Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable.
Sorry but the Muslim world is not united. There have been a number of wars and lesser conflicts between Shi'a and Suni Muslims. There are a number of countries where the Shi'a minority is oppressed by the Sunni majority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi'a%E2%80%93Sunni_relations
This sounds very much like a phenomenon I called "al dente programming"; throw code at a problem until something sticks. There is very little thought to the consequences of actions and assumptions that any issues will be fixed later. If people would just slow down a bit, do some research and think about the action maybe they would be starting fewer fires that need to be put out. It is circular logic; I don't have time to think about something because it is a fire but not thinking about something creates fires in the future so I am back in the same place.
So they removed the maintenance between qualifying and race. That does not mean that the race team does not do "maintenance" between races. Yes there is "less maintenance" but not "no maintenance".
Possibly because ten out of 100 units have failed because a $200 hard drive has failed in each one? Does that mean that the whole $100,000 cluster needs to be replaced? Spending $100,000 instead of $2000 is not a great decision.
The only reason for allowing corporations in the first place is "the public benefit." Is it in the public benefit to allow corporations to pit us against ourselves?
Where do you get this "fact"? A main reason for corporations is to protect the people who work for corporations from personal liability for corporate acts; LLC stand for Limited Liability Corporation.
If you meant to ask a question they do that. Had your opening statement been "Are the the lese majeste laws are anything like English libel laws?" it would have been much clearer. By starting with "If" it appears that you are taking the statement as a fact and not a question.
Canada will offer me some consular assistance, no doubt, but at the end of the day they'd tell me that I was subject to the laws of a foreign country and I broke those laws (same as they'd tell any other Canadian - dual citizen or not).
That is the whole point, when in another country one is subject to the laws of that country. There are Thai laws against what Joe Gordon did but he is seen to be immune to them because he is an American Citizen. If you visit a country where you have broken a law, especially when you are a citizen of that country, be prepared to take the consequences. Don't whine to the consulate of your other citizenship to try to get you off.
The issue here is that the Joe Gordon is a Thai/US citizen. When Thai laws are applied to him when he is in Thailand he cries foul because he is a US citizen.
For example, if you were a dual US/Canadian citizen and was authorized to use medicinal marijuana. If you were arrested for marijuana possession in a state that does not allow medicinal marijuana would you call up the Canadian consulate claiming to be a Canadian citizen in a foreign country and needing assistance even when you are an American citizen too?
I can see the HR person now; "So, by hacking us and threatening to divulge confidential information you have shown that you are not trust worthy. You expect us to hire someone we can not trust to be on out premises and roam freely in secure areas? Get real."
The Corporate threat was to move to a state with a lower tax rate. That is not extortion. It is giving a state a chance to match an offer made by another state. People do it all the time when they buy things and companies advertise that they will match advertised prices. If all other states had a higher tax rate Sears would not be talking about moving.
That is very different than saying they will release confidential information.
Starting with "If" generally invalidated everything said after it. To equate English libel laws with the Thai lese majeste laws you must do the research. It is not up to the reader to find out whether or not the "if" is true. Add "if" to "might" and the statement is without weight.
The issue is with choosing when to use each citizenship. For example a Canadian/US dual citizenship. When in Canada one would have access to the Canadian health system as a Canadian citizen. When in the US one could stay as long as one wanted as an American citizen. If that person had a criminal record he could not freely cross the border but can if he uses the Canadian passport going north and the US passport going south. Do you see the issue? Advantages when desired and disadvantages avoided just by choosing which passport to use at what time.
It goes something like this; If someone is asked to approve a complex project that would take years to understand they generally trust the recommendations of the experts and say yes or no. They generally do not ask for changes that do not understand.
On the other hand, when people are asked to approve a project the understand or think they understand, like the construction of an outhouse, they are very likely to make suggestions and demands on specifics of the project. Should there be a hole in the door, If so what shape? etc.
Some of the frustration from IT is that ever dev tends to think they are "special". Yes, you may want to use the IDE you are used to but since IT does support that IDE they do not have any way of certifying that the IDE, or supporting installs, do not have security holes that can compromise the network. If there is a hole and it is exploited it is IT and not the user that gets in trouble. Possibly the IDE does not work well with the standard IDE and even though you may be more productive you may be causing other devs to waste time. Your builds may not be compatible with the production builds because your IDE uses different libraries. Even if you can prove that you are actually special you are among the X number of "special" people in the company each with "special" rules that have to be kept track of by every member of the IT team. There are many things that a dev does not see that go into creating a saleable or usable product.
