This map doesn't have any force of law, though, unlike the sex offender registry. You are not required to register yourself on the map each time you move, for example.
It has no force of law, and it has no measure or moderation of law either. It is quite easy to harass someone with it. I think the risk of harassing someone is pretty far fetch (which is why as a pragmatic gun owner I don't lose my sleep over such an app.)
With that said, the app is so silly and useless, and to think people might actually think it does something useful, it's just pathetic. It provides merely a sense of false safety on dubious "information awareness".
To you, the generic "you" that owns or things to own such an app - your app shows some people flagged around your neighborhood? How do you know the information is reliable? Can you objectively assume that a flagged person is truly dangerous or unsafe? Most importantly, what are you going to do, objectively speaking?
Here goes to the fatal flaw of such an approach. The app might give you data, data whose accuracy you cannot corroborate. Assuming the data is sufficiently accurate, data is not information. And information is not useful unless is is "actionable". Otherwise it is simply TBU (true but useless).
You got a home next to yours that is labeled as suspect of having a dangerous/unsafe firearm. What do you do? Do you stare at them through your window? Do yo cow yourself in terror? Do you tell your kids "be sure not to walk in front of the house of those dangerous people"?
What the fuck would you do other than either scaring yourself out of proportion, or giving yourself a feeling that you are actually doing something?
There is a mental-health/education/socioeconomic problem with violent characteristics that gun-safety advocates like to paint as a gun problem. OTH, that same mental-health/education/socioeconomic problem is being characterized in terms reminiscent of Lebensunwertes Leben, with gun owners being the only ones holding the liberty gates against the hordes of undesirables.
Obviously there should be some type of compromise that guarantee's law abiding citizens rights to own firearms while at the same time doing the utmost to prevent the criminal and the criminal insane from getting a hold of them.
But the entire discussion has fallen into the realms of the idiotic, and mindless. This app is just another reflection of that endemic failure from all parties involved in engaging in a constructive solution to the problem.
But make sure not to do this for criminals, right?
Both sides of the argument (pro-guns, anti-guns) are lead by venomous morons who got their arguments (and their problem statements) wrong in the name of ideology.
You beat me to it. I guess people are smart enough to write ZOMG think of the children apps but aren't smart enough to remove redundant adjectives.
On another note, something more insidious from either this app or this article's title is the following: Dangerous Guns and Owners. What is "dangerous" being applied to here? Is just describing guns as dangerous (which is idiotically redundant) or does it stand for "dangerous guns and dangerous owners"?
More importantly, what about this:
These locations are typically the homes or businesses of suspected unsafe gun owners,
How do you determine if a home or business contains an unsafe gun (or unsafe gun owner, whatever the fuck that means)? How do they become suspect? What warrants people to be tracked over a mere suspicion? Funny how the right to privacy is shunned equally by the left and the right (and every punk in between) wherever it turns to be ideologically convenient.
I for one don't care if someone were to track me and label me unsafe.
Bolt action rifle with good enough caliber to take anything in the North American continent? Check, locked and with the bolt disassembled.
Revolver? Check, with a trigger combination lock.
Ammo? Check, plenty of it, locked and secured.
But hey, don't let that stop you (the generic you) from suspecting me of being dangerous or unsafe or whatever adjective that makes you feel safe and progressive and in charge of doing something positive for society or some shit like that. Once I add a 12ga scatter gun and a 1911 to my collection, that Android app is going to go beep-pause-beep-pause-beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep like Ripley's tracking device back on LV-426.
He is guilty as HELL. That's an assumption based on evidence I have seen reported; an assumption I am perfectly free to make and one which is entirely warranted. He just hasn't been found guilty in a court of law yet.
The consequence of my assumption is nil. The consequence of false procedure in a court of law, including presumption of guilt, would be very serious.
EXACTLY!!!!!! Sadly people around these internet realms seem more concerned with (and are actively looking to be upset about) people making a completely reasonable assumption justified by a line of logical thinking than with the actual issue at hand (the consequence of false procedures in a court of law for a such an important case.)
While I agree with most of what you say, calling him "it" doesn't seem helpful. He's still human and I'm not sure what you hope to achieve by excluding him from the species. Sounds like the kind of language that would get a prosecutor a reproach for turning the court into the kind of circus you've advocated avoiding.
Chalk it up to a language problem (English is not my mother tongue) and/or a repeated typo due to posting in haste. I did not do it intentionally.
With that said, I wouldn't really care much about the way this person is being described in the media or in a blog post. I would care about his treatment in the legal system, and for that I would hope our legal institutions do their jobs (but trumpeting the charges suggest me they might not.) If we are to split hairs on the rhetorical artifacts at hand, would it really had matter if I would use "he" but consistently called him a fucking asshole? The description would have retained his status as a human in the nominal sense, but it is certainly questionable from the point of being civil.
He's also not guilty of anything yet.
I know that, and I wrote what I wrote on purpose. De jure, legally and technically he is not guilty of anything until the jury provides a verdict.
De facto, however, that does not change his condition of being guilty of the crimes committed of which irrefutable evidence abounds. If I pull the trigger on someone on live TV and watched by millions, I'm guilty, regardless of whether a jury gives a verdict in a court of law. By your logic, I would not be guilty.
Obviously we have an ethical obligation in the general case to prefer de jure over de facto, but that in no way prevents the rational and logical discussion of a de facto condition of guilt when the evidence is overwhelming, powerful and pretty much irrefutable.
At this point what we need is to follow the rules of law, without trumpeting charges to stupid levels, so that we formalize a de jure verdict of guilt properly fitting to the de facto guilt and criminal responsibility of this person as testified by the abundance of evidence.
It is that formalization that becomes at risk by exaggerating the charges against Tsarnaev. If Tsarnaev is found not guilty, it will be due to a technicality or an error by the prosecution, not because he is in fact not guilty (not material and morally responsible) for the crimes, the real acts of murder that he was committed or complicit. A technical verdict of not guilty is a real possibility th e
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately.
Don't make a mockery of legal institutions by assuming a suspect's guilt before his trial.
Ok, you win. He didn't do it. He is not a criminal. He didn't shoot anybody. He didn't shoot the cops that were trying to apprehend him. He didn't kidnap anybody. Etc, etc. All is a figment of the imagination, and the moral responsibility of a crime committed with ample witnesses do not materialize until a formality (now being jeopardized by a trumpeted WMD charge) is being completed.
I'm not free to assume his guilt despite the preponderance of evidence. I'm not free to reason on that assumption (and if I'm not neither is the prosecution, a chicken-n-egg kind of thing.)
I'm not free to call up the authorities to stop trumpeting the charges. I'm not free to ask them to please use sensible interpretations of charges. Let us invalidate all this line of reasoning because I dared state my belief that Tsarnaev is a criminal based on the preponderance of evidence instead of amorally waiting on the final verdict (which is in real jeopardy due to the trumpeted WMD charges.)
I didn't though of that. Maybe the government is pulling an "Obama" in trying to find a casus belli for that war fiasco retroactively:P
FTFY
Well, if we are going to split hairs, let us remember that the classic "retroactive" meme came out of the Romney presidential campaign staff (specifically the "retroactive retirement" comment made by Ed Gillespie). I'm not making any particular value judgement pro or against any camp, but simply pointing out the typical use of the "retroactive" political meme that originated during the last presidential clown-fest... err, campaign.
