That's about right and I'll explain why. From the summary:
What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.
Unless it's done by means of proprietary standards and not by means of executive decisions. That's the complete thought. What is quoted from Adobe there is only the first half.
The feds have NO interest whatsoever in providing skill training, no matter what their propaganda tells you. At the FCI where I was, inmates typically slept till lunch, signed false pay sheets claiming 40 hours worked. They thought they were getting over, but it's actualy the feds, who can provide "proof" of "gainfully employed inmates."
But it's a scam. The BOP/DOJ has a vested interest in the 75% recidivism rate...it keeps the beds full and the $30,000 a year per inmate flowing nicely. Most inmates sleep till lunch, play basketball or softball in the afternoon, and watch TV and gamble all night.
Look, my unit had nine televisions (big flat screens, full cable, Netflix movies twice a week) and four toilets for 150 guys. Total in the facility? 1,800 inmates in regular population housed in 6 units, with a total of 48 toilets and 108 televisions. What's wrong with this picture?
Skills training my ass. Try getting a job with nothing on your resume but "data entry and basic Office." And that's for the tech/UNICOR jobs! It's like a health club..once they have you, they want you to keep coming back. Again and again. No skills? You're probably going to reoffend.
Step 3: Profit!
That's what happens when state and federal governments contract out such a basic thing as their prison systems. To the government and government-run prisons, prisoners are nothing but an expense so the fewer, the better. To the private companies, each prisoner represents profit so the more the merrier.
Certainly I can understand the government buying items on the open market such as automobiles, ships, airplanes, office stationery, electricity, etc. I hardly expect them to mine their own ore, smelt it, forge it, and make their own products, to run their own paper mills, or maintain their own electrical grids. Yet a line does need to be drawn someplace because things like prisons are rightly an unwanted expense. I propose that the government can freely purchase any needed goods (including units of energy like kilowatt-hours) but must perform all services itself, carried out by individuals who are government employees.
No one should have a vested interest in a high recidivism rate, particularly not when large sums of money are involved. It does not serve society's interests. Further, I bet they're fine with high recidivism until a crime happens to them. Any such entity with vested interests like this is a parasite that feeds off the failing of others. These parasites are state-sponsored.
If your definition of robot is "machine controlled by an intelligent computer program" then I'm sorry to say, you're ALREADY putting your faith in such things, hundreds of times per day. Hell, you're putting your life in a computer's hands on a second-by-second basis just by being within ten miles of a nuclear power plant.
The ones that haven't done it yet are undercutting the price of the guys that have done it before by 50%? Gee do we get a refund if it crashes? I think you get what you pay for is appropriate here. Maybe they can pull it off but would you want to be on the first ship?
This is an adventurous thing to do. Since when was adventure risk-free?
Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't "phone home" unless you specifically configure it to do so.
They have made this configuration radically simple to carry out. Just turn the wireless off, leave it off, and use your USB port to transfer your data.
And for the tinfoil hatters who say "How do you know it's really off? How do you know the switch is actually connected to anything?" and so on... Well, how do you know there's no microphone, GSM transmitter, and SIM card buried in your kitchen stove secretly sending all of your conversations to Whirlpool?
I have a question for you. As in, I really don't know the answer but would like to become informed.
Let's say that a user disables the wireless functionality so that only the USB port can perform data transfers on the Kindle, as you mention. That user then purchases the book 1984. The publisher screws up and decides that the very best way to handle that is to forcibly reverse the sales. In other words, instead of taking responsibility for its screw-up and paying any necessary fees to the copyright holder to make those sales legit, it instead decides to make this the customers' problem. Would the settings you mention have been able to prevent the forced reversal of that sale? Why or why not?
If it would not, then what you mention is academic at best, "feel-good yet useless" at worst since it still doesn't represent actual control over a device you purchased. Control that can be withdrawn or overridden at any time is not real ownership.
If it would, then it's a good thing that the users have at least some influence over whether or not a corporation can manipulate their device after the sale has been made. It's not nearly enough to convince me to purchase a Kindle, as I enjoy doing business with companies that don't even want to do such things for any reason. That is to say, there is still a willingness there to do something that I believe is wrong and is in fact an adversarial way of relating to customers (remember The Outer Limits? "We control the horizontal, and the vertical..."). At that point, in my eyes, we're talking now about degree; not a matter of whether it's good or bad, but about how bad it actually is.
Also, since you had to throw that in there: you can make this about wearing a tinfoil hat because let's face it, portraying those who disagree with you as paranoid lunatics is a classic, time-tested way of discrediting them without having to actually answer their objections. It works well on people who are intimidated by how it might make them look ("oh no, he might think I'm unreasonable!") because they don't recognize that technique for the weakness that it is. I'll additionally explain in more practical terms why this technique is not valid in this instance.
I said, and you quoted, "Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't 'phone home' unless you specifically configure it to do so." Not phoning home unless you set it up to do so is known as "opt-in". What you describe as enabled by default unless you disable it is known as "opt-out". From the perspective of the savvy customer, there is a world of difference in the desirability of those two methods. Opt-in is superior by far for anyone other than pushy corporations and spammers. No paranoia is needed to recognize that fact, but nice try.
Then there's the little issue of how you make that configuration sound: either disable all wireless capabilities or put up with phoning home and remote control without consent. Real choice would mean being able to use wireless capabilities "client-pull" style while still disabling the phoning-home and unwanted remote control. Assuming you have portrayed that accurately, this is still not desirable.
Should be the same with computers also and the software that runs on them. But we all know thats not true. We are constantly asked to opt in for anonymous data exchange.
No, I'm not. It's one of many reasons why I use Open Source. I remember this vaguely because it was some time ago, but I *think* OpenOffice asked me one time if I would like to be counted among their users for purposes of measuring their marketshare, but that's the sole example I can name. I answered "No" (which I think was the default option, could be wrong) and it never asked me about that again. Either way, a single one-time example in the 13-14 years that I have used Linux is a far cry from "constantly" being asked. Then there's the fact that when OpenOffice says "this data is not personally identifying" I tend to believe them, because if they lied about it a reading of the source code would expose them.
Not saying I agree with this, because I don't. But this practice is nothing new for products we currently purchase.
Only because we (well, in my case, "they") tolerate it.
Let us not fog this discussion with dismissives about hardware ownership, for this really has nothing to do with that. Instead, this about how companies treat the data you create. And let me just say that there's are some useful aspects to having Amazon keep your data for you.
Suppose I have a Kindle (or, say, one of the requisite apps on some other hardware platform), and I've bought a few books for it that I've noted and highlighted. Suppose, then, that I lose my Kindle. Or it gets run over by a bus. Or stolen. Or dunked in a hot tub. Or whatever.
All I have to do is procure/install a new Kindle, enter the appropriate account identification, and my books and notes are transferred to the new device.
