Going by the stories from back when the quake happened, the summary is more accurate than you think. What they said was that a series of tremors didn't mean there's an earthquake coming, not that there isn't going to be an earthquake. It may not sound like the biggest difference, but it really is. If earthquakes were easy to predict, I'd hesitate to defend them, but they aren't. The people who've decided they should've known are people who are not the least bit qualified to make that call, which is why geologists were hired in the first place.
What they said was "no danger". Sounds like a prediction to me.
I don't know. I'm am a health care provider. In order for me to be found culpable of negligence, three things must be established:
1) That there was a duty of care (that I was required to provide).
2) That the duty of care was not met.
3) That the failure to meet the duty of care caused the harm experienced by the plaintiff victim. (That is, it can't just be some irrelevant failure on my part.)
Interesting read, and useful to see different points from different industries. Thank you. However from what I've read, the duty of care in this case would appear to be Risk Assessment, not earthquake prediction. They were supposed to assess and communicate the risks to the public. That would cover point 1.
Point 2 would be that they communicated "no danger" and go drink some wine. The idea that the smaller quakes were actually a good thing was also communicated, with the thinking that this alleviated seismic stress. In an area known for seismic activity, and many structures poorly equipped to handle a large earthquake, I would submit that the duty of care was not met.
Point 3 is actually well covered here. The residents had a routine of sleeping outside in largely open areas if there were any tremors. With "no danger" in their mind, they broke this routine, which would have put them outside watching their homes collapse, instead of watching them from the inside.
That this meeting was convened mostly to discredit and silence a resident who was making claims about predicting earthquakes shows where their true focus was, and it wasn't on their "duty of care".
But they were seismologists serving on a government-appointed risk assessment panel.
Please don't elevate scientists to godlike status.
How do you relate a "government-appointed risk assessment panel" with "godlike status"? I was relating it to the responsibility that they accepted. Their serving on that panel means they accepted the responsibility for assessing and relaying the seismic risk of the area. If you consider that as being "godlike", you've got more to work out than can be handled on slashdot.
The only reason we should blame the scientists is if they lied about the danger. They can't be held liable for espousing an opinion based on their best understanding of the data at the time.
The statement "no danger" was given. If you want it to fit into a "lie", perhaps this will make it clear. Either they lied about there being no danger, or they lied about doing a risk assessment. Does that help?
they were discrediting an area resident who had been claiming that a large earthquake was going to hit soon.
Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, should we set our watches by it?
By this statement, I can see you presume that I think the resident was trustworthy or reputable. I have no opinion in that regard. I was merely pointing out the focus of the committee's meeting. Not risk assessment, but silencing the boy who cried wolf. In their eagerness to shut him up and pacify the population, they stated that there was no danger and to go drink some wine. Words that residents hung on to as their homes collapsed on them.
Your comparisons are really reaching. You appear stuck on the term "probability". I'm more stuck on the term "no danger". Regardless of what your "any scientist" would do, this panel did report the Italian equivilant of "no danger" in front of many now dead residents of L'Aquila. Those who are still alive remember it as well.
For the bridge, you would be bringing in questions of who owns the bridge and who is responsible for it. As well, a dangerous bridge would very likely be closed until it could be repaired or demolished, so this is really a non-starter from the beginning. If you recommended the bridge remain open despite it's obvious fragility, (or as you put it, "letting a few more people drive across the line") you would most assuredly be at fault. But this comparison is too dissimilar to service any more conjecture. There were much more circumstances in L'Aquila then can be boiled down into a simple analogy.
It's a bad analogy and a complete misrepresentation. The scientists weren't the ones who said there was nothing to worry about. A politician was.
Barberi was standing right next to him. The other scientists didn't care to stick around for the press conference. Everything about this meeting wasn't taken seriously. Therefore I disagree with your assertion.
Moreover, it did not issue any specific recommendations for community preparedness, according to Picuti, thereby failing in its legal obligation "to avoid death, injury and damage, or at least to minimize them".
I suppose that depends on who you talk to. Looking at all the irregularities around that meeting, I'd take any statements around that meeting with a healthy dose of skepticism.