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been indicted on over 30 charges relating to his part in the Boston Marathon bombing. Of particular note however is a charge of using a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction.' It's a bit out of line with the commonly-held perception of the term, most notably used in justifying the invasion of Iraq. However, U.S. criminal law defines a 'weapon of mass destruction' much more broadly, including virtually any explosive device: bombs, grenades, rockets, missiles, mines, etc. The question arises: is it wise for Tsarnaev to face such a politically-loaded charge? From an outsider perspective, it would seem easy enough to leverage any number of domestic anti-terror laws to achieve anything up to and including the death penalty if required. Why, then, muddy the waters with this new WMD claim, when the price could be giving further ammunition to groups outside of America that already clearly feel the rules are set up to indict them on false pretenses, and explicitly use this sense of outrage to attract new terrorist recruits?"
Absolutely not. Tsarnaev is a terrorist and a murderer. As such, he should be indicted logically, using the law logically, and with all the abundance of evidence arrayed against him.
By trumpeting the charges and re-defining the semantics behind the term WMD, we turn a legitimate case into a political circus. Moreover, when we cheapen a word or term (WMD in this case), when we redefined in an ad hoc manner away from the commonly accepted semantics of it, we setup a terrible precedent, one than can be legitimacy challenged by Tsarnaev's attorney.
There is no sane way in which we can interpret a pipebomb or a pressure cooker bomb as a weapon of mass destruction. No common person exercising common sense and common knowledge can accept such a definition. Any such redefinition is no longer objective. It is biased and subjective, one that can run into trouble with a judge in a court of law (or a jury).
So why risk it? I mean, there are many reasons, political and circus-like reasons, yes, but no valid, legal or ethical reasons.
Tsarnaev is guilty of terrorism. It is guilty of murder. It is guilty of harming other people and property. It is guilty of robbery. It is guilty of kidnapping. It is guilty of manufacturing and deploying destructive devises (of which WMDs are just a very small subset.) One could argue that he is guilty of organized crime (with the objective of committing acts of terrorism.)
There is plenty of objective evidence with which to finding him guilty of all of that in state and federal courts.
He is not guilty of using a WMD. This is a slippery slope for something that is completely unnecessary. If we use that logic, does a mass shooting turns a rifle into a WMD? Does crashing a car to run into a store turns it into a WMD? As horrible as these things might be, there are laws of sufficient strength and logical soundness to prosecute such acts.
This move does not make us safer. In fact, it might have the opposite effect since it trivializes the meaning behind "WMD", which could make it more difficult to prosecute an actual WMD charge.
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately. Do not turn our courts for such an important case into a political circus, please.
Turned out to be a false positive? I won't sleep much over it, unless someone genuinely innocent gets destroyed by this. But probabilistically, the chance of such occurrence is so low, not impossible, but so extremely low (truly innocent person in possession of child porn), I'm willing to live with the consequences.
You, sir, are a grade-A asshole
Since you say so, it must be so.
Are you considering the possibility that you might be the target of the false positive (however unlikely)?
But of course I have. But since your question presupposes an answer (the one you hope to have with which to prop up your privacy soap box), I'll let you think I answer in the negative and let you claim a rhetorical win.
Because it is mighty kind of you to be willing to live with the consequences of someone else's life being ruined due to false positive.
As opposed to paralysis by analysis and do nothing about child sexual abuse because ZOMG I might be wrong. Nice NIMBY morality you have there buddy.
All of this would be a less horrible idea if the law enforcement found a less damaging way to investigate
But they haven't because it is not a trivial problem. But since you seem to be the genius here, I'm dying to hear your solution.
(i.e. keep the accusation completely private until it is proven in court).
Uh, but to be proven in court, it has first to be reported to the authorities, and before being reported to the authorities, it must first be flagged somehow.
And that is what the algorithm does (or should do.) You keep bringing the word "privacy" as if the purpose of the algorithm is going to publish into the open who searches what. Quite the contrary because the algorithm hides/blocks the matches to begin with.
Nice red herring/ad hominem though.
Otherwise lives are utterly ruined well before the investigation is concluded.
As opposed to lives that are not hypothetically ruined, but actually ruined in real life as the result of real child sexual abuse. So who is the asshole again?
So genius, since I'm an asshole (and dumb and stupid) please pray tell your solution to this problem. What do you propose? What do you suggest?
Or are you just actively searching for a topic to latch on and publish your anguish on the interwebz, to post how upset you are about violation of liberties in terms of the hypothetical which trumps the need to deal effectively with child sexual abuse?
Since this is an OSS project, can you suggest any tools similar to Understand that don't cost $995?
Eclipse CDT has a very powerful index (when it works) with which to search who calls what, or who depends/inherits from who.
It is still a crapshot when the code is atrocious (or complex/large enough that even good coding efforts are not enough.) Slowly but surely identify what look like important functions. Screenshot the call/type graphs in Eclipse and put them on a document.
Sometimes I (grep|awk|find|sed|tr)+ the crap out of source files looking for types and functions/methods, massaging them into submission until they can look like a CSV file. Then I load them into Excel or Access.
Sometimes, not always, but sometimes you can glimpse a lot of knowledge when you look at code structures (functions and types) in a tabular format (in particular when dealing with CORBA IDL elements and their C/C++ implementations for instance.) Another advantage is that sometimes (again, sometimes) you can take those elements, and massage them into a DOT file from where to generate a graph of sorts.
Similarly, I've generated DOT-based graphs of file dependencies, object dependencies, etc. You can run nm or objdump to generate a list of "things" included in the obj files, and generate a sort of component dependency graph.
But the cheapest way to go about it, if you are using the GNU compiler suite, is to use gprof. If you have a set of test cases that can exercise a substantial portion of your code, you might be able to get a partial call graph. The call graph might be dependent on the test scenario, but it is something that can get you going in the right direction.
Sometimes a code coverage tool like lcov, running in tandem with gprof, can help as well. It might give you an indication of dead code (if your tests are comprehensive enough) or code that still needs inspection (if your tests are not comprehensive.)
It is all manual and thus prone to error. That is the price of not using a good code navigation tool (which unfortunately the ones worth a spit are commercial-based.)
But with some good elbow grease, spit and diligence, you can go a long way by clobbering something together using existing tools (gprof, lcov, nm, objdump, grep, awk, sed, tr, perl, excel, etc.)
The only thing I could find was source navigator NG, but I have zero experience with it.
If they mean "all underage" and not just "blatantly children", good luck with that. There are no characteristics that will distinguish between 17 and 18, or even older. What is the software going to think of Kat Young, for example? What about models who are just small?
This is a common matching problem for which a solution has been know for quite a long time: Probabilistic weights.
Algorithms can simply apply a probabilistic weight to the matches. Kat Young alike = 0.001. Obvious toddler = 1.0. Barring the Kat Young/small model outliers, there are physical markers that can distinguish between a normal 17 year old from a 10 year old from a 4 year old.
You, or rather we, cannot do anything about in terms of automatic (or even manual/visual) matching of physical characteristics at the legal boundary of age. Nor should we because the bulk of child abuse occurs with children of younger age (unless we want to find an excuse to entertain paralysis-by-analysis.)
