I totally agree with you. I don't want the Government to read the email I sent to my mum, or listen in on my phone call to work. I *sure* as hell don't want them to read the TXT MSGS I send to my mates. The Government is clearly lying about their intentions with this! They don't want to prevent another King's Cross, or 9/11-type attack through this latest move to enhanced ability to conduct surveillance. They just want to listen in on my phone calls!
I mean, there haven't been any big terrorist attacks lately, and it's not like the people who work for the government and make decisions like this have any sort of knowledge that I don't. The news media tells us everything we need to know, so I don't see where these nanny-state bureaucrats get off trying to convince us that there's a problem when the BBC isn't worried about it.
This whole plan is clearly designed to prepare the UK for some kind of neofascist information-based coup from within the government. </parody>
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Parents and government have largely non-overlapping domains of responsibility. I accept that a parent might not want their kid to drive fast, and uses technological means to prevent them from doing so. I don't want the government doing the same, just like I don't want them setting my bedtime and deciding if I've been good enough to have desert tonight. I think that in some areas, those domains overlap - education is one good example, and such overlaps generate a good bit of tension.
This is the same thing as parental locks on cable boxes. Sure, in a paranoid world, it *could* be used to prevent adult citizens from watching "dirty, dirty" shows, but it's just a tool that an automobile manufacturer thinks parents would find value in having.
And besides, everybody knows that TV is the best way to raise your kids, so an easier solution would be to put TVs in the dashboard in front of the driver seat that turn on when your kid's driving;)
Re:I don't know if I fully agree with that
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Fire Your IT Boss
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I think having the manager understand the technical nature of whats going on is certainly an asset.. but ultimately I don't know if it's a necessity.... The only technical details they need to do their job is: how long it will take, how many people can work on it efficiantly, what tasks are dependant on it, risks, and benifits..
You ignore the fact that there is more than one type of "Manager." There are the managers that directly manage the people that do the actual work (i.e. "Middle Management"), and then there are the managers who manage *other* managers (i.e., C-level management, VPs, people like that).
Direct managers of technical workers absolutely *must* understand the details of what their people do. They have to be able provide their boss with capability estimates and also translate instructions and guidance from higher-tier leadership into instructions to their team. There's just no way for a low-level manager to successfully lead a team of implementers unless he knows how to translate, "Make sure you add a Frobnicator to your team's latest feature," into actual implementation tasks for his team.
An added bonus of having technically-skilled people in lower management positions is that they, with their experience in industry, can provide actual technical guidance and make low-level design/implementation decisions when required. They have the ability to actually teach and mentor their team.
In fact.. a micro-managing manager can be a bad thing.
Yes, yes they can be. But that's a necessary evil when you have low-level managers that can actually manage effectively. It's much easier to identify and correct the issue of a technically-competent micromanager than it is to even be able to *detect* that a technically-incompetent low-level manager is doing a globally bad job.
Managers are about the big picture, not the fine details.
Not in the case of direct management of technical implementers. Higher-level managers must necessarily divorce themselves from the details of actual implementation to consider more "strategic" concerns. But the "big picture" in terms of strategic corporate goals isn't something that a lowly team manager is going to be shaping or helping to decide. Their "big picture" is, did their team complete feature "Foo" by the deadline, if so, how, if not, why not, resource recommendations to prevent/enhance failure/success (respectively) in the future, etc.
There's no good way to manage technical implementers at the lowest level except by another, more experienced, technical implementer.
That's an excellent letter. According to the author, residential streets in Japan are treated as a "common area" - i.e., they're used for excess storage, the residents feel it's their responsibility for cleaning/snow-shoveling, etc, and (the funniest, but also most telling part), apparently old dudes hang out there wearing nothing but underwear.
The issue is something that anyone, anywhere, regardless of "culture," understands: There exist places where the line between "public" and "private" are slightly blurred - in the states, this might be a row of adjoining, unfenced backyards, or maybe an apartment common area, etc. Anyhow it's not a matter of "culture", it's a matter of geography and population density. Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
School isn't supposed to be publicly-funded daycare (although that's what it effectively *is* nowadays).
The only requirements for a child to be properly educated are responsible, involved parents. A child home-schooled by disinterested, irresponsible parents wouldn't be any better off (and probably *worse* off) than a child educated in the worst public school.
The failure of public schools to provide proper education is not the fault of the Teachers. The failure of the public school system is that it tries to do too much. It tries to absolve parents of the responsibility of raising their children while they're "in school." The message parents currently get from the Public School System is, "Oh, don't worry about your kids when they're with us - they'll be fine, and they're learning a whole, whole bunch of stuff. They'll be *smarter* when they come back home."
If you think about it, this is an impossible situation. Teachers and their political action groups oppose every sort of objective standard by which teachers, or their students, could possibly be judged. It's not because they're afraid of objective standards - it's because their students are individuals, with individual needs of attention, and individual rates of progress. Teachers think of their students very much how parents think of their children.
The problem isn't Teachers, and it isn't Parents. It's the fact that our current system of Public Education overreaches the abilities of both parents and teachers. It promises parents that their children will be in, essentially, "Daycare Plus Education," which allows irresponsible parents to dump their undisciplined kids into the System and then also complain about the shortcomings of Teachers when their kids don't come back home as well-disciplined, well-spoken, well-educated men and women. It requires Teachers to deal with both behavioral issues - things that they should not have to deal with.