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That would be because are not among those who replaced the term "God" with "Science". It's amusing how many on Slashdot scorn the "backwards bible-thumpers" who blindly stick to their faith, yet employ that same blindness because someone happens to be a diploma-carrying scientist. In essence, they have become that which they hate.
To clarify, the problem isn't "God" or "Science", the problem is willful blindness.
Yes, but people in general tend to be blind on purpose.
And if the guy directing traffic is essentially blind, only able to tell after the fact that something has happened from the sound? Should he just stop everyone from going through the intersection at all times... or wave people through under the pretense that people need to take reasonable precautions?
Nice leap you made there. However the scientists you're trying to portray as "blind" were seismologists. They were by definition the "least blind". At the very least the blind man should admit his blindness, which would be a far cry from the "no danger" statement made by that committee.
But the point is, the occurrence of an earthquake was very improbable. This fact is not changed even by the occurrence of an earthquake shortly after.
What the scientists were asked to do is effectively the same as predicting who would win the lottery. This is just not possible - even if somebody still wins it every few weeks...
The scientists were on government appointed risk assessment committee. They said there was no danger in an earthquake prone town full of ancient fragile buildings. They weren't expected to predict an earthquake, they were expected to assess and relay the risk of the area. Instead, they focused on silencing what many view as the village idiot.
This article puts it best:
Moreover, it did not issue any specific recommendations for community preparedness, according to Picuti, thereby failing in its legal obligation "to avoid death, injury and damage, or at least to minimize them".
The only thing they minimized was public safety, and considering the gravity of their position, I can't disagree with them being held responsible.
The area resident was still a quack, The scientists still did the right thing in saying he had no scientific basis for his alarmism.
There are enough random people predicting quakes (on the basis of nothing scientific) that for any given day, if a quake happens, someone will have predicted it. Stock market crashes are the same way. Without any scientific basis for the prediction, it's noise, and it's right to say it's noise.
I don't know enough about earthquakes or radon to call him a quack or otherwise. If his science has been disproved, and they called him on it, that's one thing. But they stepped well past that when they claimed that there was no danger and encouraged the public to go drink wine. That appeared to me as the boot stepping on the fly. Yes the fly was annoying, and wrong to be in my face, but I still have to deal with the poop that the fly was sitting on. (Hope that analogy makes sense =D).
"With the seismic history of the region, what sane scientist would claim that there was no danger?"
If the region has such a history of significant seismic activity, then surely the people who live there would be aware of this, and would already be doing regular earthquake preparedness, as is done in seismically active parts of the US?
A more relevant question is, can they prove that the specific individuals who died, would have survived if they had been warned by these scientists in the way that you describe. That seems flimsy and unlikely to me. At best, if these guys are 'shooting from the hip', you can maybe accuse them of doing a poor job and firing them. But culpability for deaths, that is stupid.
Read the article. Here's another link. The residents had a regular routine of leaving their houses and going to safer ground and sleeping in their cars when small earthquakes had hit. Based on the statements from that meeting, the residents stayed in their homes that night, the Italian equivalent of "no danger" fresh in their minds. Had that meeting never happened, they would have left their homes, and many would have been alive today.
Thing is, in a seismically active region, danger exists "all the time"... 24/7. And the people who live in these regions know this. Should people avoid, say, going to work permanently then, if some level of danger is always there? Only idiots believe that "scientists" are magically able to predict earthquakes.
Only idiot scientists would allow a statement of "no danger" to come forth from their meeting. They took that responsibility on themselves (when they accepted their appointment to the "Great Risks" committee, and when that statement was made), and now that it's come back to bite them, they don't want it anymore. Perhaps they should have taken their position more seriously.
A: They're all considered crackpots until they're peer-reviewed, arent they? And describing someone with somewhat of a science background (he's a lab tech/hydraulic engineer measuring radon levels) as a "tea leaf reader" is quite a leap.
B: The car analogy is over-simplification at it's worst. You left out that the roads were cobblestone, there were blind corners, and the intersection was well known for having many accidents over the years. As well, the scientist was some sort of transportation specialist. And the scientist said "there's no danger, drink some wine as you drive through!". Now we're getting closer...
