Drones are not autonomous. They have pilots who are on the ground instead of in the air. Lets look at the manpower it takes to track someone 24/7 from the air. 1. A pilot 24/7. Since no one can pilot an aircraft continually for 8 hours at a time the effecting length of a shift is 6 hours. That would mean 28 shifts per week divided by 5 shifts per office makes 5.6 FTEs 2. Drones need to be refueled/recharged so they have to be replaced on station. 3. These replacement drones have to be transported to and from the general area and managed while they are refueling/recharging. That is another 5.6 FTEs as they need 24/7 hour coverage and double the drones. 4. Drones wear out and sometimes crash die to mechanical and/or communication failure. Every flight is a risksome drones will be in for repair and there needs to be backups in case an operational drone goes down. Say an 80% up time for drones that means there needs to be 0.25 standby drones for ever operational drone.
Considering that it takes 11.2 officers, 2.5 drones and a non trivial amount of other hardware to tracks a single person the idea that they can track everyone is ludicrous and merely fear mongering.
First, I think you mean Hindenberg and not Bismarck. Your supossition completely ignores the fact that the Nazi part had been gaining seats in most election and in the 1932 election the Nazis held the largest minority. It is true that Pepin's incompetence didn't help the situation but it is difficult to say that the outcome would have been different. The information I have been giving is to indicate why so many common Germans voted for the Nazi party.
Sorry but equating the forcible sterilization of fewer than a thousand First Nations members to the Nazis who hause the death of millions of people and the near destruction of an entire continent is not valid.Should forcible sterilization been done? No, but it does not compare with WW2.
Please show me where there is a right in Canadian law to protest with a mask on? Show me where there is a right for thugs and vandals to hide behind the veil of protest to commit their crimes? As Gandhi has shown, effective protest does not need to include violence and vandalism.
To me, and many law abiding people, the unrest and vandalism actually detracts from the issue being protested. I, and probably many others, will not support thugs and vandals not matter what their cause is. I will not be intimidated into agreeing with a movement. To me a peaceful demonstration is much more effective in gaining my support.
It looks like you need a little more knowledge of history . Hitler and the Nazi party began their rise to power in the early '20s when the treaty was still fresh in the minds of most Germans.
And don't tell me society will never again make the mistake of electing a Nazi-like government.
There has never been a Nazi-like government in Canada where this law would be in effect. I also thing that in the foreseeable future there never will be a Nazi-like government in Canada so you postulation is invalid.
Here is a little history. The main reason a Nazi government came into power in Germany was the Treaty of Versailles signed at the end or WW!. Even at that time there were people saying that the treaty was too harsh on Germany and would have consequences in the future. It included loss of land, harsh reparations, outlawing of a German air-force, curtailment of the German fleet, etc. In the years between the wars the Nazi party effectively used these issues to portray Germany as being under the thumb of Europe and blamed in all on a scapegoat; the Jews. They convinced Germans that the only way out was to go to war again. This is not a scenario that would be effective in Canada and therefore I believe a Nazi like government would never be voted into office in Canada.
1. It is not Harper proposing the bill it ias a Conservative backbencher. I think it is funny that when Harper controls caucus he is "acting. like a dictator" but when he does not "he is not leading as he should". 2. The ten years is tha maximum sentence for the mask offence. Someone convicted of this new crime could get no time at all. The article referenced the read rage conviction in Langly BC where the sentence was 5 years six months. The defendant was convicted of criminal negligence causing death which has a maximum penalty of life in prison. Comparing a sentence for one crime with the maximum sentence for another is not valid. The valid comparison is 10 years for the mask law and life for manslaughter. 3. Masks are being used more and more by agitators, anarchist and thugs who have no interest in the protest. They are there just to have a good time smashing things and injuring police. There needs to be a way of dealing with these people. Is a mask law a good way? Maybe, maybe not. What it hopefully does is spark the debate on the difference between protesting for a cause and rioting for fun.
