One of the things Turing is famous for is proving that the Halting Problem (whether or not a non-trivial program will ever terminate) is formally undecidable. Given any program where it isn't immediately obvious that it terminates (e.g. a string of commands with no branches) or does not terminate (e.g. a server program that basically waits in a loop for something to happen), Turing showed that there is no easier way to find out whether or not it terminates than to run it. And, of course, the fact that it hasn't terminated yet does not mean that it will not terminate - so "formally undecidable in most interesting cases", which is where the GP came in.
Boy, do I see a lawsuit brewing here. How can they legally justify paying straight people less than gays, if all other factors are equal? I don't care about any tax issues.
Easy: all other factors are not equal - ignoring tax does not make it go away (I share your dream, however). Effectively, you are arguing that it is legal for Google to choose equal gross pay, but not for them to choose equal net pay.
Does Google pay an apartment dweller more just because they don't get a mortgage write-off? Do they pay a single person more because he can't claim to be a head-of-household under IRS rules like a married person does?
These are choices that people make (often for reasons of failure of foresight, I'll admit), but they choose to put themselves in circumstances that lead to them paying more tax. Is gay a lifestyle choice? Remember that to win a lawsuit on these grounds, you'll have to prove in court that the answer is "yes" and, so far as I am aware, the evidence is not strong in either direction.
Do they pay a blind person less because they get two personal exemptions rather than one on their ISR 1040?
This one is not a lifestyle choice[1], but is easily defensible on grounds of additional costs experienced by disabled people in general. (such as a guide dog, equipment modifications and extra peripherals). Being gay or straight doesn't necessarily cost more, given the existence of adoption agencies.
...In short, it's not for Google to start correcting the unfairness of the tax system...
I think you hit a different nail from the one you were aiming at, but you're right on it's head. The tax system is unfair. Google's decision to correct for it doesn't favour gays or straights in terms of take-home pay, and this is all they need for defence because anti-discrimination laws all have exceptions for "genuine operational reasons" (for example, police attempting to infiltrate a white supremacist group can legally reject a black applicant based only on the colour of his skin). Google wishes to equalise take-home pay across protected characteristics (such as sexual orientation) while acknowledging extra costs faced by some groups (such as the disabled - which is independent of sexual orientation). That sounds like a genuine operational reason to me. The only argument[2] I can see against it requires you to say that "...wishes to equalise gross pay..." is legal while "..wishes to equalise net pay..." is not - which is quite a difficult argument.
I could be wrong, Ibix.
[1] Unless you put your own eyes out - but allow me this one assumption.
[2] The only non-homophobic argument, I should say, but the way you use "unfairness" and "correct" in your last sentence suggests to me that that's not your driver.
I think we might be talking slightly at cross purposes. I'm not challenging the existence of God here, although I have my opinions. I'm trying to challenge the validity of the experiment.
Matthew (I think we agree) says that God hides if you try to set up a circumstance where you can find evidence of his actions (jumping off a temple; testing the effectiveness of prayer). The researchers are testing the effect of prayer - it doesn't matter what's in the hearts of the people doing the praying, because it isn't them doing the analysis. Of course, God doesn't have to let people die to hide his actions; he can just fiddle the data in some way.
As a separate issue, people other than the researchers' prayer teams may have been praying for patients. 89% of them said they knew people were praying for them. Did they actually pray, or just say they would? Did the other 11% have people praying for them who hadn't yet had a chance to tell them? Who knows? If the researchers just ignored factors like this (and I really don't see how you could include them) then they are assuming that those prayers have no effect, yet their own prayer is worth investigating. If this is science, it should be logical. This isn't.
My comment about being an atheist was intended to reinforce these points. The experiment is too flawed to convince me that prayer doesn't work, and I'm already convinced for my own reasons. Preaching to the choir, badly, you might say.
Except for the fact that you CAN make him "do stuff"-- you can make him "hide his hand."
I suspect that the difference between "prayer has no effect" and "the measurements show that prayer has no effect" is enough wiggle room to get out of this bind. Measurement error is a real problem if what you're trying to measure is omnipotent and doesn't want to be measured...
