I would be realy hesitant to apply for work with a company sporting a "corporate dungeon master"... Sounds like being 5 minutes late for work means it's the thumbscrews for you. And "downsizing" might mean exactly what it says...
Having an avatar interact with other avatars is psychologically quite different from interacting with someone in front of you.
Exactly, and that is why the Google guy has a point. In the future, especially in a globalised yet CO2-lean world, contact with others will increasingly be virtual. If that is what you'll have to deal with in the future, you will have to learn the necesary social skills for virtual meetings. Games are one place to pick up such skills... though I expect the advice to 15 years olds to play such games in order to pick up these new social skills is a but superfluous; kids of that age will most likely gain those skills as they go along, without having to think about them much.
World of Warcraft makes sure you rewards and the amount of what is going is own is fast. Real life there could be weeks/months/years/decades before your work pays off.
And that is exactly the point of business simulations: quick reward for success, and mistakes quickly coming to bite you on the nose, so that you can immediately see what went well and what didn't work, then try again. Instant feedback. A well-run class on teamworking will give you more relevant experience on working in teams in 3 days than 1-2 years of actual team working might.
A year or so ago, I helped my client (a large corporation) look into using virtual worlds and MMOs as platforms for learning and collaboration. I also play MMOs, which helped. And I am familiar with the notion put forth by this professor; companies like IBM have already done some research into the subject. Anyway...
WoW and similar games can indeed hone or help assess leadership skills.... but only with people who already play Wow. For newbies, the time to learn play the game and train up to a level where there are meaningful leadership and teaming aspects (raids) is largely wasted. There are already better business simulations out there that are tailored to business situations. For instance: running a raid organisation is closer to leading a group of volunteers than to managing a corporate team. Different objectives, different leadership style. If you are looking for leadership and team working simulations that can be done virtually, I'd look for existing p&p business simulation games and port them to a platform like Second Life. The big advantage being that such a simulation hardly requires any training to work the simulation itself; after a short newbie obstacle course you can jump straight into the game itself.
Virtual platforms offer a range of possibilities for new ways of learning, especially experiential learning in areas like HSE, leadership, self assessment and team working, but sadly there still is very little training material in virtual environments out there. We're proceeding to roll our own. WoW is far too complex a game and far too removed from business relevant objectives to serve as an effective learning platform.
Putting WoW skillz on your resume? Too early, perhaps. But... if someone is leading a consistently successful raid team, I would readily assume that they have leadership skills worth looking into.
Acording to the aztec, their Tlatoani Ahuizotl, persoally killed 84,400 prisioners in four days using a stone knife...
For copyright violations? Harsh...
Re:How to play MULE, for newbies.
on
M.U.L.E. Is Back
·
· Score: 1
Next phase is selling/buying. You need to secure energy, if you don't have, and food, if you want to place mules.
I loved the way they implemented the commodity trading phase! Each player first chooses to buy or sell, then the sellers appear at the top of the screen and the buyers at the bottom. Sellers can move down (lowering their price), buyers move up (raising the bid), and when the highest bidder meets the lowest seller in the middle, they begin trading until they run out of money or goods, or until one of them steps back. In rounds with only one seller of a scarce commodity, you'd have a literal run on the market
Ahh yes, catholic mass. Kneeling in front of another man with your mouth open. Not at all gay! (Bill Maher)
Re:idiocy? Incompetence?
on
Y2.01K
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Re. point 1: Coding is complex, and newbies turning out poor code doesn't mean they are morons or poorly trained. A lot of the finesse of proper software engineering comes through hard-won experience, and quess what: rarely do we give those newbies a chance to gain that experience.
What I am talking about is mentoring and code reviews, two things that seem to have gone the way of the dodo. "Catch errors early" has always been a good coder's maxim; but there really is no excuse to have a newbie's code go unscrutinised. Catch their errors early so you can both have a good laugh about it, and he can fix the error at his leisure. If such errors come up during final testing (or worse: after release), you're too late. Instead of a valuable lesson you'll have an expensive embarassment on your hands.
That last paragraph sums up exactly what is wrong with a lot of companies these days, what happens when you let the MBAs and the bean counters run the place. Cutting corners like this, but also outsourcing or the practise of firing staff and hiring contractors, sure looks good on the balance sheet... often because the cost is the same or higher but it'll be OpEx instead of CapEx, or comes out of a different budget. The truth is that in many cases these things end up costing the company dearly.