The bottom line is that our current system of public education has failed both parents and teachers by promising too much - it has taken too much of the inherent responsibilities of parents, and placed them on teachers. It, in essence, encourages bad parenting.
Yeah, I totally understand. I wish there were a "-1 Yo momma so fat I had to grease the door frame and stand on the other side holding a Twinkie just to get her through" mod.
Fear doesn't get much more pronounced than the Patriot Act.
Acknowledging some thing as a threat and then taking preventive measures to prevent that thing from occuring isn't "fear" - it's just prudent planning.
In each of your "Yikes!" examples, you have an individual that has used their own personal opinion to deny a group of people equal access to something that is enjoyed by everyone else.
I guess my question to you is, what exactly do you mean by "equal access," and who constitutes the masses of the "everyone else?" In the first case I mentioned, a mayor refused a petition to use your tax dollars (and everyone else's, regardless of their personal opinions) to subsidize the celebration of a particular thing. Obviously, there have to be *some* criteria by which a publicly-elected official decides to allocate tax money, right? So, in the instance of what particular things that official chooses to expend resources to "honor" or otherwise commemorate, by your argument, should be "equally accessible" by all groups.
So, what if I wanted to declare July 7th to be "Richard Fahrlifar is Awesome Day," where I'm provided a police-protected display site on public ground so that all can experience the awe of ME? Or maybe me and my group think December 30th should be declared, "Hunting Pride Day," and that the local government should block off streets so we can display our awesomely slain pelts?
And let's ignore the publicly-funded parts, even. Let's say I wanted to declare February 28th as, "Pride in Beating my Spouse Day." No police cordons required, just a day where all the people who support spousal abuse are recognized. No displays, no expenditure of public funds, just a day commemmorated and legitimized by government, where the people who discipline their spouses with violence are honored.
Assuming that *all* people and groups are given "equal access" to governmentally-sanctioned "days," what should the criteria be for what's worthy of the frivolous expenditure of the tax-collected value of our hard-earned work? How does a government official decide what's an acceptable ideology, lifestlye, or personal choice, to "honor?" And how do they decide what's "offensive" and "unacceptable?"
Point is, it's not as clear-cut as you've tried to make it out to be.
You have an individual deciding which groups can and cannot participate in society
If by "participate in society" you mean, have one of the 365 days of the year "named" after a particular lifestyle, culture, ideology, or choice, I have to ask: Why is your sense of self and identity so fragile that you cannot accept yourself as legitimate until some local government has declared a celebration in honor of you?
Really? People have lived entire lives without their particular ethnic/gender/sexual group being celebrated and "acknowledged" by *anyone*. They've managed to get by.
Two last things:
What would you think if the mayor changed "Catholic Celebration Day" to "Priests raping young children day" because he happened to not like catholics?
I'm agnostic, so I wouldn't care. I'd be amused by the media spectacle it created, of course...
It's clear from you language that you have a deep fear of homosexuals taking over the world
He he... So you're a psychology undergrad, then? (good luck with finals). First of all, what makes you so sure I'm just not a rational, fiscally conservative gay man? Second, how, exactly, would "homosexuals take over the world?" especially when so many of them (or perhaps *us*?) spend so much of their (or maybe *our*) time and energy trying to enforce publicly-funded, public celebrations of being gay? And (most importantly) how would a "homosexual-controlled world" be any different from the one we live in now? Would the "Fashion Police" become *actual* Police?
The world you propose (not the mythical "GayLand" where everyone is homosexual, and heterosexuals are in the minority, of course) would require that people would no longer be free to choose who to provide their services to or not. Say you owned, I
OK- sorry - to be completely correct: If the alleged offenders don't repent and offer to pay large sums of money to the complainants when their case is put before the CHRC (Canadian Human Rights Commission) which, again, has a 100 Percent History of ruling for the so-called "victims", they are referred to the CHRT (Canadian Human Rights Tribunal), where they must retry their case under the quasi-legal-oid rules of the CHRT, and then abide by the decision put forth by the CHRT (guaranteed to be transmitted within four months by snail-mail after the somewhat-legal-ish proceedings of the CHRT are concluded), or else appeal the results to a legitimate Canadian Federal Court within 30 days of receiving the results.
My guess is that the cost required to "settle" at the CHRC tier (i.e., "Give your accuser whatever he or she wants,") is *much* less than the cost of seeing an individual case through an actual "legitimate" (I use Sarcasm Quotes here, because I can't take Canadian jurisprudence seriously after learning about this...) court.
Canada has established a taxpayer-funded infrastructure to enable the filing grievances based on personal opinions where the aggrieved party *always* wins.
I could go on with a rant about everything wrong with the world, specifically Australia, and our legal system
I tell you what - as much as Americans and Australians have to complain about regarding our respective protections of free speech, at least we don't live in Canada. Apparently, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has the jurisdiction to try private citizens for expressing opinions that can be classified as "hatespeak":
Show-Trial here.
The Canadian Court of Acceptable Thoughts has a historical 100% (no shit) "conviction" rate:
1. A mayor of London, Ontario was fined by this court because she *didn't* mandate a taxpayer-funded celebration of Gay Pride Day, requested by an exceedingly small minority of citizens.
2. The owner of a printing shop in Mississagua, ON lost around $100,000 in revenue and fines when he chose to not print gay and lesbian promotional material - he had business dealings with homosexual clients in the past, but in this particular instance, chose to decline their offer, which was based on his own personal opinions.