One of the most effective and peaceful protests was organized my Mahatma Gandhi. Anyone following Gandhi's teaching did not commit any violence or destruction of property but it was effective enough to bring a world power to it's knees. None of those protesters wore masks. The issue is that if protesters can not control their emotions then don't go to the protest.
That is exactly what I was looking for. There are recent readings taken at the ice station and Muana Loa at in the same period that show correlation. Thank you.
I wish the proof was there If you could show me the current CO2 levels where the cores were taken and Muana Loa and they are similar then I would be more likely to believe that they both represented world CO2 levels. If they are not similar then tagging the Muana Loa data onto the core data is invalid.
A previous poster compared the BART protest with the Burmigham protest. Here is the statement I was talking about;"We shouldn't allow thousands of black-skinned americans to march on Birmingham City Hall to protest for equal treatment under the law, because someone could get pushed in front of a car, it is possible that someone might get trampled in the crowd, there's a chance that there will be a riot sparked when the KKK shows up." It has nothing at all to do with the BART protest but as an example of things that need planning and room to deal with.
I didn't know there was a counterprotest in the underground terminals either.
What do you think will happen if a few thousand tired workers trying to get home after a long day are blocked by a few hundred protesters? So you thing that confrontations will probably occur? There was no counter protest because the protest didn't go off.
there are a couple of numbers missing for your figures; 1. how many guns were there 2. How many times were guns used before tasers were available. 3. How many time were night sticks used before and after tasers were available. (Tasers are an alternative to night sticks as well.) 4. How many of the taser usages would have been gun shots is tasers were not available. The point you miss is that there is no way of looking at the raw numbers and knowing if the issue is over usage of tasers or an increase in violent confrontations with police. Any analysis with out this information is pure speculation. Do I think my numbers were accurate? No, they were just an example of how the same numbers can be interpreted in different ways.Lets look at 2010, guns 256 and tasers 712 times. There is no way of knowing what those 712 taser usages would have been if tasers were not available. Some could be gun usage. Some could be night stick usage some could be fists. We have no idea what the ratio would be as we do not have the information. There is also a major flaw in your reasoning. You seem to assume that the only reason to use a taser is as an alternative to using a gun. That is not true. Tasers are used in the following situations; 1. As an alternative to guns. 2. As an alternative to knight sticks(and other striking instruments). Ask Rodney King how dangerous night sticks are. 3. As an alternative to putting officers in physical confrontations where they can be injured or where their weapons can be grabbed and used on them. By only looking at gun vs taser usage you are putting blinders on and not seeing the whole picture. I want to be clear about this; I believe that every taser usage should be investigated like a gun usage and the usage deem reasonable or not. Some departments are too lax in their usage and that needs to be fixed.
Your argument about clubs is a bit confused. Do they just piss off the people beaten with them, or kill them? Perhaps it really is both, since it depends on where the blows are struck and how much kicking is added to the beating (ask Rodney King about the kicking). Oh, and haven't tonfas pretty much replaced nightsticks as the club of choice these days?
If the suspect is on drugs a night stick will piss him of right up to the point at which the suspect dies from wounds he has received. On the other hand a taser interips the nervous system and the suspect goes down. When officers get into a hand to hand confrontation with a suspect it is dangerous for both of them. One of the big issues being the there have been a number of times when a suspect has gained control of the officer's gun and used it on him. Officers want to avoid fighting a suspect and a taser is a good way to do that. By the way, i was using the term night stick to include all striking instrument used by police; night sticks, tonfa, asp, etc.
Oh, and just because I came across it, here's a reference to a killing in the line of duty by a cop using a knife, at what I consider a pretty reliable but incomplete source:
It definitely is incomplete. The "knife or cutting instrument" could have been something lying around or possibly a weapon taken from a suspect. There is no evidence that the "knife or cutting instrument" belonged to the officer.
That is true and is one of the issues dealing with discussion of CO2 and temperature change. In geographic areas where we have good recent data we have no data that is over 160 years old. In geographic areas where we have data that is over 150 years old we have no data that is under 150 years. It would be great is there was at least one spot where we had a complete set of data but we do not. My point is that looking at "recorded history" is a much too short period of time when dealing with cycles that take thousands of years to complete.