Remember what they say about accountants: they know the cost of everything, but they don't have a clue about the value.
It seems unthinkable that this could happen in western democracies, but it is only a matter of time. [...] It's not politically feasible for most western governments to come out and take such steps directly, but it'll be rolled out slowly over time "for our own good", with each step along the way being justifiable to protect us against something that everyone agrees is bad.
It is close to happening in many countries. Demands of various parties that anonymous access or even anonymously posting on Usenet or webboards is to be abolished, are being met with increased approval. Everybody has their reason: fighting crime or terrorism, uncovering kiddie porn, finding people making anonymous threats on blogs, illegal sharing of media, etc.
And what the voters who stupidly nod their heads at these suggestions do not realise is that the law already provides for measures to uncover someone's identity through their ISP (which in the vast majority of cases will be succesful)... if there is cause to investigate that person. What the legislators want is to not have to do their homework, and be allowed to always know who everyone is on the Net. Not an attractive prospect... I live in a relatively free country, but even here I would not want to partake in certain discussions with my full name disclosed, which is right up the politicians' alley since they prefer to have these "discussions" in respectable newspapers (i.e. heavily moderated and censored).
From what I read, sales for the more unknown artists who do not get as much airtime as the big stars are also up, especially online sales. And it makes sense, too.
I don't mind paying for music. I don't even mind paying for music if the money goes to some rich asshole like Bono... he wrote it, he deserves to make a buck. All the music I've gotten during the past 10 years or so is from legal sources. Why? Not because I suddenly grew a conscience, but because the legal alternative is now almost as good as illegal sites such as AllofMP3, when it comes to quality and convenience. More importantly, many legal downloads are now DRM-free.
I only wish the movie industry would do the same, and I'd gladly pay for a legal movie site like AllofMP3, with a choice of formats and compression rates, and no DRM. For once I actually agree with our government (in the Netherlands), whose stance on illegal downloads is that they will crack down on it, but not before the movie industry provides a reasonable legal alternative. And the current offering of streaming to proprietary players only, with no means to watch content on anything other than a Windows PC (no Popcorn Hours, no iPhones), is not acceptable by any standard.
I don't think many musicians are hurting because of downloads (and there's plenty of research to back that statement up). I do believe that it's the established musicians like Bono and the record labels who are hurting, because their business model is a dinosaur from last century. Bono, pfft... he'd jump at a chance to flog a few records online before he made it big... and now he's made it so big that the great humanitarian decided that he doesn't want to pay taxes like the little people, and subsequently incorporated U2 in the Netherlands (which is a tax haven for foreign companies).
Kiddy porn is a poor analogy but it is an extremely effective one to associate with whatever it is you hate. In the eyes of the general public, reasonable arguments regarding DRM, privacy, probable cause, innocent until proven guilty, or any human right, vanish like a fart in the wind whenever someone mentions kiddie porn. When someone plays that card, sniff around a little and you'll like as not smell a rat.
While it appears that for some reason this scene is dominated by Nigerian scammers, they don't always operate out of their own country. Amsterdam and London are popular bases for these scammers and they get arrested there all the time, sometimes with the help of Nigerian police.
Amsterdam cops bust 419 ring, arrest 52
I see this as a perfect example of people trying to base a business model on trying to convince people they need your product rather then making a product they already want
SAP seem to do pretty well on that business model...
It's a cultural thing. I am sure you have heard the following line in one movie or another, where the father laments his son's career choice: "You could have been a doctor or a lawyer!" This line is used so often it's almost a cliche, and that's no surprise: those professions, and increasingly the MBA-type stuff as well, are considered by many, many people as positions that come with wealth and respect. Conversely, engineers and scientists are notoriously lacking in respect from society at large. Students leaving high school and enrolling in a technical university are sometimes still being met with a mix of disdain and pity, something that would never happen to anyone enrolling in law school. If you have a choice, this is just one of the reasons why you might not choose a career in science... social status plays a bigger role in people's choices than one might think.
There are two studies showing these results, that I am familiar with. One in the New Scientist, where they took into account all environmental costs: acreage and construction of track, stations, but most certainly of the airports as well. And taking up space might be bad for us but it is not in itself environmentally unfriendly.