Which, you must admit, is pretty cool. (Hey luddites! The cloud has uses!)
So, instead, please: Let's simply discuss the implications of Amazon sharing your highlights with others. (This is a matter that I really don't have any opinion on in this instance, but I guess I'll don my flamesuit anyway...)
Hardware that you own is under your control. "Control" as used here includes the ability to decide whether or not it transmits locally-stored data to any remote destination.
The scenarios you gave of a Kindle being destroyed, stolen, or otherwise rendered inoperable have a simple enough solution: backups. On a hardware device that you own, there is nothing preventing you from making backups of any data it stores. If you own it, you can send your data "to the cloud" as a backup (whether or not this is the primary purpose of doing so), you can back the data up to physical media that you own, you can choose to do both, or you can choose to do neither and take your chances.
Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't "phone home" unless you specifically configure it to do so. It doesn't force you to return a downloaded book (i.e. 1984) because the publisher screwed up and wants to make this your problem. It doesn't transmit your data to "the cloud" unless you enable such functionality, or if it is enabled by default, you are at least able to permanently disable it with the confidence that your settings won't be remotely overridden.
I think you miss an important point. Data ownership is a total non-issue if no one but you has possession of your data. It's an easy issue if no one else has possession of your data unless you specifically, willingly, and intentionally gave it to them. The only reason you mention "how companies treat the data you create" and think this trumps the "hardware ownership" concern is because Amazon gets this data with or without your consent because they have total control over a device you thought you owned.
The repeated examples of this single principle are why I will never use a Kindle. I refuse to reward such business practices with my money. If you really had no qualms about doing so, if there were truly nothing wrong with any of this, then you wouldn't need to create a false distinction between "hardware ownership" and "how companies treat your data", as though the hardware ownership were not exactly the means by which Amazon obtains your data.
1.) highlight
2.) upload in steal, er, I meant borrow...ahhhrr.. I mean stealth mode
3.) profit
4.) wow sharewholders
I can't wait to see who comes out of the woodwork to defend Amazon on this one, and what sort of faux reasoning they use to do it. I know Amazon doesn't have the fanboy base that Microsoft and Apple currently enjoy, but I think that's because they are, for the most part, "just a retailer" reselling goods they did not themselves design or produce. Most of the items they sell are things you happen to have bought from Amazon but could obtain elsewhere. The Kindle is quite the exception to that. It's a real Amazon product and service with all of the brand recognition that goes with that.
I'm wondering who is going to make excuses for Amazon and advocate that we view this as a desirable or at least benign practice. That's what happens whenever there is a story about alleged or proven malfeasance by Microsoft. It's what happens whenever there is a story about excessive vendor lock-in, general control-freak practices, or arbitrary and inconsistent actions (like which apps are accepted/rejected for its App Store) by Apple. So, who will it be? Who's going to try convincing us that this is a good and desirable practice, that it's in our interests as customers, that it's not a step in the wrong direction that has a long series of steps, or that there's something wrong with seriously questioning it?
Or better yet, who will point out a EULA clause or similar document stating, "we can arbitrarily modify this agreement without notice or ability to opt-out, at any time, to allow ourselves to engage in any practice" and conclude that this completely justifies everything beyond reproach, both legally and morally/ethically?
In the interests of non-discrimination, I hereby request that those of you with fanboy inclinations, who derive your identity in part or whole by feeling a personal connection to non-human entities that don't give a damn about you except that you spend money, who cheer their successes and mourn their losses, who add your free contributions to their already multi-million dollar marketing and PR budgets, who use ad-hominem and invective against anyone who dislikes "your team", speak up and be heard. There is no reason why Amazon should not be treated equally.
I'm guessing it will take no more than a month for a combination of "conservative" and "progressive" blogs to rev up their teams of dittoheads to start flooding Twitter with politically themed messages
Well, sure, that is to be expected. Those two groups have much arguing to do about the purpose for which the size and power of the federal government should be expanded. Twitter could be an important growth area for them.
world is full of shitty companies that don't care about their customers/users. They just don't get it. I really think Google is the exception to the rule.
Or they hire the very best PR people and pay them well. (/cynacism)
Indeed. "Slippery slope" is the new "racism" in terms of attempting to perfunctorily end arguments. Using it is basically an ad hominem which *is* a logical fallacy.
I'd say that such weak techniques ("indications of weakness" might be a better term) are merely the result of an inability to separate emotion from reason during discussion. I'd like to think it's that simple.
Unfortunately, there is a distinctive pattern. The "demonized word" is always or nearly always a description of the increasing accumulation and centralization of political power. That's how this dismissive technique tends to be used; that is, against anyone who disagrees with the expansion of power, the homogenization of society, or the false concept of deriving one's notion of self from a predefined group identity.
I don't generally see these weak, dismissive techniques used against anyone who is pro-government, pro-corporation, or anti-individual. It's as though those positions are exempt from demagoguery. The consistency of this pattern is such that I am forced to believe it is not accidental. I'll tell you what I think it is: it's Newspeak.
I guess it never occurred to you that there might be a reason why I never made any claims about average users building and administering such devices. Ah, Slashdot, where people feel free to assume but the assumption is never that your positive statements and omissions are deliberate...
I guess the part where you were answering to a message about a family of clueless users must have confused me. I thought you were actually answering to that message;)
But at any rate, take a chill pill. If you think I actually care that much about your omissions, you're really overthinking it.
I guess the part where you were answering to a message about a family of clueless users must have confused me. I thought you were actually answering to that message;)
I was answering that message. That's why I never said the clueless users themselves should perform the setup or administration of such a device. Had I said such a thing, that would be incompatible with the subject matter of clueless users. Instead, I originally left that part open-ended.
But at any rate, take a chill pill.
Chill pill? I can point out the fact that you made a false assumption without getting upset. In fact, that's what I did. Had I called you names etc. your response would make more sense.
Since I didn't, it looks like you're clutching at straws to find some objection to something I said now that your original one was shown to be invalid. Ego is amusing that way. I have one too, you know, so I'm aware of its petty and subtle little tendencies. I'm all too aware of the fact that these go totally unexamined in most people, who usually resent having them pointed out since they are so convinced it's some kind of contest.
If you think I actually care that much about your omissions, you're really overthinking it.
You made a false assumption and proceeded as though the assumption were valid. I pointed out that this had happened. Whether you care about that, or whether you wish to see that this is an easy mistake that is entirely preventable is entirely your business. I wouldn't dream of telling you what you should do with this information.
Just know that if you or anyone else makes false assumptions about me while conversing with me, I will correct them. My interest in accuracy is not a personal interest in you, how you feel, or how much you care. That again is your self-importance (aka ego) getting involved in a factual matter. It does provide a nice excuse to tell me how much thinking I am permitted to do before you judge that I am "really overthinking", but I disregard that the same way I'd expect you to (rightly) disregard any attempt of mine to tell you what you should do with information I provide.