The bulk of child abuse occurs with younger kids, for which, on average, anatomical characteristics can be inferred automatically to a great degree of certainty (and far easier than face recognition which is already implementable.)
Also are they going to attempt to sort through drawings at all, considering they are legal in some jurisdictions and not others?
Probably not because the main point is not just to act as a moral police, but to act upon actual evidence of child abuse. A drawing, as perverted as it might be, might not be evidence of child abuse. On the other hand, a child porn pic, that is certainly evidence of child abuse.
The former is not "actionable". The later is.
I sense false positives and angry models in Google's future.
I doubt angry models (except the most narcissist ones) will sue in droves for being flagged as such, specially if the technology end up working well for the intended purpose.
False positives will always exist. Pretending they don't exist, that is stupid. Not moving forward in such a case just because they might come up. That is equally stupid.
Plus, I'm sure the algorithm designers at google might have thought about them a long longer than you on this post. Unless we are actually entertaining the idea that only us can foreseen the problem of false positives, but Google engineers do not.
So Google are attempting to create a system to automatically disappear content from the Internet with no human supervision, not only that but it also autonomously informs law enforcement of "child porn" found on these sites and you think thats to their credit?
I was thinking to post this anon, but no. I've personally known people who were victims of such horrible crimes. So my views on this very strong (and biased should you wish to seem them that way.)
This is a step in the right direction. Be it by peer review or by an algorithm, detect something that is "child porn". Flag it and rate it. Who published it and how it got searched (a profile that could suggest a rating from "accidental" find to "found by premeditated and methodical searches"). Report it to the authorities, and let them sort it out.
If I were to see or glimpse or even take a whiff of an indication of child porn on someone's computer or a person's private property, or whatever, you can bet your ass that I would call 911, and let the cops sort it out.
Turned out to be a false positive? I won't sleep much over it, unless someone genuinely innocent gets destroyed by this. But probabilistically, the chance of such occurrence is so low, not impossible, but so extremely low (truly innocent person in possession of child porn), I'm willing to live with the consequences.
People conflating this with 1984 or PRISM, that's NIMBYstically, selfishly disturbing and disconcerting.
I'd hate to see what you think is a step too far.
I'd hate to see what you think is a step too short when fighting child sexual abuse. Seriously, what do you propose in practical terms?
Actually, there are 6 routes, and the route thru the san jan river (route 6) was rejected as there would be too many complications with Costa Rica. All other 5 routes require lots of dredging and digging.
What complications there would be (or should be). As per the Cañas-Jerez Treaty of 1858, the entire river is within Nicaraguan's jurisdiction (the national border is defined by the south shore of the river on the Costa Rican side.) Any "ecological" concerns by Costa Rica could be rendered moot at the ICJ with Costa Rica's precedence of past dredging of San Juan River tributaries (plus some nice pesticides flowing from their territory) contaminating the river (and thus Nicaraguan territory.) Just saying...
The Atlantic-side digging will likely be through the Indio Maiz Biological Preserve. I imagine there will be some energetic discussion over that.
As a Nicaraguan, I hope there will be. Anyways, it should not be difficult to run a canal while protecting the preserve. After all, the Panama Canal has been in operations for more than a century with flush and vibrant forests all around it.
The plan is on the BORDER of nicaragua and costa rica. The full story is far more interesting. Nicaragua invaded costa rica in 2010 for the sole reason of capturing a portion of the river that is going to be used for the canal. Because it is on the border, I fully expect Costa Rica will also reap benefits from this project.
* I have lived in Nicaragua and Costa Rica for past five years.
Uh, no. Nicaragua didn't invade anything. Costa Rica threw a fist when Nicaragua started dredging operations on the San Juan River, over which Nicaragua has full sovereign from border to border (that is sovereignty over the totality of the surface area) as per the Cañas-Jerez Treaty of 1858 (with Costa Rica having only commercial navigation rights.)
There is a lot more the story than what you have been implying here. For example Costa Rica for a while insisted in sending armed police and patrol up and down the surface of the river in direct contravention of the Cañas-Jerez Treaty. And then complaining about the dredging operations on the river (again, under the complete sovereignty as per the treaty just mentioned.)
The so called island Calero is still under dispute, and until the ICJ pronounces itself, it cannot be legally called an invasion. I would also suggest people refer to the ICJ provisional ruling/advisory on this issue circa March, 2011, or the previous ones (2009). This is not to say that Nicaragua is free from any responsibilities, and has in fact violated certain Costa Rican navigational rights.
But the preponderance of sovereignty violations has been committed by the Costa Rican government (not the people who in general just mind themselves.) Again, don't take my word, just look at the ICJ rulings.
One thing for certain is that a canal, if one is ever created, it will benefit both economies substantially. And it will be stupid by both governments to create trouble around a region with so much potential.
This situation smells strongly of scapegoat, but perhaps not the scapegoat you're thinking of.
"It's a trap!"
Think about the IT manager. This is someone who already has the job, and who influenced the boss enough to get that job. Pointing out that he's incompetent will be perceived as a slap in the face by all those who have backed him so far.
Be prepared to be placed in direct conflict with not only him, but the executive leadership. And unless you have evidence of actual malfeasance, the incumbents almost always win the case when the Old Boys' Network is the judge and jury.
This is one of those situations that has no winners.
Nice angle. I forgot that also happens exactly as you said.
If you're already stuck in the middle of it, start polishing your resume and emailing everyone you know on LinkedIn.
Bingo. Situations like these have "ZOMG GTFO!!!" written all over it. Nothing good ever come out of such situations. And who in his sane mind would work under such conditions if they can avoid it?
The only one foreign war that the USA has started since the Cold War is the 2nd Gulf War.
Yes, because Afghanistan is in the US? I love the meaning you give to the word 'foreign':).
Well, what other meaning could you possibly attach to it given the context of the conversation?. The focus is on the US. Ergo, that is the context, ergo the word "foreign" from the geographical context of the US.
If you are referring to a different meaning, please share your corrected, more accurate meaning so as to understand what the hell you are referring to (with examples of the other "foreign" wars initiated by the US since the end of the Cold War, thanks.)
With the whole 'Prism is not a big deal, we just spy on the rest of the world' stuff, I guess you are not the only one using that meaning.
I have no clue about what you are guessing, but I'm sure you feel very strongly that the conclusions you have come up from that guess are actually cogent and logical. Good for you.
However, I stated nothing about things being legitimate or not.
But to pretend that him getting re-elected is solely the result of the population not giving a shit about body bags, that's overly simplistic.
Nice strawman. I didn't state that you stated such a thing being legitimate or not. You are referring about the impact, or lack thereof, of body bags in the US have. That itself present an implicit, yet clear moral question, which is what I'm addressing.
Well, it was about political impact of bodybags of soldiers in the US being the highest in the world, that was the statement I was responding to.
Well, so did I. The political impact of body bags is a direct function of the prevalent sensitivities and moralities (or lack thereof) exhibited by the populace (as well as other factors such as press coverage, which are also a function of the national ethos.)
I would say there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, the re-election of the president being pretty notable. How that matters? Well apparently people didn't care enough about it to prevent it from voting for him.