The other study was the one published by the RIVM agency. They looked at energy consumption and CO2 emissions per trip, assuming an 80% occupancy of modern versions of the vehicles you'd typically find on such trips. From memory, on longer trips the study assessed fuel efficiency per person-kilometer as follows from best to worst: cars (remember they assume 80% occupancy which is 3 guys), regular trains, airplanes, high-speed trains. When looking at emissions, the numbers for airplanes and conventionally-powered high-speed trains were about the same; for trains powered by nuclear or solar plants they get a lot better of course.
But you're right in that trains can actually be powered by nukes, and in most of France this will be the case. Plus, you will not have to suffer the indignities that you'll be subjected to at the airport. For Amsterdam to Paris or Marseille, the TGV will be a good choice. But if you go to Madrid or Milan, flying might well be a green choice, and certainly not one you need to be ashamed of. (Of course staying at home is even better, but not as much fun...)
Plus anyone who delays the project quickly became an involuntary organ donor.
That's the kicker, isn't it? Over here in the Netherlands, we have finally come to a decision, I think, perhaps, to go ahead and extend the A4 around Delft to connect to the A20 at Rotterdam. This concerns building a few miles of road for which the grade already has been laid (if you check Google maps). This is a decision that has taken 40 years, and I really wish I was kidding... Most infrastructure projects are decided upon a lot quicker but most will still take years, and when construction finally gets underway, it will be put on hold again for any crappy rare-ass beetle that turns up at the site. (Of course if the construction guys find the beetle first, it means the immediate extinction of said beetle). Somehow I suspect you don't get a lot of that in China
If the difference in fuel efficiency is considerable, then maybe the US should consider building something like that?
Fuel efficiency on long hauls might be disappointing. Several studies have shown that on short trips (up to around 800km), high-speed trains beat airplanes on emissions and fuel consumption. On long haul trips. not so much. An airplane burns a metric crapload of fuel on takeoff, but uses decidedly less to cruise, and on trips over 1000km or so it is actually more environmentally friendly than the high-speed train... unless that train gets its power from nuclear power plants (which is the case for the French TGV). One of the studies confirming this was conducted by the Dutch RIVM agency, which is generally very much in the environmentalist camp (and thus -automatically- predispositioned against anything not public transport).
These days though, phones are shifting towards being a mini computer that just happens to make calls, such as the N900 for instance.
That remark would be worth mod points if I had any left to spend. And for a very long time, that is something that a few companies, most notably Nokia, just didn't get when they designed their line of smartphones. It was as if they started with a mobile phone and added PDA-like features to it. The better smart phones started with a PDA and added phone functionality to that (which, if you already have a PDA, isn't all that much). Even Windows Mobile phones did far better in that respect than Nokia, for a good while.
For me it's the opposite. I make frequent use of many of my phone's features: the browser, navigation, calendar/todo/notebook features, email, and so on... but I actually don't make calls all that often. Can they make me a cell phone without the phone (but with mobile data)?
Megapixels won't make up for crappy optics. And by "crappy" I mean the best the manufacturers can manage in such a tiny space. Under good conditions, modern phones actually make decent pictures.
There's a bit more choice these days as well, with a few companies (at least SonyEricsson...) offering phones with better optics, making the device thicker but resulting in picture quality that comes pretty close to that of compact happysnap cameras... good for people who like to always have a decent camera on them.
Not just that, it works on all levels... Men seem to be more willing to work silly hours for pizza than women. Men are also more inclined to pretty much give up their personal life to go into higher management, whereas women prefer to forego a career in favour of working part-time.
Men and women tend to make different choices; I don't know if it's Nature or Nurture, but smarts or stupidity have very little to do with it.
Sure sounds like it. It sounds a little like one of those Susan Boyle "surprise talent" discoveries, where they pick up someone whose singing/acting/movie editing skills/composing/whatever skills are not that much above average and don't really warrant big-ticket producer attention... except for the fact that they've got a hell of a compelling rags-to-riches story behind them.
It's the same problem the police and other officials have in many countries, including my own. The problem is not that they are idiots (mostly they are not), or that they have powers they shouldn't have (there are legitimate scenarios for them to use those powers).
The problem is that they can abuse those powers, secure in the knowledge that such abuse will have no repercussions whatsoever. It's easy and sometimes tempting for border security, police or anyone wielding power granted by the government, to pick on someone, even for trivial reasons. Then they'll just make up a convenient excuse, knowing that their mates will back them up, and in the unlikely case an unfavourable report does emerge, their chief will conveniently lose it behind a filing cabinet. Any country has its horror stories about government officials, but when does one ever hear about outright abuse of power ever earning more than a reprimand?