There is no inherent reason why an outside provider for something like email has to be cheaper in any significant way for a client the size of a major university. And I'm not making any assumption about incompetent IT professionals- I think you're making an assumption that it was IT professionals at all, rather than business administrators who have made this decision in most universities.
Here is a quote from the article refuting both your points.;"UH Information Technology Services specialist Osamu Makiguchi counters that thousands of schools across the nation already have opted to outsource email, and most of them have selected Google Education Apps, a free service that has the potential to save UH “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Makiguchi wrote in an email." SO an IT professional in UH is touting hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings.
Just try going and enforcing the contract that says they need to archive your data, do so securely, and make it available to you when there are no employees left.
If there are no employees than there is no one to use the data. Another point is that, depending on the contract we have never seen, the data may have to be destroyed if ownership changes.
The university is probably long-lived in comparison to any of its technology vendors,
Considering the financial pressures on today's universities it in not beyond possibility that they may become more commercial just to stay afloat.
Accountability to the university.
You used the "what about employees" as a means of denying thet the contract will Google will protect data. How ias an employee who is accountable to a university different from an employee who is accountable to Google who is accountable to the university? Both employees can go counter to policy and steal data.
This is sounding more and more like the old "all corporations are bad" meme. The university is trying to shed hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses. The choice is tuition raises or outsourcing; you choose.
That is the issue with taking CO2 reading at different places and comparing them If you mean this graph please note the location that is next to a volcano the spews CO2 making the reading much higher than most other places. You can not compare reading taken next to a volcano and readings taken from ice cores thousands of miles away. CO2 levels will be different in those two area. I tried but could not fins the current CO2 levels where the cores were taken.
It might be individual employees of the university run mail system. What makes Google employees any different than University employees?
It might be the future owner of Google assets if a few stupid decisions bankrupt it or cause it to break up.
It might be the university attempting to make money by selling the information. Any future owner of Google, if theat ever happens, would still be bound by the contracts signed by Google.
Sure you can come up with scenarios that can cause issue. The point is that these scenarios apply to any entity that handles the university's email be it Google, the University or another provider. What is your solution? Who would you prefer to handle the universities email. If it is the university are you willing to approve tuition increases to deal with the additional expense?
It seems that there is an assumption that the IT professionals that made the decision are incompetent and/or corrupt and that everyone should agree on the change before it is implemented. Unanimity is an impossible standard.
My UCSD outsourced-to-google email actually has the standard Google privacy policy on it!
That policy is overridden by the contract with UCSD. Why was it shown to you? Because you ate using a standard Gmail interface that can not identify which contract you are subject to. Does UCSD have a portal like the Univ of Hawaii? Using that portal may solve the browser data mining issue.
You missed a very important point. SecDef must approve "surveillance on specifically identified US persons". That means that unless the SecDef approves the Military can not follow and record Joe Bloggins of 123 Fourth St, Tempe Arizona. That would be surveillance on an identified US person. You also missed the "Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent."
And they are then fully responsible for maintaining and more importantly acting on the info.
Wrong, "Civil law enforcement agencies, such as the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the US Coast Guard, will control any such data collected." The Military does not maintain the info gathered under SecDef authority; civil law enforcement agencies do.
they are then fully responsible for maintaining and more importantly acting on the info.
Wrong again; "A law enforcement entity of federal, state or local government, and the information may indicate involvement in activities that may violate laws that the recipient is responsible to enforce.". So the recording can be passed to local law enforcement so they can enforce those laws "that the recipient is responsible to enforce".
Again, SecDef only gets involved if there is a "specifically identified US person". That is completely different than "some person killing someone else" and the person is not specifically identifiable.
One of the issues I see in this whole debate is the bias, intentional or unintentional, of the observer. It seems that some observers have the idea that apes have the ability to plan ahead. It is quite possible that observations are being interpreted to fit the hypothesis when there may be other explanations. It could just be an extension of learning hunting skills. Would a large cat that conceals himself near a game trail be considered to be planning ahead like a human? All hunters do similar things but are not considered to have human like intelligence. Perhaps some researches have the idea that chimps have human intelligence and are looking for anything to prove that theory.