C: The committee didn't just say to ignore the "tea leaf reader", they said there was no danger. The "Great Risks" committee said "no danger", changing the way the local residents responded to earthquakes.
When you accept an appointment to a committee or panel tasked with assessing and communicating those risks to the public, you have to accept the responsibility as well. This wasn't armchair conjecture they were giving, it was direction from government specialists. They accepted a position that can literally save or cost lives, and they were careless either in either their assessment, their communication, or both. You really don't think they should be held responsible?
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That would be because are not among those who replaced the term "God" with "Science". It's amusing how many on Slashdot scorn the "backwards bible-thumpers" who blindly stick to their faith, yet employ that same blindness because someone happens to be a diploma-carrying scientist. In essence, they have become that which they hate.
To clarify, the problem isn't "God" or "Science", the problem is willful blindness.
The government asked for their assessment, and they gave the best prediction they could given the data they had. Nearly every other seismologist in the world would have given the same assessment. They are being sentenced to prison because they did not predict the quake, pure and simple. The lesson here is that if the Italian government ever asks your assessment on anything, the only valid response is "fuck off and die".
According to statements given to the prosecution, two members of the same committee disagreed with the assessment, albeit after the quake:
The suggestion that repeated tremors were favourable because they 'unload', or discharge, seismic stress and reduce the probability of a major quake seems to be scientifically incorrect. Two of the committee members — Selvaggi and Eva — later told prosecutors that they "strongly dissented" from such an assertion, and Jordan later characterized it as "not a correct view of things".
link TFA
I can see how eager you are to support scientists and hate Italy, but these were scientists masquerading as politicians. Reading through the various news reports on this paints the picture quite clearly. They let politics into their science, and people paid the price with their lives.
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated
Oh, MY GOD. That isn't even a charge, or a crime.
If they were just random scientists sharing their random opinion, I'd agree. But they were seismologists serving on a government-appointed risk assessment panel. This was their specialty, and their opinion carried special weight because of their appointment. Their meeting and the public statements made as a result of that meeting changed the way the residents of L'Aquila responded to earthquakes. People died as a result of that meeting.
These IDIOTS have done a serious amount of damage to people who were trying to help them.
They weren't trying to help them, they were discrediting an area resident who had been claiming that a large earthquake was going to hit soon. This wasn't a scientific meeting, it was a political one. If you're willing to turn a blind eye because the politician happens to also be a scientist, you're warming yourself up to be as forgiving to them as the church-goers are to their pedophile pastors. Open your eyes man!
that is not the lesson, since they did not make a forecast. Saying there is no evidence of a potential earthquake is not the same as saying there will be no earthquake.
But the committee did make a forecast by saying it was "improbable", as well the press conference that took place afterwards stated that there was "no danger".
I wondered if there was more to the story than the summary indicates. I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
Whether you agree that the scientist were negligent or not, the article title and summary are misleading and flamebait.
There is more to it, this article seems to detail it out pretty well. It's not "Scientists who failed to warn of Quake", it's more like "Scientists on Advisory Panel claim no danger". There was also another wrinkle in this, a resident and lab tech named "Giampaolo Giuliani" who was warning of earthquakes based on his home-made radon detectors. The article points out that the advisory panel appears to have been convened (at least partially) to silence or discredit Giuliani's predictions, and they held a press conference afterwards where they effectively said there was "no danger" and to go drink some wine.
This is about public officials in a position of trust trying to calm or silence the worry of the public. With the seismic history of the region, what sane scientist would claim that there was no danger? They're not in trouble because of their science, they're in trouble because they let their politics take precedence over public safety. There are other tidbits in the article that lead to this conclusion, showing that the meeting held that day was unusual in many regards, including the lack of routine earthquake preparedness warnings. It looks like the panel "shot from the hip" that day, and missed the mark so horribly that lives were lost as a result of the direction given. When you accept the responsibility of serving on a panel like that, negligence should be a punishable offense.