Fair enough - putting it in context (again, cut'n'paste job from Matthew 4, bible-kjv):
5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
That's set, as you say, in the tempting of Jesus by Satan. I read the passage as: Satan says 'Prove you're the Son of God.' Jesus says no, citing 'thou shalt not tempt...'
I understood this situation as analogous. A scientific study of the effect of prayer seems to me to be summed up by "God, if you exist, prove it!". To which he would, presumably, reply "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God". This may well be simplistic. May I ask what interpretation you would have put on it?
So while a study like this may be a amuzing anecdote, in the end its completely pointless.
It's worse than that. The bible has built-in defences against this kind of thing: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God (Matthew 4:7, according to bible-kjv). You're sunk either way - if God doesn't exist then prayer has no effect (except maybe the placebo effect). If he does exist he'll hide his hand so that you can't make him do stuff...
Also, you can't control for how-many-million Christians in the world praying for "all the sick and infirm of this world", some of them adding "particularly John Smith, member of our church". If you don't control for it, you're implicitly assuming it has no effect.
Note: I'm an atheist. I'm also a scientist. This experiment doesn't convince me...
Courtesy of a post on Groklaw, court costs
don't include attorney fees (although they can be imposed, too). Another post in the Groklaw thread suggested a figure of about $2k (for the FSF's costs...), but PJ said probably lower. I understand Wallace has similar cases pending against RedHat, Novell, and IBM. He probably has similar chances of success. It's going to add up if he pushes...
Let me start out by saying that you're about to get friended. It's very seldom I find someone who both disagrees with me and knows how to argue without becoming hostile. It's a beautiful thing.
Thanks - I agree. Actually, it's easy enough in text, but I could do with a "delete" key for my mouth...;)
Well, the logical answer (to an ex-military volunteer) is that the Congress should decide who is right for the soldiers. They pretty much abdicated that responsibility and said "let the president decide", which is cowardly, but safe for them. The soldiers themselves get to decide whether or not any particular action they take is correct.
I've been thinking about this...
What you are saying, I think, is that once you sign up to the military, you defer any moral consequences to your actions (under legal orders) to your superiors. Under that assumption you can only conclude that censoring information is right. A soldier's morality is implemented in the rules of engagement and his orders, so the effect on morale is all that a commander needs to consider.
Still not convinced that this is the Right Way to do things, although I concede the initial point. I expect that every recruit is asked if they are happy to abrogate their moral responsibility to people they may consider to be idiots[1]. Is the reverse true? Is every person who has a hand in authorising military action told very clearly that the resulting blood is on that hand? I suspect that even if it is, many of them don't accept that responsibility - hence your notation that Congress said the President can do whatever he wants.
I think what initially made me comment in this thread was the vague feeling that responsibility is being avoided at the top and made impossible at the bottom. Now that we seem to have argued me round to the idea that you're right as the situation stands, I'm not sure what to do about that. Agitate for electoral reform to provide finer-grained political accountability, I suspect...
Yep. As soon as someone (the UN, the US Supreme Court, etc) says uncategorically that it's an illegal war, then the troops should be told...of course, they would be coming home at that point, so it wouldn't matter much.
...assuming a well-behaved government and military command. Which would be something that would bother me if I were a soldier. I acknowledge that that may be (part of) why I'm not.
...what is the soldier finding out? If the soldier (like the people that believe...not know...believe that the war is illegal or immoral) doesn't have factual information, they can't make a good decision.
You can argue that no authoritative "This war is illegal" is equivalent to "This war is legal" - innocent until proven guilty and all that. However, "This war is immoral" is trickier. Nobody can make that statement authoritatively except for an individual. Does a soldier have a duty to consider if his actions are immoral or not? I understood that he did (post-Nuremberg, anyway). If so, he needs access to public opinion, or his moral judgement will be skewed by only speaking to other soldiers.
I would think that it's better to have fully informed troops, and that it's the duty of the people running the war to make sure that the cause is good enough.
I agree, but I haven't devoted anything close to two hundred years (multiplied by whatever average number of people work on it in a given year) on evaluating that opinion and its merit. I submit that the military probably has empirical evidence that theirs is the better way, or else they damn sure wouldn't do it.
Not so sure about that. History is littered with examples of idiotic military decisions made in the face of overwhelming evidence that they were wrong. See the Battle of the Somme, for example. Do you have evidence that they've studied the pros and cons of censorship, are you taking it on faith, or are you assuming that "they must have done"?
