America is worried about innovation. We're worried that without patents, someone else might come along and steal our poor American's idea for a self-lighting candle with built-in gerbil feeder! We can't have that, can we?
I'd be happy with that if the alternative were spending $1000 and making $0. I've lived through that personally, and it's not a good situation. If I had to work a bit to make my savings last twice as long, I'd do it. Hopefully I'd be able to find a better job before my savings ran out entirely.
Regular workers? By that, I assume you mean Americans who had to lower their demands to get a job. Yes, of course there will be less money per person. There will also be more jobs, and less outsourcing. That means more money stays in America, and we get to keep buying stuff. I think your assumption of my line of thought is horribly wrong.
Maybe it's simply un-American to reduce our demands in a financial crisis. That would certainly explain the UAW's actions. They're the poster child for American unions. Maybe everyone really should have high-paying jobs. Let's cut out all those wastes, then.
No job paying less than $100,000 a year. That should support most livelihoods. Now, though, every fast-food meal costs $50 to cover the fry cook's salary, which makes everyone else's livelihoods that much more expensive. Now a $100,000 job doesn't cut it anymore. $150,000 is decent. Then $250,000, then $500,000... Of course folks will object to paying such high prices, so more and more fry cooks will be out of jobs. African standards aren't that far off, really.
Let's look at the "waste" job a different way, where only the employee is better off without it. I refer to my own recent unemployment. While sitting at home job-hunting, burning through my savings at a rate of a few thousand dollars a month, I would have taken ANY software engineering job, just to have a longer time to get a "good" job without exhausting my savings.
Fair compensation works both ways. It must be fair to the employee, and it must be fair to the employer.
Given that my original comment has been modded "troll" now, it's apparently unpopular to think that an employer might need some rights, too. Go figure.
Now compare that to the number of villages that are already overrun with dumps.
When I volunteered in Africa, most of the towns I was in had a large amount of land dedicated to holding refuse. In one village, there was a small (2 or 3 cubic meter) dumpster. It was surrounded by a pile of refuse 10 meters in diameter. Elsewhere in that village, there was an area roughly 50 meters by 100 meters, piled about a meter high with refuse. This was a village without any large industry, mind you. Every day, dozens of children go over those piles, looking for things that might be useful at home or simply amusing to play with.
In order to determine whether corporate employment will degrade the quality of life in these villages, you have to know well what life was like beforehand. Seems to me they're not that different.
In my case, when I was sitting without a job for a full year, I would have gladly taken a low wage job, just to get back to work and have some income.
Instead, as the economy got worse, American jobs kept disappearing. One company I called with a question before even applying said that they couldn't afford to hire anyone else. Their application (online) was gone the next day.
Personally, I think the situation's the same in other companies. In addition to the agreed wage, there's a significant overhead cost for each employee. Companies can't afford to hire people, so people don't buy things, so companies can't afford to hire people. It's a vicious cycle.
There are several ways out of it. One retail shop I have connections to had their most profitable day ever during the 2008 Christmas season. They had a huge sale, with discounts cutting their profit margin by about half. People could buy things, and the company could make money again.
I think the other half of the cycle can be fixed as well. If companies had simply started hiring again, at a far lower wage, then people could afford to start buying again, albeit slowly.
In fact, that seems to be part of the intent behind Title I of the HIRE Act, which gives up to $6000 (in the form of tax credits) to companies who hire previously-unemployed workers.
Lowering the cost of hiring makes hiring more likely. This is pretty much the point I was originally tried to make, which got ignored in favor of a little quip against labor unions, so here it is again, nice and clear:
In my opinion, American workers generally expect too much in return for their work.
Taking advantage of the highest technological systems in the world, and at the same time providing employment for poor peasants who will work for pennies per day...
Seems a little different now, doesn't it? All economic exchanges are based on exploiting others. You go to the store, and con the innocent shopkeeper to give you a gallon of milk for only $2. Meanwhile, the shopkeeper sells off one of his many gallons of milk to some schmuck for $2. At the end of the exchange, you both say "thank you", because you both feel like you've gotten the good end of the deal.