3. In 2000, Kelowna, B.C. (the city) was dragged in front of the Canadian Kangaroo Court of "Human Rights" because they celebrated "Gay and Lesbian Day," in 1997 (yes, three years prior to the complaint). The complaint? They didn't include the word "pride" in the celebration. The Mayor of Kelowna was found guilty.
4. A chapter of the Knights of Columbus (a privately-funded, *clearly* Catholic organization) was fined for choosing to not rent their convention hall to a same-sex couple for their marriage celebration.
Yikes. So, I guess my point is, just be thankful you don't live in Canada. As numerous the faults American government has, at least they still let us think for ourselves and don't fine us for expressing our opinions.
But this sets a legal precedent
No, it doesn't. That "precedent" was set 26 years ago:
The FOIA definition of "agency" includes an "establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President)." 5 U.S.C. 552(f). Relying on the conference committee report explaining the 1974 amendment to the definition, the Supreme Court has held that the term "agency" does not cover "the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President." Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 156 (1980) (quoting H.R. Conf. Rep. 1380, 93rd Cong., 2nd Sess. 15 (1974)).
Sorry, but this story is a non-remarkable news item: News Flash! In a surprising turnabout of events, the Supreme Court upholds the unconstitutionality of slavery!...
OK, hyperbole aside, the point is that we (the people) want more transparency in government, but that the laws haven't caught up with what we want. Regardless of our personal political leanings, everyone (at one time or another) has wanted more government transparency - usually during the time the opposing party has controlled the White House (let's be honest with ourselves...)
But there's another bound - how much transparency is too much? Obviously, there are things that our government keeps secret from us that we agree should be kept secret (e.g., nuclear launch codes for our ballistic missile submarines, encryption keys used by the military, etc.) In other words, we choose to allow the government to keep secrets from everyone, including us, that if made public would compromise the safety of the person we've elected as our leader, the security of our nation, our states, and ultimately, our families.
So what are the bounds of acceptability in governmental secret-keeping? This discussion illustrates a gray area in those bounds, because of one simple fact: Any information publicly available in America is publicly available to everyone else in the world.
The problem is that we, the people, want this information in order to make more informed decisions about our leaders and their administration. Yet the revelation of the internal workings of a given administration, while it will certainly provide satisfying reading for our nationally-internal critics and opponents of the current administration, this information will also provide potential adversaries with insight into the inner workings of our highest levels of government, and also the idiosyncrasies of our current leader (Clinton, Bush, Obama, whoever it happens to be at the time).
Of course, this isn't a problem if you choose to believe that there *are* no adversaries - in other words, that everyone who wished the world were different from how it is now were somehow "above" using forcible means to attempt to make it so.
in fact isn't that common to have a firearm on/with you even if you work on a ranch/farm.
Anecdotal evidence isn't. I don't think it's possible for you to make the claim that you know what's generally common practice among *all* ranchers and farmers based on your individual experience.
When it comes down to how an individual chooses to run/defend his or her ranch, it's highly dependent on the *local* population of livestock predators (which might also include things that attack humans).
not everyone is carrying a six shooter or rifle/shotgun on them all the time. Only when they see a specific use for it.
I would argue that, as a rancher, it would be *prudent* to carry firearms (responsibly, of course) at all times. It's always better to have a gun, and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it.
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue.
Even more damning,
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson.
And it only gets better:
Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. Next, Robert Novak speaks out on Plame's "outing". Of note, he said:
I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."
And another article dispelling the myth. A quote:
How covert was Valerie Plame at the CIA? Her top-secret code name was "Valerie Plame."
And yet another, exposing this whole thing for the farce it really is.
Seriously, I can go on forever with this stuff. It's just not true.
I just got up from the floor, where you comment had me Rolling on it, Laughing My Ass Off. You've got to be kidding me... You cited one left-leaning broadcast news oulet, a far-left cable news outlet, a leftist newspaper, and a radical-left web organization to support your claim, and then you have the incredible audacity to further quote an article entitled:
Right-wing noise machine
Really?!?! You've actually provided evidence of the left-wing "noise machine": "Plame was a super-secret spy! Plame was a super-secret spy! Plame was a super-secret spy!" Yeah, just repeat it enough, loudly enough, and eventually it becomes the truth.
The point is, none of this is going to stop an actual extremist/zealot/terrorist from causing harm to the people he considers infidels.
That's a really good point... Really determined terrorists are a lot like malicious hackers - there's always a way around any security, and a sufficiently determined person, properly motivated, will be able to find it.
That's a fairly common argument against "passive defenses," which are the measures that get criticized most often (i.e., airport carry-on screening, forbidding a sixty year old lady from carrying a pair of nail clippers onto a plane, etc.). The military uses those on its fixed facilities, especially those in foreign countries: Random vehicle searches when entering a post, Jersey barriers on the inside of fencelines, random patrols, etc.
Just about six months ago I was on a working group to plan and implement those passive defenses on a large number of small military facilities in a foreign country in response to a specific threat. The idea wasn't that our concrete barriers and quick response forces and random patrols would prevent *all* terrorist attacks. The intent was to sufficiently harden a given target to both deter not-so-determined attackers, and also to make the determined ones consider other, softer targets (that's a really bad way of looking at it, but it's true).
The thing that stops the really determined terrorists are the "active defenses," we employ to actually identify, locate, and stop them. *Those* things are the purview of the CIA/NSA/Jack Bauer's of the world, not the TSA, or U.S. Military Garrison Commanders. Those are the measures that, in part, require the "domestic spying" that we're all so up in arms against.