There are always going to be people who oppose any war. If your officers can't convince volunteer soldiers that these people are wrong, is it just possible that the cause is a crock?
Of course...anything's possible...but is it likely or true?
Define "true" in this context. I'm pretty convinced that there were never WMDs in Iraq and that there was never any terrorist connection. Some people disagree with me on one or both counts. Who is right? Who should get to decide who is right for the soldiers? Their ultimate commanders, or the soldiers themselves?
Does the morale gain outweigh the dishonesty to your soldiers? When they see the censorship, what will their minds put in the blanks? This is more open to debate, don't you think?
My gut instinct is that censorship is bad, but then, I've already said that. I know that I wasn't told things when I was in Iraq and Korea, and I probably would have *liked* to know them, but I can also see how certain information would have seriously undermined my effectiveness at doing my job. If I'm not effective, other people's lives are at risk, and that's worse than me being angry about not knowing everything I believe I should know.
Does the morale gain outweigh the dishonesty? I would have to say "yes", or else it wouldn't be done.
I'd love to see some measurements addressing that question.
We're looking at things in terms of what's correct, from a first-amendment point of view, and the military is looking at things in terms of what's correct , from a keep-soldiers-alive point of view.
I'm trying to understand why (if) the two are incompatible. I don't quite see why they are, if the war is being fought on a sound, defensible moral footing. A paci
Censorship sucks, and in almost every circumstance, it hurts more than it helps,
Spot on. What is it that makes the military a circumstance in which it helps more than it hurts? If I'm understanding you correctly, you say that censoring "our troops are war criminals" is a benefit to morale. I can see that, and there's your "help" straight off.
However, you commented in a post above that the primary loyalty of a soldier is not to his superiors, but to the nation, embodied by the constitution. If the war the soldier is fighting is illegal[1]doesn't he need to be able to find that out to satisfy his duty?
I would think that it's better to have fully informed troops, and that it's the duty of the people running the war to make sure that the cause is good enough. There are always going to be people who oppose any war. If your officers can't convince volunteer soldiers that these people are wrong, is it just possible that the cause is a crock?
but (again), you'll have to explain to me how a group of people that can move hundreds of thousands of soldiers and vehicles (and countless tons of support equipment and food) across an ocean and then supply them with what they need for staying alive could not have managed to think about this subject at least as much as you or I have.
There are differences between logistics and censorship that you fail to acknowledge here. Logistics (at a strategic level, anyway) is pure science - count your troops, measure average rate of expenditure of stores, and multiply[2]. To censor or not is pure philosophy. Does the morale gain outweigh the dishonesty to your soldiers? When they see the censorship, what will their minds put in the blanks? This is more open to debate, don't you think?
I
[1] I'm not saying either way about Iraq here.
[2] It's possible I'm oversimplifying the equations here.
It's derived from a book titled "Who moved my cheese?", apparently about management of change in your life. I understand that it's becoming a buzz-book (to coin a neologism). Whether it's anything revolutionary or just more re-packaged obviousness, I have no idea. Amazon and Google are your friends.
While the 'distance factor' of MySpace does make it less likely that a child will be assaulted by a lurker, the distance factor also doesn't make MySpace completely safe.
As I posted, the parent should be aware of what their child is doing on-line. It may not prevent them from all dangers, but, it could help the parent spot a dangerous situation.
Of course you should pay attention to what your child is doing on the net. I wasn't meaning to imply that MySpace was completely safe, merely that the comparison in the article was bogus. The population of (potential) statutory rapists on MySpace is necessarily limited to those attackers who groom a more-or-less-random child, then attack them. Therefore the article is comparing attacks by all paedophiles in California against attacks by paedophiles with a particular MO who have an account on MySpace. The "particular MO" thing renders the comparison meaningless.
California, which averaged 62 statutory rape convictions per month in the late 90s, in a state population of 33 million
So, the article is comparing a the state of California (a physical region) with MySpace, which is in Cyberspace. To me, that does not sound like a fair comparison. I believe that the comparison to California's crime rate is invalid because cybercrime may or may not involve actual physical contact. And, if it doesn't involve physical contact (for example, a dirty phone conversation), then it may not be reported.