In the end they both clean you out. Do you take it slow or fast?
Only if your business model isn't bringing in money every month. A/V can be planned for. Random Dude will take you for everything you've got with little to no warning. That can really hurt a business, and if done at the wrong time it can severely impact a business' plan, short-term or long.
Ah. You take the other risks that I missed. Gotcha.
Those would be.... ?
I run Linux everywhere. Sure, there are holes in Linux and in Linux applications just like everything else, but I don't think there are any actual Linux viruses in the wild, nor is there much money to be made developing Linux viruses. Of much more concern to me are cross-platform things like Java, Flash and Adobe Acrobat bugs... and even those often have system-specific exploits that are much more likely to target Windows.
In terms of Linux hats, I wear a fez =D (not much skill, but enough to get around). Your path is much less risky, but my point is that regardless of what you do, you take a risk. Often, the greater risk with Linux servers is inept sysadmins setting them up (and there are many of these) and leaving gaping holes open for even the inept blackhat.
To clarify: I'm not accusing you of belonging to this group.
Just think about it. The average Windows AV program runs with sufficient privilege to wreck your system by altering or removing arbitrary files. And it gets fed multiple updates per day created by teams of workers working in a hugely stressful situation: When a new virus appears, you've got to get those signatures out NOW.
I'm amazed people don't see this risks in this.
There are risks either way. Do you take the risk with the company paid to help you? Or the risk with random dude out to clean you out?
Seems that on a Windows Active Directory network, isn't this something an admin can script to run on all the computers at once? Or am I vastly overestimating their management capabilities.
If not resolvable from the Sophos console, our Sophos admin resolves these type of things with PStools. Active directory provides the list and the credentials.
Slashdot Mirror
Going by the stories from back when the quake happened, the summary is more accurate than you think. What they said was that a series of tremors didn't mean there's an earthquake coming, not that there isn't going to be an earthquake. It may not sound like the biggest difference, but it really is. If earthquakes were easy to predict, I'd hesitate to defend them, but they aren't. The people who've decided they should've known are people who are not the least bit qualified to make that call, which is why geologists were hired in the first place.
What they said was "no danger". Sounds like a prediction to me.
I don't know. I'm am a health care provider. In order for me to be found culpable of negligence, three things must be established:
1) That there was a duty of care (that I was required to provide). 2) That the duty of care was not met. 3) That the failure to meet the duty of care caused the harm experienced by the plaintiff victim. (That is, it can't just be some irrelevant failure on my part.)
Interesting read, and useful to see different points from different industries. Thank you. However from what I've read, the duty of care in this case would appear to be Risk Assessment, not earthquake prediction. They were supposed to assess and communicate the risks to the public. That would cover point 1.
Point 2 would be that they communicated "no danger" and go drink some wine. The idea that the smaller quakes were actually a good thing was also communicated, with the thinking that this alleviated seismic stress. In an area known for seismic activity, and many structures poorly equipped to handle a large earthquake, I would submit that the duty of care was not met.
Point 3 is actually well covered here. The residents had a routine of sleeping outside in largely open areas if there were any tremors. With "no danger" in their mind, they broke this routine, which would have put them outside watching their homes collapse, instead of watching them from the inside.
That this meeting was convened mostly to discredit and silence a resident who was making claims about predicting earthquakes shows where their true focus was, and it wasn't on their "duty of care".
But they were seismologists serving on a government-appointed risk assessment panel. Please don't elevate scientists to godlike status.
How do you relate a "government-appointed risk assessment panel" with "godlike status"? I was relating it to the responsibility that they accepted. Their serving on that panel means they accepted the responsibility for assessing and relaying the seismic risk of the area. If you consider that as being "godlike", you've got more to work out than can be handled on slashdot.
The only reason we should blame the scientists is if they lied about the danger. They can't be held liable for espousing an opinion based on their best understanding of the data at the time.
The statement "no danger" was given. If you want it to fit into a "lie", perhaps this will make it clear. Either they lied about there being no danger, or they lied about doing a risk assessment. Does that help?
they were discrediting an area resident who had been claiming that a large earthquake was going to hit soon. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, should we set our watches by it?