1. Google in in a contract with the university that sets out exactly what Google can and can not do with the data. If they break that contract they will be sued and lose. It is not in a companies interest to leave themselves open to litigation and large judgments. 2. The "school official" phrase has a few implications;
a. Subpoenas can go to the school instead of Google
b. Teachers are required to post all correspondence on Gmail for retention purposes.
c. IT is only required to support Gmail Many universities are trying to cut IT budgets and one of the best ways is to outsource email. One of the biggest failings in the critics is that they offer no alternative. It is very easy to be an obstructionist and much more difficult to solve the issue. No matter what provider was chosen there would always be a few people who object to it and/or the process that came to the solution. For example one of the criticisms is that the comment period was too short at a couple of months and people did not have sufficient time to comment. If that period was extended to say six months there would be people criticizing that such a simple decision should not take so long and the university was wasting time and money. It is impossible to please everyone.
The "lack of consultation" issue is yet another example of what is called the "outhouse principle". It goes like this; When a huge complex project is proposed, say a power plant, where non experts do not have enough knowledge to understand the detail the approval process goes quite quickly as almost all comments are "yes" or "no". When a smaller project, such as an outhouse, is proposed everyone can understand how one is built and want to comment on every little detail of construction; what shape hole in the door(round, moon, star?), dimensions of the door, which way the door swings, how much ventilation room under the door, etc. The approval process for a simple project can be longer than a complex project. There is no reason for everyone on campus to debate this issue until everyone is satisfied. It is a decision by the IT department who made it based on their experience and requirements. Does everyone comment when the chemistry department changes their chemical supplier? Does everyone comment when administration changes their paper supplier? Just because people think they should be able to have a say in matters they think the know about does not mean they really should.
The issue is that CO2 concentrations have nothing to do with the statement "Hottest in recorded history". What they mean by recorded history is since temperatures have been written down. Take a look at this graph which covers the last 400,000 years using ice cores. Notice a few things; 1. There for periods where temperatures are higher than they are today. 2. There is at leat one period where CO2 levels are higher than today and a couple where the levels are very similar. 3. The there is a pulse patters and currently we are in a height part of the cycle. I rail at the "recorded history" phrase because in geological terms it is so short. A much more valid comparison is, as you pointed out, to use ice cores. The problem is that ice core data does not support the "this has never happened before" idea.
If you don't care enough to verify facts then don't make statements like "that's even more reason not to cut off the emergency communication lines." So, since you do not care enough to check facts, you are admitting that your statements are un-researched assumptions on you part that may or may not be true. I will keep that in mind when reading your posts.
But they don't shoot any more people than cops with Tasers do, they just don't tase as many.
There is a basic flaw in the statistical analysis in that it assumes that the number of incidents where officers who do not have tazers would have used guns stays the same. For example, if in one year there were 100 gun usages. I that point the tazer was introduced. The next year there were 100 gun usages and 20 tazer usages. It would seem that tazer usages had not decreased the use of guns. The important point would be to ask the 20 officers who used the tazer what they would have done if the tazer was not available. It is quite likely that some or all of them would say that they would have used their guns. Say 10 officers stated they would have used guns. So the comparison is between a year where, without tazers, 100 gun incidents would have occurred with a year where 110 gun incidents would have occurred. In effect tazers mitigated 10 incidents that would have been gun incidents. Another issue us that tazers are not only an alternative to guns they are also an alternative to the night stick. Striking someone with a nightstick can cause much more damage than a tazer; ask Rodney King. A taser will quickly render a subject unable to fight while a knight stick just enrages some subjects. By the way, I have never seen or heard of an incident where an officer has pulled a knife in a fight and knives are as lethal as guns in close quarters.
Slashdot Mirror
Now it is quite feasible to track everyone.
Drones are not autonomous. They have pilots who are on the ground instead of in the air. Lets look at the manpower it takes to track someone 24/7 from the air.