One of the biggest issues that users have with IT is their seemingly frustrated and dismissive attitude. There are a couple of sources for this. 1. When an IT person refuses a seemingly simple request it may be due to the fact that IT wanted exactly that to happen but have been overruled by someone higher up. The IT person is not frustrated with you but is frustrated with having to shell out the party line that the IT department does not want to support but is forced to. 2. The refusal may also be due to best practices, investigation and experience that the user does not have. The IT person has taken years to acquire this knowledge and is not going to try to condense it down into a 30 second course for every user that makes a request. Sorry but "works on my home computer" is not a good enough answer for a corporate environment. Just because someone is a dev does not make them a network or security expert. Many devs these days are code monkeys that know little about how large networks or development departments operate.
3. Many times a dev comes up with an issue that should have been known before hand if the dev thought about it and made the proper request for an adjustment. Since that was not done the dev now wants the IT person to drop everything they were doing and fix the dev's issue. I hate to say this but the IT department is not sitting around on their hand waiting for emergency requests to come in from devs. I have seen this poster in many places;"Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part". So now the dev wants a seemingly simple change to a server and it told to wait. What the dev does not know is that the small change may effect the test and production servers. What needs to be changed to accommodate the request? Those test images may be invalid and have to be re-done (test will wipe servers many times during testing). Will this change break other software on the prod server? A simple, " I need to use a new version of X" or "I need to use this package" request could have huge ramifications.
Many devs, even "senior" devs, I have worked with tend to be myopic and focus on how a decision effects them without looking how it effects the rest of the employees. One issue is the USB memory stick issue. It has become a major security hole mainly because Windows allows an autorun when a USB stick is plugged in ( that is a stupid decision by Microsoft). Even if there is a "do you want to run this" prompt too many users just automatically click yes. Many IT departments have outlawed them because they cause
Development machines should be on a separate network that IT is forbidden from touching. A network that is insulated from the corporate office network.
Yet IT must still back up the repositories(what are you using this week?), admin and backup the DB servers, leave holes so the devs can get out to any web site they want, fix the dev's desktop when they screw it up, allow devs access to the intranet, etc. Developer desktops can not be sequestered from the rest of a company's intranet without causing a lot of issues.
Another issue is that it is quite possible for a well meaning dev to set up a server that works in dev but has so many security holes as to make it non-viable for a production release. Now the product that works on dev will not work on a production server.
Here are a few things to think about from you post. 1. Who decides what the "minimum set of liberties" is? Not being able to publicly criticize the ceremonial head of state does not make Thailand undemocratic. The Thai people could elect a government who could strike down the law. They have democratically chosen not to do that. What you think is the "minimum set of liberties" is you own personal opinion may be different that other people in the world.
2. The royal family is not the body that is bringing charges or prosecuting people; the elected government is. We have no information on whether or not the royal family agrees or disagrees with these charges. The king can not change laws; only the democratically elected government can.
3. I doubt very much if anyone would be arrested for stating "Abolish the lese majeste laws because they are being misused" as it is a comment about the law and not the royal family. One could be arrested for saying "Abolish the lese majeste laws because the royal family are idiots" because that comment breaks the law.
A management decision to not go nuclear implies that the species could make the management decision to go nuclear. Since humans are the only species who can go nuclear no other species can make a management decision not to go nuclear. If one can not do something there is no decision necessary not to do it.
Many manufacturers and dealers of products that could be used for illegal purposes are required to report suspicious purchases and keep key ingredients under lock and key. The police are not going to post an officer in the business to watch for issues. For example, a non farmer might have difficulty purchasing a large quantity of ammonia fertilizer. As for the license fee it costs money to be sure the manufacturer is in compliance. A cost that should not be carried by the tax payer. You want to do business; you pay the watchers.
To me, this is no better than the "terrorism" excuse.
The difference is that there has been a huge invasion of privacy to prevent terorist attacks that may or may not ever happen. On the other hand taxi drivers are robbed, assaulted and killed every day. It is a real danger to anyone who drives a taxi.
CCTV in stores and taxi cabs have solved many crimes which removes the criminals from the streets for a period of time. They also act as a deterent to some criminals.
Of course, that is just my opinion. I also wouldn't prefer a law forbidding the use of the cameras. I think it should be a choice (although I do think using them is idiotic in most cases).
Should it be a choice for the driver or the cab owner who is to cheap to buy the equipment? Making them mandatory removes that choice from the owner in favour of protecting the driver.