Didn't care enough, choosing the lesser of evils (however uninformed that POV would have been at the time), exploited national fervor. One can certainly pick one of these, or none, or something else to fabricate a simplistic explanation of events.
Is that proof? no.
Well, duh.
You don't have to believe me, I'm just saying I doubt the statement.
That is fine. You could be right in your doubt by all accounts.
Also wasn't the whole controversy in the US about the total lack of political impact?
Yes, so? Where did I say otherwise?
So what exactly was the political impact?
The close call that almost gave Kerry the presidency? The continuous and gradual discontent towards the war and Junior's second administration which ultimately gave the presidency to the Democrats? The continuous call by the populate for an actual, concrete plan of gradual disengagement from Iraq (as opposed to a never-ending war on terror as sold by Junior and company)? If by political impact you mean total government upheaval, yeah then, we didn't have a political impact. Unsurprisingly, that is not a valid definition of "political impact".
the 2nd Gulf War was not their war, so of course the fallout would be greater.
The fallout would be greater because they had less casualties and didn't start a war?
No. Because simply it wasn't their war. It cannot get any simpler than that. What is so confusing or wrong about that statement? There was no casus belli. The population in the participating countries had no
only in the USA soldiers in body bags have such a heavy political price
The fact that the US is one of the few countries to start foreign wars in the past decade,
The only one foreign war that the USA has started since the Cold War is the 2nd Gulf War. Every other war has been legitimate (the war in Afghanistan), the invasion of Panama (which even the majority of Panamanians welcomed it), UN sanctioned to prevent genocide (as in the Balkans) or ill-prepared, ill-advise attempts to provide support to desperately needed UN-sanctioned peacekeeping/humanitarian work (the Somali War and the "Black Hawk Down" incident.).
and that the president responsible got re-elected makes me doubt that.
Junior (that's how I call Bush Jr.) got re-elected once due to not having a viable non-flip-flopping opposition candidate. Kerry at the time was not such a candidate. Opposing without providing clear alternatives is not a viable opposition alternative at all.
We were still recoiling fresh from 9/11 with a fresh 2nd conflict in Iraq. We needed a viable alternative to Junior, and Kerry only opposed, but didn't provide a clear, workable alternative either (and no, an immediate withdrawal at that time was not practical.)
Many people, myself included wanted someone other than Junior. There was none. Ergo, you know the rest of this tragedy. Obviously, hindsight is always 20/20, and there were certainly some jingoistic elements in the US who rooted for Junior. But to pretend that him getting re-elected is solely the result of the population not giving a shit about body bags, that's overly simplistic.
Such a theory makes for excellent rhetoric, I grant you that.
Hell, even in a bunch countries just supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan the political fallout was bigger.
Is that surprising? Why should it have not been a greater fallout in the other countries? For those governments, the 2nd Gulf War was not their war, so of course the fallout would be greater. I'm not sure what is so surprising about it, or how one can derive logical or moral conclusions from the fallouts or lack thereof in US politics.
Not sure about India though.
India has a lot of reasons (not necessarily valid or practical in the absolute sense of the word, however.) They have a continuous border dispute with Pakistan, a lot of it with unique hardships and challenges posed of high-altitude, mountain warfare. There might or will be eventual border disputes with China (also under mountain warfare conditions.) The is an asymetric terror warfare going on in India.
Robotics, drones and the like, I can see why India would push this. Whether they have the technical wherewithal to do so now, that's a different question. True that India has a lot of problems in terms of quality control, but so did the Japanese. And while here in the US people used to dismiss the Japanese as "makers of cheap cameras", they rose up to the challenge and almost ate our lunch.
All those quality control and process problems, those are implementation details that countries like India will eventually work out. There is nothing other than time from preventing that from happening.
I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
What does that mean anyways? More important metrics would be the number of bugs introduced, number of fixes per month, number of successful deployments. Similarly, across the organization, how do different departments categorize their requirements (what is the percentage of new requirements that are considered as non-negotiable priorities, do departments force requirement changes in the middle of development, etc?)
One can easily run with twice the budget if every other department is dicking around with impossible-to-manage dynamics. Furthermore, budget costs is only one metric. What about savings? You can easily put a number on the cost of a bug defect (downtime, man hours, loss of salary by employees being idle due to downtime, etc.)
So a reduction or absence of defects translates to savings by not incurring into them. Then you compare that against budget costs.
If the CFO or you didn't look into that angle in an objective, quantifiable manner, then this is seriously scapegoating.
This has scapegoating written all over it. I could be wrong, but I've seen enough of these (never directly affected but just as an outside observer) to come to this conclusion.
You don't. You walk away. That has always been my suggestion whenever someone has to come to a point of having to prove his/her manager is incompetent.
OTH, your situation is quite unique because you have been tasked with root-causing an IT department's woes. That is quite a pickle you have there.
"I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
Based on what? Your description of the situation hints to some very interesting, poisonous dynamics within that company. Sounds more like scapegoating that problem solving to me.
After just a little scratching, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question. (This has led to countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive.)
Well, this will also tell me that the subordinates are incompetent either. Subordinates should be competent enough to provide sound technical advice. They might not have the middle-to-upper company view to make IT and enterprise architecture decisions (which can lead to unnecessary complexity at the "macro" level.)
However, and barring significant managerial interference and politics, they should be competent enough to keep things efficient, workable and sufficiently simple within their own silos. Rarely you will ever see a situation as the one described being solely the result of an incompetent IT manager.
One could argue that the "parroting" was in essence supporting what his subordinates were passing to him. True that a manager of IT should be capable to tell from the technical factual to the bullshit, at least from a 10k foot view. But he is also expected to rely on his (supposedly) trustworthy subordinates.
IT manager -> strategy.
subordinate -> tactical.
Doesn't matter how good an IT manager is. If the subordinates are shit, no manager will ever be able to compensate for that (and viceversa.) I'm not saying that the IT manager in question is worthless. I'm saying that if the inherent complexity is due to him parroting what his subordinates passed to him, then the subordinates are shit as well.
SORRY. IT. TAKES. TWO. TO. TANGO.
How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department?
You are going to have to prove that key (and yet poor) decisions have been made by this person consistently and continuously. Decisions that are/were self-evidently poor ones. Passing/parroting poor decisions all the way up should be enough to illustrate that. The corollary of this, however, is that you will also be demonstrating that incompetence runs vertically deep.
How can you salvage that. I don't know. But if you lay the blame sorely on the IT manager, then you are not solving, you are scape goating.
The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose,
No. If you think that, I don't believe you are technically competent to make these kind of evaluations. You might not need to know to develop software with the specific stacks being used. But you have to have some type of development knowledge (either from direct experience as a developer or indirectly as, say, a DBA or network administratior, for example.)
but should be able to run a project.
Here we are conflating the role of head of IT with the one of a project manager. This is ok for small companies, but for mid-size companies and up, you better separate the two. If this mid-size company does n
Slashdot Mirror
This map doesn't have any force of law, though, unlike the sex offender registry. You are not required to register yourself on the map each time you move, for example.
It has no force of law, and it has no measure or moderation of law either. It is quite easy to harass someone with it. I think the risk of harassing someone is pretty far fetch (which is why as a pragmatic gun owner I don't lose my sleep over such an app.)