I'm really confused by your post
On one hand you challenge me to "Do some research and try to find accidents that were caused solely by speeding. I do not mean accidents where "speed was a factor" but the actual impact was caused by the at-fault driver failing to yield right of way"
Then you do the work for me:
"What my years in the auto insurance industry taught me were that two things are the primary cause of all the accidents and claim reports I saw: following too closely and failure to yield right of way."
In reply to your confusion, I have an easy answer: my research that informed me is not a substitute for your own research that informs you. In other words, don't believe something just because I say it with confidence. Investigate it and see it for yourself. See if you come to the same conclusion. If you don't, I might just learn something. Not to mention, some people will mislead you and some of those will do it deliberately because they have an agenda. Maintaining your intellectual independence guards against all of these things and exercises a vital skill.
Therefore, I would say that I didn't do your work for you. I did my work for me and reported the results.
The rest of your post seems to say that speed limits are rubbish and speeding in itself isn't dangerous... that seems contradictory since the safe following distance is directly influenced by speed. I understand that you can follow too closely at any speed, but speed is a major component because it makes your reaction time far more detrimental. In fact, following too closely is about as close as you can get to an accident where speed is the cause instead of just a factor.
Speed limits are a way for the state to raise revenue while pretending to care about the welfare of its citizens. If that caring were genuine, they'd target the well-known, well-researched behaviors that cause far more accidents than speeding. The cops themselves either know that they are collection agents for the state and don't care about the dishonesty in which they participate (after all, lots of fringe benefits and a feeling of power come with that job), or they're what you'd call useful idiots.
You answered your own objection about following too closely. It can be done at any speed, as you said. That's why (at least in my state) rear-ender accidents are always, automatically the fault of the driver behind and rightfully so.
Personally, I drive in such a way that the guy in front of me can suddenly and without warning slam into an invisible reinforced brick wall and instantly decelerate to a full stop without me hitting him, at any speed. To do otherwise would be supremely irresponsible. It would mean allowing myself to succumb to a predictable eventuality. No responsible adult does that.
What do I mean by "predictable eventuality?" There are such things as deer, children, careless pedestrians, vehicles that run stop signs and red lights, and all sorts of other unpredictable hazards that might require someone to suddenly and unexpectedly stop the vehicle. If you are like most American adults, you drive on a daily basis and have done so for years. It is absolutely inevitable that you will eventually run into such a scenario. To be unprepared for it and surprised by it is to disregard the very real possibility of your negligence causing the death of either yourself or an innocent third party. I'd rather not die a useless death and I enjoy being able to sleep at night.
Speed turns an accident into a fatality. When you lower the speed limit there are more accidents but you are more likely to survive. Human life is priceless and trumps the damage
Just like gravity turns a non-trivial fall into a fatality. However, gravity did not cause anyone to fall. Losing their grip, losing their footing, or failing to use safety equipment caused them to fall. If you are
Actually, while I agree with the majority of your post, I CAN think of one more place where speed limits are very useful, with the caveat that they're not useful all the time: I live in Denver, Colorado. We by far don't have the worst weather, I know, but our weather is variable enough, and can get bad enough, that road travel is seriously inhibited. Yet, if you must drive during these times, you'll find other people out on the highway doing 60 in the middle of a blizzard with a foot of snow on the road. I think that speed limits would be very useful on those roads DURING those times. They already have digital speed limit signs set up in places around Denver... what's to stop them from networking them and then slowing those limits for bad weather? Variable speed limits based on real time road information would be infinitely more helpful and safer than the set speed limits we have now, and I can't help feeling that if the speed limits were REALLY about safety, we'd be hearing more about ideas like this.
I know exactly what you mean about drivers who are reckless during bad weather. I have been stuck in second gear (i.e. 20-25 mph) going down what is normally a 45mph road before because of ice and snow, only to have people flying by me in their invincible SUVs. Apparently they don't realize that the purpose of four-wheel drive is to avoid getting stuck; it will not save you from hitting a sheet of ice at highway speeds. It won't prevent unwanted drift, oversteer, or understeer yet many people drive as though it will.
Unfortunately I don't believe that your idea will work. It'd be nice if it would but I have a good reason to doubt that.
You have observed that people will drive recklessly (excessive speed) during a blizzard with one foot of snow already on the ground. This overrides their instinct for self-preservation. You are suggesting that people who will not slow down for the sake of life-and-limb will slow down because a sign told them it's a good idea. I'd flat-out say this will not possibly work, except for one thing.
Thanks to the combined efforts of public schooling and mass media, many people will mindlessly obey a sign if it looks official enough. The bit of cynacism I have left tells me that they would do this before they'd exercise any sort of awareness or proactive evaluation of their situation, since those things require the independent, self-directed thought that they seem to find so painful. Still, the purpose of enforcing a "bad conditions" speed limit would not be to protect the reckless driver. Similar to why we sanction drunk drivers, the purpose would be to protect everyone else on the road from their poor decision-making.
You have too much faith in the average user, if you think they'll configure and admin a whole PC instead of just buying a small appliance and forgetting that it's even there. And if you actually want them to configure and admin it _well_, now that's a whole other issue.
I guess it never occurred to you that there might be a reason why I never made any claims about average users building and administering such devices. Ah, Slashdot, where people feel free to assume but the assumption is never that your positive statements and omissions are deliberate... At any rate, the same shops that remove Windows viruses and otherwise service end-user PCs could set these up on behalf of the users. Such a shop would likely do this once and then use a drive image to clone the rest. It would be based on the model of the average driver not being an auto mechanic but knowing that he can go to a shop to hire one in order to repair or customize a vehicle. In both cases, whether you do it yourself is a matter of saving money, not a matter of whether the job gets done.
What's a "virus"? I can't find any reference to it in portage:
emerge -s virus
Searching...
[ Results for search key : virus ]
[ Applications found : 0 ]
And what do condoms have to do with computer security, anyway?
(ducks for cover)
The utility "eix" is quite a bit faster than "emerge -s" particularly when you also want to search the package description. You just have to remember to update its index when you do "emerge --sync".
there is little you can do against those who are determined to do bad things.
Or against those that are determined to do stupid things, regardless of warnings and education on the dangers.
I've always thought it would be a great idea for the state law enforcement agencies to look for e-mail addresses the same way spammers do. Then send fake phishing e-mails to those addresses. If a user responds favorably or goes to the phishing site, apply a court order requiring that the user is denied Internet access for six months. The justification is that their stupidity creates botnets and enables spam that harms many other people and reduces the overall quality of the entire network; therefore they should be held responsible for it.
While I don't normally want the government to find new ways to get involved in things, this one isn't so bad because it requires the active participation of the user. If your e-mail address is already out there, one more phishing attempt is a drop in the bucket. Other than one additional e-mail, anyone with sense enough not to respond to phishers would not be affected by this.