This is an absolute misrepresentation of what happened in this incident. From another article that is more complete than the cited one, the man called five times and talked to an operator five times demanding that his phone be fixed. That was no drunken accident.
The law that 911 can be dialed from behind a lock screen is a good one. It allows anyone to get help in an emergency. Would you want someone to die because they forgot their pin in a stressful situation like bleeding to death?
Even if it was your scenario lets take an alternate path. You hack on you phone in a very drunken state. Accidentally call 911 five time. The police come, you do not respond and they leave. You puke in your lungs and die. Your survivors sue the police. Or alternately, the police come, you respond in a very belligerent and drunken state. The police go away. You pass out, puke into your lungs and die. Your survivors sue the police. Either way you are dead and the police are fired for not doing their job.
I bet one of the driving factors for making cameras mandatory are the drivers who want the camera and the car owners, who don't drive themselves, who do not want to spend the money on them. I drove taxi for seven years and would have welcomed a camera and panic button. The fact that this equipment exists will deter crime against cab drivers. Most of these posts have concentrated on rates of robbery. There are other crime against taxi drivers including assault, kidnapping and murder. The fact that one can no longer have a private conversation in a cab must be weighted against the right of a cab driver not to be killed.
The privacy aspect is moot in that a cab is not a private place in which to have a private conversation. It is the mobile workplace of a vulnerable driver who has to drive stranger around. The driver is not allowed to pick his fares or destination and has no backup in the event he is attacked. Would you advocate removing CCTV cameras from convenience stores? In some cities cabs are treated like mobile ATMs where one uses a knife instead of a card.
I live in Victoria BC and all the cabs have CCTV cameras in them and stickers on the side warning of that fact.
Here is the pertinent quote; "He was arrested because he would not follow the police officers orders." He was not arrested for making the calls; he was arrested for being a drunken idiot when the police responded to the multiple 911 calls. They may have even taken him into custody for his own protection if he was that drunk.
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Pre Iraq, the Muslim world was united, Muslims would never attach Muslims, and attacking a Mosque was unthinkable.
Sorry but the Muslim world is not united. There have been a number of wars and lesser conflicts between Shi'a and Suni Muslims. There are a number of countries where the Shi'a minority is oppressed by the Sunni majority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi'a%E2%80%93Sunni_relations
He was visiting for medical treatment
This sounds very much like a phenomenon I called "al dente programming"; throw code at a problem until something sticks. There is very little thought to the consequences of actions and assumptions that any issues will be fixed later. If people would just slow down a bit, do some research and think about the action maybe they would be starting fewer fires that need to be put out. It is circular logic; I don't have time to think about something because it is a fire but not thinking about something creates fires in the future so I am back in the same place.
So they removed the maintenance between qualifying and race. That does not mean that the race team does not do "maintenance" between races. Yes there is "less maintenance" but not "no maintenance".
Possibly because ten out of 100 units have failed because a $200 hard drive has failed in each one? Does that mean that the whole $100,000 cluster needs to be replaced? Spending $100,000 instead of $2000 is not a great decision.
The only reason for allowing corporations in the first place is "the public benefit." Is it in the public benefit to allow corporations to pit us against ourselves?
Where do you get this "fact"? A main reason for corporations is to protect the people who work for corporations from personal liability for corporate acts; LLC stand for Limited Liability Corporation.
Perhaps you should look up what a corporation is before commenting. Here is a start; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
If you meant to ask a question they do that. Had your opening statement been "Are the the lese majeste laws are anything like English libel laws?" it would have been much clearer. By starting with "If" it appears that you are taking the statement as a fact and not a question.
Canada will offer me some consular assistance, no doubt, but at the end of the day they'd tell me that I was subject to the laws of a foreign country and I broke those laws (same as they'd tell any other Canadian - dual citizen or not).
That is the whole point, when in another country one is subject to the laws of that country. There are Thai laws against what Joe Gordon did but he is seen to be immune to them because he is an American Citizen. If you visit a country where you have broken a law, especially when you are a citizen of that country, be prepared to take the consequences. Don't whine to the consulate of your other citizenship to try to get you off.
And every user with admin privileges can re-enable those settings any time they want. The auto run is only one USB issue; there are several others.
Perhaps you should read at least one paper on USB security issues before you deem them safe. Here is one http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/threats/usb-ubiquitous-security-backdoor_33173
The issue here is that the Joe Gordon is a Thai/US citizen. When Thai laws are applied to him when he is in Thailand he cries foul because he is a US citizen.