With that said, the app is so silly and useless, and to think people might actually think it does something useful, it's just pathetic. It provides merely a sense of false safety on dubious "information awareness".
To you, the generic "you" that owns or things to own such an app - your app shows some people flagged around your neighborhood? How do you know the information is reliable? Can you objectively assume that a flagged person is truly dangerous or unsafe? Most importantly, what are you going to do, objectively speaking?
Here goes to the fatal flaw of such an approach. The app might give you data, data whose accuracy you cannot corroborate. Assuming the data is sufficiently accurate, data is not information. And information is not useful unless is is "actionable". Otherwise it is simply TBU (true but useless).
You got a home next to yours that is labeled as suspect of having a dangerous/unsafe firearm. What do you do? Do you stare at them through your window? Do yo cow yourself in terror? Do you tell your kids "be sure not to walk in front of the house of those dangerous people"?
What the fuck would you do other than either scaring yourself out of proportion, or giving yourself a feeling that you are actually doing something?
There is a mental-health/education/socioeconomic problem with violent characteristics that gun-safety advocates like to paint as a gun problem. OTH, that same mental-health/education/socioeconomic problem is being characterized in terms reminiscent of Lebensunwertes Leben, with gun owners being the only ones holding the liberty gates against the hordes of undesirables.
Obviously there should be some type of compromise that guarantee's law abiding citizens rights to own firearms while at the same time doing the utmost to prevent the criminal and the criminal insane from getting a hold of them.
But the entire discussion has fallen into the realms of the idiotic, and mindless. This app is just another reflection of that endemic failure from all parties involved in engaging in a constructive solution to the problem.
But make sure not to do this for criminals, right?
Both sides of the argument (pro-guns, anti-guns) are lead by venomous morons who got their arguments (and their problem statements) wrong in the name of ideology.
aren't they?
You beat me to it. I guess people are smart enough to write ZOMG think of the children apps but aren't smart enough to remove redundant adjectives.
On another note, something more insidious from either this app or this article's title is the following: Dangerous Guns and Owners. What is "dangerous" being applied to here? Is just describing guns as dangerous (which is idiotically redundant) or does it stand for "dangerous guns and dangerous owners"?
More importantly, what about this:
These locations are typically the homes or businesses of suspected unsafe gun owners,
How do you determine if a home or business contains an unsafe gun (or unsafe gun owner, whatever the fuck that means)? How do they become suspect? What warrants people to be tracked over a mere suspicion? Funny how the right to privacy is shunned equally by the left and the right (and every punk in between) wherever it turns to be ideologically convenient.
I for one don't care if someone were to track me and label me unsafe.
Bolt action rifle with good enough caliber to take anything in the North American continent? Check, locked and with the bolt disassembled.
Revolver? Check, with a trigger combination lock.
Ammo? Check, plenty of it, locked and secured.
But hey, don't let that stop you (the generic you) from suspecting me of being dangerous or unsafe or whatever adjective that makes you feel safe and progressive and in charge of doing something positive for society or some shit like that. Once I add a 12ga scatter gun and a 1911 to my collection, that Android app is going to go beep-pause-beep-pause-beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep like Ripley's tracking device back on LV-426.
San Francisco has 8,000 homeless people. Those could help.
The problem is, where do you put them up? NIMBY ('Not In My Back Yard!!') is the watchword here.
Start with Nevada. Send back the 5000 bused and dumped there by that State's various NGOs and government agencies.
Sig heil much? Take that Godwin.
No wonder nobody takes Netflix seriously.
Its impact on the market says otherwise.
He is guilty as HELL. That's an assumption based on evidence I have seen reported; an assumption I am perfectly free to make and one which is entirely warranted. He just hasn't been found guilty in a court of law yet.
The consequence of my assumption is nil. The consequence of false procedure in a court of law, including presumption of guilt, would be very serious.
EXACTLY!!!!!! Sadly people around these internet realms seem more concerned with (and are actively looking to be upset about) people making a completely reasonable assumption justified by a line of logical thinking than with the actual issue at hand (the consequence of false procedures in a court of law for a such an important case.)
Honestly, we are the country of teh the stupid.
While I agree with most of what you say, calling him "it" doesn't seem helpful. He's still human and I'm not sure what you hope to achieve by excluding him from the species. Sounds like the kind of language that would get a prosecutor a reproach for turning the court into the kind of circus you've advocated avoiding.
Chalk it up to a language problem (English is not my mother tongue) and/or a repeated typo due to posting in haste. I did not do it intentionally.
With that said, I wouldn't really care much about the way this person is being described in the media or in a blog post. I would care about his treatment in the legal system, and for that I would hope our legal institutions do their jobs (but trumpeting the charges suggest me they might not.) If we are to split hairs on the rhetorical artifacts at hand, would it really had matter if I would use "he" but consistently called him a fucking asshole? The description would have retained his status as a human in the nominal sense, but it is certainly questionable from the point of being civil.
He's also not guilty of anything yet.
I know that, and I wrote what I wrote on purpose. De jure, legally and technically he is not guilty of anything until the jury provides a verdict.
De facto, however, that does not change his condition of being guilty of the crimes committed of which irrefutable evidence abounds. If I pull the trigger on someone on live TV and watched by millions, I'm guilty, regardless of whether a jury gives a verdict in a court of law. By your logic, I would not be guilty.
Obviously we have an ethical obligation in the general case to prefer de jure over de facto, but that in no way prevents the rational and logical discussion of a de facto condition of guilt when the evidence is overwhelming, powerful and pretty much irrefutable.
At this point what we need is to follow the rules of law, without trumpeting charges to stupid levels, so that we formalize a de jure verdict of guilt properly fitting to the de facto guilt and criminal responsibility of this person as testified by the abundance of evidence.
It is that formalization that becomes at risk by exaggerating the charges against Tsarnaev. If Tsarnaev is found not guilty, it will be due to a technicality or an error by the prosecution, not because he is in fact not guilty (not material and morally responsible) for the crimes, the real acts of murder that he was committed or complicit. A technical verdict of not guilty is a real possibility th e
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately.
Don't make a mockery of legal institutions by assuming a suspect's guilt before his trial.
Ok, you win. He didn't do it. He is not a criminal. He didn't shoot anybody. He didn't shoot the cops that were trying to apprehend him. He didn't kidnap anybody. Etc, etc. All is a figment of the imagination, and the moral responsibility of a crime committed with ample witnesses do not materialize until a formality (now being jeopardized by a trumpeted WMD charge) is being completed.
I'm not free to assume his guilt despite the preponderance of evidence. I'm not free to reason on that assumption (and if I'm not neither is the prosecution, a chicken-n-egg kind of thing.)
I'm not free to call up the authorities to stop trumpeting the charges. I'm not free to ask them to please use sensible interpretations of charges. Let us invalidate all this line of reasoning because I dared state my belief that Tsarnaev is a criminal based on the preponderance of evidence instead of amorally waiting on the final verdict (which is in real jeopardy due to the trumpeted WMD charges.)
You sir, are awesome.
I didn't though of that. Maybe the government is pulling an "Obama" in trying to find a casus belli for that war fiasco retroactively :P
FTFY
Well, if we are going to split hairs, let us remember that the classic "retroactive" meme came out of the Romney presidential campaign staff (specifically the "retroactive retirement" comment made by Ed Gillespie). I'm not making any particular value judgement pro or against any camp, but simply pointing out the typical use of the "retroactive" political meme that originated during the last presidential clown-fest... err, campaign.
