Either your location is very different from mine, or you arrived late to the movie.
I remember a time when theatres had a curtain that was closed when you walked in to the theatre, and only opened at the time the show was supposed to start. Depending on the movie, the show would start immediately, or 1 (maybe 2, but not normally) movie trailer would play, and then the show would start.
Now the theatres don't have a curtain, because they want the screen showing ads the moment you walk in to the theatre. the ads before show time are a mix of ads for other movies, and ads for miscellaneous products and services. Then the lights dim at the scheduled start time, and the volume doubles. We then see 5-10 minutes of ads for miscellaneous products/services, followed by 5-10 more minutes of movie trailers before the show we paid to see starts.
The ratio of ad to movie is actually not all that different from the ad to show ratio on cable TV, they just front load it all.
That's only half of it. The company can still be liable even if they have the correct procedures in place if there's culture of ignoring the procedures, or if management turns a blind eye to employees who violate the procedures. This is to stop a company from having the right procedures on paper, but encouraging employees to break those procedures through things like unrealistic schedules, manager demands, etc.
Thing is, the US is NOT economically dominant, unless the rest of the world agrees that "IP" is economically important. The US has a severe trade deficit with the rest of the world on all physical things, it's only "IP" that saves the US. Which means that the rest of the world could chose to cripple the US economically by simply refusing to agree to all the IP ridiculousness.
Militarily the US is dominant, but would they go to war over copyright? we've never seen any indication of it so far.
You ALWAYS look at what something is capable of doing, not what it is supposed to do. If you were only worried about what things were supposed to do you wouldn't need lock-out procedures for anything really. Those procedures exist specifically to deal with things that are not expected to happen, but could happen anyway.
Why wear a hard hat on a construction site, people aren't expected to drop things on your head. Why have guards over saw blades, you're not expected to put your hand in to them.
If we only did safety for things that were supposed to happen, there'd be a lot more dead workers out there.
Not every robot in the plant, every robot capable of reaching in to the area she was working in. Either lock it out, or place a physical barrier between it and you.
Then they weren't properly trained, or they didn't follow that training.
Safety isn't about what "should" happen under ideal situations, it's about what "can" happen under worst case situations.
If the robot in location 140 never goes in to location 130, then it shouldn't be capable of doing so. If it does sometimes go in to location 130, but wasn't expected to at this time, it should have been physically blocked from doing so, or shut down as well.
high population density helps, but that's on an overall basis, not a case by case basis.
If they can look at individual apartment buildings and decide that the demographic living in that building is too poor, or too likely to chose the competition, they can decide it isn't worth their while.
No, what this is doing is killing the ability of any US company to do business in any civilized jurisdiction in the world.
Companies need to be held accountable to local laws, but you can't make them accountable to 2 separate conflicting laws and then tell them it's their problem.
Heard some horror stories about the local low income high rises getting their FiOS boxes and then residents, some of whom use their net connection for health monitors and are on fixed incomes, being told - FiOS or nothing, here's your much larger bill.
This is where FiOS is a bit confusing to me. Where I live the main telco is going and replacing as much copper as they can with fibre. But that doesn't mean increased bills, only increased capabilities. The telco is selling the service level, not the technology it's on. For example, If you're on 25 meg internet on xDSL, and switch to 25 meg internet on fibre, your bill stays the same. The only difference is that while 25 meg might have been the highest speed you could get on the xDSL, you now have the option to upgrade to a 250meg symetrical connection on fibre if you want (and are willing to pay the extra for a connection that's 10 times the speed you had before)
In fact, when you call in for service, you don't even get to chose which technology you get, the telco does, you simply say you want X service tier, and they provide it using whichever technology they have available.
But the reason for this is clear, while there is a large up front cost to installing the fibre network, it benefits the Telco in a bunch of ways, first of all there's the increased revenue from the people who do want the higher speed, but beyond that, there's also the fact that the fibre network is far more reliable and requires less maintenance in the future.
So why on earth is Verizon charging different amounts for the same service on different technology? (oh wait... USA... Monopoly... Capitalism... Shareholders.... rah rah rah)
If the machine is NEVER supposed to work in that area, then it shouldn't physically be able to get there. If the machine wasn't supposed to work in that area AT THAT TIME, then it should have either been powered down, or physically blocked from getting there.
The problem is that some idiot relied on "should" when they should instead have been looking at "can"
When designing safety procedures you NEVER look at what a system should do in a given set of circumstances, you always look at what the system is capable of doing under any circumstances, and act accordingly.
If that robot sometimes goes in to that cell, but shouldn't decide to right now, you don't take that as good enough, you think about what you need to do to stop it from doing so no matter what. So that could be a barrier that is capable of physically stopping the robot, or it could be that the other robot also needs to be powered down for this procedure. Either way you design the safety procedures assuming worst case, not best case.