I dunno. I can see how a person could be on either side of the issue - on one hand, it could be argued that because there have been no recent, non-combat-zone major terrorist attacks against American interests that such programs are not needed. On the other, it could be argued that there have been no successful attacks on American interests only *because* of those programs. It's impossible to know unless you, I don't know, work for the CIA or are privy to a lot of high-level intel.
So, based on my own experience, my opinion is that the latter is true. But I'm not arguing that everyone should agree with me, nor would I expect that, based on my one, necessarily vague, anecdote. I'm just stating my opinon.
Finally, a Middle East peace accord! My guess is that a "sustainable, real, peace" agreement would have to be something like this:
Israel: "We offer a halt to all military action, we'll give you land, and we'll trade with you. Seriously, just leave us the fuck alone."
Palestine: "In return for those concessions, we offer you a three week period during which you all try your best to kill yourselves, after which we promise to try our very best to finish the job."
There are no terrorists.
And in other news, scientists continue to be baffled at the phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Explosion, Spontaneous Flight of Planes into Buildings, Spontaneous Human Beheading, and other various incidents of things filled with people exploding, or being blown up. The best explanation forthcoming from the scientific community to date is that these events are the result of:
the intentions and capabilities of magical elves
OK, seriously? "There are no terrorists?" And you got modded "Insightful?"
Look - if you had ever held a security clearance and worked for some part of the military, you wouldn't be making ignorant statements like that. It's just *not* *true*. Yes, there are actual people, with actual faces and names, that actually plan to harm people for reasons that are largely religious in nature. This is the world we live in. Declaring "it ain't so" doesn't make it true.
which, strangely has been modded "insightful". That is something of a quantum leap... ...into the world of rational thought and reality. Yeah, surprising for slashdot, I know.
Compromise is the only way - and as with all compromise, it will cost both sides more than they like.
How do you propose that would work out for Israel? So far, every time they've given anything to a bordering nation (i.e., free land, the land that they took over to prevent themselves from being invaded again, and again, and again, etc.), the "compromise" they receive is that mortars and rocket launchers get moved that much closer.
How, exactly, do you compromise with nations whose goals include: a) The extermination of your ethnic group and religion, and b) The dissolution of your sovereign nation? Where's the point of acceptable compromise for Israel there?
unless the Israelis start WWIII
Is there some corollary to Godwin's law that I don't know about? "As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability that someone will randomly blame Jews for some imaginary travesty approaches one," or something like that?
Here's a howler from Iran's OPEC cartel representative, Mohammad Ali Khatibi:
"I foresee the price of oil reaching around 150 dollars a barrel by the end of the summer,"
Another alarmingly absurd utterance:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also said oil is priced too low and that the commodity "should find its real value."
And something we can *all* agree is stupid:
Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari has said the market is currently oversupplied with oil
From this article.
Given that there's a handful of people in charge of decreeing, by fiat, the price of oil from OPEC nations (Iran being one of those nations) don't these statements seem kind of... I don't know... Odd?
OPEC nations decide how much money they want, and then produce and price oil accordingly. Their only upper bound is that if they get *really* crazy with the artificial pricing that the Western world might just decide that it'd be cheaper to diplomatically or militarily depose the regimes that currently control their nationalized economies and give the reins back to their massively, and usually violently, oppressed citizenry, which would allow *actual* market forces to decide the price of oil.
Like I said, speculators are the *least* of our concerns regarding the price of oil.
BTW and kind of off topic... Do you know why oil is 136 a barrel?
Yeah. OPEC, and prohibitive taxes and restrictions on domestic drilling, plus increased fossil fuels demand from developing nations.
It is because speculative corporations...
No. Speculators perform a valuable function in the free market. You're only looking at one half of the picture (the half that allows you to demonize speculators).
Speculators buy a commodity in the hopes that the price will rise. In doing so, they decrease the supply, thereby further driving up prices. (this is the "bad part" that you've fixated on). However, by driving up prices, they decrease consumption (and *please* don't trot out the "but gas is price inelastic!" argument. It's not).
The part you've neglected to mention is what happens when speculators decide to start selling their stored commodities. When a speculator guesses that scarcity is at its peak, they start selling. This increases the supply, and drives *down* price, and allowing consumption to increase.
A better way to look at speculation is this: Speculators act as "buffers" for supply and demand. They actually smooth out the peaks and valleys of supply and demand. Also, you left out the fact that speculation is *not* a risk-free enterprise. Speculators take considerable risks in storing commodities. If the price decreases, they've lost out! In addition, consider the fact that the rising price in oil incentivizes energy companies to develop alternate forms of energy, and maybe will even help politicians in the thrall of mindless environmentalist special interest groups see the folly of preventing domestic drilling for fossil fuels, and the development of a nuclear energy infrastructure.
If your opinion is that we ought to be consuming less fossil fuels, then speculators are doing you a favor! If your belief is that fossil fuels ought to be cheaper, so we'll use more energy, then why not just advocate for the development of nuclear power, or drilling in ANWR? Why not vocally denounce the unethical price-gouging behavior of OPEC nations? There are a lot more culprits to blame for this than speculators. In fact, they're the least of our worries.
But just because they happen to be making out like bandits right now, they're easy targets for ill-considered and thoughtless rhetoric.
Pen(cil) and paper?