The rule for government officials should be: "with great power comes great responsibility". If it is necessary for them to have such powers, they should also be certain that any wilful abuse will earn them a dismissal at least, and criminal charges in more serious cases. Instead, it's one hand washing the other all round.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be realy hesitant to apply for work with a company sporting a "corporate dungeon master"... Sounds like being 5 minutes late for work means it's the thumbscrews for you. And "downsizing" might mean exactly what it says...
Exactly, and that is why the Google guy has a point. In the future, especially in a globalised yet CO2-lean world, contact with others will increasingly be virtual. If that is what you'll have to deal with in the future, you will have to learn the necesary social skills for virtual meetings. Games are one place to pick up such skills... though I expect the advice to 15 years olds to play such games in order to pick up these new social skills is a but superfluous; kids of that age will most likely gain those skills as they go along, without having to think about them much.
And that is exactly the point of business simulations: quick reward for success, and mistakes quickly coming to bite you on the nose, so that you can immediately see what went well and what didn't work, then try again. Instant feedback. A well-run class on teamworking will give you more relevant experience on working in teams in 3 days than 1-2 years of actual team working might.
A year or so ago, I helped my client (a large corporation) look into using virtual worlds and MMOs as platforms for learning and collaboration. I also play MMOs, which helped. And I am familiar with the notion put forth by this professor; companies like IBM have already done some research into the subject. Anyway...
WoW and similar games can indeed hone or help assess leadership skills.... but only with people who already play Wow. For newbies, the time to learn play the game and train up to a level where there are meaningful leadership and teaming aspects (raids) is largely wasted. There are already better business simulations out there that are tailored to business situations. For instance: running a raid organisation is closer to leading a group of volunteers than to managing a corporate team. Different objectives, different leadership style. If you are looking for leadership and team working simulations that can be done virtually, I'd look for existing p&p business simulation games and port them to a platform like Second Life. The big advantage being that such a simulation hardly requires any training to work the simulation itself; after a short newbie obstacle course you can jump straight into the game itself.
Virtual platforms offer a range of possibilities for new ways of learning, especially experiential learning in areas like HSE, leadership, self assessment and team working, but sadly there still is very little training material in virtual environments out there. We're proceeding to roll our own. WoW is far too complex a game and far too removed from business relevant objectives to serve as an effective learning platform.
Putting WoW skillz on your resume? Too early, perhaps. But... if someone is leading a consistently successful raid team, I would readily assume that they have leadership skills worth looking into.
So this thing is like typical Monster cable. Better than the vanilla product, but way overpriced.
Acording to the aztec, their Tlatoani Ahuizotl, persoally killed 84,400 prisioners in four days using a stone knife...
For copyright violations? Harsh...
I loved the way they implemented the commodity trading phase! Each player first chooses to buy or sell, then the sellers appear at the top of the screen and the buyers at the bottom. Sellers can move down (lowering their price), buyers move up (raising the bid), and when the highest bidder meets the lowest seller in the middle, they begin trading until they run out of money or goods, or until one of them steps back. In rounds with only one seller of a scarce commodity, you'd have a literal run on the market
Ahh yes, catholic mass. Kneeling in front of another man with your mouth open. Not at all gay! (Bill Maher)
Re. point 1: Coding is complex, and newbies turning out poor code doesn't mean they are morons or poorly trained. A lot of the finesse of proper software engineering comes through hard-won experience, and quess what: rarely do we give those newbies a chance to gain that experience.
What I am talking about is mentoring and code reviews, two things that seem to have gone the way of the dodo. "Catch errors early" has always been a good coder's maxim; but there really is no excuse to have a newbie's code go unscrutinised. Catch their errors early so you can both have a good laugh about it, and he can fix the error at his leisure. If such errors come up during final testing (or worse: after release), you're too late. Instead of a valuable lesson you'll have an expensive embarassment on your hands.
That last paragraph sums up exactly what is wrong with a lot of companies these days, what happens when you let the MBAs and the bean counters run the place. Cutting corners like this, but also outsourcing or the practise of firing staff and hiring contractors, sure looks good on the balance sheet... often because the cost is the same or higher but it'll be OpEx instead of CapEx, or comes out of a different budget. The truth is that in many cases these things end up costing the company dearly.
Remember what they say about accountants: they know the cost of everything, but they don't have a clue about the value.
It seems unthinkable that this could happen in western democracies, but it is only a matter of time.
[...]
