it? That made economic systems. That meant a unit of monetary exchange. That was cash” he explains bluntly. And several thousand years ago, it was as simple as that.
Although I was speaking with a man that is able to face off, eye to eye with a corporation as powerful as IBM, his tough, down to business exterior disappears the moment he flashes a smile. It is a warm, full faced smile that could lighten even the darkest of rooms. When his eyes weren’t cutting through to your very core, they were welcoming and gentle.
Money served as a common object that would allow people to barter with each other, with something tangible that had an agreed upon value. If a goat herder was selling goats at a market, and another person had a bunch of grapes he wished to trade for a goat, the goat herder may not have been interested in bartering for grapes. This situation would have prevented the grape harvester from obtaining a goat for dinner. Money alleviated this problem by offering an intermediary between the two respected goods, allowing a fair barter to occur.
“That was the basis for the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, several thousand years ago, with the code of Hammurabi,“ Edwin explains. Mesopotamia is what we now know today as modern Iraq and the code of Hammurabi is one of the oldest deciphered writings in the world, written in a script known as Cuneiform. It is similar to a modern constitution and listed the laws of trade and commerce, with over one half of the engravings dealing exclusively with matters of contractual law.
Edwin Black knows the history of commerce well, as one of his books deals with Iraq and its seven thousand year history, including the earliest of monetary systems, “Banking on Baghdad”. Gold and silver coins were cash money all the way through the ages until the early nineteenth century. Every society the world over understood the value of gold and silver and this can be seen in the modern day stock market. As the currencies of nations falter, the value of gold and silver rise.
These precious metals have historically been of value and will always be valued. However, carrying around stacks of coinage was impractical and society eventually moved to a paper currency that was linked to a common value of gold. Notes of paper that acted as receipts of gold replaced physical gold or silver coins and were redeemable at local banks for their value in gold. The very first Federal Reserve Bank notes would carry the message “This Note is Redeemable in Gold on Demand”, allowing people to still participate in commerce with gold and became known as ‘the gold standard’. The American constitution specifically states that gold and silver are “lawful money” and with the gold standard, this commercial activity could still be defined as ‘constitutional’.
The world eventually parted ways with the gold standard, leaving us with a fiat currency, meaning that it only has value because of government regulation or law. For example, the value of the currency is determined by how many units of this currency is in circulation at the time, regulated by the central bank of the nation. This is cash money as we know it today.
Magnetic stripes on a plastic card have been used since the early 1960′s. Invented by an IBM engineer named Forrest Parry, these cards were the next step towards a cashless society. They allowed for commerce to take place without the physical exchange of money. This was the cutting edge of technology in the early sixties and it still persists to the modern day.
After the magnetic stripes, there is now the relatively new ‘Tap & Go’ payment system. This technology is based on NFC (near field communication) and allows the purchaser to simply tap their credit/debit card on a POS (point of sale) device, allowing a transaction to occur. While an older magnetic stripe card requires the magnetic stripe to pass along the physical reader, the near field communication device only requires the chip to be within a specific range of it, as the transaction occurs in three dimensional space. NFC, which is actually RFID (radio frequency identification), is considered cutting edge technology. All modern day credit cards and passports bear an RFID microchip for NFC transactions with relevant readers.
But these aren’t considered technologies that make up a cashless transaction, are they? They still require something tangible for a transaction to take place. This raises the question that if electronic currency, in the form of a credit card or bank card, couldn’t ween the population off of a physical currency, what could?
State of the Art
If magnetic stripes were once the pinnacle of commerce, and RFID technology still relies on a similar sized piece of plastic, you could consider them the same. Technology today has radically evolved into a completely unknown beast. Check out the ‘Brain Computer Interface’ and come to the realization that the world is ‘moving forward’ quicker than you can imagine. It is a device that fuses the nervous system of a patient with electronics, by implanting a computer chip into the motor cortex of a patient’s brain, and allows signals sent from the brain to interface with a computer. A person can literally move a mouse cursor on the computer screen with thought alone. This is revolutionary for those suffering a condition known as ‘locked in’ syndrome, a debilitating condition which prevents a person from moving or communicating due to near total paralysis. However, the focus is on technology that simply allows for commerce to take place, in a cashless way.