Can't tell anyone what you're writing on it. It also can't tell people where you are currently located.
... The kid sitting next to you?
Doesn't know what you're writing, or what you're reading, and can only give up your location while he or she is actually sitting next to you.
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree with you. I don't want the Government to read the email I sent to my mum, or listen in on my phone call to work. I *sure* as hell don't want them to read the TXT MSGS I send to my mates. The Government is clearly lying about their intentions with this! They don't want to prevent another King's Cross, or 9/11-type attack through this latest move to enhanced ability to conduct surveillance. They just want to listen in on my phone calls!
I mean, there haven't been any big terrorist attacks lately, and it's not like the people who work for the government and make decisions like this have any sort of knowledge that I don't. The news media tells us everything we need to know, so I don't see where these nanny-state bureaucrats get off trying to convince us that there's a problem when the BBC isn't worried about it.
This whole plan is clearly designed to prepare the UK for some kind of neofascist information-based coup from within the government.
</parody>
Public Service Announcement: Although unlikely, your tinfoil hat may have shifted during the course of reading this post. Please ensure you readjust if necessary in order to continue to filter out reality.
Parents and government have largely non-overlapping domains of responsibility. I accept that a parent might not want their kid to drive fast, and uses technological means to prevent them from doing so. I don't want the government doing the same, just like I don't want them setting my bedtime and deciding if I've been good enough to have desert tonight. I think that in some areas, those domains overlap - education is one good example, and such overlaps generate a good bit of tension.
;)
This is the same thing as parental locks on cable boxes. Sure, in a paranoid world, it *could* be used to prevent adult citizens from watching "dirty, dirty" shows, but it's just a tool that an automobile manufacturer thinks parents would find value in having.
And besides, everybody knows that TV is the best way to raise your kids, so an easier solution would be to put TVs in the dashboard in front of the driver seat that turn on when your kid's driving
I think having the manager understand the technical nature of whats going on is certainly an asset.. but ultimately I don't know if it's a necessity. ... The only technical details they need to do their job is: how long it will take, how many people can work on it efficiantly, what tasks are dependant on it, risks, and benifits..
You ignore the fact that there is more than one type of "Manager." There are the managers that directly manage the people that do the actual work (i.e. "Middle Management"), and then there are the managers who manage *other* managers (i.e., C-level management, VPs, people like that).
Direct managers of technical workers absolutely *must* understand the details of what their people do. They have to be able provide their boss with capability estimates and also translate instructions and guidance from higher-tier leadership into instructions to their team. There's just no way for a low-level manager to successfully lead a team of implementers unless he knows how to translate, "Make sure you add a Frobnicator to your team's latest feature," into actual implementation tasks for his team.
An added bonus of having technically-skilled people in lower management positions is that they, with their experience in industry, can provide actual technical guidance and make low-level design/implementation decisions when required. They have the ability to actually teach and mentor their team.
In fact.. a micro-managing manager can be a bad thing.
Yes, yes they can be. But that's a necessary evil when you have low-level managers that can actually manage effectively. It's much easier to identify and correct the issue of a technically-competent micromanager than it is to even be able to *detect* that a technically-incompetent low-level manager is doing a globally bad job.
Managers are about the big picture, not the fine details.
Not in the case of direct management of technical implementers. Higher-level managers must necessarily divorce themselves from the details of actual implementation to consider more "strategic" concerns. But the "big picture" in terms of strategic corporate goals isn't something that a lowly team manager is going to be shaping or helping to decide. Their "big picture" is, did their team complete feature "Foo" by the deadline, if so, how, if not, why not, resource recommendations to prevent/enhance failure/success (respectively) in the future, etc.
There's no good way to manage technical implementers at the lowest level except by another, more experienced, technical implementer.
That's an excellent letter. According to the author, residential streets in Japan are treated as a "common area" - i.e., they're used for excess storage, the residents feel it's their responsibility for cleaning/snow-shoveling, etc, and (the funniest, but also most telling part), apparently old dudes hang out there wearing nothing but underwear.
The issue is something that anyone, anywhere, regardless of "culture," understands: There exist places where the line between "public" and "private" are slightly blurred - in the states, this might be a row of adjoining, unfenced backyards, or maybe an apartment common area, etc. Anyhow it's not a matter of "culture", it's a matter of geography and population density. Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
School isn't supposed to be publicly-funded daycare (although that's what it effectively *is* nowadays).
The only requirements for a child to be properly educated are responsible, involved parents. A child home-schooled by disinterested, irresponsible parents wouldn't be any better off (and probably *worse* off) than a child educated in the worst public school.
The failure of public schools to provide proper education is not the fault of the Teachers. The failure of the public school system is that it tries to do too much. It tries to absolve parents of the responsibility of raising their children while they're "in school." The message parents currently get from the Public School System is, "Oh, don't worry about your kids when they're with us - they'll be fine, and they're learning a whole, whole bunch of stuff. They'll be *smarter* when they come back home."
If you think about it, this is an impossible situation. Teachers and their political action groups oppose every sort of objective standard by which teachers, or their students, could possibly be judged. It's not because they're afraid of objective standards - it's because their students are individuals, with individual needs of attention, and individual rates of progress. Teachers think of their students very much how parents think of their children.