It's not politically feasible for most western governments to come out and take such steps directly, but it'll be rolled out slowly over time "for our own good", with each step along the way being justifiable to protect us against something that everyone agrees is bad.
It is close to happening in many countries. Demands of various parties that anonymous access or even anonymously posting on Usenet or webboards is to be abolished, are being met with increased approval. Everybody has their reason: fighting crime or terrorism, uncovering kiddie porn, finding people making anonymous threats on blogs, illegal sharing of media, etc.
And what the voters who stupidly nod their heads at these suggestions do not realise is that the law already provides for measures to uncover someone's identity through their ISP (which in the vast majority of cases will be succesful)... if there is cause to investigate that person. What the legislators want is to not have to do their homework, and be allowed to always know who everyone is on the Net. Not an attractive prospect... I live in a relatively free country, but even here I would not want to partake in certain discussions with my full name disclosed, which is right up the politicians' alley since they prefer to have these "discussions" in respectable newspapers (i.e. heavily moderated and censored).
25 years? I give it 10.
From what I read, sales for the more unknown artists who do not get as much airtime as the big stars are also up, especially online sales. And it makes sense, too.
I don't mind paying for music. I don't even mind paying for music if the money goes to some rich asshole like Bono... he wrote it, he deserves to make a buck. All the music I've gotten during the past 10 years or so is from legal sources. Why? Not because I suddenly grew a conscience, but because the legal alternative is now almost as good as illegal sites such as AllofMP3, when it comes to quality and convenience. More importantly, many legal downloads are now DRM-free.
I only wish the movie industry would do the same, and I'd gladly pay for a legal movie site like AllofMP3, with a choice of formats and compression rates, and no DRM. For once I actually agree with our government (in the Netherlands), whose stance on illegal downloads is that they will crack down on it, but not before the movie industry provides a reasonable legal alternative. And the current offering of streaming to proprietary players only, with no means to watch content on anything other than a Windows PC (no Popcorn Hours, no iPhones), is not acceptable by any standard.
I don't think many musicians are hurting because of downloads (and there's plenty of research to back that statement up). I do believe that it's the established musicians like Bono and the record labels who are hurting, because their business model is a dinosaur from last century. Bono, pfft... he'd jump at a chance to flog a few records online before he made it big... and now he's made it so big that the great humanitarian decided that he doesn't want to pay taxes like the little people, and subsequently incorporated U2 in the Netherlands (which is a tax haven for foreign companies).
Kiddy porn is a poor analogy but it is an extremely effective one to associate with whatever it is you hate. In the eyes of the general public, reasonable arguments regarding DRM, privacy, probable cause, innocent until proven guilty, or any human right, vanish like a fart in the wind whenever someone mentions kiddie porn. When someone plays that card, sniff around a little and you'll like as not smell a rat.
While it appears that for some reason this scene is dominated by Nigerian scammers, they don't always operate out of their own country. Amsterdam and London are popular bases for these scammers and they get arrested there all the time, sometimes with the help of Nigerian police. Amsterdam cops bust 419 ring, arrest 52
I see this as a perfect example of people trying to base a business model on trying to convince people they need your product rather then making a product they already want
SAP seem to do pretty well on that business model...
It's a cultural thing. I am sure you have heard the following line in one movie or another, where the father laments his son's career choice: "You could have been a doctor or a lawyer!" This line is used so often it's almost a cliche, and that's no surprise: those professions, and increasingly the MBA-type stuff as well, are considered by many, many people as positions that come with wealth and respect. Conversely, engineers and scientists are notoriously lacking in respect from society at large. Students leaving high school and enrolling in a technical university are sometimes still being met with a mix of disdain and pity, something that would never happen to anyone enrolling in law school. If you have a choice, this is just one of the reasons why you might not choose a career in science... social status plays a bigger role in people's choices than one might think.
There are two studies showing these results, that I am familiar with. One in the New Scientist, where they took into account all environmental costs: acreage and construction of track, stations, but most certainly of the airports as well. And taking up space might be bad for us but it is not in itself environmentally unfriendly.
The other study was the one published by the RIVM agency. They looked at energy consumption and CO2 emissions per trip, assuming an 80% occupancy of modern versions of the vehicles you'd typically find on such trips. From memory, on longer trips the study assessed fuel efficiency per person-kilometer as follows from best to worst: cars (remember they assume 80% occupancy which is 3 guys), regular trains, airplanes, high-speed trains. When looking at emissions, the numbers for airplanes and conventionally-powered high-speed trains were about the same; for trains powered by nuclear or solar plants they get a lot better of course.