Cashless society. A world without cash. It makes sense, we are nearly there if you consider that Internet transactions are basically ‘cashless’. Yet we are still bound to carrying something physical aren’t we? Credit cards need wallets, Internet transactions need credit cards. In the late seventies, credit cards didn’t create the cashless society. If credit cards that utilize NFC instead of magnetic stripes don’t constitute a cashless society, and mobile phones are based on the exact same technology, then the only thing left would be something totally intangible.
Playing with Fire
Would Nazi Germany have been a cashless society? “Nazi Germany would have been a cashless society, because they were already using technical means to deprive people of their cash. It’s one thing to confiscate cash, its another thing to prohibit the transmission of cash or the transactions of cash or currency of value based upon electronic means.” Edwin continues.
“Now, you have heard of the credit society where people are enabled to get credit cards and buy shoes and things at the store based on a credit card, but if your credit goes bad you can’t use your credit card. But even if your credit goes bad, you can still take a five dollar bill, go into the grocery store and buy yourself some bread and some milk.
“Under the cashless society, with one click, you can be DE-listed from having a transaction. So while you can call it the cashless society, or corporate America or the global corporations can call it a cashless society.. so it’s convenient.. so we’re not burdened with dollar bills and things. There’s a dark side to that. This is Promethean. This is a great convenience and also a great avenue to individual destruction. A great avenue toward the confiscation, not of money, but of personal liberty.
“Imagine what would happen if the government in Syria, North Korea, China, Libya, certain parts of the United States and maybe northern Ireland, whatever society you wish to look at, decides that it can push a button a stop somebody from having a transaction. They can already push a button and stop your master card in a moment’s notice, but can they actually push a button and stop you from buying bread? That’s what the cashless society will do. “
“So once you can establish that modality, everything else flows from that. First we invent the gun, then we invent what will do with the gun. Do we defend? Do we hunt for food? Do we murder? Do we mass murder? Do we have target practice? Do we put food on the table?” he says.
Edwin continues, “These are the Promethean issues that face us with the cashless society, which is merely the next step in a society which is controlled and mass controlled and centralized”.
This isn’t a ‘conspiracy theory‘, it’s a hypothetical situation that can occur tomorrow, as the technology is already being used throughout the world. VISA has already promised a cashless experience for everyone at the 2012 Olympics. ‘Conspiracy theory‘ are trigger words, very powerful ones. Even the most intelligent of people fall victim to the power this expression wields both in its use as a weapon to prevent an epic dialectic, or experience its devastating destructive powers as it is aimed in your direction.
Hands Free Radio Frequency Identification Device’s
Onto the stage and into the lime light steps the Verichip, the world’s first and only FDA approved implantable microchip for humans. Get implanted with this RFID chip, and forever you can be ‘read’ with a hand held device. Mobile phones are RFID enabled through NFC. Upon the ‘scanning’, the RFID chip broadcasts a unique identifier key that allows the ‘reader’ to match your unique chip with the relevant database record.
There is a night club in Barcelona, Spain, named the Baja Club. Since 2004 it has been offering patrons the opportunity to have themselves implanted with a Verichip. If anyone were to take the club up on in their offer, they are to be afforded access to the VIP section in the nightclub, and not only did they not require photo identification to enter the club, they also had their drink tabs charged to the chip. This, by it’s very definition, is a cashless society. Aforementioned logic dictates that for a cashless society to exist it would need to be totally intangible commerce. Although right now it is limited to a night club party lifestyle, how long would it take for this to spread like an epidemic throughout the world, seeping into every crevice of modern commerce?