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been indicted on over 30 charges relating to his part in the Boston Marathon bombing. Of particular note however is a charge of using a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction.' It's a bit out of line with the commonly-held perception of the term, most notably used in justifying the invasion of Iraq. However, U.S. criminal law defines a 'weapon of mass destruction' much more broadly, including virtually any explosive device: bombs, grenades, rockets, missiles, mines, etc. The question arises: is it wise for Tsarnaev to face such a politically-loaded charge? From an outsider perspective, it would seem easy enough to leverage any number of domestic anti-terror laws to achieve anything up to and including the death penalty if required. Why, then, muddy the waters with this new WMD claim, when the price could be giving further ammunition to groups outside of America that already clearly feel the rules are set up to indict them on false pretenses, and explicitly use this sense of outrage to attract new terrorist recruits?"
Absolutely not. Tsarnaev is a terrorist and a murderer. As such, he should be indicted logically, using the law logically, and with all the abundance of evidence arrayed against him.
By trumpeting the charges and re-defining the semantics behind the term WMD, we turn a legitimate case into a political circus. Moreover, when we cheapen a word or term (WMD in this case), when we redefined in an ad hoc manner away from the commonly accepted semantics of it, we setup a terrible precedent, one than can be legitimacy challenged by Tsarnaev's attorney.
There is no sane way in which we can interpret a pipebomb or a pressure cooker bomb as a weapon of mass destruction. No common person exercising common sense and common knowledge can accept such a definition. Any such redefinition is no longer objective. It is biased and subjective, one that can run into trouble with a judge in a court of law (or a jury).
So why risk it? I mean, there are many reasons, political and circus-like reasons, yes, but no valid, legal or ethical reasons.
Tsarnaev is guilty of terrorism. It is guilty of murder. It is guilty of harming other people and property. It is guilty of robbery. It is guilty of kidnapping. It is guilty of manufacturing and deploying destructive devises (of which WMDs are just a very small subset.) One could argue that he is guilty of organized crime (with the objective of committing acts of terrorism.)
There is plenty of objective evidence with which to finding him guilty of all of that in state and federal courts.
He is not guilty of using a WMD. This is a slippery slope for something that is completely unnecessary. If we use that logic, does a mass shooting turns a rifle into a WMD? Does crashing a car to run into a store turns it into a WMD? As horrible as these things might be, there are laws of sufficient strength and logical soundness to prosecute such acts.
This move does not make us safer. In fact, it might have the opposite effect since it trivializes the meaning behind "WMD", which could make it more difficult to prosecute an actual WMD charge.
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately. Do not turn our courts for such an important case into a political circus, please.
By this new definition of "Weapons of Mass Destruction", Saddam did have WMD's and they were in Iraq.
I didn't though of that. Maybe the government is pulling a "Romney" in trying to find a casus belli for that war fiasco retroactively :P
The act, which requires evaluation for all properties found to house human remains, has the Canadian couple stuck with a big bill.
Gubrment needs its tax fees, you know. Fairness or competence got nothing to do with it :/
Turned out to be a false positive? I won't sleep much over it, unless someone genuinely innocent gets destroyed by this. But probabilistically, the chance of such occurrence is so low, not impossible, but so extremely low (truly innocent person in possession of child porn), I'm willing to live with the consequences.
You, sir, are a grade-A asshole
Since you say so, it must be so.
Are you considering the possibility that you might be the target of the false positive (however unlikely)?
But of course I have. But since your question presupposes an answer (the one you hope to have with which to prop up your privacy soap box), I'll let you think I answer in the negative and let you claim a rhetorical win.
Because it is mighty kind of you to be willing to live with the consequences of someone else's life being ruined due to false positive.
As opposed to paralysis by analysis and do nothing about child sexual abuse because ZOMG I might be wrong. Nice NIMBY morality you have there buddy.
All of this would be a less horrible idea if the law enforcement found a less damaging way to investigate
But they haven't because it is not a trivial problem. But since you seem to be the genius here, I'm dying to hear your solution.
(i.e. keep the accusation completely private until it is proven in court).
Uh, but to be proven in court, it has first to be reported to the authorities, and before being reported to the authorities, it must first be flagged somehow.
And that is what the algorithm does (or should do.) You keep bringing the word "privacy" as if the purpose of the algorithm is going to publish into the open who searches what. Quite the contrary because the algorithm hides/blocks the matches to begin with.
Nice red herring/ad hominem though.
Otherwise lives are utterly ruined well before the investigation is concluded.
As opposed to lives that are not hypothetically ruined, but actually ruined in real life as the result of real child sexual abuse. So who is the asshole again?
So genius, since I'm an asshole (and dumb and stupid) please pray tell your solution to this problem. What do you propose? What do you suggest?
Or are you just actively searching for a topic to latch on and publish your anguish on the interwebz, to post how upset you are about violation of liberties in terms of the hypothetical which trumps the need to deal effectively with child sexual abuse?
Since this is an OSS project, can you suggest any tools similar to Understand that don't cost $995?
Eclipse CDT has a very powerful index (when it works) with which to search who calls what, or who depends/inherits from who.
It is still a crapshot when the code is atrocious (or complex/large enough that even good coding efforts are not enough.) Slowly but surely identify what look like important functions. Screenshot the call/type graphs in Eclipse and put them on a document.
Sometimes I (grep|awk|find|sed|tr)+ the crap out of source files looking for types and functions/methods, massaging them into submission until they can look like a CSV file. Then I load them into Excel or Access.
Sometimes, not always, but sometimes you can glimpse a lot of knowledge when you look at code structures (functions and types) in a tabular format (in particular when dealing with CORBA IDL elements and their C/C++ implementations for instance.) Another advantage is that sometimes (again, sometimes) you can take those elements, and massage them into a DOT file from where to generate a graph of sorts.
Similarly, I've generated DOT-based graphs of file dependencies, object dependencies, etc. You can run nm or objdump to generate a list of "things" included in the obj files, and generate a sort of component dependency graph.
But the cheapest way to go about it, if you are using the GNU compiler suite, is to use gprof. If you have a set of test cases that can exercise a substantial portion of your code, you might be able to get a partial call graph. The call graph might be dependent on the test scenario, but it is something that can get you going in the right direction.
Sometimes a code coverage tool like lcov, running in tandem with gprof, can help as well. It might give you an indication of dead code (if your tests are comprehensive enough) or code that still needs inspection (if your tests are not comprehensive.)
It is all manual and thus prone to error. That is the price of not using a good code navigation tool (which unfortunately the ones worth a spit are commercial-based.)
But with some good elbow grease, spit and diligence, you can go a long way by clobbering something together using existing tools (gprof, lcov, nm, objdump, grep, awk, sed, tr, perl, excel, etc.)
The only thing I could find was source navigator NG, but I have zero experience with it.
If they mean "all underage" and not just "blatantly children", good luck with that. There are no characteristics that will distinguish between 17 and 18, or even older. What is the software going to think of Kat Young, for example? What about models who are just small?
This is a common matching problem for which a solution has been know for quite a long time: Probabilistic weights.