For example, if you were a dual US/Canadian citizen and was authorized to use medicinal marijuana. If you were arrested for marijuana possession in a state that does not allow medicinal marijuana would you call up the Canadian consulate claiming to be a Canadian citizen in a foreign country and needing assistance even when you are an American citizen too?
I can see the HR person now;
"So, by hacking us and threatening to divulge confidential information you have shown that you are not trust worthy. You expect us to hire someone we can not trust to be on out premises and roam freely in secure areas? Get real."
The Corporate threat was to move to a state with a lower tax rate. That is not extortion. It is giving a state a chance to match an offer made by another state. People do it all the time when they buy things and companies advertise that they will match advertised prices. If all other states had a higher tax rate Sears would not be talking about moving.
That is very different than saying they will release confidential information.
Starting with "If" generally invalidated everything said after it. To equate English libel laws with the Thai lese majeste laws you must do the research. It is not up to the reader to find out whether or not the "if" is true. Add "if" to "might" and the statement is without weight.
The issue is with choosing when to use each citizenship. For example a Canadian/US dual citizenship. When in Canada one would have access to the Canadian health system as a Canadian citizen. When in the US one could stay as long as one wanted as an American citizen. If that person had a criminal record he could not freely cross the border but can if he uses the Canadian passport going north and the US passport going south. Do you see the issue? Advantages when desired and disadvantages avoided just by choosing which passport to use at what time.
It goes something like this;
If someone is asked to approve a complex project that would take years to understand they generally trust the recommendations of the experts and say yes or no. They generally do not ask for changes that do not understand.
On the other hand, when people are asked to approve a project the understand or think they understand, like the construction of an outhouse, they are very likely to make suggestions and demands on specifics of the project. Should there be a hole in the door, If so what shape? etc.
Some of the frustration from IT is that ever dev tends to think they are "special". Yes, you may want to use the IDE you are used to but since IT does support that IDE they do not have any way of certifying that the IDE, or supporting installs, do not have security holes that can compromise the network. If there is a hole and it is exploited it is IT and not the user that gets in trouble. Possibly the IDE does not work well with the standard IDE and even though you may be more productive you may be causing other devs to waste time. Your builds may not be compatible with the production builds because your IDE uses different libraries. Even if you can prove that you are actually special you are among the X number of "special" people in the company each with "special" rules that have to be kept track of by every member of the IT team. There are many things that a dev does not see that go into creating a saleable or usable product.
One of the biggest issues that users have with IT is their seemingly frustrated and dismissive attitude. There are a couple of sources for this.
1. When an IT person refuses a seemingly simple request it may be due to the fact that IT wanted exactly that to happen but have been overruled by someone higher up. The IT person is not frustrated with you but is frustrated with having to shell out the party line that the IT department does not want to support but is forced to.
2. The refusal may also be due to best practices, investigation and experience that the user does not have. The IT person has taken years to acquire this knowledge and is not going to try to condense it down into a 30 second course for every user that makes a request. Sorry but "works on my home computer" is not a good enough answer for a corporate environment. Just because someone is a dev does not make them a network or security expert. Many devs these days are code monkeys that know little about how large networks or development departments operate.
3. Many times a dev comes up with an issue that should have been known before hand if the dev thought about it and made the proper request for an adjustment. Since that was not done the dev now wants the IT person to drop everything they were doing and fix the dev's issue. I hate to say this but the IT department is not sitting around on their hand waiting for emergency requests to come in from devs. I have seen this poster in many places;"Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part". So now the dev wants a seemingly simple change to a server and it told to wait. What the dev does not know is that the small change may effect the test and production servers. What needs to be changed to accommodate the request? Those test images may be invalid and have to be re-done (test will wipe servers many times during testing). Will this change break other software on the prod server? A simple, " I need to use a new version of X" or "I need to use this package" request could have huge ramifications.
Many devs, even "senior" devs, I have worked with tend to be myopic and focus on how a decision effects them without looking how it effects the rest of the employees. One issue is the USB memory stick issue. It has become a major security hole mainly because Windows allows an autorun when a USB stick is plugged in ( that is a stupid decision by Microsoft). Even if there is a "do you want to run this" prompt too many users just automatically click yes. Many IT departments have outlawed them because they cause
Development machines should be on a separate network that IT is forbidden from touching. A network that is insulated from the corporate office network.
Yet IT must still back up the repositories(what are you using this week?), admin and backup the DB servers, leave holes so the devs can get out to any web site they want, fix the dev's desktop when they screw it up, allow devs access to the intranet, etc. Developer desktops can not be sequestered from the rest of a company's intranet without causing a lot of issues.