Are you confusing me with someone else?. Where do you see me stating or even implying that citizens should not have this right? I am in agreement with you on the subject.
Perhaps I did confuse you with someone else; my apologies. However, I disagree about one thing. The speeding cameras are a valid example of a slippery slope.
Speeding and most other traffic tickets are not so much about safety. If it were about safety and about punishing the behaviors that actually cause accidents, we would not have so many cops running radar to measure speed. Instead, they'd primarily look for people who follow too closely and who fail to yield right of way.
As a secondary concern cops would look for people who perform a "rolling roadblock" in the passing lane or who go significantly below the speed limit in good conditions and impede traffic. Both of those behaviors create hazards for other drivers and tempt impatient drivers to perform dangerous maneuvers to get around them. I realize drivers should not get impatient like this, but I deal in truth. The truth or the reality is that right or wrong, if you make something tempting enough, people WILL do it. You are better off addressing the careless, unnecessary, inconsiderate beahviors that create these temptations if safety and prevention is your goal.
Exceeding the speed limit would be a very distant tertiary concern, if safety were the actual purpose.
The reason you want a human police officer instead of a camera is that it is undesirable and unhealthy for society to automate this revenue-generation process in the name of safety. If that works and fulfills their goal of revenue generation by means of tickets, you can expect the use of cameras to expand for the same reason you can expect a corporation to put more resources into activities that make profit. Cameras don't sleep, don't take days off, can be mass-produced, and are quite cheap when compared to the budget available to a state government. That's why this is a slippery slope. Look at Britian sometime -- their use of cameras started small, but didn't stay that way. This pattern happens so frequently it should be the default position, with the burden of proof on anyone who says "this situation is an exception".
Human cops have one big advantage here. They are a finite resource that comes at a significant cost to the state. This compels the state to strike a balance between overreacting to trivial administrative violations and having enough manpower available to deal with real problems like violent criminals. The cameras are an attempt to have it both ways and no one really benefits from it.
I believe the way that he was trying to use slippery slope was incorrect and off-base as you're post clearly points out. Thanks.
So you won't be trying to explain why the citizens of a state should not be free to reject this measure and choose to take any additional risk this implies? Prediction fulfilled.
i've never seen so much "won't somebody think of the children" BS on slashdot.... the sentiment here so far seems to be "well i don't speed (liars), so i don't mind the cameras", which is silly, i don't sell crack or run a basement casino but i still appreciate and recognize the importance of 4th amendment protections even though, were the police to kick down my door, they would find nothing amiss. its been mentioned quite a few times already but look at Britain with its mass of CCTV cameras and speed cameras, i don't see how ANYONE can look at that system and think, yes, lets bring that to America! There are times when we need to choose between preservation of personal liberties and nanny state garbage, even if the nanny state garbage could save a few lives in the long run... just in the same way i'm happily willing to face an "increased risk of a terrorist act" if we scuttled the decidedly un-american and hypocritically named Patriot Act in its entirety...
Amen. The problem is that cowards never face their own cowardice and admit that it is a driving force behind their actions, decisions, and the sort of government under which they'd like to live. Instead, they have a million excuses and justifications. Some of them even sound pretty good, at least until you evaluate them critically. That's why no amount of freedom is worth an "increased risk" of anything to them, not when some politician promises to protect them from it.
What we need is driving education that actually teaches people a thing or two about the actual dangers of speeding, and do something about the roads that have an unproportionally high rate of accidents. Also, make sure the roads are safe enough for what most people consider a sensible speed limit for that road
Do some research and try to find accidents that were caused solely by speeding. I do not mean accidents where "speed was a factor" but the actual impact was caused by the at-fault driver failing to yield right of way (indeed, the fact that someone is speeding is all the more reason not to pull out in front of them). I mean accidents caused by speeding alone; for one example, a case where (let's say) the tires could not come up with enough traction to keep the vehicle on the road at that speed, resulting in an accident. Or an accident caused by a hazard that the vehicle could have maneuvered around at the speed limit but could not maneuver around in time when exceeding it. Good luck, for these are difficult to find.
What my years in the auto insurance industry taught me were that two things are the primary cause of all the accidents and claim reports I saw: following too closely and failure to yield right of way. Most of the single-vehicle accidents did not involve high rates of speed, or at least the police reports did not mention speeding. Most of those involved people who fell asleep at the wheel, were drunk, were texting or otherwise engaged in distracted driving, or things of that nature. Yet "strangely enough" the emphasis of traffic enforcement is placed on speeding, likely because it happens frequently, is easy to demonstrate in court, and produces a lot of revenue for the state.
I laugh when my state plays public-service commercials on the radio talking about how you shouldn't speed and you should wear your seatbelt because the cops and the state care about your safety. Every time I hear those, I think "yeah, and if the ticket money went to charity I might just believe that."
The one place where speed limits make a lot of sense is also a place where accidents are relatively rare: residential neighborhoods where there may be children playing. Yet the cops don't seem to pay much attention to these areas because they don't generally have heavy traffic. I am much more likely to see a cop sitting near the 65mph highway running radar than anyplace where people live. If you assume that ticket revenue is what the state cares about, then this makes perfect sense. More traffic == more vehicles == more traffic violations == more tickets == more revenue for the state. To say this is about safety is a joke.
Once you have prove that this is what actually happens after you start allowing these types of monitoring is it actually a slippery slope argument?
Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that. You ask that question as though someone has misled you into believing that "slippery slope" is some kind of bad word. That it has been proven means it is a valid slippery slope. Does Slashdot not understand that "slippery slope" is emphatically NOT a logical fallacy? Has "slippery slope" become the new keyword to instantly end a debate with no burden of proof, sort of like "conspiracy theory"? Because slippery slopes are quite real, they do pose a danger, and are best dealt with in their early stages.
Besides, what is called "slippery slope" is merely the realization that few or no actions are the final last word. Rather, events tend to progress along a path. The path has a destination. It proceeds by a series of steps according to a philosophy. The destination of the path can be known by looking at the very first step if you're sharp. The very first step is never as threatening or as problematic as the destination. It's just the acknowledgement of what should be bleedin' obvious: that complex processes do not spring up overnight, but are brought about by a series of gradual changes. A free country's transformation to a surveillance society is such a complex process.
Rather than delve into this any further, I'll show just how simple this speed camera issue really is. If the citizens of a state don't want these speed cameras, it's because they are prepared to assume the risk (if any) posed by speeders who might have been stopped or deterred by them. They have that right. The burden of proof here lies squarely on the shoulders of anyone suggesting that the citizens of a state do not have the right to make such decisions or to elect representatives to make such decisions on their behalf. Yet no one opposing this wants to meet that burden of proof because they'd rather whine about semantics like "slippery slopes" in an attempt to discredit. What a limp-wristed way to make an argument!