The laws on worker safety in most jurisdictions are pretty well thought out in that regard. The only way the employer would avoid responsibility is if they can prove that the worker was properly trained in the proper procedures, and that the corporate culture encouraged them to use them. If the employer can't prove the worker was properly trained, or is known not to enforce their safety procedures, then the employer will be held responsible.
All that said, it seems like the lawsuit is trying to blame the manufacturers of the robots, and that's far less likely to succeed, unless they can prove that the documentation provided to the company by the manufacturers did not include the correct information on how to safely de-energize the machines, which seems highly unlikely.
And yet an action that it was known to be fully capable of doing under other circumstances.
It doesn't matter if it *should* do the thing at the time, what matters is whether it *can* do the thing at any time. And if the answer is yes, it should have been subject to lock out-tag out.
I don't think you understand the concept of "lock out - tag out".
If the robot has no power, it can't hurt anyone. No further "test cases" required.
This is maintenance 101, you never work on any dangerous system without first personally turning off every power supply to it, and putting a padlock on the switch that only you have the key to, along with a tag with your name and contact information in case anyone has questions.
The question here isn't about what test cases the robot passed, the question is about what safety precautions did the worker take to ensure that no matter what the robot did they wouldn't be harmed.
Now as to fault, there are 2 possibilities here. A worker who didn't follow all proper safety procedures, or a company who failed to properly train the worker on those safety procedures. But in no case is the robot, nor it's creators, responsible.
This is actually completely consistent with the Kim Dot Com case. Both are cases of the USA completely ignoring jurisdiction and imposing their laws and enforcement on a worldwide basis with no concern for the country they are actually in.
The question becomes, just how much longer will the rest of the world bend over backwards to accommodate the US in these matters?
And that's exactly the issue. They get the choice of violating a court order in their own country, or breaking the law in another country they do business in. There's no right answer for them.
Too bad the USA has never understood the concept of "jurisdiction"...
We're almost there already. Due to the US's known lack of any privacy protections, many areas of our business are prohibited by law from using any provider who will store customer information within the borders of the US. Currently we do business with companies like Google, only if they can provide guarantees that all customer data will be stored outside of the US in jurisdictions with actual privacy protections. If this precedent stands, then a re-interpretation of the same law would almost certainly require that we also stop using any provider with any US presence.
Here's the thing though, it's actually an impossible order for Google to follow. They end up with a choice. Violate a court order in their own country, or break the law in another country they do business in. There's no right answer for them here.
Of course the USA is famous worldwide for having no clue about the concept of jurisdiction...
You are correct, but the difference is that it DOES depend where your typo is, whereas with IPv4 it almost doesn't depend where your typo is as it's still pretty much guaranteed to point the finger at someone.
Additionally, if your typo is near the end of the IP in IPv6, the odds are good that you'll be pointing at the same customer, something not true in IPv4
Power meters aren't handled by the retailer, they're handled by the wires service provider. the part without any competition (unless you have multiple power lines running to your house and you can chose which one to connect to, and I don't know anywhere in the world that does that)
So yes, they can skim 10-20% (or more) off every power bill, and no, you can't change to the "competition"
A competitive electricity market is a farce, it just adds more layers of administration in to the system, it doesn't introduce any actual competition for the end user.
That depends. If you're talking the 45 year old who has sex with a 6 year old, then yes. You're absolutely correct. But that's not where the definitions end, and there's a lot more grey area involved. For example, an 18 year old having consensual sex with their 17 year old partner is committing a sex crime in several jurisdictions (adjust for the cut-off ages in various areas). Is that "physical and psychological abuse"?
The issue with "sex crimes" is that they are treated on an emotional level before a practical one, with no consideration for circumstances, and they WILL ruin your life if you're even accused, no trial or conviction necessary.
On the bright side, with so many addresses, the chance of an accidental IP collision with a different customer is decreased rather significantly, so you're less likely to screw over the wrong person if you do.
We don't need causation. DST is a pain. If there's a good reason to use it, we should do so, but in this case the absence of evidence FOR it, should be used as evidence AGAINST it.
We have run an exceptionally long trial of this system, there have been zero proven benefits, there's no reason to continue implementing it.
Slashdot Mirror
only ads for upcoming movies?
Either your location is very different from mine, or you arrived late to the movie.
I remember a time when theatres had a curtain that was closed when you walked in to the theatre, and only opened at the time the show was supposed to start. Depending on the movie, the show would start immediately, or 1 (maybe 2, but not normally) movie trailer would play, and then the show would start.