Rural villages in third-world countries making parts for American companies get the money they need to build their own infrastructure. Sure, they're getting paid less than a dollar a day, but the lineman installing electrical service is also getting paid that same rate. Everything just costs less there, for now, so everyone's happy. Except in extreme circumstances, nobody feels that they're getting exploited.
I'm intimately aware that protocols can't be protected by copyright. I figured they were probably including files, though from TFA, that's never clear. Being a default judgement, it's altogether possible that the actual material being copied was never even looked at.
Patents also do not apply to protocols, since they must cover a specific mechanism, such as an algorithm. Now, if the protocol requires encryption or encoding using a patented algorithm, that's a problem.
Sorry, but I'd rather not have my Slashdot discussions associated with my employer. Not that I've talked of anything illegal or even distasteful, but I'd rather keep just it separate as a matter of principle. As far as treating employers well, it helps that there are less than 100 employees in total. However, there have already been several discussions on how to keep the environment the same as it grows. As an example, we recently moved into a larger office, which is a part of a big stereotypical corporate office building. Our first company activity was to take the crappy artwork off the walls and replace it with (almost) whatever we wanted.
What I'm wondering is whether or not anything significant was actually copied. Was the private server just duplicating the game's protocol, or was the game world actually duplicated?
Looking through the information linked to in the summary, it looks like there was no actual debate on anything. The judgement was default.
It's important to sever the connection between unions and company environments. A good company can provide a good environment without a union. A bad company will find holes in the union deals, and exploit them until the next contract, driving costs up.
Be glad you don't have forced unions. There are some that aren't so lucky. Here (in the USA, in a non-right-to-work state), it's possible to enter an industry where the only choices are living in poverty or living in deeper poverty. If you join the union, you have to follow their rules for bargaining, which means you can't sell your labor for less than anyone else. If you don't join the union, you'll be making less (though have a job), but you still have to pay some of the union dues anyway.
There is effectively very little difference between what's mandated by labor laws and what's mandated by contract laws when there are unions involved. Unions have the power and money to pay lobbyists to influence laws.
Leisure time itself does not increase productivity. Leisure time often improves morale, and improved morale increases productivity. Personally, I'd rather see an employer voluntarily do other things to improve morale. If it makes sense for the company to offer much higher pay, that works. Paid vacation? Sure, but I won't take much. On-site child care? Of course. A weekly company-wide happy hour at the local bar, with pay? Why not? If that's the kind of thing that they need to do to attract the employees they want, why shouldn't a company offer anything they can afford to?
Again, I don't have any problem with labor unions inherently. I just don't like the excessive pressure they use to enforce their own particular idea of "good".
If a rural village has a factory producing widgets for the Global Widget company, that rural village is exchanging one resource (labor) for another (money). As in all economics, they can then exchange that resource for another (food/amenities/whatever) produced elsewhere.
Depending on the location, it may even be preferable to work on widgets than on farming. In Niger, for example, farmland is scarce, and a decent crop is ever more rare. Nigeriens working in a foreign-run factory could make enough to import food from less arid regions. A failed crop doesn't have to mean a village's starvation.
That more humid region, in turn, can use their new income to purchase other goods from elsewhere. Given a wide enough scope, everyone profits by providing what is needed. The advantage might be heavily skewed, but there aren't (or at least, should not be) any purely one-way deals.
There are some companies that treat their employees well. I happen to work for one now. If they can afford to stay in business, that's great, and I hope to see more companies follow their practices.
If the companies can't stay in business, then that's too bad. Their employees will have to look elsewhere for employment, and I hope that other companies won't be too broke to hire them.
The labor unions aren't inherently the problem. It's what they argue for (in America, at least).
For example, I'd have no problems with a union arguing that the CEO can't make more than 10 times the average starting salary, or that workers must be allowed to take a significant (but reasonable) amount of unpaid leave without risking their job.
I have a problem with unions requiring a certain minimum salary, paid vacations, and other amenities that only serve to cost the employers money without increasing productivity.
In my opinion, all details of that agreement should be negotiable on an individual basis.
If employees want to group their negotiations, that's fine. Don't apply the terms of one employee's contract to someone else. Don't require workers to participate in a strike if they don't want to. Don't require union membership. Don't drive the employer to bankruptcy pushing for ever-higher wages.
it's easy to ignore the realities of really, REALLY, sub par working conditions
What's par?