By this statement, I can see you presume that I think the resident was trustworthy or reputable. I have no opinion in that regard. I was merely pointing out the focus of the committee's meeting. Not risk assessment, but silencing the boy who cried wolf. In their eagerness to shut him up and pacify the population, they stated that there was no danger and to go drink some wine. Words that residents hung on to as their homes collapsed on them.
Your comparisons are really reaching. You appear stuck on the term "probability". I'm more stuck on the term "no danger". Regardless of what your "any scientist" would do, this panel did report the Italian equivilant of "no danger" in front of many now dead residents of L'Aquila. Those who are still alive remember it as well.
For the bridge, you would be bringing in questions of who owns the bridge and who is responsible for it. As well, a dangerous bridge would very likely be closed until it could be repaired or demolished, so this is really a non-starter from the beginning. If you recommended the bridge remain open despite it's obvious fragility, (or as you put it, "letting a few more people drive across the line") you would most assuredly be at fault. But this comparison is too dissimilar to service any more conjecture. There were much more circumstances in L'Aquila then can be boiled down into a simple analogy.
It's a bad analogy and a complete misrepresentation. The scientists weren't the ones who said there was nothing to worry about. A politician was.
Barberi was standing right next to him. The other scientists didn't care to stick around for the press conference. Everything about this meeting wasn't taken seriously. Therefore I disagree with your assertion.
Moreover, it did not issue any specific recommendations for community preparedness, according to Picuti, thereby failing in its legal obligation "to avoid death, injury and damage, or at least to minimize them".
Source
I suppose that depends on who you talk to. Looking at all the irregularities around that meeting, I'd take any statements around that meeting with a healthy dose of skepticism.
But you are describing academic negligence, hardly a criminal offence. Even if we assume it can be criminal, it's certainly not manslaughter...
They were appointed to a government appointed risk assessment committee, their statements carried much more then academic weight.
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That would be because are not among those who replaced the term "God" with "Science". It's amusing how many on Slashdot scorn the "backwards bible-thumpers" who blindly stick to their faith, yet employ that same blindness because someone happens to be a diploma-carrying scientist. In essence, they have become that which they hate.
To clarify, the problem isn't "God" or "Science", the problem is willful blindness.
Yes, but people in general tend to be blind on purpose.
FTFY. =D
(At least from my perspective)
And if the guy directing traffic is essentially blind, only able to tell after the fact that something has happened from the sound? Should he just stop everyone from going through the intersection at all times... or wave people through under the pretense that people need to take reasonable precautions?
Nice leap you made there. However the scientists you're trying to portray as "blind" were seismologists. They were by definition the "least blind". At the very least the blind man should admit his blindness, which would be a far cry from the "no danger" statement made by that committee.
But the point is, the occurrence of an earthquake was very improbable. This fact is not changed even by the occurrence of an earthquake shortly after.
What the scientists were asked to do is effectively the same as predicting who would win the lottery. This is just not possible - even if somebody still wins it every few weeks...
The scientists were on government appointed risk assessment committee. They said there was no danger in an earthquake prone town full of ancient fragile buildings. They weren't expected to predict an earthquake, they were expected to assess and relay the risk of the area. Instead, they focused on silencing what many view as the village idiot. This article puts it best:
Moreover, it did not issue any specific recommendations for community preparedness, according to Picuti, thereby failing in its legal obligation "to avoid death, injury and damage, or at least to minimize them".
The only thing they minimized was public safety, and considering the gravity of their position, I can't disagree with them being held responsible.
The area resident was still a quack, The scientists still did the right thing in saying he had no scientific basis for his alarmism.
There are enough random people predicting quakes (on the basis of nothing scientific) that for any given day, if a quake happens, someone will have predicted it. Stock market crashes are the same way. Without any scientific basis for the prediction, it's noise, and it's right to say it's noise.