Now the theatres don't have a curtain, because they want the screen showing ads the moment you walk in to the theatre. the ads before show time are a mix of ads for other movies, and ads for miscellaneous products and services. Then the lights dim at the scheduled start time, and the volume doubles. We then see 5-10 minutes of ads for miscellaneous products/services, followed by 5-10 more minutes of movie trailers before the show we paid to see starts.
The ratio of ad to movie is actually not all that different from the ad to show ratio on cable TV, they just front load it all.
That's only half of it. The company can still be liable even if they have the correct procedures in place if there's culture of ignoring the procedures, or if management turns a blind eye to employees who violate the procedures. This is to stop a company from having the right procedures on paper, but encouraging employees to break those procedures through things like unrealistic schedules, manager demands, etc.
Thing is, the US is NOT economically dominant, unless the rest of the world agrees that "IP" is economically important.
The US has a severe trade deficit with the rest of the world on all physical things, it's only "IP" that saves the US. Which means that the rest of the world could chose to cripple the US economically by simply refusing to agree to all the IP ridiculousness.
Militarily the US is dominant, but would they go to war over copyright? we've never seen any indication of it so far.
Don't use "expected" use "capable of".
You ALWAYS look at what something is capable of doing, not what it is supposed to do. If you were only worried about what things were supposed to do you wouldn't need lock-out procedures for anything really. Those procedures exist specifically to deal with things that are not expected to happen, but could happen anyway.
Why wear a hard hat on a construction site, people aren't expected to drop things on your head. Why have guards over saw blades, you're not expected to put your hand in to them.
If we only did safety for things that were supposed to happen, there'd be a lot more dead workers out there.
Not every robot in the plant, every robot capable of reaching in to the area she was working in.
Either lock it out, or place a physical barrier between it and you.
Then they weren't properly trained, or they didn't follow that training.
Safety isn't about what "should" happen under ideal situations, it's about what "can" happen under worst case situations.
If the robot in location 140 never goes in to location 130, then it shouldn't be capable of doing so. If it does sometimes go in to location 130, but wasn't expected to at this time, it should have been physically blocked from doing so, or shut down as well.
This is safety 101 here, it's not complicated.
high population density helps, but that's on an overall basis, not a case by case basis.
If they can look at individual apartment buildings and decide that the demographic living in that building is too poor, or too likely to chose the competition, they can decide it isn't worth their while.
I'd have expected the Americans to use covert means to get the data they want and to pretend to play nicely in public.
The Americans gave up pretending to play nice years ago, it's not like anyone has believed them recently anyway.
No, what this is doing is killing the ability of any US company to do business in any civilized jurisdiction in the world.
Companies need to be held accountable to local laws, but you can't make them accountable to 2 separate conflicting laws and then tell them it's their problem.
"should not have been able to move" and yet did, tells me it had power, which means it wasn't locked out.
You don't lock out only the things that *should* happen, you lock out all the things that *can* happen.
That's simple, their accountants have determined that the cost to provision the service is likely to exceed the revenue generated from doing so.
That's not a good excuse for breaking their contract, but that's likely what's happened.
Heard some horror stories about the local low income high rises getting their FiOS boxes and then residents, some of whom use their net connection for health monitors and are on fixed incomes, being told - FiOS or nothing, here's your much larger bill.
This is where FiOS is a bit confusing to me. Where I live the main telco is going and replacing as much copper as they can with fibre. But that doesn't mean increased bills, only increased capabilities. The telco is selling the service level, not the technology it's on.
For example, If you're on 25 meg internet on xDSL, and switch to 25 meg internet on fibre, your bill stays the same. The only difference is that while 25 meg might have been the highest speed you could get on the xDSL, you now have the option to upgrade to a 250meg symetrical connection on fibre if you want (and are willing to pay the extra for a connection that's 10 times the speed you had before)
In fact, when you call in for service, you don't even get to chose which technology you get, the telco does, you simply say you want X service tier, and they provide it using whichever technology they have available.
But the reason for this is clear, while there is a large up front cost to installing the fibre network, it benefits the Telco in a bunch of ways, first of all there's the increased revenue from the people who do want the higher speed, but beyond that, there's also the fact that the fibre network is far more reliable and requires less maintenance in the future.
So why on earth is Verizon charging different amounts for the same service on different technology? (oh wait... USA... Monopoly... Capitalism... Shareholders.... rah rah rah)
If the machine is NEVER supposed to work in that area, then it shouldn't physically be able to get there.
If the machine wasn't supposed to work in that area AT THAT TIME, then it should have either been powered down, or physically blocked from getting there.
This is safety 101.