1. A pilot 24/7. Since no one can pilot an aircraft continually for 8 hours at a time the effecting length of a shift is 6 hours. That would mean 28 shifts per week divided by 5 shifts per office makes 5.6 FTEs
2. Drones need to be refueled/recharged so they have to be replaced on station.
3. These replacement drones have to be transported to and from the general area and managed while they are refueling/recharging. That is another 5.6 FTEs as they need 24/7 hour coverage and double the drones.
4. Drones wear out and sometimes crash die to mechanical and/or communication failure. Every flight is a risksome drones will be in for repair and there needs to be backups in case an operational drone goes down. Say an 80% up time for drones that means there needs to be 0.25 standby drones for ever operational drone.
Considering that it takes 11.2 officers, 2.5 drones and a non trivial amount of other hardware to tracks a single person the idea that they can track everyone is ludicrous and merely fear mongering.
It is not a civilian's job to enforce speed limits. so your analogy is pure bunk.
First, I think you mean Hindenberg and not Bismarck. Your supossition completely ignores the fact that the Nazi part had been gaining seats in most election and in the 1932 election the Nazis held the largest minority. It is true that Pepin's incompetence didn't help the situation but it is difficult to say that the outcome would have been different. The information I have been giving is to indicate why so many common Germans voted for the Nazi party.
Sorry but equating the forcible sterilization of fewer than a thousand First Nations members to the Nazis who hause the death of millions of people and the near destruction of an entire continent is not valid.Should forcible sterilization been done? No, but it does not compare with WW2.
Please show me where there is a right in Canadian law to protest with a mask on? Show me where there is a right for thugs and vandals to hide behind the veil of protest to commit their crimes? As Gandhi has shown, effective protest does not need to include violence and vandalism.
To me, and many law abiding people, the unrest and vandalism actually detracts from the issue being protested. I, and probably many others, will not support thugs and vandals not matter what their cause is. I will not be intimidated into agreeing with a movement. To me a peaceful demonstration is much more effective in gaining my support.
It looks like you need a little more knowledge of history . Hitler and the Nazi party began their rise to power in the early '20s when the treaty was still fresh in the minds of most Germans.
And don't tell me society will never again make the mistake of electing a Nazi-like government.
There has never been a Nazi-like government in Canada where this law would be in effect. I also thing that in the foreseeable future there never will be a Nazi-like government in Canada so you postulation is invalid.
Here is a little history. The main reason a Nazi government came into power in Germany was the Treaty of Versailles signed at the end or WW!. Even at that time there were people saying that the treaty was too harsh on Germany and would have consequences in the future. It included loss of land, harsh reparations, outlawing of a German air-force, curtailment of the German fleet, etc. In the years between the wars the Nazi party effectively used these issues to portray Germany as being under the thumb of Europe and blamed in all on a scapegoat; the Jews. They convinced Germans that the only way out was to go to war again. This is not a scenario that would be effective in Canada and therefore I believe a Nazi like government would never be voted into office in Canada.
1. It is not Harper proposing the bill it ias a Conservative backbencher. I think it is funny that when Harper controls caucus he is "acting. like a dictator" but when he does not "he is not leading as he should".
2. The ten years is tha maximum sentence for the mask offence. Someone convicted of this new crime could get no time at all. The article referenced the read rage conviction in Langly BC where the sentence was 5 years six months. The defendant was convicted of criminal negligence causing death which has a maximum penalty of life in prison. Comparing a sentence for one crime with the maximum sentence for another is not valid. The valid comparison is 10 years for the mask law and life for manslaughter.
3. Masks are being used more and more by agitators, anarchist and thugs who have no interest in the protest. They are there just to have a good time smashing things and injuring police. There needs to be a way of dealing with these people. Is a mask law a good way? Maybe, maybe not. What it hopefully does is spark the debate on the difference between protesting for a cause and rioting for fun.
One of the most effective and peaceful protests was organized my Mahatma Gandhi. Anyone following Gandhi's teaching did not commit any violence or destruction of property but it was effective enough to bring a world power to it's knees. None of those protesters wore masks.