Algorithms can simply apply a probabilistic weight to the matches. Kat Young alike = 0.001. Obvious toddler = 1.0. Barring the Kat Young/small model outliers, there are physical markers that can distinguish between a normal 17 year old from a 10 year old from a 4 year old.
You, or rather we, cannot do anything about in terms of automatic (or even manual/visual) matching of physical characteristics at the legal boundary of age. Nor should we because the bulk of child abuse occurs with children of younger age (unless we want to find an excuse to entertain paralysis-by-analysis.)
The bulk of child abuse occurs with younger kids, for which, on average, anatomical characteristics can be inferred automatically to a great degree of certainty (and far easier than face recognition which is already implementable.)
Also are they going to attempt to sort through drawings at all, considering they are legal in some jurisdictions and not others?
Probably not because the main point is not just to act as a moral police, but to act upon actual evidence of child abuse. A drawing, as perverted as it might be, might not be evidence of child abuse. On the other hand, a child porn pic, that is certainly evidence of child abuse.
The former is not "actionable". The later is.
I sense false positives and angry models in Google's future.
I doubt angry models (except the most narcissist ones) will sue in droves for being flagged as such, specially if the technology end up working well for the intended purpose.
False positives will always exist. Pretending they don't exist, that is stupid. Not moving forward in such a case just because they might come up. That is equally stupid.
Plus, I'm sure the algorithm designers at google might have thought about them a long longer than you on this post. Unless we are actually entertaining the idea that only us can foreseen the problem of false positives, but Google engineers do not.
So Google are attempting to create a system to automatically disappear content from the Internet with no human supervision, not only that but it also autonomously informs law enforcement of "child porn" found on these sites and you think thats to their credit?
I was thinking to post this anon, but no. I've personally known people who were victims of such horrible crimes. So my views on this very strong (and biased should you wish to seem them that way.)
This is a step in the right direction. Be it by peer review or by an algorithm, detect something that is "child porn". Flag it and rate it. Who published it and how it got searched (a profile that could suggest a rating from "accidental" find to "found by premeditated and methodical searches"). Report it to the authorities, and let them sort it out.
If I were to see or glimpse or even take a whiff of an indication of child porn on someone's computer or a person's private property, or whatever, you can bet your ass that I would call 911, and let the cops sort it out.
Turned out to be a false positive? I won't sleep much over it, unless someone genuinely innocent gets destroyed by this. But probabilistically, the chance of such occurrence is so low, not impossible, but so extremely low (truly innocent person in possession of child porn), I'm willing to live with the consequences.
People conflating this with 1984 or PRISM, that's NIMBYstically, selfishly disturbing and disconcerting.
I'd hate to see what you think is a step too far.
I'd hate to see what you think is a step too short when fighting child sexual abuse. Seriously, what do you propose in practical terms?
Actually, there are 6 routes, and the route thru the san jan river (route 6) was rejected as there would be too many complications with Costa Rica. All other 5 routes require lots of dredging and digging.
What complications there would be (or should be). As per the Cañas-Jerez Treaty of 1858, the entire river is within Nicaraguan's jurisdiction (the national border is defined by the south shore of the river on the Costa Rican side.) Any "ecological" concerns by Costa Rica could be rendered moot at the ICJ with Costa Rica's precedence of past dredging of San Juan River tributaries (plus some nice pesticides flowing from their territory) contaminating the river (and thus Nicaraguan territory.) Just saying...
The Atlantic-side digging will likely be through the Indio Maiz Biological Preserve. I imagine there will be some energetic discussion over that.
As a Nicaraguan, I hope there will be. Anyways, it should not be difficult to run a canal while protecting the preserve. After all, the Panama Canal has been in operations for more than a century with flush and vibrant forests all around it.
The plan is on the BORDER of nicaragua and costa rica. The full story is far more interesting. Nicaragua invaded costa rica in 2010 for the sole reason of capturing a portion of the river that is going to be used for the canal. Because it is on the border, I fully expect Costa Rica will also reap benefits from this project. * I have lived in Nicaragua and Costa Rica for past five years.
Uh, no. Nicaragua didn't invade anything. Costa Rica threw a fist when Nicaragua started dredging operations on the San Juan River, over which Nicaragua has full sovereign from border to border (that is sovereignty over the totality of the surface area) as per the Cañas-Jerez Treaty of 1858 (with Costa Rica having only commercial navigation rights.)
There is a lot more the story than what you have been implying here. For example Costa Rica for a while insisted in sending armed police and patrol up and down the surface of the river in direct contravention of the Cañas-Jerez Treaty. And then complaining about the dredging operations on the river (again, under the complete sovereignty as per the treaty just mentioned.)
The so called island Calero is still under dispute, and until the ICJ pronounces itself, it cannot be legally called an invasion. I would also suggest people refer to the ICJ provisional ruling/advisory on this issue circa March, 2011, or the previous ones (2009). This is not to say that Nicaragua is free from any responsibilities, and has in fact violated certain Costa Rican navigational rights.
But the preponderance of sovereignty violations has been committed by the Costa Rican government (not the people who in general just mind themselves.) Again, don't take my word, just look at the ICJ rulings.
One thing for certain is that a canal, if one is ever created, it will benefit both economies substantially. And it will be stupid by both governments to create trouble around a region with so much potential.
Costa Rica understands fully how precious their environment is. CR would not be stupid enough to want such a thing.
plus theirs volcanoes in the way..
So we Nicaraguans are stupid enough to want it?
This situation smells strongly of scapegoat, but perhaps not the scapegoat you're thinking of.
"It's a trap!"
Think about the IT manager. This is someone who already has the job, and who influenced the boss enough to get that job. Pointing out that he's incompetent will be perceived as a slap in the face by all those who have backed him so far.
Be prepared to be placed in direct conflict with not only him, but the executive leadership. And unless you have evidence of actual malfeasance, the incumbents almost always win the case when the Old Boys' Network is the judge and jury.
This is one of those situations that has no winners.
Nice angle. I forgot that also happens exactly as you said.
If you're already stuck in the middle of it, start polishing your resume and emailing everyone you know on LinkedIn.
Bingo. Situations like these have "ZOMG GTFO!!!" written all over it. Nothing good ever come out of such situations. And who in his sane mind would work under such conditions if they can avoid it?
Yes, because Afghanistan is in the US? I love the meaning you give to the word 'foreign' :).
Well, what other meaning could you possibly attach to it given the context of the conversation?. The focus is on the US. Ergo, that is the context, ergo the word "foreign" from the geographical context of the US.
If you are referring to a different meaning, please share your corrected, more accurate meaning so as to understand what the hell you are referring to (with examples of the other "foreign" wars initiated by the US since the end of the Cold War, thanks.)
With the whole 'Prism is not a big deal, we just spy on the rest of the world' stuff, I guess you are not the only one using that meaning.
I have no clue about what you are guessing, but I'm sure you feel very strongly that the conclusions you have come up from that guess are actually cogent and logical. Good for you.
However, I stated nothing about things being legitimate or not.
Nice strawman. I didn't state that you stated such a thing being legitimate or not. You are referring about the impact, or lack thereof, of body bags in the US have. That itself present an implicit, yet clear moral question, which is what I'm addressing.