The problem is that some idiot relied on "should" when they should instead have been looking at "can"
When designing safety procedures you NEVER look at what a system should do in a given set of circumstances, you always look at what the system is capable of doing under any circumstances, and act accordingly.
If that robot sometimes goes in to that cell, but shouldn't decide to right now, you don't take that as good enough, you think about what you need to do to stop it from doing so no matter what. So that could be a barrier that is capable of physically stopping the robot, or it could be that the other robot also needs to be powered down for this procedure. Either way you design the safety procedures assuming worst case, not best case.
The laws on worker safety in most jurisdictions are pretty well thought out in that regard. The only way the employer would avoid responsibility is if they can prove that the worker was properly trained in the proper procedures, and that the corporate culture encouraged them to use them.
If the employer can't prove the worker was properly trained, or is known not to enforce their safety procedures, then the employer will be held responsible.
All that said, it seems like the lawsuit is trying to blame the manufacturers of the robots, and that's far less likely to succeed, unless they can prove that the documentation provided to the company by the manufacturers did not include the correct information on how to safely de-energize the machines, which seems highly unlikely.
And yet an action that it was known to be fully capable of doing under other circumstances.
It doesn't matter if it *should* do the thing at the time, what matters is whether it *can* do the thing at any time. And if the answer is yes, it should have been subject to lock out-tag out.
I don't think you understand the concept of "lock out - tag out".
If the robot has no power, it can't hurt anyone. No further "test cases" required.
This is maintenance 101, you never work on any dangerous system without first personally turning off every power supply to it, and putting a padlock on the switch that only you have the key to, along with a tag with your name and contact information in case anyone has questions.
The question here isn't about what test cases the robot passed, the question is about what safety precautions did the worker take to ensure that no matter what the robot did they wouldn't be harmed.
Now as to fault, there are 2 possibilities here. A worker who didn't follow all proper safety procedures, or a company who failed to properly train the worker on those safety procedures. But in no case is the robot, nor it's creators, responsible.
This is actually completely consistent with the Kim Dot Com case.
Both are cases of the USA completely ignoring jurisdiction and imposing their laws and enforcement on a worldwide basis with no concern for the country they are actually in.
The question becomes, just how much longer will the rest of the world bend over backwards to accommodate the US in these matters?
And that's exactly the issue. They get the choice of violating a court order in their own country, or breaking the law in another country they do business in. There's no right answer for them.
Too bad the USA has never understood the concept of "jurisdiction"...
We're almost there already.
Due to the US's known lack of any privacy protections, many areas of our business are prohibited by law from using any provider who will store customer information within the borders of the US. Currently we do business with companies like Google, only if they can provide guarantees that all customer data will be stored outside of the US in jurisdictions with actual privacy protections.
If this precedent stands, then a re-interpretation of the same law would almost certainly require that we also stop using any provider with any US presence.
Here's the thing though, it's actually an impossible order for Google to follow. They end up with a choice. Violate a court order in their own country, or break the law in another country they do business in. There's no right answer for them here.
Of course the USA is famous worldwide for having no clue about the concept of jurisdiction...
You are correct, but the difference is that it DOES depend where your typo is, whereas with IPv4 it almost doesn't depend where your typo is as it's still pretty much guaranteed to point the finger at someone.
Additionally, if your typo is near the end of the IP in IPv6, the odds are good that you'll be pointing at the same customer, something not true in IPv4
Power meters aren't handled by the retailer, they're handled by the wires service provider. the part without any competition (unless you have multiple power lines running to your house and you can chose which one to connect to, and I don't know anywhere in the world that does that)
So yes, they can skim 10-20% (or more) off every power bill, and no, you can't change to the "competition"
A competitive electricity market is a farce, it just adds more layers of administration in to the system, it doesn't introduce any actual competition for the end user.
That depends. If you're talking the 45 year old who has sex with a 6 year old, then yes. You're absolutely correct. But that's not where the definitions end, and there's a lot more grey area involved. For example, an 18 year old having consensual sex with their 17 year old partner is committing a sex crime in several jurisdictions (adjust for the cut-off ages in various areas). Is that "physical and psychological abuse"?
The issue with "sex crimes" is that they are treated on an emotional level before a practical one, with no consideration for circumstances, and they WILL ruin your life if you're even accused, no trial or conviction necessary.
On the bright side, with so many addresses, the chance of an accidental IP collision with a different customer is decreased rather significantly, so you're less likely to screw over the wrong person if you do.
We don't need causation.
DST is a pain. If there's a good reason to use it, we should do so, but in this case the absence of evidence FOR it, should be used as evidence AGAINST it.
We have run an exceptionally long trial of this system, there have been zero proven benefits, there's no reason to continue implementing it.