I don't know enough about earthquakes or radon to call him a quack or otherwise. If his science has been disproved, and they called him on it, that's one thing. But they stepped well past that when they claimed that there was no danger and encouraged the public to go drink wine. That appeared to me as the boot stepping on the fly. Yes the fly was annoying, and wrong to be in my face, but I still have to deal with the poop that the fly was sitting on. (Hope that analogy makes sense =D).
"With the seismic history of the region, what sane scientist would claim that there was no danger?"
If the region has such a history of significant seismic activity, then surely the people who live there would be aware of this, and would already be doing regular earthquake preparedness, as is done in seismically active parts of the US?
A more relevant question is, can they prove that the specific individuals who died, would have survived if they had been warned by these scientists in the way that you describe. That seems flimsy and unlikely to me. At best, if these guys are 'shooting from the hip', you can maybe accuse them of doing a poor job and firing them. But culpability for deaths, that is stupid.
Read the article. Here's another link. The residents had a regular routine of leaving their houses and going to safer ground and sleeping in their cars when small earthquakes had hit. Based on the statements from that meeting, the residents stayed in their homes that night, the Italian equivalent of "no danger" fresh in their minds. Had that meeting never happened, they would have left their homes, and many would have been alive today.
Thing is, in a seismically active region, danger exists "all the time" ... 24/7. And the people who live in these regions know this. Should people avoid, say, going to work permanently then, if some level of danger is always there? Only idiots believe that "scientists" are magically able to predict earthquakes.
Only idiot scientists would allow a statement of "no danger" to come forth from their meeting. They took that responsibility on themselves (when they accepted their appointment to the "Great Risks" committee, and when that statement was made), and now that it's come back to bite them, they don't want it anymore. Perhaps they should have taken their position more seriously.
A: They're all considered crackpots until they're peer-reviewed, arent they? And describing someone with somewhat of a science background (he's a lab tech/hydraulic engineer measuring radon levels) as a "tea leaf reader" is quite a leap.
B: The car analogy is over-simplification at it's worst. You left out that the roads were cobblestone, there were blind corners, and the intersection was well known for having many accidents over the years. As well, the scientist was some sort of transportation specialist. And the scientist said "there's no danger, drink some wine as you drive through!". Now we're getting closer...
C: The committee didn't just say to ignore the "tea leaf reader", they said there was no danger. The "Great Risks" committee said "no danger", changing the way the local residents responded to earthquakes.
When you accept an appointment to a committee or panel tasked with assessing and communicating those risks to the public, you have to accept the responsibility as well. This wasn't armchair conjecture they were giving, it was direction from government specialists. They accepted a position that can literally save or cost lives, and they were careless either in either their assessment, their communication, or both. You really don't think they should be held responsible?
No, the people had no more reason to worry than usual, that was the message. It's not the scientists fault if they weren't worried enough already.
Read, learn, and retract.
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed. I can't see why the same can't apply to this case.
That would be because are not among those who replaced the term "God" with "Science". It's amusing how many on Slashdot scorn the "backwards bible-thumpers" who blindly stick to their faith, yet employ that same blindness because someone happens to be a diploma-carrying scientist. In essence, they have become that which they hate.
To clarify, the problem isn't "God" or "Science", the problem is willful blindness.
The government asked for their assessment, and they gave the best prediction they could given the data they had. Nearly every other seismologist in the world would have given the same assessment. They are being sentenced to prison because they did not predict the quake, pure and simple. The lesson here is that if the Italian government ever asks your assessment on anything, the only valid response is "fuck off and die".
According to statements given to the prosecution, two members of the same committee disagreed with the assessment, albeit after the quake:
The suggestion that repeated tremors were favourable because they 'unload', or discharge, seismic stress and reduce the probability of a major quake seems to be scientifically incorrect. Two of the committee members — Selvaggi and Eva — later told prosecutors that they "strongly dissented" from such an assertion, and Jordan later characterized it as "not a correct view of things".
link TFA
I can see how eager you are to support scientists and hate Italy, but these were scientists masquerading as politicians. Reading through the various news reports on this paints the picture quite clearly. They let politics into their science, and people paid the price with their lives.
Oh, MY GOD. That isn't even a charge, or a crime.