You're not wrong, this is a real apples-and-oranges comparison. It's not like you can move to MySpace to get out of that dangerous environment in California. There's also a wider range of attackers in a physical region than online - family members, friends, professional people (there have been paedophile rings in child care centers in the UK). Online, you're only going to find what you might call "active hunter" paedophiles, ones who go out and seek a child to attack rather than going for the one infront of them. That stereotype probably doesn't fit most paedophiles in the real world[1].
I
[1] That's a guess based on adult rape statistics, where most attackers know their victim.
What's the point for some people to encrypt their files (other than temporary privacy) if you're going to get in trouble later in court anyway for not revealing your keys?
Courts aren't the only poeple who might want to read your data. What about business competitors? They can break into your office and copy your sensitive data, but they can't make you give up the encryption key[1].
I
[1] I'll assume you didn't write it on a post-it on the monitor.
Well said. There are two separate issues of responsibility here.
One is responsibility for the attack. That lies with the attacker - if he hadn't installed the bots the ICU network wouldn't have gone down.
Second, there is this: given that there ARE bad guys out there, and that lives may depend on ICU computers, do the IT staff have a responsibility to the patients to protect the systems? I'd say yes. Failure to secure computers when there are known to be attackers interested in gaining control of any computer is negligent. They could have taken better care (why are ICU systems on the internet anyway?) and their failure to do so put lives at risk.
This is the difference between this case and the short skirt/rape argument. In both cases, the attacker is at fault. However, you can modify your risk of attack by taking certain actions (not taking a short-cut through a dark alley, unplugging ICU from the internet). The girl has no responsibility to anyone beyond herself to do so. The hospital is responsible for the lives of the patients, so it has duty to them to minimise the risk of attack.
I realise your first comment was made in jest, but I'll note for the record that "normal" police in the UK do not carry guns.
These kids have usually poor education and all of them have a record of several transgressions or crimes, they have nothing or very little to lose in their lives and that is exactly how they are going to run their lives.
Exactly. The argument goes that if you build relationships between "them and us", then they have something to lose - those relationships. That gives "us" some leverage which we didn't have before. It's not a lot, but it's more than nothing...
It might just be nice, for a change, to organize something fun like this for the youth who actually haven't done anything criminal in their previous years; reward the good guys for a change.
The point here is not to reward bad behaviour, but to encourage the interaction of the kids with the cops. It's harder for the kids to see the cops as faceless oppressors when they've met them as people.
This is standard "wooly liberal" thinking. Engage with people, don't beat them over the head[1]. I'm always glad to see people practicing it: being a "wooly liberal" myself, I think it's a great strategy. I hope they're keeping careful track of it's results, because I'd like hard evidence to test the theory.
I
[1] Except when you're out of rail-gun ammo, of course...;)
For some reason it has always occurred to me that the people who argue for better privacy have something to hide, like they are growing marijuana in their closet, or are dealing child pornography...If you don't have something to hide then you have no reason to support the right to privacy...
"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is an argument often advanced against privacy. The weak point, as I see it, is that there are a lot of perfectly legal things that one might want to hide. That you're a Catholic or a Protestant might be something you want to keep hidden in certain parts of Ireland. Being one or the other is not illegal, and one has nothing to fear from the government if people find out. It's not the government that you fear in this case.
The EU thinks, I suppose, that they'll be able to arrest a terrorist, then go and check his phone and internet records and check out all his friends to see if they're terrorists too[1]. They ignore the risks generated by this data storage. What can an unscrupulous person deduce from those records? (Do you really think the bad guys can be stopped from obtaining them?) A stalker (or social engineering attacker of any stripe) can deduce who your friends and family are and use that against you. Blackmail is always a possibility. I'm sure there are others.
I
[1]I have my doubts about the efficacy of this. MI5 had looked at one of the London bombers in connection with a separate investigation, and decided he wasn't a threat. Understanding what your data means is the problem, not lack of data.
How come they can suddenly justify holding someone without charge, just because their investigation involves hard drives?
Up until they got shot down in parliament yesterday, they were justifying 90 days' detention on the grounds that the police wanted it. The position is now "the police want it to have time to crack encryption". It's just more of the "look tough by not giving in to rational thought" attitude that seems so popular with politicians.