The issue is that if protesters can not control their emotions then don't go to the protest.
That is exactly what I was looking for. There are recent readings taken at the ice station and Muana Loa at in the same period that show correlation. Thank you.
I wish the proof was there If you could show me the current CO2 levels where the cores were taken and Muana Loa and they are similar then I would be more likely to believe that they both represented world CO2 levels. If they are not similar then tagging the Muana Loa data onto the core data is invalid.
A previous poster compared the BART protest with the Burmigham protest. Here is the statement I was talking about;"We shouldn't allow thousands of black-skinned americans to march on Birmingham City Hall to protest for equal treatment under the law, because someone could get pushed in front of a car, it is possible that someone might get trampled in the crowd, there's a chance that there will be a riot sparked when the KKK shows up." It has nothing at all to do with the BART protest but as an example of things that need planning and room to deal with.
I didn't know there was a counterprotest in the underground terminals either.
What do you think will happen if a few thousand tired workers trying to get home after a long day are blocked by a few hundred protesters? So you thing that confrontations will probably occur? There was no counter protest because the protest didn't go off.
there are a couple of numbers missing for your figures;
1. how many guns were there
2. How many times were guns used before tasers were available.
3. How many time were night sticks used before and after tasers were available. (Tasers are an alternative to night sticks as well.)
4. How many of the taser usages would have been gun shots is tasers were not available.
The point you miss is that there is no way of looking at the raw numbers and knowing if the issue is over usage of tasers or an increase in violent confrontations with police. Any analysis with out this information is pure speculation. Do I think my numbers were accurate? No, they were just an example of how the same numbers can be interpreted in different ways.Lets look at 2010, guns 256 and tasers 712 times. There is no way of knowing what those 712 taser usages would have been if tasers were not available. Some could be gun usage. Some could be night stick usage some could be fists. We have no idea what the ratio would be as we do not have the information.
There is also a major flaw in your reasoning. You seem to assume that the only reason to use a taser is as an alternative to using a gun. That is not true.
Tasers are used in the following situations;
1. As an alternative to guns.
2. As an alternative to knight sticks(and other striking instruments). Ask Rodney King how dangerous night sticks are.
3. As an alternative to putting officers in physical confrontations where they can be injured or where their weapons can be grabbed and used on them.
By only looking at gun vs taser usage you are putting blinders on and not seeing the whole picture. I want to be clear about this; I believe that every taser usage should be investigated like a gun usage and the usage deem reasonable or not. Some departments are too lax in their usage and that needs to be fixed.
Your argument about clubs is a bit confused. Do they just piss off the people beaten with them, or kill them? Perhaps it really is both, since it depends on where the blows are struck and how much kicking is added to the beating (ask Rodney King about the kicking). Oh, and haven't tonfas pretty much replaced nightsticks as the club of choice these days?
If the suspect is on drugs a night stick will piss him of right up to the point at which the suspect dies from wounds he has received. On the other hand a taser interips the nervous system and the suspect goes down.
When officers get into a hand to hand confrontation with a suspect it is dangerous for both of them. One of the big issues being the there have been a number of times when a suspect has gained control of the officer's gun and used it on him. Officers want to avoid fighting a suspect and a taser is a good way to do that.
By the way, i was using the term night stick to include all striking instrument used by police; night sticks, tonfa, asp, etc.
Oh, and just because I came across it, here's a reference to a killing in the line of duty by a cop using a knife, at what I consider a pretty reliable but incomplete source:
It definitely is incomplete. The "knife or cutting instrument" could have been something lying around or possibly a weapon taken from a suspect. There is no evidence that the "knife or cutting instrument" belonged to the officer.
That is true and is one of the issues dealing with discussion of CO2 and temperature change. In geographic areas where we have good recent data we have no data that is over 160 years old. In geographic areas where we have data that is over 150 years old we have no data that is under 150 years. It would be great is there was at least one spot where we had a complete set of data but we do not. My point is that looking at "recorded history" is a much too short period of time when dealing with cycles that take thousands of years to complete.