Is it the American standard where working 40 hours in an air-conditioned building, getting paid extra for overtime, and making a minimum of $15,000 a year is barely acceptable?
Or is it the African standard where walking 2 miles to work 100 hours a week sewing clothes in a shack, and making $480 a year is a good job?
In a world with cheap & easy transportation, jobs get outsourced to places where people are willing to work cheaper. If that means they don't get central air conditioning or hourly safety inspections, too bad. Yeah, it's sad that someone might lose a hand or get sick, but until then, they have a job. After that, they have to try and get a different job, doing something that doesn't require a hand. It's callous, but it's true.
If Americans were willing to work cheaper (and were actually allowed to), we might get some jobs coming back. Instead, we get labor unions that argue for high wages and benefits at the cost of actual jobs. Employment should be an agreement exchanging work for pay. In my opinion, all details of that agreement should be negotiable on an individual basis.
In other news, a handgun was manufactured today. I predict that it's going to hurt someone.
Sun managed its IP like any other decent-sized company should. They built up a nice portfolio and promptly ignored it, unless someone else wanted to start trouble. Oracle is one of those companies who wants to starts trouble.
I think it was all three. Sun had a decent amount of virgin un-evil products. Oracle saw them, and had an insatiable desire to corrupt and spread malevolence.
So to answer my original question, you're so special that you can ignore posted rules, because you're more attentive than everyone else? An appropriate quote from a friend of mine, a police officer who trains other officers before they get patrol cars:
I tell 'em, 'Go down that street' and we go for a block. Then I ask how many pickups we passed. Nobody's gotten the first one right yet. The next street it's kids, then dogs. After an hour of that, they're pissed at me, but they're starting to watch what's going on in every driveway we go past. These guys already passed their test, but they're just now getting it.
You are welcome to come visit me and have a look for yourself.
Or, you could post a link to any of several satellite images available online, and the community (myself happily included) can point out places children could be missed.
An ad hominem attack would imply that because you drive poorly, your argument is invalid, such as saying "people like you can't possibly know anything about safe driving". Rather, that was just a subtle insult.
basic school
Regardless of level, I've never seen a school that wasn't active all year long in some form. Hence my comment regarding a mile-high wall. It's the only way to be even slightly certain nobody's there.
What children?
The ones you may not have seen because you were speeding. Going 166% of the legal speed means your available time to see, recognize, and react to a condition is reduced by 40%. That means you missed 40% of the sensory observations available at that time. If those observations had indicated there were children present......well I guess that'd just be too bad, wouldn't it? Those 10 seconds were important!
There were 543 collisions per year in Toronto involving children under 18, across 1050 schools, from 2000 to 2005. That's 0.518 collisions per school per year. That's 1 collision per school per 705 days. That's 1 collision per school per 16900 hours. On a busy street with 2000 vehicles per hour, that's 1 collision per school per 33,800,000 vehicles.
Assuming a more average rate of 1000 vehicles per hour, that's one collision per school per 16,900,000 vehicles.
It looks like the actual odds, as measured in Toronto, are about 1 in 20 million. 50 years of someone else's life actually saves 200 million seconds, which is 6.3 years. I apologize for the mistake.
Taking into account the increased proportion of kids hit during peak hours (before/after school and lunch), the odds only decrease by 50%. That's still 50 years vs. 12.6. Speeders are still selfish.
I'm intentionally placing no trust in the statement that nothing was happening at the school. First, because I've never known a school (of any level) to be completely empty. Second, because I've never known a driver to hit someone they saw well ahead of time. Third, because if observation were being considered, I'd have to go compare reaction times to speed, and frankly I'd rather spend my time going slowly through school zones. The comparison is unequal by a factor of 4. Is the GP really four times more observant than the average Toronto driver?
Other people have to live with the consequences of your actions, too. This seems to be painfully obvious to the point of triviality. Let's run through a comparisons, shall we?
Going 50km/h instead of 30 km/h for 50 meters saves you 3 seconds. Let's expand that to 10 seconds, to account for slowing down before the school, and speeding back up afterward.