Your statements that "x can be abused, but we still need x" miss the point. Need is not absolute. Note, for example, that cops don't carry guns in every country. You have to weigh the advantages of something versus the risks.
The advantages to this system are that the government gains additional evidence to use against people using the printers for purposes contrary to the good of society (however that is defined - a can of worms for another time), or individuals within society.
One disadvantage is that the government gains additional evidence to use against people using the printers for purposes contrary to the good of the government. This may or may not line up with the good of society. Another disadvantage is that the system can be cracked and abused by criminals - if the EFF can figure it out, so could the Mafia. They might then figure out a way to finger an innocent by planting false codes in documents.
Whether or not you think we "need" the system depends on how you much weight you give to those pros and cons. The prevailing opinion here seems to be that disadvantage number one (potential for supression of awkward political speech) trumps everything else. I'm generally in that camp myself.
With regard to your comment about enforcement and punishment for abuse, yes, in principle, it's a good idea. However:
Is there a clear definition of "abuse of this system"?
What is the complaint mechanism?
Who investigates? And do they only respond to complaints, or search actively for abuse?
Do the investigators have powers to investigate properly? Is there someone with authority to issue punishments if abuse is found?
What are the punishments for abuse?
All these questions need firm and sensible answers before you can say that a policy is enough. The general culture of governments leads me to suspect that they'll only even think about the questions if every major news service in the country hits them in the face repeatedly with them. And then they'll only go through the motions. That's why, in my opinion, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages - there will be (next to) no checks and balances that might make it acceptable. And experience in the UK suggests that any promised checks and balances will not be implemented.
One other thought - the US government might retain enough scruples not to track every printer in the country - but what about the Chinese? Canon printers work there, too...
Slashdot Mirror
One of the things Turing is famous for is proving that the Halting Problem (whether or not a non-trivial program will ever terminate) is formally undecidable. Given any program where it isn't immediately obvious that it terminates (e.g. a string of commands with no branches) or does not terminate (e.g. a server program that basically waits in a loop for something to happen), Turing showed that there is no easier way to find out whether or not it terminates than to run it. And, of course, the fact that it hasn't terminated yet does not mean that it will not terminate - so "formally undecidable in most interesting cases", which is where the GP came in.
Boy, do I see a lawsuit brewing here. How can they legally justify paying straight people less than gays, if all other factors are equal? I don't care about any tax issues.
Easy: all other factors are not equal - ignoring tax does not make it go away (I share your dream, however). Effectively, you are arguing that it is legal for Google to choose equal gross pay, but not for them to choose equal net pay.
Does Google pay an apartment dweller more just because they don't get a mortgage write-off? Do they pay a single person more because he can't claim to be a head-of-household under IRS rules like a married person does?
These are choices that people make (often for reasons of failure of foresight, I'll admit), but they choose to put themselves in circumstances that lead to them paying more tax. Is gay a lifestyle choice? Remember that to win a lawsuit on these grounds, you'll have to prove in court that the answer is "yes" and, so far as I am aware, the evidence is not strong in either direction.
Do they pay a blind person less because they get two personal exemptions rather than one on their ISR 1040?
This one is not a lifestyle choice[1], but is easily defensible on grounds of additional costs experienced by disabled people in general. (such as a guide dog, equipment modifications and extra peripherals). Being gay or straight doesn't necessarily cost more, given the existence of adoption agencies.
...In short, it's not for Google to start correcting the unfairness of the tax system...
I think you hit a different nail from the one you were aiming at, but you're right on it's head. The tax system is unfair. Google's decision to correct for it doesn't favour gays or straights in terms of take-home pay, and this is all they need for defence because anti-discrimination laws all have exceptions for "genuine operational reasons" (for example, police attempting to infiltrate a white supremacist group can legally reject a black applicant based only on the colour of his skin). Google wishes to equalise take-home pay across protected characteristics (such as sexual orientation) while acknowledging extra costs faced by some groups (such as the disabled - which is independent of sexual orientation). That sounds like a genuine operational reason to me. The only argument[2] I can see against it requires you to say that "...wishes to equalise gross pay..." is legal while "..wishes to equalise net pay..." is not - which is quite a difficult argument.