The problem isn't Teachers, and it isn't Parents. It's the fact that our current system of Public Education overreaches the abilities of both parents and teachers. It promises parents that their children will be in, essentially, "Daycare Plus Education," which allows irresponsible parents to dump their undisciplined kids into the System and then also complain about the shortcomings of Teachers when their kids don't come back home as well-disciplined, well-spoken, well-educated men and women. It requires Teachers to deal with both behavioral issues - things that they should not have to deal with.
The bottom line is that our current system of public education has failed both parents and teachers by promising too much - it has taken too much of the inherent responsibilities of parents, and placed them on teachers. It, in essence, encourages bad parenting.
Yeah, I totally understand. I wish there were a "-1 Yo momma so fat I had to grease the door frame and stand on the other side holding a Twinkie just to get her through" mod.
Fear doesn't get much more pronounced than the Patriot Act.
Acknowledging some thing as a threat and then taking preventive measures to prevent that thing from occuring isn't "fear" - it's just prudent planning.
do we know that the above statement is really true, or is it just what we are told ?
I think you already have the answer - GP cites the opinion of Noam Chomsky as his evidence. So, we're all scared because Noam said so.
Where are all of these scared people ?
Living inside Noam Chomsky's rich imagination, apparently.
Google's momma so fat she has other, smaller fat people in orbit around her.
In each of your "Yikes!" examples, you have an individual that has used their own personal opinion to deny a group of people equal access to something that is enjoyed by everyone else.
I guess my question to you is, what exactly do you mean by "equal access," and who constitutes the masses of the "everyone else?" In the first case I mentioned, a mayor refused a petition to use your tax dollars (and everyone else's, regardless of their personal opinions) to subsidize the celebration of a particular thing. Obviously, there have to be *some* criteria by which a publicly-elected official decides to allocate tax money, right? So, in the instance of what particular things that official chooses to expend resources to "honor" or otherwise commemorate, by your argument, should be "equally accessible" by all groups.
So, what if I wanted to declare July 7th to be "Richard Fahrlifar is Awesome Day," where I'm provided a police-protected display site on public ground so that all can experience the awe of ME? Or maybe me and my group think December 30th should be declared, "Hunting Pride Day," and that the local government should block off streets so we can display our awesomely slain pelts?
And let's ignore the publicly-funded parts, even. Let's say I wanted to declare February 28th as, "Pride in Beating my Spouse Day." No police cordons required, just a day where all the people who support spousal abuse are recognized. No displays, no expenditure of public funds, just a day commemmorated and legitimized by government, where the people who discipline their spouses with violence are honored.
Assuming that *all* people and groups are given "equal access" to governmentally-sanctioned "days," what should the criteria be for what's worthy of the frivolous expenditure of the tax-collected value of our hard-earned work? How does a government official decide what's an acceptable ideology, lifestlye, or personal choice, to "honor?" And how do they decide what's "offensive" and "unacceptable?"
Point is, it's not as clear-cut as you've tried to make it out to be.
You have an individual deciding which groups can and cannot participate in society
If by "participate in society" you mean, have one of the 365 days of the year "named" after a particular lifestyle, culture, ideology, or choice, I have to ask: Why is your sense of self and identity so fragile that you cannot accept yourself as legitimate until some local government has declared a celebration in honor of you?
Really? People have lived entire lives without their particular ethnic/gender/sexual group being celebrated and "acknowledged" by *anyone*. They've managed to get by.
Two last things:
What would you think if the mayor changed "Catholic Celebration Day" to "Priests raping young children day" because he happened to not like catholics?
I'm agnostic, so I wouldn't care. I'd be amused by the media spectacle it created, of course...
It's clear from you language that you have a deep fear of homosexuals taking over the world
He he... So you're a psychology undergrad, then? (good luck with finals). First of all, what makes you so sure I'm just not a rational, fiscally conservative gay man? Second, how, exactly, would "homosexuals take over the world?" especially when so many of them (or perhaps *us*?) spend so much of their (or maybe *our*) time and energy trying to enforce publicly-funded, public celebrations of being gay? And (most importantly) how would a "homosexual-controlled world" be any different from the one we live in now? Would the "Fashion Police" become *actual* Police?
The world you propose (not the mythical "GayLand" where everyone is homosexual, and heterosexuals are in the minority, of course) would require that people would no longer be free to choose who to provide their services to or not. Say you owned, I
OK- sorry - to be completely correct: If the alleged offenders don't repent and offer to pay large sums of money to the complainants when their case is put before the CHRC (Canadian Human Rights Commission) which, again, has a 100 Percent History of ruling for the so-called "victims", they are referred to the CHRT (Canadian Human Rights Tribunal), where they must retry their case under the quasi-legal-oid rules of the CHRT, and then abide by the decision put forth by the CHRT (guaranteed to be transmitted within four months by snail-mail after the somewhat-legal-ish proceedings of the CHRT are concluded), or else appeal the results to a legitimate Canadian Federal Court within 30 days of receiving the results.
My guess is that the cost required to "settle" at the CHRC tier (i.e., "Give your accuser whatever he or she wants,") is *much* less than the cost of seeing an individual case through an actual "legitimate" (I use Sarcasm Quotes here, because I can't take Canadian jurisprudence seriously after learning about this...) court.
Canada has established a taxpayer-funded infrastructure to enable the filing grievances based on personal opinions where the aggrieved party *always* wins.
I tell you what - as much as Americans and Australians have to complain about regarding our respective protections of free speech, at least we don't live in Canada. Apparently, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has the jurisdiction to try private citizens for expressing opinions that can be classified as "hatespeak": Show-Trial here.