Well, it was about political impact of bodybags of soldiers in the US being the highest in the world, that was the statement I was responding to.
Well, so did I. The political impact of body bags is a direct function of the prevalent sensitivities and moralities (or lack thereof) exhibited by the populace (as well as other factors such as press coverage, which are also a function of the national ethos.)
I would say there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, the re-election of the president being pretty notable. How that matters? Well apparently people didn't care enough about it to prevent it from voting for him.
Didn't care enough, choosing the lesser of evils (however uninformed that POV would have been at the time), exploited national fervor. One can certainly pick one of these, or none, or something else to fabricate a simplistic explanation of events.
Is that proof? no.
Well, duh.
You don't have to believe me, I'm just saying I doubt the statement.
That is fine. You could be right in your doubt by all accounts.
Also wasn't the whole controversy in the US about the total lack of political impact?
Yes, so? Where did I say otherwise?
So what exactly was the political impact?
The close call that almost gave Kerry the presidency? The continuous and gradual discontent towards the war and Junior's second administration which ultimately gave the presidency to the Democrats? The continuous call by the populate for an actual, concrete plan of gradual disengagement from Iraq (as opposed to a never-ending war on terror as sold by Junior and company)? If by political impact you mean total government upheaval, yeah then, we didn't have a political impact. Unsurprisingly, that is not a valid definition of "political impact".
The fallout would be greater because they had less casualties and didn't start a war?
No. Because simply it wasn't their war. It cannot get any simpler than that. What is so confusing or wrong about that statement? There was no casus belli. The population in the participating countries had no
The fact that the US is one of the few countries to start foreign wars in the past decade,
The only one foreign war that the USA has started since the Cold War is the 2nd Gulf War. Every other war has been legitimate (the war in Afghanistan), the invasion of Panama (which even the majority of Panamanians welcomed it), UN sanctioned to prevent genocide (as in the Balkans) or ill-prepared, ill-advise attempts to provide support to desperately needed UN-sanctioned peacekeeping/humanitarian work (the Somali War and the "Black Hawk Down" incident.).
and that the president responsible got re-elected makes me doubt that.
Junior (that's how I call Bush Jr.) got re-elected once due to not having a viable non-flip-flopping opposition candidate. Kerry at the time was not such a candidate. Opposing without providing clear alternatives is not a viable opposition alternative at all.
We were still recoiling fresh from 9/11 with a fresh 2nd conflict in Iraq. We needed a viable alternative to Junior, and Kerry only opposed, but didn't provide a clear, workable alternative either (and no, an immediate withdrawal at that time was not practical.)
Many people, myself included wanted someone other than Junior. There was none. Ergo, you know the rest of this tragedy. Obviously, hindsight is always 20/20, and there were certainly some jingoistic elements in the US who rooted for Junior. But to pretend that him getting re-elected is solely the result of the population not giving a shit about body bags, that's overly simplistic.
Such a theory makes for excellent rhetoric, I grant you that.
Hell, even in a bunch countries just supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan the political fallout was bigger.
Is that surprising? Why should it have not been a greater fallout in the other countries? For those governments, the 2nd Gulf War was not their war, so of course the fallout would be greater. I'm not sure what is so surprising about it, or how one can derive logical or moral conclusions from the fallouts or lack thereof in US politics.
Not sure about India though.
India has a lot of reasons (not necessarily valid or practical in the absolute sense of the word, however.) They have a continuous border dispute with Pakistan, a lot of it with unique hardships and challenges posed of high-altitude, mountain warfare. There might or will be eventual border disputes with China (also under mountain warfare conditions.) The is an asymetric terror warfare going on in India.
Robotics, drones and the like, I can see why India would push this. Whether they have the technical wherewithal to do so now, that's a different question. True that India has a lot of problems in terms of quality control, but so did the Japanese. And while here in the US people used to dismiss the Japanese as "makers of cheap cameras", they rose up to the challenge and almost ate our lunch.
All those quality control and process problems, those are implementation details that countries like India will eventually work out. There is nothing other than time from preventing that from happening.
I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
What does that mean anyways? More important metrics would be the number of bugs introduced, number of fixes per month, number of successful deployments. Similarly, across the organization, how do different departments categorize their requirements (what is the percentage of new requirements that are considered as non-negotiable priorities, do departments force requirement changes in the middle of development, etc?)
One can easily run with twice the budget if every other department is dicking around with impossible-to-manage dynamics. Furthermore, budget costs is only one metric. What about savings? You can easily put a number on the cost of a bug defect (downtime, man hours, loss of salary by employees being idle due to downtime, etc.) So a reduction or absence of defects translates to savings by not incurring into them. Then you compare that against budget costs.
If the CFO or you didn't look into that angle in an objective, quantifiable manner, then this is seriously scapegoating.
This has scapegoating written all over it. I could be wrong, but I've seen enough of these (never directly affected but just as an outside observer) to come to this conclusion.
How Do You Prove an IT Manager Is Incompetent?
You don't. You walk away. That has always been my suggestion whenever someone has to come to a point of having to prove his/her manager is incompetent. OTH, your situation is quite unique because you have been tasked with root-causing an IT department's woes. That is quite a pickle you have there.
"I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
Based on what? Your description of the situation hints to some very interesting, poisonous dynamics within that company. Sounds more like scapegoating that problem solving to me.
After just a little scratching, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question. (This has led to countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive.)
Well, this will also tell me that the subordinates are incompetent either. Subordinates should be competent enough to provide sound technical advice. They might not have the middle-to-upper company view to make IT and enterprise architecture decisions (which can lead to unnecessary complexity at the "macro" level.)
However, and barring significant managerial interference and politics, they should be competent enough to keep things efficient, workable and sufficiently simple within their own silos. Rarely you will ever see a situation as the one described being solely the result of an incompetent IT manager.
One could argue that the "parroting" was in essence supporting what his subordinates were passing to him. True that a manager of IT should be capable to tell from the technical factual to the bullshit, at least from a 10k foot view. But he is also expected to rely on his (supposedly) trustworthy subordinates.
IT manager -> strategy.
subordinate -> tactical.
Doesn't matter how good an IT manager is. If the subordinates are shit, no manager will ever be able to compensate for that (and viceversa.) I'm not saying that the IT manager in question is worthless. I'm saying that if the inherent complexity is due to him parroting what his subordinates passed to him, then the subordinates are shit as well.
SORRY. IT. TAKES. TWO. TO. TANGO.
How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department?
You are going to have to prove that key (and yet poor) decisions have been made by this person consistently and continuously. Decisions that are/were self-evidently poor ones. Passing/parroting poor decisions all the way up should be enough to illustrate that. The corollary of this, however, is that you will also be demonstrating that incompetence runs vertically deep.
How can you salvage that. I don't know. But if you lay the blame sorely on the IT manager, then you are not solving, you are scape goating.
The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose,
No. If you think that, I don't believe you are technically competent to make these kind of evaluations. You might not need to know to develop software with the specific stacks being used. But you have to have some type of development knowledge (either from direct experience as a developer or indirectly as, say, a DBA or network administratior, for example.)
but should be able to run a project.
Here we are conflating the role of head of IT with the one of a project manager. This is ok for small companies, but for mid-size companies and up, you better separate the two. If this mid-size company does n