You may have seen an advertisement on behalf of IBM being played on television (above). This ad, exhibiting IBM’s vision of the future market, displays a man walking through a modern day shopping complex slyly packing groceries under his jacket. This continues through the store as he eventually gets to the exit of the store. Throughout the duration of the man’s time in the store there is a security guard closely watching, and as he is exiting, he passes through what we can now refer to as an RFID portal. Once the man passes through this portal, a scanning action takes place, as you would expect an item to be passed over a bar code scanner. A receipt is then spat out detailing every item that the man has stuffed under his jacket, and accordingly whatever he has on him, has been charged to his account. Transaction complete. This is the future market.
What is specified technologically that could differentiate between the man having a NFC enabled smart phone or an implantable RFID microchip? Absolutely nothing! This is the future of e-Business according to IBM.
While supermarket chains like Woolworths offer a customer with the option of self-checkout, it could only be a matter of time until they offer the intangible commercial portal that would enable a consumer to walk through with a packed shopping trolley filled with RFID tagged products, for a truly ‘cash free’ experience.
Cashless Society. There are only two options before us, for a truly cashless society to exist. One involves our mobile phones incorporating every piece of data usually stored on plastic cards in our wallets – Medicare, licenses, credit and bank cards, etc. Or an implantable RFID microchip.
Identification is only Step One
What difference is there, technologically, to what is available today and what was available to the Nazi regime? “The speed is a major difference, what took Hitler repeat efforts with IBM cards, program after program, to register the Jews, to exclude them from society, to confiscate their assets, the fourth area was ghettoization, the fifth is deportation, the sixth is extermination” explains Edwin.
“That long process can now be done in a moments notice with a click of a button.”
“And further than that, in the case of the Nazi, people like my father were able to survive the Nazi onslaught because he had blond hair. Other people were not able to survive because they were required to wear a yellow star, or had an ID card. And anyone who didn’t have a yellow star or an ID card, who needed to have one, could be shot. Now what was the purpose of the yellow star? The yellow star was to warn people, theres a Jew there, or this man could not sit on that bench, or this man could not walk into that store, these are Jews.”
“Now imagine if nobody needs a yellow star, and nobody needs blond or brown hair. And everybody can be identified for their value, for their advocacy, for their enemy character, for their adversary nature. Based up some arbitrarily decided feature. Are they Jews? Are they young protesters in Iran? Are they Wiggers? Are they Tutsi’s? Are they Hutu’s? Are they the tribe of Gaddafa? Are they from the tribe of eastern Libya? Western Libya?”.
“Now with the cashless society can you not only turn of the switch of credit, not only can you turn off the Internet of communication, you can actually prohibit people from using the very means that civilization pioneered several thousand years ago that people used to rise above war,” Edwin continues, “That was cash”.
“Just when we were decentralizing our lives, we are centralizing the control of our life”, warns Edwin.
As technology advances and we as consumers expect life to get easier and more convenient, how are we to know that we aren’t going to get burnt? Edwin Black has documented corporate collusion with governments and offers a blunt warning to all who are willing to listen. Is the cashless society the next step towards another holocaust? A technological holocaust, at the discretion of those who control the digital money? If a corporation as large and as influential as IBM can remain as predominant and influential as it is, even with their genocidal history exposed, how can anyone deny a conspiracy exists?
This is not the “cashless society” that Hollywood or corporate America would have you believe. Is it?
Brody Sutton: I still remember. Saturday morning cartoons, must-see-tv, news, fair and balanced. I also remember the first two Gulf wars, the second great depression, school shootings, and the music. It’s the music I miss the most. There was freedom then. Freedom to do terrible things, but freedom all the same.
Beautiful Woman: You will find that such primitive emotions and ideas as jealously, rage, sexual possessiveness, and monogamy have been eliminated. Your new implant has made you part of a collective whole known as the Community. In the Community you are truly free to move among partners, male or female, as you choose. Your pleasure will be your guide.