Another issue is that it is quite possible for a well meaning dev to set up a server that works in dev but has so many security holes as to make it non-viable for a production release. Now the product that works on dev will not work on a production server.
Here are a few things to think about from you post.
1. Who decides what the "minimum set of liberties" is? Not being able to publicly criticize the ceremonial head of state does not make Thailand undemocratic. The Thai people could elect a government who could strike down the law. They have democratically chosen not to do that. What you think is the "minimum set of liberties" is you own personal opinion may be different that other people in the world.
2. The royal family is not the body that is bringing charges or prosecuting people; the elected government is. We have no information on whether or not the royal family agrees or disagrees with these charges. The king can not change laws; only the democratically elected government can.
3. I doubt very much if anyone would be arrested for stating "Abolish the lese majeste laws because they are being misused" as it is a comment about the law and not the royal family. One could be arrested for saying "Abolish the lese majeste laws because the royal family are idiots" because that comment breaks the law.
Joe Gordon is a dual Thai/US citizen. He was born in Thailand and never renounced his citizenship. So Mr Gordon is not "from a country not their own".
I am not saying that the law is not BS but that Thailand is applying their laws to their citizens.
A management decision to not go nuclear implies that the species could make the management decision to go nuclear. Since humans are the only species who can go nuclear no other species can make a management decision not to go nuclear. If one can not do something there is no decision necessary not to do it.
Many manufacturers and dealers of products that could be used for illegal purposes are required to report suspicious purchases and keep key ingredients under lock and key. The police are not going to post an officer in the business to watch for issues. For example, a non farmer might have difficulty purchasing a large quantity of ammonia fertilizer. As for the license fee it costs money to be sure the manufacturer is in compliance. A cost that should not be carried by the tax payer. You want to do business; you pay the watchers.
To me, this is no better than the "terrorism" excuse.
The difference is that there has been a huge invasion of privacy to prevent terorist attacks that may or may not ever happen. On the other hand taxi drivers are robbed, assaulted and killed every day. It is a real danger to anyone who drives a taxi.
CCTV in stores and taxi cabs have solved many crimes which removes the criminals from the streets for a period of time. They also act as a deterent to some criminals.
Of course, that is just my opinion. I also wouldn't prefer a law forbidding the use of the cameras. I think it should be a choice (although I do think using them is idiotic in most cases).
Should it be a choice for the driver or the cab owner who is to cheap to buy the equipment? Making them mandatory removes that choice from the owner in favour of protecting the driver.
This is an absolute misrepresentation of what happened in this incident. From another article that is more complete than the cited one, the man called five times and talked to an operator five times demanding that his phone be fixed. That was no drunken accident.
The law that 911 can be dialed from behind a lock screen is a good one. It allows anyone to get help in an emergency. Would you want someone to die because they forgot their pin in a stressful situation like bleeding to death?
Even if it was your scenario lets take an alternate path. You hack on you phone in a very drunken state. Accidentally call 911 five time. The police come, you do not respond and they leave. You puke in your lungs and die. Your survivors sue the police. Or alternately, the police come, you respond in a very belligerent and drunken state. The police go away. You pass out, puke into your lungs and die. Your survivors sue the police. Either way you are dead and the police are fired for not doing their job.
I bet one of the driving factors for making cameras mandatory are the drivers who want the camera and the car owners, who don't drive themselves, who do not want to spend the money on them. I drove taxi for seven years and would have welcomed a camera and panic button. The fact that this equipment exists will deter crime against cab drivers. Most of these posts have concentrated on rates of robbery. There are other crime against taxi drivers including assault, kidnapping and murder. The fact that one can no longer have a private conversation in a cab must be weighted against the right of a cab driver not to be killed.
The privacy aspect is moot in that a cab is not a private place in which to have a private conversation. It is the mobile workplace of a vulnerable driver who has to drive stranger around. The driver is not allowed to pick his fares or destination and has no backup in the event he is attacked. Would you advocate removing CCTV cameras from convenience stores? In some cities cabs are treated like mobile ATMs where one uses a knife instead of a card.
I live in Victoria BC and all the cabs have CCTV cameras in them and stickers on the side warning of that fact.
Here is the pertinent quote;
"He was arrested because he would not follow the police officers orders."
He was not arrested for making the calls; he was arrested for being a drunken idiot when the police responded to the multiple 911 calls. They may have even taken him into custody for his own protection if he was that drunk.
Then the court issues an order to FB to restore the accounts and keep them active till a specified date. Also a simple solution.