I could be wrong,
Ibix.
[1] Unless you put your own eyes out - but allow me this one assumption.
[2] The only non-homophobic argument, I should say, but the way you use "unfairness" and "correct" in your last sentence suggests to me that that's not your driver.
That explains a lot.
I
PS: Your post fully deserves its +5, and I'm sorry I have nothing but taken-out-of-context jokes to make in response...
Sell it on eBay instead.
I
I think we might be talking slightly at cross purposes. I'm not challenging the existence of God here, although I have my opinions. I'm trying to challenge the validity of the experiment.
Matthew (I think we agree) says that God hides if you try to set up a circumstance where you can find evidence of his actions (jumping off a temple; testing the effectiveness of prayer). The researchers are testing the effect of prayer - it doesn't matter what's in the hearts of the people doing the praying, because it isn't them doing the analysis. Of course, God doesn't have to let people die to hide his actions; he can just fiddle the data in some way.
As a separate issue, people other than the researchers' prayer teams may have been praying for patients. 89% of them said they knew people were praying for them. Did they actually pray, or just say they would? Did the other 11% have people praying for them who hadn't yet had a chance to tell them? Who knows? If the researchers just ignored factors like this (and I really don't see how you could include them) then they are assuming that those prayers have no effect, yet their own prayer is worth investigating. If this is science, it should be logical. This isn't.
My comment about being an atheist was intended to reinforce these points. The experiment is too flawed to convince me that prayer doesn't work, and I'm already convinced for my own reasons. Preaching to the choir, badly, you might say.
I
I suspect that the difference between "prayer has no effect" and "the measurements show that prayer has no effect" is enough wiggle room to get out of this bind. Measurement error is a real problem if what you're trying to measure is omnipotent and doesn't want to be measured...
I
Fair enough - putting it in context (again, cut'n'paste job from Matthew 4, bible-kjv):
5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
That's set, as you say, in the tempting of Jesus by Satan. I read the passage as: Satan says 'Prove you're the Son of God.' Jesus says no, citing 'thou shalt not tempt...'
I understood this situation as analogous. A scientific study of the effect of prayer seems to me to be summed up by "God, if you exist, prove it!". To which he would, presumably, reply "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God". This may well be simplistic. May I ask what interpretation you would have put on it?
I
It's worse than that. The bible has built-in defences against this kind of thing: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God (Matthew 4:7, according to bible-kjv). You're sunk either way - if God doesn't exist then prayer has no effect (except maybe the placebo effect). If he does exist he'll hide his hand so that you can't make him do stuff...
Also, you can't control for how-many-million Christians in the world praying for "all the sick and infirm of this world", some of them adding "particularly John Smith, member of our church". If you don't control for it, you're implicitly assuming it has no effect.
Note: I'm an atheist. I'm also a scientist. This experiment doesn't convince me...
I
Courtesy of a post on Groklaw, court costs don't include attorney fees (although they can be imposed, too). Another post in the Groklaw thread suggested a figure of about $2k (for the FSF's costs...), but PJ said probably lower. I understand Wallace has similar cases pending against RedHat, Novell, and IBM. He probably has similar chances of success. It's going to add up if he pushes...
I
The appropriate link is http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,17295 79,00.html. Note the "frontpage" in the URL, and guess where it was...
I
Thanks - I agree. Actually, it's easy enough in text, but I could do with a "delete" key for my mouth... ;)
I've been thinking about this...
What you are saying, I think, is that once you sign up to the military, you defer any moral consequences to your actions (under legal orders) to your superiors. Under that assumption you can only conclude that censoring information is right. A soldier's morality is implemented in the rules of engagement and his orders, so the effect on morale is all that a commander needs to consider.
Still not convinced that this is the Right Way to do things, although I concede the initial point. I expect that every recruit is asked if they are happy to abrogate their moral responsibility to people they may consider to be idiots[1]. Is the reverse true? Is every person who has a hand in authorising military action told very clearly that the resulting blood is on that hand? I suspect that even if it is, many of them don't accept that responsibility - hence your notation that Congress said the President can do whatever he wants.