There is no inherent reason why an outside provider for something like email has to be cheaper in any significant way for a client the size of a major university. And I'm not making any assumption about incompetent IT professionals- I think you're making an assumption that it was IT professionals at all, rather than business administrators who have made this decision in most universities.
Here is a quote from the article refuting both your points.;"UH Information Technology Services specialist Osamu Makiguchi counters that thousands of schools across the nation already have opted to outsource email, and most of them have selected Google Education Apps, a free service that has the potential to save UH “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Makiguchi wrote in an email." SO an IT professional in UH is touting hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings.
Just try going and enforcing the contract that says they need to archive your data, do so securely, and make it available to you when there are no employees left.
If there are no employees than there is no one to use the data. Another point is that, depending on the contract we have never seen, the data may have to be destroyed if ownership changes.
The university is probably long-lived in comparison to any of its technology vendors,
Considering the financial pressures on today's universities it in not beyond possibility that they may become more commercial just to stay afloat.
Accountability to the university.
You used the "what about employees" as a means of denying thet the contract will Google will protect data. How ias an employee who is accountable to a university different from an employee who is accountable to Google who is accountable to the university? Both employees can go counter to policy and steal data.
This is sounding more and more like the old "all corporations are bad" meme. The university is trying to shed hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses. The choice is tuition raises or outsourcing; you choose.
That is the issue with taking CO2 reading at different places and comparing them If you mean this graph please note the location that is next to a volcano the spews CO2 making the reading much higher than most other places. You can not compare reading taken next to a volcano and readings taken from ice cores thousands of miles away. CO2 levels will be different in those two area. I tried but could not fins the current CO2 levels where the cores were taken.
It might be individual employees.
It might be individual employees of the university run mail system. What makes Google employees any different than University employees?
It might be the future owner of Google assets if a few stupid decisions bankrupt it or cause it to break up.
It might be the university attempting to make money by selling the information. Any future owner of Google, if theat ever happens, would still be bound by the contracts signed by Google.
Sure you can come up with scenarios that can cause issue. The point is that these scenarios apply to any entity that handles the university's email be it Google, the University or another provider. What is your solution? Who would you prefer to handle the universities email. If it is the university are you willing to approve tuition increases to deal with the additional expense?
It seems that there is an assumption that the IT professionals that made the decision are incompetent and/or corrupt and that everyone should agree on the change before it is implemented. Unanimity is an impossible standard.
My UCSD outsourced-to-google email actually has the standard Google privacy policy on it!
That policy is overridden by the contract with UCSD. Why was it shown to you? Because you ate using a standard Gmail interface that can not identify which contract you are subject to. Does UCSD have a portal like the Univ of Hawaii? Using that portal may solve the browser data mining issue.
You missed a very important point. SecDef must approve "surveillance on specifically identified US persons". That means that unless the SecDef approves the Military can not follow and record Joe Bloggins of 123 Fourth St, Tempe Arizona. That would be surveillance on an identified US person. You also missed the "Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent."
And they are then fully responsible for maintaining and more importantly acting on the info.
Wrong, "Civil law enforcement agencies, such as the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the US Coast Guard, will control any such data collected." The Military does not maintain the info gathered under SecDef authority; civil law enforcement agencies do.
they are then fully responsible for maintaining and more importantly acting on the info.
Wrong again; "A law enforcement entity of federal, state or local government, and the information may indicate involvement in activities that may violate laws that the recipient is responsible to enforce.". So the recording can be passed to local law enforcement so they can enforce those laws "that the recipient is responsible to enforce".
Again, SecDef only gets involved if there is a "specifically identified US person". That is completely different than "some person killing someone else" and the person is not specifically identifiable.
One of the issues I see in this whole debate is the bias, intentional or unintentional, of the observer. It seems that some observers have the idea that apes have the ability to plan ahead. It is quite possible that observations are being interpreted to fit the hypothesis when there may be other explanations. It could just be an extension of learning hunting skills. Would a large cat that conceals himself near a game trail be considered to be planning ahead like a human? All hunters do similar things but are not considered to have human like intelligence. Perhaps some researches have the idea that chimps have human intelligence and are looking for anything to prove that theory.