I personally think they are needed for specific places. Construction zones. Too many idiots go flying through construction zones putting construction works and other motorists in danger. maybe speed cameras all along the construction area will actually slow down those idiots.
If it's a legitimate safety issue, then it's worth having an actual human police officer monitor or patrol the area. That's quite a bit different from the "administrative" issue of going a little faster than the speed limit on an open highway with no such hazards. The joke there is that speeding is not precisely illegal, it's just taxed. Which leads me to another point (from the summary)...
a setback for those who argue that the cameras slow speeders, reduce accidents, and free up police for more serious matters
If we really cared about freeing up police for more serious matters, we'd stop prosecuting nonviolent drug users. Do the research sometime and look at how many cops, courts, and much jail/prison space is currently devoted to these victimless crimes. Then imagine what that effort would accomplish if it were put towards violent criminals and scammers who directly harm other people with their crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Adobe: We Bitch and Moan until we Get Our Way(TM)
That's about right and I'll explain why. From the summary:
Unless it's done by means of proprietary standards and not by means of executive decisions. That's the complete thought. What is quoted from Adobe there is only the first half.
The feds have NO interest whatsoever in providing skill training, no matter what their propaganda tells you. At the FCI where I was, inmates typically slept till lunch, signed false pay sheets claiming 40 hours worked. They thought they were getting over, but it's actualy the feds, who can provide "proof" of "gainfully employed inmates."
But it's a scam. The BOP/DOJ has a vested interest in the 75% recidivism rate...it keeps the beds full and the $30,000 a year per inmate flowing nicely. Most inmates sleep till lunch, play basketball or softball in the afternoon, and watch TV and gamble all night.
Look, my unit had nine televisions (big flat screens, full cable, Netflix movies twice a week) and four toilets for 150 guys. Total in the facility? 1,800 inmates in regular population housed in 6 units, with a total of 48 toilets and 108 televisions. What's wrong with this picture?
Skills training my ass. Try getting a job with nothing on your resume but "data entry and basic Office." And that's for the tech/UNICOR jobs! It's like a health club..once they have you, they want you to keep coming back. Again and again. No skills? You're probably going to reoffend.
Step 3: Profit!
That's what happens when state and federal governments contract out such a basic thing as their prison systems. To the government and government-run prisons, prisoners are nothing but an expense so the fewer, the better. To the private companies, each prisoner represents profit so the more the merrier.
Certainly I can understand the government buying items on the open market such as automobiles, ships, airplanes, office stationery, electricity, etc. I hardly expect them to mine their own ore, smelt it, forge it, and make their own products, to run their own paper mills, or maintain their own electrical grids. Yet a line does need to be drawn someplace because things like prisons are rightly an unwanted expense. I propose that the government can freely purchase any needed goods (including units of energy like kilowatt-hours) but must perform all services itself, carried out by individuals who are government employees.
No one should have a vested interest in a high recidivism rate, particularly not when large sums of money are involved. It does not serve society's interests. Further, I bet they're fine with high recidivism until a crime happens to them. Any such entity with vested interests like this is a parasite that feeds off the failing of others. These parasites are state-sponsored.
If your definition of robot is "machine controlled by an intelligent computer program" then I'm sorry to say, you're ALREADY putting your faith in such things, hundreds of times per day. Hell, you're putting your life in a computer's hands on a second-by-second basis just by being within ten miles of a nuclear power plant.
Unless pebble bed reactors become deployed on a commercial scale.
The ones that haven't done it yet are undercutting the price of the guys that have done it before by 50%? Gee do we get a refund if it crashes? I think you get what you pay for is appropriate here. Maybe they can pull it off but would you want to be on the first ship?
This is an adventurous thing to do. Since when was adventure risk-free?
Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't "phone home" unless you specifically configure it to do so.
They have made this configuration radically simple to carry out. Just turn the wireless off, leave it off, and use your USB port to transfer your data.
And for the tinfoil hatters who say "How do you know it's really off? How do you know the switch is actually connected to anything?" and so on... Well, how do you know there's no microphone, GSM transmitter, and SIM card buried in your kitchen stove secretly sending all of your conversations to Whirlpool?
I have a question for you. As in, I really don't know the answer but would like to become informed.
Let's say that a user disables the wireless functionality so that only the USB port can perform data transfers on the Kindle, as you mention. That user then purchases the book 1984. The publisher screws up and decides that the very best way to handle that is to forcibly reverse the sales. In other words, instead of taking responsibility for its screw-up and paying any necessary fees to the copyright holder to make those sales legit, it instead decides to make this the customers' problem. Would the settings you mention have been able to prevent the forced reversal of that sale? Why or why not?
If it would not, then what you mention is academic at best, "feel-good yet useless" at worst since it still doesn't represent actual control over a device you purchased. Control that can be withdrawn or overridden at any time is not real ownership.
If it would, then it's a good thing that the users have at least some influence over whether or not a corporation can manipulate their device after the sale has been made. It's not nearly enough to convince me to purchase a Kindle, as I enjoy doing business with companies that don't even want to do such things for any reason. That is to say, there is still a willingness there to do something that I believe is wrong and is in fact an adversarial way of relating to customers (remember The Outer Limits? "We control the horizontal, and the vertical..."). At that point, in my eyes, we're talking now about degree; not a matter of whether it's good or bad, but about how bad it actually is.
Also, since you had to throw that in there: you can make this about wearing a tinfoil hat because let's face it, portraying those who disagree with you as paranoid lunatics is a classic, time-tested way of discrediting them without having to actually answer their objections. It works well on people who are intimidated by how it might make them look ("oh no, he might think I'm unreasonable!") because they don't recognize that technique for the weakness that it is. I'll additionally explain in more practical terms why this technique is not valid in this instance.
I said, and you quoted, "Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't 'phone home' unless you specifically configure it to do so." Not phoning home unless you set it up to do so is known as "opt-in". What you describe as enabled by default unless you disable it is known as "opt-out". From the perspective of the savvy customer, there is a world of difference in the desirability of those two methods. Opt-in is superior by far for anyone other than pushy corporations and spammers. No paranoia is needed to recognize that fact, but nice try.
Then there's the little issue of how you make that configuration sound: either disable all wireless capabilities or put up with phoning home and remote control without consent. Real choice would mean being able to use wireless capabilities "client-pull" style while still disabling the phoning-home and unwanted remote control. Assuming you have portrayed that accurately, this is still not desirable.
No, I'm not. It's one of many reasons why I use Open Source. I remember this vaguely because it was some time ago, but I *think* OpenOffice asked me one time if I would like to be counted among their users for purposes of measuring their marketshare, but that's the sole example I can name. I answered "No" (which I think was the default option, could be wrong) and it never asked me about that again. Either way, a single one-time example in the 13-14 years that I have used Linux is a far cry from "constantly" being asked. Then there's the fact that when OpenOffice says "this data is not personally identifying" I tend to believe them, because if they lied about it a reading of the source code would expose them.