Let's say that one time out of million, you fatally hit a kid in the school zone. That's assuming a 50% fatality rate, and a 1-in-500,000 chance of collision. Assuming it's a secondary school, that puts the kid at about 18 years old. Also assuming an average life span, you just cost that person 50 years of life.
In those million times through the school zone, you saved yourself ten million seconds. That's 116 days.
The consequences of your saving 116 days is someone else losing 50 years, plus the trauma their family gets to go through. If you're perfectly fine living with those consequences, then I hope I'm never near you.
By the way, the chance of collision must be roughly 1 in 79 million for this comparison to break even.
Are you telling me you never ever in your whole life assessed a situation, came to the conclusion that whatever a sign tells you is wrong and/or it was left in place by mistake and did something else instead?
Not that I can remember, actually. I assume that I'm not omniscient, and there's probably a reason for the sign being there. I find a legal alternative. I'm fairly certain I've never knowingly and intentionally broken the law for the sake of saving time. I'm just not that kind of asshole.
And yes, I would have known if stuff happenend there.
Are you the only one with a key to the gate in the mile-high wall surrounding the premises?
I seem to distinctly remember students visiting my high school during breaks for school meetings, extra-curricular school activities, and simply meeting friends.
Of course, as you said, the situation might have justified it. Maybe the roughly 10 seconds you saved was worth sacrificing the safety of children.
Yes, it's wrong. What makes you so special that you can ignore posted limits, regardless of what you think their reason is?
I'd also like to know more about this power of clairvoyance you have that makes you so certain there wasn't remedial school in session, or a youth program, or any other activity that might have been a reason to leave the signs up.
On the other hand, perhaps the local officials just realized that when they take the signs down, people get used to going 50 km/h through there, and they continue speeding for a few weeks after the signs go back up.
Slashdot Mirror
America is worried about innovation. We're worried that without patents, someone else might come along and steal our poor American's idea for a self-lighting candle with built-in gerbil feeder! We can't have that, can we?
How does this help fuel economy? More to the point, how is this story anything but an advertisement for some guy's new tire?
I'd be happy with that if the alternative were spending $1000 and making $0. I've lived through that personally, and it's not a good situation. If I had to work a bit to make my savings last twice as long, I'd do it. Hopefully I'd be able to find a better job before my savings ran out entirely.
Regular workers? By that, I assume you mean Americans who had to lower their demands to get a job. Yes, of course there will be less money per person. There will also be more jobs, and less outsourcing. That means more money stays in America, and we get to keep buying stuff. I think your assumption of my line of thought is horribly wrong.
Maybe it's simply un-American to reduce our demands in a financial crisis. That would certainly explain the UAW's actions. They're the poster child for American unions. Maybe everyone really should have high-paying jobs. Let's cut out all those wastes, then.
No job paying less than $100,000 a year. That should support most livelihoods. Now, though, every fast-food meal costs $50 to cover the fry cook's salary, which makes everyone else's livelihoods that much more expensive. Now a $100,000 job doesn't cut it anymore. $150,000 is decent. Then $250,000, then $500,000... Of course folks will object to paying such high prices, so more and more fry cooks will be out of jobs. African standards aren't that far off, really.
Let's look at the "waste" job a different way, where only the employee is better off without it. I refer to my own recent unemployment. While sitting at home job-hunting, burning through my savings at a rate of a few thousand dollars a month, I would have taken ANY software engineering job, just to have a longer time to get a "good" job without exhausting my savings.
Fair compensation works both ways. It must be fair to the employee, and it must be fair to the employer.
Given that my original comment has been modded "troll" now, it's apparently unpopular to think that an employer might need some rights, too. Go figure.
Now compare that to the number of villages that are already overrun with dumps.
When I volunteered in Africa, most of the towns I was in had a large amount of land dedicated to holding refuse. In one village, there was a small (2 or 3 cubic meter) dumpster. It was surrounded by a pile of refuse 10 meters in diameter. Elsewhere in that village, there was an area roughly 50 meters by 100 meters, piled about a meter high with refuse. This was a village without any large industry, mind you. Every day, dozens of children go over those piles, looking for things that might be useful at home or simply amusing to play with.