1. Google in in a contract with the university that sets out exactly what Google can and can not do with the data. If they break that contract they will be sued and lose. It is not in a companies interest to leave themselves open to litigation and large judgments.
2. The "school official" phrase has a few implications;
a. Subpoenas can go to the school instead of Google
b. Teachers are required to post all correspondence on Gmail for retention purposes.
c. IT is only required to support Gmail
Many universities are trying to cut IT budgets and one of the best ways is to outsource email. One of the biggest failings in the critics is that they offer no alternative. It is very easy to be an obstructionist and much more difficult to solve the issue. No matter what provider was chosen there would always be a few people who object to it and/or the process that came to the solution. For example one of the criticisms is that the comment period was too short at a couple of months and people did not have sufficient time to comment. If that period was extended to say six months there would be people criticizing that such a simple decision should not take so long and the university was wasting time and money. It is impossible to please everyone.
The "lack of consultation" issue is yet another example of what is called the "outhouse principle". It goes like this; When a huge complex project is proposed, say a power plant, where non experts do not have enough knowledge to understand the detail the approval process goes quite quickly as almost all comments are "yes" or "no". When a smaller project, such as an outhouse, is proposed everyone can understand how one is built and want to comment on every little detail of construction; what shape hole in the door(round, moon, star?), dimensions of the door, which way the door swings, how much ventilation room under the door, etc. The approval process for a simple project can be longer than a complex project.
There is no reason for everyone on campus to debate this issue until everyone is satisfied. It is a decision by the IT department who made it based on their experience and requirements. Does everyone comment when the chemistry department changes their chemical supplier? Does everyone comment when administration changes their paper supplier? Just because people think they should be able to have a say in matters they think the know about does not mean they really should.
The issue is that CO2 concentrations have nothing to do with the statement "Hottest in recorded history". What they mean by recorded history is since temperatures have been written down. Take a look at this graph which covers the last 400,000 years using ice cores. Notice a few things;
1. There for periods where temperatures are higher than they are today.
2. There is at leat one period where CO2 levels are higher than today and a couple where the levels are very similar.
3. The there is a pulse patters and currently we are in a height part of the cycle.
I rail at the "recorded history" phrase because in geological terms it is so short. A much more valid comparison is, as you pointed out, to use ice cores. The problem is that ice core data does not support the "this has never happened before" idea.
According to this source "The longest continuous temperature record is the Hadley Centre's Central England Temperature series. It starts around 1850." considering that is only 160 years it and comparing it to the time man have been on earth that would be equivalent to a person saying "this is the hottest I have been in the last few milliseconds. Perhaps is the time frame was larger I could believe it was an issue.
If you don't care enough to verify facts then don't make statements like "that's even more reason not to cut off the emergency communication lines." So, since you do not care enough to check facts, you are admitting that your statements are un-researched assumptions on you part that may or may not be true. I will keep that in mind when reading your posts.
But they don't shoot any more people than cops with Tasers do, they just don't tase as many.
There is a basic flaw in the statistical analysis in that it assumes that the number of incidents where officers who do not have tazers would have used guns stays the same. For example, if in one year there were 100 gun usages. I that point the tazer was introduced. The next year there were 100 gun usages and 20 tazer usages. It would seem that tazer usages had not decreased the use of guns. The important point would be to ask the 20 officers who used the tazer what they would have done if the tazer was not available. It is quite likely that some or all of them would say that they would have used their guns. Say 10 officers stated they would have used guns. So the comparison is between a year where, without tazers, 100 gun incidents would have occurred with a year where 110 gun incidents would have occurred. In effect tazers mitigated 10 incidents that would have been gun incidents.
Another issue us that tazers are not only an alternative to guns they are also an alternative to the night stick. Striking someone with a nightstick can cause much more damage than a tazer; ask Rodney King. A taser will quickly render a subject unable to fight while a knight stick just enrages some subjects. By the way, I have never seen or heard of an incident where an officer has pulled a knife in a fight and knives are as lethal as guns in close quarters.