The Canadian Court of Acceptable Thoughts has a historical 100% (no shit) "conviction" rate:
1. A mayor of London, Ontario was fined by this court because she *didn't* mandate a taxpayer-funded celebration of Gay Pride Day, requested by an exceedingly small minority of citizens.
2. The owner of a printing shop in Mississagua, ON lost around $100,000 in revenue and fines when he chose to not print gay and lesbian promotional material - he had business dealings with homosexual clients in the past, but in this particular instance, chose to decline their offer, which was based on his own personal opinions.
3. In 2000, Kelowna, B.C. (the city) was dragged in front of the Canadian Kangaroo Court of "Human Rights" because they celebrated "Gay and Lesbian Day," in 1997 (yes, three years prior to the complaint). The complaint? They didn't include the word "pride" in the celebration. The Mayor of Kelowna was found guilty.
4. A chapter of the Knights of Columbus (a privately-funded, *clearly* Catholic organization) was fined for choosing to not rent their convention hall to a same-sex couple for their marriage celebration.
Yikes. So, I guess my point is, just be thankful you don't live in Canada. As numerous the faults American government has, at least they still let us think for ourselves and don't fine us for expressing our opinions.
uh. 34 years. I'm retarded.
No, it doesn't. That "precedent" was set 26 years ago:
The FOIA definition of "agency" includes an "establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President)." 5 U.S.C. 552(f). Relying on the conference committee report explaining the 1974 amendment to the definition, the Supreme Court has held that the term "agency" does not cover "the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President." Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 156 (1980) (quoting H.R. Conf. Rep. 1380, 93rd Cong., 2nd Sess. 15 (1974)).
Sorry, but this story is a non-remarkable news item: News Flash! In a surprising turnabout of events, the Supreme Court upholds the unconstitutionality of slavery!
OK, hyperbole aside, the point is that we (the people) want more transparency in government, but that the laws haven't caught up with what we want. Regardless of our personal political leanings, everyone (at one time or another) has wanted more government transparency - usually during the time the opposing party has controlled the White House (let's be honest with ourselves...)
But there's another bound - how much transparency is too much? Obviously, there are things that our government keeps secret from us that we agree should be kept secret (e.g., nuclear launch codes for our ballistic missile submarines, encryption keys used by the military, etc.) In other words, we choose to allow the government to keep secrets from everyone, including us, that if made public would compromise the safety of the person we've elected as our leader, the security of our nation, our states, and ultimately, our families.
So what are the bounds of acceptability in governmental secret-keeping? This discussion illustrates a gray area in those bounds, because of one simple fact: Any information publicly available in America is publicly available to everyone else in the world.
The problem is that we, the people, want this information in order to make more informed decisions about our leaders and their administration. Yet the revelation of the internal workings of a given administration, while it will certainly provide satisfying reading for our nationally-internal critics and opponents of the current administration, this information will also provide potential adversaries with insight into the inner workings of our highest levels of government, and also the idiosyncrasies of our current leader (Clinton, Bush, Obama, whoever it happens to be at the time).
Of course, this isn't a problem if you choose to believe that there *are* no adversaries - in other words, that everyone who wished the world were different from how it is now were somehow "above" using forcible means to attempt to make it so.
Anecdotal evidence isn't. I don't think it's possible for you to make the claim that you know what's generally common practice among *all* ranchers and farmers based on your individual experience.
When it comes down to how an individual chooses to run/defend his or her ranch, it's highly dependent on the *local* population of livestock predators (which might also include things that attack humans).
not everyone is carrying a six shooter or rifle/shotgun on them all the time. Only when they see a specific use for it.
I would argue that, as a rancher, it would be *prudent* to carry firearms (responsibly, of course) at all times. It's always better to have a gun, and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it.
OK.
From the Washington Post:
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue.
Even more damning,
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson.
And it only gets better:
Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials.
Next, Robert Novak speaks out on Plame's "outing". Of note, he said:
I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."
And another article dispelling the myth. A quote:
How covert was Valerie Plame at the CIA? Her top-secret code name was "Valerie Plame."
And yet another, exposing this whole thing for the farce it really is.
Seriously, I can go on forever with this stuff. It's just not true.
Right-wing noise machine
Really?!?! You've actually provided evidence of the left-wing "noise machine": "Plame was a super-secret spy! Plame was a super-secret spy! Plame was a super-secret spy!" Yeah, just repeat it enough, loudly enough, and eventually it becomes the truth.
That's a really good point... Really determined terrorists are a lot like malicious hackers - there's always a way around any security, and a sufficiently determined person, properly motivated, will be able to find it.
That's a fairly common argument against "passive defenses," which are the measures that get criticized most often (i.e., airport carry-on screening, forbidding a sixty year old lady from carrying a pair of nail clippers onto a plane, etc.). The military uses those on its fixed facilities, especially those in foreign countries: Random vehicle searches when entering a post, Jersey barriers on the inside of fencelines, random patrols, etc.
Just about six months ago I was on a working group to plan and implement those passive defenses on a large number of small military facilities in a foreign country in response to a specific threat. The idea wasn't that our concrete barriers and quick response forces and random patrols would prevent *all* terrorist attacks. The intent was to sufficiently harden a given target to both deter not-so-determined attackers, and also to make the determined ones consider other, softer targets (that's a really bad way of looking at it, but it's true).