Only because we (well, in my case, "they") tolerate it.
Let us not fog this discussion with dismissives about hardware ownership, for this really has nothing to do with that. Instead, this about how companies treat the data you create. And let me just say that there's are some useful aspects to having Amazon keep your data for you.
Suppose I have a Kindle (or, say, one of the requisite apps on some other hardware platform), and I've bought a few books for it that I've noted and highlighted. Suppose, then, that I lose my Kindle. Or it gets run over by a bus. Or stolen. Or dunked in a hot tub. Or whatever.
All I have to do is procure/install a new Kindle, enter the appropriate account identification, and my books and notes are transferred to the new device.
Which, you must admit, is pretty cool. (Hey luddites! The cloud has uses!)
As I see it, the only problem here is if, and how, Amazon shares that data with others. It really has nothing to do with hardware ownership, which is a red herring argument at best.
So, instead, please: Let's simply discuss the implications of Amazon sharing your highlights with others. (This is a matter that I really don't have any opinion on in this instance, but I guess I'll don my flamesuit anyway...)
Hardware that you own is under your control. "Control" as used here includes the ability to decide whether or not it transmits locally-stored data to any remote destination.
The scenarios you gave of a Kindle being destroyed, stolen, or otherwise rendered inoperable have a simple enough solution: backups. On a hardware device that you own, there is nothing preventing you from making backups of any data it stores. If you own it, you can send your data "to the cloud" as a backup (whether or not this is the primary purpose of doing so), you can back the data up to physical media that you own, you can choose to do both, or you can choose to do neither and take your chances.
Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't "phone home" unless you specifically configure it to do so. It doesn't force you to return a downloaded book (i.e. 1984) because the publisher screwed up and wants to make this your problem. It doesn't transmit your data to "the cloud" unless you enable such functionality, or if it is enabled by default, you are at least able to permanently disable it with the confidence that your settings won't be remotely overridden.
I think you miss an important point. Data ownership is a total non-issue if no one but you has possession of your data. It's an easy issue if no one else has possession of your data unless you specifically, willingly, and intentionally gave it to them. The only reason you mention "how companies treat the data you create" and think this trumps the "hardware ownership" concern is because Amazon gets this data with or without your consent because they have total control over a device you thought you owned.
The repeated examples of this single principle are why I will never use a Kindle. I refuse to reward such business practices with my money. If you really had no qualms about doing so, if there were truly nothing wrong with any of this, then you wouldn't need to create a false distinction between "hardware ownership" and "how companies treat your data", as though the hardware ownership were not exactly the means by which Amazon obtains your data.
1.) highlight 2.) upload in steal, er, I meant borrow...ahhhrr.. I mean stealth mode 3.) profit 4.) wow sharewholders
I can't wait to see who comes out of the woodwork to defend Amazon on this one, and what sort of faux reasoning they use to do it. I know Amazon doesn't have the fanboy base that Microsoft and Apple currently enjoy, but I think that's because they are, for the most part, "just a retailer" reselling goods they did not themselves design or produce. Most of the items they sell are things you happen to have bought from Amazon but could obtain elsewhere. The Kindle is quite the exception to that. It's a real Amazon product and service with all of the brand recognition that goes with that.
I'm wondering who is going to make excuses for Amazon and advocate that we view this as a desirable or at least benign practice. That's what happens whenever there is a story about alleged or proven malfeasance by Microsoft. It's what happens whenever there is a story about excessive vendor lock-in, general control-freak practices, or arbitrary and inconsistent actions (like which apps are accepted/rejected for its App Store) by Apple. So, who will it be? Who's going to try convincing us that this is a good and desirable practice, that it's in our interests as customers, that it's not a step in the wrong direction that has a long series of steps, or that there's something wrong with seriously questioning it?
Or better yet, who will point out a EULA clause or similar document stating, "we can arbitrarily modify this agreement without notice or ability to opt-out, at any time, to allow ourselves to engage in any practice" and conclude that this completely justifies everything beyond reproach, both legally and morally/ethically?
In the interests of non-discrimination, I hereby request that those of you with fanboy inclinations, who derive your identity in part or whole by feeling a personal connection to non-human entities that don't give a damn about you except that you spend money, who cheer their successes and mourn their losses, who add your free contributions to their already multi-million dollar marketing and PR budgets, who use ad-hominem and invective against anyone who dislikes "your team", speak up and be heard. There is no reason why Amazon should not be treated equally.
Well, sure, that is to be expected. Those two groups have much arguing to do about the purpose for which the size and power of the federal government should be expanded. Twitter could be an important growth area for them.
Or they hire the very best PR people and pay them well. (/cynacism)
Indeed. "Slippery slope" is the new "racism" in terms of attempting to perfunctorily end arguments. Using it is basically an ad hominem which *is* a logical fallacy.
I'd say that such weak techniques ("indications of weakness" might be a better term) are merely the result of an inability to separate emotion from reason during discussion. I'd like to think it's that simple.
Unfortunately, there is a distinctive pattern. The "demonized word" is always or nearly always a description of the increasing accumulation and centralization of political power. That's how this dismissive technique tends to be used; that is, against anyone who disagrees with the expansion of power, the homogenization of society, or the false concept of deriving one's notion of self from a predefined group identity.
I don't generally see these weak, dismissive techniques used against anyone who is pro-government, pro-corporation, or anti-individual. It's as though those positions are exempt from demagoguery. The consistency of this pattern is such that I am forced to believe it is not accidental. I'll tell you what I think it is: it's Newspeak.
I guess the part where you were answering to a message about a family of clueless users must have confused me. I thought you were actually answering to that message ;)
But at any rate, take a chill pill. If you think I actually care that much about your omissions, you're really overthinking it.
I was answering that message. That's why I never said the clueless users themselves should perform the setup or administration of such a device. Had I said such a thing, that would be incompatible with the subject matter of clueless users. Instead, I originally left that part open-ended.
Chill pill? I can point out the fact that you made a false assumption without getting upset. In fact, that's what I did. Had I called you names etc. your response would make more sense.
Since I didn't, it looks like you're clutching at straws to find some objection to something I said now that your original one was shown to be invalid. Ego is amusing that way. I have one too, you know, so I'm aware of its petty and subtle little tendencies. I'm all too aware of the fact that these go totally unexamined in most people, who usually resent having them pointed out since they are so convinced it's some kind of contest.
You made a false assumption and proceeded as though the assumption were valid. I pointed out that this had happened. Whether you care about that, or whether you wish to see that this is an easy mistake that is entirely preventable is entirely your business. I wouldn't dream of telling you what you should do with this information.