GERMAN IT powerhouse Siemens is quietly lobbying federal and state governments to showcase how technology can mitigate the projected $20 billion urban congestion bill.
Siemens Australia has released its Picture the Future: Australia 2030 study, a framework of how technology can be used to tackle four “global megatrends” affecting the country: climate change, demographic change, urbanisation and globalisation.
“One suggested technology is a national, highly secure, high-bandwidth wireless network that can help mechanical, electrical and automation engineering be conducted collaboratively in a digital world. Siemens head of productivity research Matthew Rait said the company had met with opposition innovation spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella and with aides from Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s office.The company would hold further meetings with the government to explain its research findings.
“We support a high-speed digital network that will provide Australia with a capacity to implement the technology solution that is best practice in the world.
“At this point in time we haven’t seen a full release of the specifications (of the NBN) and if we look at the perspective of President Obama saying he’s going to take 98 per cent wireless communication to the nation . . . is fibre right or is wireless right?”
“The Federal Government this afternoon appointed former IBM Australia chief Glen Boreham to lead its planned review of Australia’s communications and media regulatory environment.”
The regulations under examination affect the news you consume, the TV you watch, the radio you listen to and the content you enjoy online.
A person can now watch exactly the same TV program on a TV set, laptop, or mobile phone. However, the underlying networks that are used to transmit the program are very different—broadcast spectrum or cable networks, the internet or mobile networks.
“Australia’s key communications legislative framework was introduced in the 1990s: the Broadcasting Services Act and the Radiocommunications Act were enacted in 1992; the Telecommunications Act was enacted in 1997. Each piece of legislation has been tailored to achieve different public policy objectives.”
“it is widely accepted that television is a powerful medium with the potential to influence public opinion, and that television has a role to play in promoting Australia’s cultural identity” - Broadcasting Services Bill 1992, Explanatory Memorandum, p. 67.
“the Radiocommunications Act is designed to promote the efficient allocation and use of spectrum to maximise public benefit.“
A New Standard for Wireless medical Body Area Networks IEEE 802.15.6
The standard is targeted for relatively low data rate (100kpbs to 1 Mbps) transmission to devices attached around the body or implanted. Low power medical and consumer applications will benefit from this development. Application bands include the implant (402‐405 MHz band), 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz ISM bands.
“Patrick Redmond graduated with a Doctorate in History from the University of London, England in 1972. He taught at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, then at Adhadu Bello University in Kano, Nigeria before joining IBM. He worked in IBM for 31 years before retiring. During his career at IBM he held a variety of jobs. These included; from 1992 until 2007 working at the IBM Toronto lab in technical, then in sales support. He has written two books and numerous articles.”
“RFID’s are a great economic help to a company because they reduce theft and loss. They also streamline inventory, reduce turnaround time and handling. They’ve allowed companies to adjust production in response to inventory levels and to respond on demand. That’s why companies are interested, because of these big economic benefits and efficiency.”
When discussing TV & its replacement broadcasting frequency, Dgital TV
“and instead of the antenna on your roof you’ll use a black box.The reason they’re doing this is that the UBF and VHF analog frequency are being used for the chips, so they don’t want to overload the chips with television signals, because the chips signals will now be receiving those frequencies.”
“The Australian CSIRO will begin live field trials of its experimental wireless technology in September to assess whether spectrum formerly used for analogue television can be used to deliver National Broadband Network (NBN) services.”
“The technology, announced in April last year and dubbed Broadband to the Bush, is designed to make use of analogue television infrastructure already in place within Australia.”
“The whole idea is that there is no communications gear in that space as it has been used for TV and we can reuse the broadcast infrastructure.”
“Range really is the 64 million dollar question,” he said. “We have a licence for a particular transmit power, and the transmit power sets the range, but we will be looking to demonstrate 10s of kilometres with this technology.”