In order to determine whether corporate employment will degrade the quality of life in these villages, you have to know well what life was like beforehand. Seems to me they're not that different.
That's true, for some lax definitions of "true".
In my case, when I was sitting without a job for a full year, I would have gladly taken a low wage job, just to get back to work and have some income.
Instead, as the economy got worse, American jobs kept disappearing. One company I called with a question before even applying said that they couldn't afford to hire anyone else. Their application (online) was gone the next day.
Personally, I think the situation's the same in other companies. In addition to the agreed wage, there's a significant overhead cost for each employee. Companies can't afford to hire people, so people don't buy things, so companies can't afford to hire people. It's a vicious cycle.
There are several ways out of it. One retail shop I have connections to had their most profitable day ever during the 2008 Christmas season. They had a huge sale, with discounts cutting their profit margin by about half. People could buy things, and the company could make money again.
I think the other half of the cycle can be fixed as well. If companies had simply started hiring again, at a far lower wage, then people could afford to start buying again, albeit slowly.
In fact, that seems to be part of the intent behind Title I of the HIRE Act, which gives up to $6000 (in the form of tax credits) to companies who hire previously-unemployed workers.
Lowering the cost of hiring makes hiring more likely. This is pretty much the point I was originally tried to make, which got ignored in favor of a little quip against labor unions, so here it is again, nice and clear:
In my opinion, American workers generally expect too much in return for their work.
Taking advantage of the highest technological systems in the world, and at the same time providing employment for poor peasants who will work for pennies per day...
Seems a little different now, doesn't it? All economic exchanges are based on exploiting others. You go to the store, and con the innocent shopkeeper to give you a gallon of milk for only $2. Meanwhile, the shopkeeper sells off one of his many gallons of milk to some schmuck for $2. At the end of the exchange, you both say "thank you", because you both feel like you've gotten the good end of the deal.
Rural villages in third-world countries making parts for American companies get the money they need to build their own infrastructure. Sure, they're getting paid less than a dollar a day, but the lineman installing electrical service is also getting paid that same rate. Everything just costs less there, for now, so everyone's happy. Except in extreme circumstances, nobody feels that they're getting exploited.
I'm intimately aware that protocols can't be protected by copyright. I figured they were probably including files, though from TFA, that's never clear. Being a default judgement, it's altogether possible that the actual material being copied was never even looked at.
Patents also do not apply to protocols, since they must cover a specific mechanism, such as an algorithm. Now, if the protocol requires encryption or encoding using a patented algorithm, that's a problem.
Sorry, but I'd rather not have my Slashdot discussions associated with my employer. Not that I've talked of anything illegal or even distasteful, but I'd rather keep just it separate as a matter of principle. As far as treating employers well, it helps that there are less than 100 employees in total. However, there have already been several discussions on how to keep the environment the same as it grows. As an example, we recently moved into a larger office, which is a part of a big stereotypical corporate office building. Our first company activity was to take the crappy artwork off the walls and replace it with (almost) whatever we wanted.
What I'm wondering is whether or not anything significant was actually copied. Was the private server just duplicating the game's protocol, or was the game world actually duplicated?
Looking through the information linked to in the summary, it looks like there was no actual debate on anything. The judgement was default.
It's important to sever the connection between unions and company environments. A good company can provide a good environment without a union. A bad company will find holes in the union deals, and exploit them until the next contract, driving costs up.
Be glad you don't have forced unions. There are some that aren't so lucky. Here (in the USA, in a non-right-to-work state), it's possible to enter an industry where the only choices are living in poverty or living in deeper poverty. If you join the union, you have to follow their rules for bargaining, which means you can't sell your labor for less than anyone else. If you don't join the union, you'll be making less (though have a job), but you still have to pay some of the union dues anyway.
There is effectively very little difference between what's mandated by labor laws and what's mandated by contract laws when there are unions involved. Unions have the power and money to pay lobbyists to influence laws.