But you're right in that trains can actually be powered by nukes, and in most of France this will be the case. Plus, you will not have to suffer the indignities that you'll be subjected to at the airport. For Amsterdam to Paris or Marseille, the TGV will be a good choice. But if you go to Madrid or Milan, flying might well be a green choice, and certainly not one you need to be ashamed of. (Of course staying at home is even better, but not as much fun...)
Plus anyone who delays the project quickly became an involuntary organ donor.
That's the kicker, isn't it? Over here in the Netherlands, we have finally come to a decision, I think, perhaps, to go ahead and extend the A4 around Delft to connect to the A20 at Rotterdam. This concerns building a few miles of road for which the grade already has been laid (if you check Google maps). This is a decision that has taken 40 years, and I really wish I was kidding... Most infrastructure projects are decided upon a lot quicker but most will still take years, and when construction finally gets underway, it will be put on hold again for any crappy rare-ass beetle that turns up at the site. (Of course if the construction guys find the beetle first, it means the immediate extinction of said beetle). Somehow I suspect you don't get a lot of that in China
Fuel efficiency on long hauls might be disappointing. Several studies have shown that on short trips (up to around 800km), high-speed trains beat airplanes on emissions and fuel consumption. On long haul trips. not so much. An airplane burns a metric crapload of fuel on takeoff, but uses decidedly less to cruise, and on trips over 1000km or so it is actually more environmentally friendly than the high-speed train... unless that train gets its power from nuclear power plants (which is the case for the French TGV). One of the studies confirming this was conducted by the Dutch RIVM agency, which is generally very much in the environmentalist camp (and thus -automatically- predispositioned against anything not public transport).
These days though, phones are shifting towards being a mini computer that just happens to make calls, such as the N900 for instance.
That remark would be worth mod points if I had any left to spend. And for a very long time, that is something that a few companies, most notably Nokia, just didn't get when they designed their line of smartphones. It was as if they started with a mobile phone and added PDA-like features to it. The better smart phones started with a PDA and added phone functionality to that (which, if you already have a PDA, isn't all that much). Even Windows Mobile phones did far better in that respect than Nokia, for a good while.
For me it's the opposite. I make frequent use of many of my phone's features: the browser, navigation, calendar/todo/notebook features, email, and so on... but I actually don't make calls all that often. Can they make me a cell phone without the phone (but with mobile data)?
Megapixels won't make up for crappy optics. And by "crappy" I mean the best the manufacturers can manage in such a tiny space. Under good conditions, modern phones actually make decent pictures.
There's a bit more choice these days as well, with a few companies (at least SonyEricsson...) offering phones with better optics, making the device thicker but resulting in picture quality that comes pretty close to that of compact happysnap cameras... good for people who like to always have a decent camera on them.
Not just that, it works on all levels... Men seem to be more willing to work silly hours for pizza than women. Men are also more inclined to pretty much give up their personal life to go into higher management, whereas women prefer to forego a career in favour of working part-time.
Men and women tend to make different choices; I don't know if it's Nature or Nurture, but smarts or stupidity have very little to do with it.
Sure sounds like it. It sounds a little like one of those Susan Boyle "surprise talent" discoveries, where they pick up someone whose singing/acting/movie editing skills/composing/whatever skills are not that much above average and don't really warrant big-ticket producer attention... except for the fact that they've got a hell of a compelling rags-to-riches story behind them.
It's the same problem the police and other officials have in many countries, including my own. The problem is not that they are idiots (mostly they are not), or that they have powers they shouldn't have (there are legitimate scenarios for them to use those powers).
The problem is that they can abuse those powers, secure in the knowledge that such abuse will have no repercussions whatsoever. It's easy and sometimes tempting for border security, police or anyone wielding power granted by the government, to pick on someone, even for trivial reasons. Then they'll just make up a convenient excuse, knowing that their mates will back them up, and in the unlikely case an unfavourable report does emerge, their chief will conveniently lose it behind a filing cabinet. Any country has its horror stories about government officials, but when does one ever hear about outright abuse of power ever earning more than a reprimand?
The rule for government officials should be: "with great power comes great responsibility". If it is necessary for them to have such powers, they should also be certain that any wilful abuse will earn them a dismissal at least, and criminal charges in more serious cases. Instead, it's one hand washing the other all round.