“Ultimately what could be deployed will depend on what transmit powers are allowed. If we are allowed to transmit at the same powers as analogue TV, which is actually quite high, then give us an analogue channel and we will give you 12 Mbits up and down.”
The survey, conducted by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM
The CeBIT, the world’s biggest high-tech fair, throws its doors open to the public today, with Spain, the current EU president, this year’s guest of honour.
In all, 23 per cent of around 1000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin “for certain benefits”.
Around one in six (16 per cent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.
Five per cent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly.
But 72 per cent said they would not “under any circumstances” allow electronics in their body.
The other arm of PositiveID’s ID Security business is dedicated to protecting consumers’ identities and preventing identity theft. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, identity theft is the number one crime in America, and it can affect anyone at any time. Identity theft can occur from computer fraud through “phishing,” which accounts for 12% of cases; stolen or lost wallets or other personal items, which accounts for 29% of thefts; individuals stealing records from businesses, which accounts for 50%; and mail theft, representing the remaining 9% of all identity thefts. The company’s suite of products and services allows consumers to manage and monitor their personal financial data to proactively protect themselves from theft and errors
While the New South Wales Department of Health Web page is ostensibly a reference point for officials who want to reduce medical errors caused by patient mixups, it looks pretty scary if you’re someone who thinks that society is heading toward a Minority Report-style dictatorship in which everyone carries a compulsory microchip implant.
Australian eHealth Literature review – Patient Identifiers http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/quality/identification/literature.asp
An e-health consumer advocacy group has joined a growing choir of those dissatisfied with the lack of communication from lead agencies surrounding implementation of the Federal Government’s $467 million personally controlled electronic health records (PCEHR) project initiative.
The coalition argued the lack of documentation, including NEHTA’s failure to release the draft concept of operations around the PCEHR to the public. Health minister Nicola Roxon in January pledged to release the document for public consultation – a milestone NEHTA is anxiously anticipating – but the e-health agency is currently exempt from freedom of information laws and cannot be called upon to release such documents prior.
The group also decried the National Authentication Service for Health, a secure messaging platform and key aspect of the PCEHR recently contracted to IBM Australia, as another example of the lack of transparency and poor timelines surrounding the project.
The group also decried the National Authentication Service for Health, a secure messaging platform and key aspect of the PCEHR recently contracted to IBM Australia, as another example of the lack of transparency and poor timelines surrounding the project.
“The need for trust and the way this is acknowledged in formal government documents contradicts the fact all publicly available feedback has been ignored,” the group wrote. “We are nervous when it comes to trusting in a process that seeks consumer group feedback yet runs another in parallel.”
The government-funded process that was run parallel to the three workshops excluded a number of advocates in attendance at the public meetings, contributing to the scepticism of the coalition.
“We do not like wondering whether NEHTA’s appeals to advocates re mutual trust will simply carpetbag consumer groups so we don’t challenge the process in public. The IHI [Independent Healthcare Identifier] is useless to consumers presently and claims that the PCEHR will not be centralised are simply market-speak for not responding to advocates initial concerns re the IHI.”
“We are nervous when it comes to trusting in a process that seeks consumer group feedback yet runs another in parallel,” CCeHC wrote. “… bureaucrats have driven the process, preferring to commission reports, such as the risk assessment report, that have cost taxpayers thousands of dollars rather than listen to the advocates or citizens.”
Privacy was also a major concern of the CCeHC. The group said it was alarming “in an age of rapidly growing rates of identity fraud” that all of the personal details of every Australian was stored by Medicare in a centralised database. ”The market-speak DoHA and NEHTA use to describe the database simply refers to it as ‘distributed’,” they said. “A distributed database is a centralised database!”
“In any case, the APF draws to attention the impossibility of evaluating the utility of the HI system for patient privacy and health when only a fraction of the proposal is on the table, and even the relevant agencies appear to know little about how it would work in a ‘real life’ context,” the APF wrote.