I think what initially made me comment in this thread was the vague feeling that responsibility is being avoided at the top and made impossible at the bottom. Now that we seem to have argued me round to the idea that you're right as the situation stands, I'm not sure what to do about that. Agitate for electoral reform to provide finer-grained political accountability, I suspect...
I
[1] Probably not phrased that way...
...assuming a well-behaved government and military command. Which would be something that would bother me if I were a soldier. I acknowledge that that may be (part of) why I'm not.
You can argue that no authoritative "This war is illegal" is equivalent to "This war is legal" - innocent until proven guilty and all that. However, "This war is immoral" is trickier. Nobody can make that statement authoritatively except for an individual. Does a soldier have a duty to consider if his actions are immoral or not? I understood that he did (post-Nuremberg, anyway). If so, he needs access to public opinion, or his moral judgement will be skewed by only speaking to other soldiers.
Not so sure about that. History is littered with examples of idiotic military decisions made in the face of overwhelming evidence that they were wrong. See the Battle of the Somme, for example. Do you have evidence that they've studied the pros and cons of censorship, are you taking it on faith, or are you assuming that "they must have done"?
Define "true" in this context. I'm pretty convinced that there were never WMDs in Iraq and that there was never any terrorist connection. Some people disagree with me on one or both counts. Who is right? Who should get to decide who is right for the soldiers? Their ultimate commanders, or the soldiers themselves?
I'd love to see some measurements addressing that question.
I'm trying to understand why (if) the two are incompatible. I don't quite see why they are, if the war is being fought on a sound, defensible moral footing. A paci
Spot on. What is it that makes the military a circumstance in which it helps more than it hurts? If I'm understanding you correctly, you say that censoring "our troops are war criminals" is a benefit to morale. I can see that, and there's your "help" straight off.
However, you commented in a post above that the primary loyalty of a soldier is not to his superiors, but to the nation, embodied by the constitution. If the war the soldier is fighting is illegal[1]doesn't he need to be able to find that out to satisfy his duty?
I would think that it's better to have fully informed troops, and that it's the duty of the people running the war to make sure that the cause is good enough. There are always going to be people who oppose any war. If your officers can't convince volunteer soldiers that these people are wrong, is it just possible that the cause is a crock?
There are differences between logistics and censorship that you fail to acknowledge here. Logistics (at a strategic level, anyway) is pure science - count your troops, measure average rate of expenditure of stores, and multiply[2]. To censor or not is pure philosophy. Does the morale gain outweigh the dishonesty to your soldiers? When they see the censorship, what will their minds put in the blanks? This is more open to debate, don't you think?
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[1] I'm not saying either way about Iraq here.
[2] It's possible I'm oversimplifying the equations here.
It's derived from a book titled "Who moved my cheese?", apparently about management of change in your life. I understand that it's becoming a buzz-book (to coin a neologism). Whether it's anything revolutionary or just more re-packaged obviousness, I have no idea. Amazon and Google are your friends.
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Of course you should pay attention to what your child is doing on the net. I wasn't meaning to imply that MySpace was completely safe, merely that the comparison in the article was bogus. The population of (potential) statutory rapists on MySpace is necessarily limited to those attackers who groom a more-or-less-random child, then attack them. Therefore the article is comparing attacks by all paedophiles in California against attacks by paedophiles with a particular MO who have an account on MySpace. The "particular MO" thing renders the comparison meaningless.
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You're not wrong, this is a real apples-and-oranges comparison. It's not like you can move to MySpace to get out of that dangerous environment in California. There's also a wider range of attackers in a physical region than online - family members, friends, professional people (there have been paedophile rings in child care centers in the UK). Online, you're only going to find what you might call "active hunter" paedophiles, ones who go out and seek a child to attack rather than going for the one infront of them. That stereotype probably doesn't fit most paedophiles in the real world[1].
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[1] That's a guess based on adult rape statistics, where most attackers know their victim.
Courts aren't the only poeple who might want to read your data. What about business competitors? They can break into your office and copy your sensitive data, but they can't make you give up the encryption key[1].
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[1] I'll assume you didn't write it on a post-it on the monitor.
Well said. There are two separate issues of responsibility here.
One is responsibility for the attack. That lies with the attacker - if he hadn't installed the bots the ICU network wouldn't have gone down.