Leisure time itself does not increase productivity. Leisure time often improves morale, and improved morale increases productivity. Personally, I'd rather see an employer voluntarily do other things to improve morale. If it makes sense for the company to offer much higher pay, that works. Paid vacation? Sure, but I won't take much. On-site child care? Of course. A weekly company-wide happy hour at the local bar, with pay? Why not? If that's the kind of thing that they need to do to attract the employees they want, why shouldn't a company offer anything they can afford to?
Again, I don't have any problem with labor unions inherently. I just don't like the excessive pressure they use to enforce their own particular idea of "good".
My guess would be "not many".
If a rural village has a factory producing widgets for the Global Widget company, that rural village is exchanging one resource (labor) for another (money). As in all economics, they can then exchange that resource for another (food/amenities/whatever) produced elsewhere.
Depending on the location, it may even be preferable to work on widgets than on farming. In Niger, for example, farmland is scarce, and a decent crop is ever more rare. Nigeriens working in a foreign-run factory could make enough to import food from less arid regions. A failed crop doesn't have to mean a village's starvation.
That more humid region, in turn, can use their new income to purchase other goods from elsewhere. Given a wide enough scope, everyone profits by providing what is needed. The advantage might be heavily skewed, but there aren't (or at least, should not be) any purely one-way deals.
There are some companies that treat their employees well. I happen to work for one now. If they can afford to stay in business, that's great, and I hope to see more companies follow their practices.
If the companies can't stay in business, then that's too bad. Their employees will have to look elsewhere for employment, and I hope that other companies won't be too broke to hire them.
The labor unions aren't inherently the problem. It's what they argue for (in America, at least).
For example, I'd have no problems with a union arguing that the CEO can't make more than 10 times the average starting salary, or that workers must be allowed to take a significant (but reasonable) amount of unpaid leave without risking their job.
I have a problem with unions requiring a certain minimum salary, paid vacations, and other amenities that only serve to cost the employers money without increasing productivity.
In my opinion, all details of that agreement should be negotiable on an individual basis.
If employees want to group their negotiations, that's fine. Don't apply the terms of one employee's contract to someone else. Don't require workers to participate in a strike if they don't want to. Don't require union membership. Don't drive the employer to bankruptcy pushing for ever-higher wages.
it's easy to ignore the realities of really, REALLY, sub par working conditions
What's par?
Is it the American standard where working 40 hours in an air-conditioned building, getting paid extra for overtime, and making a minimum of $15,000 a year is barely acceptable?
Or is it the African standard where walking 2 miles to work 100 hours a week sewing clothes in a shack, and making $480 a year is a good job?
In a world with cheap & easy transportation, jobs get outsourced to places where people are willing to work cheaper. If that means they don't get central air conditioning or hourly safety inspections, too bad. Yeah, it's sad that someone might lose a hand or get sick, but until then, they have a job. After that, they have to try and get a different job, doing something that doesn't require a hand. It's callous, but it's true.
If Americans were willing to work cheaper (and were actually allowed to), we might get some jobs coming back. Instead, we get labor unions that argue for high wages and benefits at the cost of actual jobs. Employment should be an agreement exchanging work for pay. In my opinion, all details of that agreement should be negotiable on an individual basis.
</rant>
In other news, a handgun was manufactured today. I predict that it's going to hurt someone.
Sun managed its IP like any other decent-sized company should. They built up a nice portfolio and promptly ignored it, unless someone else wanted to start trouble. Oracle is one of those companies who wants to starts trouble.
I think it was all three. Sun had a decent amount of virgin un-evil products. Oracle saw them, and had an insatiable desire to corrupt and spread malevolence.
Bad anonymous clicky button! No cookie!
I went into college knowing a lot, and also knowing that there was more out there I didn't know. During college, I increased the first quantity.
The most important skills I learned, in order:
I suppose I also learned how to win a programming contest. That accomplishment, more or less by itself, got me my last job interview.
me, who is attentive
So to answer my original question, you're so special that you can ignore posted rules, because you're more attentive than everyone else? An appropriate quote from a friend of mine, a police officer who trains other officers before they get patrol cars:
I tell 'em, 'Go down that street' and we go for a block. Then I ask how many pickups we passed. Nobody's gotten the first one right yet. The next street it's kids, then dogs. After an hour of that, they're pissed at me, but they're starting to watch what's going on in every driveway we go past. These guys already passed their test, but they're just now getting it.