The thing that stops the really determined terrorists are the "active defenses," we employ to actually identify, locate, and stop them. *Those* things are the purview of the CIA/NSA/Jack Bauer's of the world, not the TSA, or U.S. Military Garrison Commanders. Those are the measures that, in part, require the "domestic spying" that we're all so up in arms against.
I dunno. I can see how a person could be on either side of the issue - on one hand, it could be argued that because there have been no recent, non-combat-zone major terrorist attacks against American interests that such programs are not needed. On the other, it could be argued that there have been no successful attacks on American interests only *because* of those programs. It's impossible to know unless you, I don't know, work for the CIA or are privy to a lot of high-level intel.
So, based on my own experience, my opinion is that the latter is true. But I'm not arguing that everyone should agree with me, nor would I expect that, based on my one, necessarily vague, anecdote. I'm just stating my opinon.
Finally, a Middle East peace accord! My guess is that a "sustainable, real, peace" agreement would have to be something like this:
Israel: "We offer a halt to all military action, we'll give you land, and we'll trade with you. Seriously, just leave us the fuck alone."
Palestine: "In return for those concessions, we offer you a three week period during which you all try your best to kill yourselves, after which we promise to try our very best to finish the job."
And in other news, scientists continue to be baffled at the phenomenon of Spontaneous Human Explosion, Spontaneous Flight of Planes into Buildings, Spontaneous Human Beheading, and other various incidents of things filled with people exploding, or being blown up. The best explanation forthcoming from the scientific community to date is that these events are the result of:
the intentions and capabilities of magical elves
OK, seriously? "There are no terrorists?" And you got modded "Insightful?"
Look - if you had ever held a security clearance and worked for some part of the military, you wouldn't be making ignorant statements like that. It's just *not* *true*. Yes, there are actual people, with actual faces and names, that actually plan to harm people for reasons that are largely religious in nature. This is the world we live in. Declaring "it ain't so" doesn't make it true.
Compromise is the only way - and as with all compromise, it will cost both sides more than they like.
How do you propose that would work out for Israel? So far, every time they've given anything to a bordering nation (i.e., free land, the land that they took over to prevent themselves from being invaded again, and again, and again, etc.), the "compromise" they receive is that mortars and rocket launchers get moved that much closer.
How, exactly, do you compromise with nations whose goals include: a) The extermination of your ethnic group and religion, and b) The dissolution of your sovereign nation? Where's the point of acceptable compromise for Israel there?
Is there some corollary to Godwin's law that I don't know about? "As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability that someone will randomly blame Jews for some imaginary travesty approaches one," or something like that?
Get a grip.
"I foresee the price of oil reaching around 150 dollars a barrel by the end of the summer,"
Another alarmingly absurd utterance:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also said oil is priced too low and that the commodity "should find its real value."
And something we can *all* agree is stupid:
Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari has said the market is currently oversupplied with oil
From this article.
Given that there's a handful of people in charge of decreeing, by fiat, the price of oil from OPEC nations (Iran being one of those nations) don't these statements seem kind of... I don't know... Odd?
OPEC nations decide how much money they want, and then produce and price oil accordingly. Their only upper bound is that if they get *really* crazy with the artificial pricing that the Western world might just decide that it'd be cheaper to diplomatically or militarily depose the regimes that currently control their nationalized economies and give the reins back to their massively, and usually violently, oppressed citizenry, which would allow *actual* market forces to decide the price of oil.
Like I said, speculators are the *least* of our concerns regarding the price of oil.
Yeah. OPEC, and prohibitive taxes and restrictions on domestic drilling, plus increased fossil fuels demand from developing nations.
It is because speculative corporations...
No. Speculators perform a valuable function in the free market. You're only looking at one half of the picture (the half that allows you to demonize speculators).
Speculators buy a commodity in the hopes that the price will rise. In doing so, they decrease the supply, thereby further driving up prices. (this is the "bad part" that you've fixated on). However, by driving up prices, they decrease consumption (and *please* don't trot out the "but gas is price inelastic!" argument. It's not).
The part you've neglected to mention is what happens when speculators decide to start selling their stored commodities. When a speculator guesses that scarcity is at its peak, they start selling. This increases the supply, and drives *down* price, and allowing consumption to increase.
A better way to look at speculation is this: Speculators act as "buffers" for supply and demand. They actually smooth out the peaks and valleys of supply and demand. Also, you left out the fact that speculation is *not* a risk-free enterprise. Speculators take considerable risks in storing commodities. If the price decreases, they've lost out! In addition, consider the fact that the rising price in oil incentivizes energy companies to develop alternate forms of energy, and maybe will even help politicians in the thrall of mindless environmentalist special interest groups see the folly of preventing domestic drilling for fossil fuels, and the development of a nuclear energy infrastructure.
If your opinion is that we ought to be consuming less fossil fuels, then speculators are doing you a favor! If your belief is that fossil fuels ought to be cheaper, so we'll use more energy, then why not just advocate for the development of nuclear power, or drilling in ANWR? Why not vocally denounce the unethical price-gouging behavior of OPEC nations? There are a lot more culprits to blame for this than speculators. In fact, they're the least of our worries.
But just because they happen to be making out like bandits right now, they're easy targets for ill-considered and thoughtless rhetoric.
Can't tell anyone what you're writing on it. It also can't tell people where you are currently located.
Doesn't know what you're writing, or what you're reading, and can only give up your location while he or she is actually sitting next to you.
You can't dismiss this issue so easily.