If they were just random scientists sharing their random opinion, I'd agree. But they were seismologists serving on a government-appointed risk assessment panel. This was their specialty, and their opinion carried special weight because of their appointment. Their meeting and the public statements made as a result of that meeting changed the way the residents of L'Aquila responded to earthquakes. People died as a result of that meeting.
These IDIOTS have done a serious amount of damage to people who were trying to help them.
They weren't trying to help them, they were discrediting an area resident who had been claiming that a large earthquake was going to hit soon. This wasn't a scientific meeting, it was a political one. If you're willing to turn a blind eye because the politician happens to also be a scientist, you're warming yourself up to be as forgiving to them as the church-goers are to their pedophile pastors. Open your eyes man!
that is not the lesson, since they did not make a forecast. Saying there is no evidence of a potential earthquake is not the same as saying there will be no earthquake.
But the committee did make a forecast by saying it was "improbable", as well the press conference that took place afterwards stated that there was "no danger".
I wondered if there was more to the story than the summary indicates. I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
Whether you agree that the scientist were negligent or not, the article title and summary are misleading and flamebait.
There is more to it, this article seems to detail it out pretty well. It's not "Scientists who failed to warn of Quake", it's more like "Scientists on Advisory Panel claim no danger". There was also another wrinkle in this, a resident and lab tech named "Giampaolo Giuliani" who was warning of earthquakes based on his home-made radon detectors. The article points out that the advisory panel appears to have been convened (at least partially) to silence or discredit Giuliani's predictions, and they held a press conference afterwards where they effectively said there was "no danger" and to go drink some wine.
This is about public officials in a position of trust trying to calm or silence the worry of the public. With the seismic history of the region, what sane scientist would claim that there was no danger? They're not in trouble because of their science, they're in trouble because they let their politics take precedence over public safety. There are other tidbits in the article that lead to this conclusion, showing that the meeting held that day was unusual in many regards, including the lack of routine earthquake preparedness warnings. It looks like the panel "shot from the hip" that day, and missed the mark so horribly that lives were lost as a result of the direction given. When you accept the responsibility of serving on a panel like that, negligence should be a punishable offense.
In the end they both clean you out. Do you take it slow or fast?
Only if your business model isn't bringing in money every month. A/V can be planned for. Random Dude will take you for everything you've got with little to no warning. That can really hurt a business, and if done at the wrong time it can severely impact a business' plan, short-term or long.
Those would be .... ?
I run Linux everywhere. Sure, there are holes in Linux and in Linux applications just like everything else, but I don't think there are any actual Linux viruses in the wild, nor is there much money to be made developing Linux viruses. Of much more concern to me are cross-platform things like Java, Flash and Adobe Acrobat bugs... and even those often have system-specific exploits that are much more likely to target Windows.
In terms of Linux hats, I wear a fez =D (not much skill, but enough to get around). Your path is much less risky, but my point is that regardless of what you do, you take a risk. Often, the greater risk with Linux servers is inept sysadmins setting them up (and there are many of these) and leaving gaping holes open for even the inept blackhat.
To clarify: I'm not accusing you of belonging to this group.
Neither. I don't run Windows AV software and I don't run Windows.
Ah. You take the other risks that I missed. Gotcha.
Just think about it. The average Windows AV program runs with sufficient privilege to wreck your system by altering or removing arbitrary files. And it gets fed multiple updates per day created by teams of workers working in a hugely stressful situation: When a new virus appears, you've got to get those signatures out NOW.
I'm amazed people don't see this risks in this.
There are risks either way. Do you take the risk with the company paid to help you? Or the risk with random dude out to clean you out?
These autoimmune diseases ain't a whole lot of fun. I'd prescribe some computosteroids and avoiding sunlight. Just stay in the basement.
You mean the turbo button? Haven't seen one of those since my 386!
Seems that on a Windows Active Directory network, isn't this something an admin can script to run on all the computers at once? Or am I vastly overestimating their management capabilities.
If not resolvable from the Sophos console, our Sophos admin resolves these type of things with PStools. Active directory provides the list and the credentials.