You are welcome to come visit me and have a look for yourself.
Or, you could post a link to any of several satellite images available online, and the community (myself happily included) can point out places children could be missed.
Ad hominem
An ad hominem attack would imply that because you drive poorly, your argument is invalid, such as saying "people like you can't possibly know anything about safe driving". Rather, that was just a subtle insult.
basic school
Regardless of level, I've never seen a school that wasn't active all year long in some form. Hence my comment regarding a mile-high wall. It's the only way to be even slightly certain nobody's there.
What children?
The ones you may not have seen because you were speeding. Going 166% of the legal speed means your available time to see, recognize, and react to a condition is reduced by 40%. That means you missed 40% of the sensory observations available at that time. If those observations had indicated there were children present... ...well I guess that'd just be too bad, wouldn't it? Those 10 seconds were important!
There were 543 collisions per year in Toronto involving children under 18, across 1050 schools, from 2000 to 2005. That's 0.518 collisions per school per year. That's 1 collision per school per 705 days. That's 1 collision per school per 16900 hours. On a busy street with 2000 vehicles per hour, that's 1 collision per school per 33,800,000 vehicles.
Assuming a more average rate of 1000 vehicles per hour, that's one collision per school per 16,900,000 vehicles.
It looks like the actual odds, as measured in Toronto, are about 1 in 20 million. 50 years of someone else's life actually saves 200 million seconds, which is 6.3 years. I apologize for the mistake.
Taking into account the increased proportion of kids hit during peak hours (before/after school and lunch), the odds only decrease by 50%. That's still 50 years vs. 12.6. Speeders are still selfish.
I'm intentionally placing no trust in the statement that nothing was happening at the school. First, because I've never known a school (of any level) to be completely empty. Second, because I've never known a driver to hit someone they saw well ahead of time. Third, because if observation were being considered, I'd have to go compare reaction times to speed, and frankly I'd rather spend my time going slowly through school zones. The comparison is unequal by a factor of 4. Is the GP really four times more observant than the average Toronto driver?
Other people have to live with the consequences of your actions, too. This seems to be painfully obvious to the point of triviality. Let's run through a comparisons, shall we?
Going 50km/h instead of 30 km/h for 50 meters saves you 3 seconds. Let's expand that to 10 seconds, to account for slowing down before the school, and speeding back up afterward.
Let's say that one time out of million, you fatally hit a kid in the school zone. That's assuming a 50% fatality rate, and a 1-in-500,000 chance of collision. Assuming it's a secondary school, that puts the kid at about 18 years old. Also assuming an average life span, you just cost that person 50 years of life.
In those million times through the school zone, you saved yourself ten million seconds. That's 116 days.
The consequences of your saving 116 days is someone else losing 50 years, plus the trauma their family gets to go through. If you're perfectly fine living with those consequences, then I hope I'm never near you.
By the way, the chance of collision must be roughly 1 in 79 million for this comparison to break even.
Are you telling me you never ever in your whole life assessed a situation, came to the conclusion that whatever a sign tells you is wrong and/or it was left in place by mistake and did something else instead?
Not that I can remember, actually. I assume that I'm not omniscient, and there's probably a reason for the sign being there. I find a legal alternative. I'm fairly certain I've never knowingly and intentionally broken the law for the sake of saving time. I'm just not that kind of asshole.
And yes, I would have known if stuff happenend there.
Are you the only one with a key to the gate in the mile-high wall surrounding the premises?
I seem to distinctly remember students visiting my high school during breaks for school meetings, extra-curricular school activities, and simply meeting friends.
Of course, as you said, the situation might have justified it. Maybe the roughly 10 seconds you saved was worth sacrificing the safety of children.
Yes, it's wrong. What makes you so special that you can ignore posted limits, regardless of what you think their reason is?
I'd also like to know more about this power of clairvoyance you have that makes you so certain there wasn't remedial school in session, or a youth program, or any other activity that might have been a reason to leave the signs up.
On the other hand, perhaps the local officials just realized that when they take the signs down, people get used to going 50 km/h through there, and they continue speeding for a few weeks after the signs go back up.