Just know that if you or anyone else makes false assumptions about me while conversing with me, I will correct them. My interest in accuracy is not a personal interest in you, how you feel, or how much you care. That again is your self-importance (aka ego) getting involved in a factual matter. It does provide a nice excuse to tell me how much thinking I am permitted to do before you judge that I am "really overthinking", but I disregard that the same way I'd expect you to (rightly) disregard any attempt of mine to tell you what you should do with information I provide.
In reply to your confusion, I have an easy answer: my research that informed me is not a substitute for your own research that informs you. In other words, don't believe something just because I say it with confidence. Investigate it and see it for yourself. See if you come to the same conclusion. If you don't, I might just learn something. Not to mention, some people will mislead you and some of those will do it deliberately because they have an agenda. Maintaining your intellectual independence guards against all of these things and exercises a vital skill.
Therefore, I would say that I didn't do your work for you. I did my work for me and reported the results.
Speed limits are a way for the state to raise revenue while pretending to care about the welfare of its citizens. If that caring were genuine, they'd target the well-known, well-researched behaviors that cause far more accidents than speeding. The cops themselves either know that they are collection agents for the state and don't care about the dishonesty in which they participate (after all, lots of fringe benefits and a feeling of power come with that job), or they're what you'd call useful idiots.
You answered your own objection about following too closely. It can be done at any speed, as you said. That's why (at least in my state) rear-ender accidents are always, automatically the fault of the driver behind and rightfully so.
Personally, I drive in such a way that the guy in front of me can suddenly and without warning slam into an invisible reinforced brick wall and instantly decelerate to a full stop without me hitting him, at any speed. To do otherwise would be supremely irresponsible. It would mean allowing myself to succumb to a predictable eventuality. No responsible adult does that.
What do I mean by "predictable eventuality?" There are such things as deer, children, careless pedestrians, vehicles that run stop signs and red lights, and all sorts of other unpredictable hazards that might require someone to suddenly and unexpectedly stop the vehicle. If you are like most American adults, you drive on a daily basis and have done so for years. It is absolutely inevitable that you will eventually run into such a scenario. To be unprepared for it and surprised by it is to disregard the very real possibility of your negligence causing the death of either yourself or an innocent third party. I'd rather not die a useless death and I enjoy being able to sleep at night.
Just like gravity turns a non-trivial fall into a fatality. However, gravity did not cause anyone to fall. Losing their grip, losing their footing, or failing to use safety equipment caused them to fall. If you are
Actually, while I agree with the majority of your post, I CAN think of one more place where speed limits are very useful, with the caveat that they're not useful all the time: I live in Denver, Colorado. We by far don't have the worst weather, I know, but our weather is variable enough, and can get bad enough, that road travel is seriously inhibited. Yet, if you must drive during these times, you'll find other people out on the highway doing 60 in the middle of a blizzard with a foot of snow on the road. I think that speed limits would be very useful on those roads DURING those times. They already have digital speed limit signs set up in places around Denver... what's to stop them from networking them and then slowing those limits for bad weather? Variable speed limits based on real time road information would be infinitely more helpful and safer than the set speed limits we have now, and I can't help feeling that if the speed limits were REALLY about safety, we'd be hearing more about ideas like this.
I know exactly what you mean about drivers who are reckless during bad weather. I have been stuck in second gear (i.e. 20-25 mph) going down what is normally a 45mph road before because of ice and snow, only to have people flying by me in their invincible SUVs. Apparently they don't realize that the purpose of four-wheel drive is to avoid getting stuck; it will not save you from hitting a sheet of ice at highway speeds. It won't prevent unwanted drift, oversteer, or understeer yet many people drive as though it will.
Unfortunately I don't believe that your idea will work. It'd be nice if it would but I have a good reason to doubt that.
You have observed that people will drive recklessly (excessive speed) during a blizzard with one foot of snow already on the ground. This overrides their instinct for self-preservation. You are suggesting that people who will not slow down for the sake of life-and-limb will slow down because a sign told them it's a good idea. I'd flat-out say this will not possibly work, except for one thing.
Thanks to the combined efforts of public schooling and mass media, many people will mindlessly obey a sign if it looks official enough. The bit of cynacism I have left tells me that they would do this before they'd exercise any sort of awareness or proactive evaluation of their situation, since those things require the independent, self-directed thought that they seem to find so painful. Still, the purpose of enforcing a "bad conditions" speed limit would not be to protect the reckless driver. Similar to why we sanction drunk drivers, the purpose would be to protect everyone else on the road from their poor decision-making.
Is it mere coincidence that the Senate planned for a vote to break up the big banks on the same day?
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
You have too much faith in the average user, if you think they'll configure and admin a whole PC instead of just buying a small appliance and forgetting that it's even there. And if you actually want them to configure and admin it _well_, now that's a whole other issue.
I guess it never occurred to you that there might be a reason why I never made any claims about average users building and administering such devices. Ah, Slashdot, where people feel free to assume but the assumption is never that your positive statements and omissions are deliberate... At any rate, the same shops that remove Windows viruses and otherwise service end-user PCs could set these up on behalf of the users. Such a shop would likely do this once and then use a drive image to clone the rest. It would be based on the model of the average driver not being an auto mechanic but knowing that he can go to a shop to hire one in order to repair or customize a vehicle. In both cases, whether you do it yourself is a matter of saving money, not a matter of whether the job gets done.
What's a "virus"? I can't find any reference to it in portage:
emerge -s virus Searching... [ Results for search key : virus ] [ Applications found : 0 ]
And what do condoms have to do with computer security, anyway?
(ducks for cover)
The utility "eix" is quite a bit faster than "emerge -s" particularly when you also want to search the package description. You just have to remember to update its index when you do "emerge --sync".
there is little you can do against those who are determined to do bad things.
Or against those that are determined to do stupid things, regardless of warnings and education on the dangers.
I've always thought it would be a great idea for the state law enforcement agencies to look for e-mail addresses the same way spammers do. Then send fake phishing e-mails to those addresses. If a user responds favorably or goes to the phishing site, apply a court order requiring that the user is denied Internet access for six months. The justification is that their stupidity creates botnets and enables spam that harms many other people and reduces the overall quality of the entire network; therefore they should be held responsible for it.
While I don't normally want the government to find new ways to get involved in things, this one isn't so bad because it requires the active participation of the user. If your e-mail address is already out there, one more phishing attempt is a drop in the bucket. Other than one additional e-mail, anyone with sense enough not to respond to phishers would not be affected by this.
A hardened Linux PC makes a fine router. Older hardware will do the job just fine too, so nothing expensive or exotic is required.
Are you confusing me with someone else?. Where do you see me stating or even implying that citizens should not have this right? I am in agreement with you on the subject.
Perhaps I did confuse you with someone else; my apologies. However, I disagree about one thing. The speeding cameras are a valid example of a slippery slope.