Privacy fear over agencies’ mega-merger: Medicare, Centrelink data plan
MEDICARE and Centrelink are involved in an Orwellian mega-mergerthat will strengthen data linkages to citizens’personal information, say consumer advocates
“I am amazed the government has not told Australians that integration of Medicare and Centrelink services under a single shopfront will result in many new linkages of data,” Dr Fernando said.
“We are concerned more linkages between Medicare, which hosts the centralised repository of individual healthcare identifiers, and Centrelink is the thin edge of the wedge.”
“It doesn’t require the screen-writing talents of James Cameron to envisage a pensioner who is dependent on the case officer’s goodwill for food and shelter being asked: ‘May I link your pension record with your other records?’ It would a brave soul who answered no.”
In a study funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), scientists at the University of New Mexico hooked subjects up to electrical currents which were generated through sponges attached to their temples.
Whilst playing DARWARS AMBUSH!, a training game designed to help soldiers train for service in Iraq, the subjects’ performance improved when they were running on batteries. This process is called transcranial direct-current stimulation (tCDS).
Neuroscientists Vincent Clarke said that the group that received two milliamps of electricity to the brain showed twice as much improvement over a short period of time compared to the group that received the lesser amount.
“The learn more quickly but they don’t have a good intuitive or introspective sense about why,” Dr Clarke told science journal, Nature.
JERUSALEM: Two nails used in Jesus’s crucifixion have been discovered in a 2000-year-old tomb, a documentary maker has claimed, sparking intense debate among historians. The rusted, bent iron nails were found more than 20 years ago in a tomb outside Jerusalem that contained a number of ossuaries, or boxes containing bones. Two boxes were inscribed with the name Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who presided over Christ’s crucifixion, the New Testament says. ”What we are bringing to the world is the best archaeological argument ever made that two of the nails from the crucifixion of Jesus have been found,” he said.
”If you look at the whole story – historical, textual, archaeological – they all seem to point at these two nails being involved in a crucifixion. And since Caiaphas is only associated with Jesus’s crucifixion, you put two and two together and they seem to imply that these are the nails.”
Think of how far Technology has advanced in this last century; one hundred years ago the knapsack parachute was invented, a device that would change the ways wars were fought and made flying a little less dangerous, John Browning finished designing his revolutionary pistol, the Colt M1911, and CRT Television was invented, bravely stepping into a world of projector screens and radios. Those inventions created huge paradigm shifts in the way people could move, could entertain themselves, and kill. In our modern day and age, the vast majority of inventions are catered towards our need to entertain ourselves, many of them beyond the wildest dreams of futurologists. Our tech has expanded to the point were soon we will be able to do some of the things that comic book heroes could never have dreamed of. Remember watching Star-Wars as a kid and seeing Darth Vader get mad over some missing data tapes? The scene looks a whole lot less badass now and way more laughable when you consider that few people even use tapes anymore. Hell, Darth Vader’s suit is in many ways a relic, artificial muscles have been invented and while they haven’t made any arms able to outperform the real deal, they are definitely the kind of prosthetic I’d want. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/flexing-carbon-nanotube-muscles.ars Closer to home with our technologies, we find our soldiers outfitted with cameras and gps’s on their helmets and backpacks, their performance monitored and evaluated, their position, as long as these systems last, known at all times. If it were not for the miserly attitude of the Millitary Industrial Complex, we would see this equipment on all American soldiers, and possibly all of their allies soldier’s too. Such technology has positive benefits; the ability to provide soldiers with advanced tactical information plus giving the staff members a better idea for what is going on in the field.
image of a US Army soldier in 2001, outfitted with the then latest technologies for the land warrior project.
Land Warrior as used by a member of he 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry, in Iraq, 2007.