Second, there is this: given that there ARE bad guys out there, and that lives may depend on ICU computers, do the IT staff have a responsibility to the patients to protect the systems? I'd say yes. Failure to secure computers when there are known to be attackers interested in gaining control of any computer is negligent. They could have taken better care (why are ICU systems on the internet anyway?) and their failure to do so put lives at risk.
This is the difference between this case and the short skirt/rape argument. In both cases, the attacker is at fault. However, you can modify your risk of attack by taking certain actions (not taking a short-cut through a dark alley, unplugging ICU from the internet). The girl has no responsibility to anyone beyond herself to do so. The hospital is responsible for the lives of the patients, so it has duty to them to minimise the risk of attack.
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Maybe he's a grammar Nazi, too? ;)
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I realise your first comment was made in jest, but I'll note for the record that "normal" police in the UK do not carry guns.
Exactly. The argument goes that if you build relationships between "them and us", then they have something to lose - those relationships. That gives "us" some leverage which we didn't have before. It's not a lot, but it's more than nothing...
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The point here is not to reward bad behaviour, but to encourage the interaction of the kids with the cops. It's harder for the kids to see the cops as faceless oppressors when they've met them as people.
This is standard "wooly liberal" thinking. Engage with people, don't beat them over the head[1]. I'm always glad to see people practicing it: being a "wooly liberal" myself, I think it's a great strategy. I hope they're keeping careful track of it's results, because I'd like hard evidence to test the theory.
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[1] Except when you're out of rail-gun ammo, of course... ;)
"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is an argument often advanced against privacy. The weak point, as I see it, is that there are a lot of perfectly legal things that one might want to hide. That you're a Catholic or a Protestant might be something you want to keep hidden in certain parts of Ireland. Being one or the other is not illegal, and one has nothing to fear from the government if people find out. It's not the government that you fear in this case.
The EU thinks, I suppose, that they'll be able to arrest a terrorist, then go and check his phone and internet records and check out all his friends to see if they're terrorists too[1]. They ignore the risks generated by this data storage. What can an unscrupulous person deduce from those records? (Do you really think the bad guys can be stopped from obtaining them?) A stalker (or social engineering attacker of any stripe) can deduce who your friends and family are and use that against you. Blackmail is always a possibility. I'm sure there are others.
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[1]I have my doubts about the efficacy of this. MI5 had looked at one of the London bombers in connection with a separate investigation, and decided he wasn't a threat. Understanding what your data means is the problem, not lack of data.
"I have seen the fnords..."
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How come they can suddenly justify holding someone without charge, just because their investigation involves hard drives?
Up until they got shot down in parliament yesterday, they were justifying 90 days' detention on the grounds that the police wanted it. The position is now "the police want it to have time to crack encryption". It's just more of the "look tough by not giving in to rational thought" attitude that seems so popular with politicians.
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Your statements that "x can be abused, but we still need x" miss the point. Need is not absolute. Note, for example, that cops don't carry guns in every country. You have to weigh the advantages of something versus the risks.
The advantages to this system are that the government gains additional evidence to use against people using the printers for purposes contrary to the good of society (however that is defined - a can of worms for another time), or individuals within society.
One disadvantage is that the government gains additional evidence to use against people using the printers for purposes contrary to the good of the government. This may or may not line up with the good of society. Another disadvantage is that the system can be cracked and abused by criminals - if the EFF can figure it out, so could the Mafia. They might then figure out a way to finger an innocent by planting false codes in documents.
Whether or not you think we "need" the system depends on how you much weight you give to those pros and cons. The prevailing opinion here seems to be that disadvantage number one (potential for supression of awkward political speech) trumps everything else. I'm generally in that camp myself.
With regard to your comment about enforcement and punishment for abuse, yes, in principle, it's a good idea. However:
All these questions need firm and sensible answers before you can say that a policy is enough. The general culture of governments leads me to suspect that they'll only even think about the questions if every major news service in the country hits them in the face repeatedly with them. And then they'll only go through the motions. That's why, in my opinion, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages - there will be (next to) no checks and balances that might make it acceptable. And experience in the UK suggests that any promised checks and balances will not be implemented.
One other thought - the US government might retain enough scruples not to track every printer in the country - but what about the Chinese? Canon printers work there, too...
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