Speeding and most other traffic tickets are not so much about safety. If it were about safety and about punishing the behaviors that actually cause accidents, we would not have so many cops running radar to measure speed. Instead, they'd primarily look for people who follow too closely and who fail to yield right of way.
As a secondary concern cops would look for people who perform a "rolling roadblock" in the passing lane or who go significantly below the speed limit in good conditions and impede traffic. Both of those behaviors create hazards for other drivers and tempt impatient drivers to perform dangerous maneuvers to get around them. I realize drivers should not get impatient like this, but I deal in truth. The truth or the reality is that right or wrong, if you make something tempting enough, people WILL do it. You are better off addressing the careless, unnecessary, inconsiderate beahviors that create these temptations if safety and prevention is your goal.
Exceeding the speed limit would be a very distant tertiary concern, if safety were the actual purpose.
The reason you want a human police officer instead of a camera is that it is undesirable and unhealthy for society to automate this revenue-generation process in the name of safety. If that works and fulfills their goal of revenue generation by means of tickets, you can expect the use of cameras to expand for the same reason you can expect a corporation to put more resources into activities that make profit. Cameras don't sleep, don't take days off, can be mass-produced, and are quite cheap when compared to the budget available to a state government. That's why this is a slippery slope. Look at Britian sometime -- their use of cameras started small, but didn't stay that way. This pattern happens so frequently it should be the default position, with the burden of proof on anyone who says "this situation is an exception".
Human cops have one big advantage here. They are a finite resource that comes at a significant cost to the state. This compels the state to strike a balance between overreacting to trivial administrative violations and having enough manpower available to deal with real problems like violent criminals. The cameras are an attempt to have it both ways and no one really benefits from it.
I believe the way that he was trying to use slippery slope was incorrect and off-base as you're post clearly points out. Thanks.
So you won't be trying to explain why the citizens of a state should not be free to reject this measure and choose to take any additional risk this implies? Prediction fulfilled.
i've never seen so much "won't somebody think of the children" BS on slashdot.... the sentiment here so far seems to be "well i don't speed (liars), so i don't mind the cameras", which is silly, i don't sell crack or run a basement casino but i still appreciate and recognize the importance of 4th amendment protections even though, were the police to kick down my door, they would find nothing amiss. its been mentioned quite a few times already but look at Britain with its mass of CCTV cameras and speed cameras, i don't see how ANYONE can look at that system and think, yes, lets bring that to America! There are times when we need to choose between preservation of personal liberties and nanny state garbage, even if the nanny state garbage could save a few lives in the long run... just in the same way i'm happily willing to face an "increased risk of a terrorist act" if we scuttled the decidedly un-american and hypocritically named Patriot Act in its entirety...
Amen. The problem is that cowards never face their own cowardice and admit that it is a driving force behind their actions, decisions, and the sort of government under which they'd like to live. Instead, they have a million excuses and justifications. Some of them even sound pretty good, at least until you evaluate them critically. That's why no amount of freedom is worth an "increased risk" of anything to them, not when some politician promises to protect them from it.
Do some research and try to find accidents that were caused solely by speeding. I do not mean accidents where "speed was a factor" but the actual impact was caused by the at-fault driver failing to yield right of way (indeed, the fact that someone is speeding is all the more reason not to pull out in front of them). I mean accidents caused by speeding alone; for one example, a case where (let's say) the tires could not come up with enough traction to keep the vehicle on the road at that speed, resulting in an accident. Or an accident caused by a hazard that the vehicle could have maneuvered around at the speed limit but could not maneuver around in time when exceeding it. Good luck, for these are difficult to find.
What my years in the auto insurance industry taught me were that two things are the primary cause of all the accidents and claim reports I saw: following too closely and failure to yield right of way. Most of the single-vehicle accidents did not involve high rates of speed, or at least the police reports did not mention speeding. Most of those involved people who fell asleep at the wheel, were drunk, were texting or otherwise engaged in distracted driving, or things of that nature. Yet "strangely enough" the emphasis of traffic enforcement is placed on speeding, likely because it happens frequently, is easy to demonstrate in court, and produces a lot of revenue for the state.
I laugh when my state plays public-service commercials on the radio talking about how you shouldn't speed and you should wear your seatbelt because the cops and the state care about your safety. Every time I hear those, I think "yeah, and if the ticket money went to charity I might just believe that."
The one place where speed limits make a lot of sense is also a place where accidents are relatively rare: residential neighborhoods where there may be children playing. Yet the cops don't seem to pay much attention to these areas because they don't generally have heavy traffic. I am much more likely to see a cop sitting near the 65mph highway running radar than anyplace where people live. If you assume that ticket revenue is what the state cares about, then this makes perfect sense. More traffic == more vehicles == more traffic violations == more tickets == more revenue for the state. To say this is about safety is a joke.
Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that. You ask that question as though someone has misled you into believing that "slippery slope" is some kind of bad word. That it has been proven means it is a valid slippery slope. Does Slashdot not understand that "slippery slope" is emphatically NOT a logical fallacy? Has "slippery slope" become the new keyword to instantly end a debate with no burden of proof, sort of like "conspiracy theory"? Because slippery slopes are quite real, they do pose a danger, and are best dealt with in their early stages.
Besides, what is called "slippery slope" is merely the realization that few or no actions are the final last word. Rather, events tend to progress along a path. The path has a destination. It proceeds by a series of steps according to a philosophy. The destination of the path can be known by looking at the very first step if you're sharp. The very first step is never as threatening or as problematic as the destination. It's just the acknowledgement of what should be bleedin' obvious: that complex processes do not spring up overnight, but are brought about by a series of gradual changes. A free country's transformation to a surveillance society is such a complex process.
Rather than delve into this any further, I'll show just how simple this speed camera issue really is. If the citizens of a state don't want these speed cameras, it's because they are prepared to assume the risk (if any) posed by speeders who might have been stopped or deterred by them. They have that right. The burden of proof here lies squarely on the shoulders of anyone suggesting that the citizens of a state do not have the right to make such decisions or to elect representatives to make such decisions on their behalf. Yet no one opposing this wants to meet that burden of proof because they'd rather whine about semantics like "slippery slopes" in an attempt to discredit. What a limp-wristed way to make an argument!
If it's a legitimate safety issue, then it's worth having an actual human police officer monitor or patrol the area. That's quite a bit different from the "administrative" issue of going a little faster than the speed limit on an open highway with no such hazards. The joke there is that speeding is not precisely illegal, it's just taxed. Which leads me to another point (from the summary)...
If we really cared about freeing up police for more serious matters, we'd stop prosecuting nonviolent drug users. Do the research sometime and look at how many cops, courts, and much jail/prison space is currently devoted to these victimless crimes. Then imagine what that effort would accomplish if it were put towards violent criminals and scammers who directly harm other people with their crimes.