Unfortunately such technology could also be used to paint an unflattering view of the soldiers enemies, or the soldiers themselves. The future it seems, could involve simply ‘tagging’ soldiers with micro or even nano chips and using their biometric data, track their performance and increase their capabilities by responding with the proper kinds of drug or mental therapies. Heck by counteracting the fatigue poisons that build up in the human body, and with injections of cortisol and adrenaline you could potentialy create super soldiers who can run faster, longer and hit harder like steve Rogers, the Original Captain America (albeit with tempers more like wolverine). Unfortunately with all this new technology we have created a new generation of men, no longer do we look to the strong or the brave, but rather, to the capable; who the hell knows how to build a car, or how the components work? How would we work if one or more of our currently placed systems broke down. Who do the incapable turn to, when machines make other machines, the job of people simply to maintain the makers. Is this technology that enables us to know what another is doing, feeling, at any moment all the time a true replacement for the human desire for contact or are we all becoming like superman, all knowing, known by all, and yet anonymous, alone.
I was having a moment to critically think about IBM’s new Jeopardy playing supercomputer and realised some quite interesting.
Jeopardy! is an American game show featuring trivia in history, literature, the arts, pop culture, science, sports, geography, wordplay, and more. The show has a unique answer-and-question format in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in question form.
The basic function of WATSON, is to process data and generate questions. Computers usually answer questions. They take input and calculate a yes or no answer. WATSON asks questions. It has to, to be able to determine whether or not its answer is correct on the game show.
Using the story of Sherlock Holmes and his pal Watson, one could compare their combined detective prowess with the functionality of the human brain. Each Character represents a hemisphere of the brain.
The usual dialogue between these two individuals usually goes down like this:
Watson: “But how did “<example >> do this?”
(right hemisphere) *creative idea generator WATSON
Using this basic dialogue example, and hopefully your child hood memories of Sherlock Holmes, you can see the basic relationship between the two halves of your brain.
One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness …
Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the “Singin’ Scientist.”
“How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I’ve gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career.”
On February 10, 1996, Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. However, Kasparov won three and drew two of the following five games, beating Deep Blue by a score of 4–2 (wins count 1 point, draws count ½ point). The match concluded on February 17, 1996.
Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded (unofficially nicknamed “Deeper Blue”)[11] and played Kasparov again in May 1997, winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½, ending on May 11. Deep Blue won the deciding game six after Kasparov made a mistake in the opening, becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.
The system derived its playing strength mainly out of brute force computing power. It was a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC-based system with 30-nodes, with each node containing a 120 MHz P2SC microprocessor for a total of 30, enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess chips. Its chess playing program was written in C and ran under the AIX operating system. It was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second, twice as fast as the 1996 version. In June 1997, Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful supercomputer according to the TOP500 list, achieving 11.38 GFLOPS on the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark.
Project Joshua Blue is an IBM project with the goal of enhancing artificial intelligence through the development of better common sense reasoning, natural language understanding, and emotional intelligence capacities.
Abstract
This paper contrasts the implementation of motivation and emotion in Project Joshua Blue with current approaches such as Breazeal’s (2001) sociable robots. Differences in our implementation support our different goals for model performance and are made possible by a novel system architecture.
Overview of Joshua Blue
Project Joshua Blue applies ideas from complexity theory and evolutionary computational design to the simulation of mind on a computer. The goal is to enhance artificial intelligence by evolving such capacities as common sense reasoning, natural language understanding, and emotional intelligence, acquired in the same manner as humans acquire them, through learning situated in a rich environment.
Wobbly camcorder video footage that appears to show an unidentified flying object hovering over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has become the latest UFO sighting to fascinate the conspiratorially minded among us.
In the video, a light-filled orb appears to float over the holy site for about 30 seconds to the sound of “oohs” and “aahs” – and the more literal “is that a UFO?” – from the onlookers behind the camera.
"The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/33/Land_Warrior_Iraq_071307.jpg/800px-Land_Warrior_Iraq_071307.jpg
