Unfortunately, in my experience, most of the developers who are best at doing prototypes are among the worst at writing robust, maintainable code. The single threaded, low locking granularity prototype is easy and looks much like the real one -- but the real one requires a level of attention to detail the prototypers seem to usually lack.
This is why I always leave lots of bugs in the code, and name the variables: a, aa, aAa, Aa, etc. They can never fire me.
Hey, Intron, good to hear from you again. Seriously, we are really sorry we never sent you your last check after we fired you (your code had a bug in it which corrupted our terminated employee database beyond repair so we didn't have your address anymore).
It turns out that markets are not the magic spring of happiness for society that some would have you believe...
It would be incorrect to assume that everyone who advocates free market solutions believes they are a "magic spring of happiness for society". However, many people believe that free markets based solutions tend to be better than the next best alternative - and believe that's sufficient justification to consider free market solutions.
Also, definition of "happiness" varies from person to person. Some people would be happiest with a system that gives them everything they want and requires them do nothing (this is the "From each according to his willingness to get off his fat butt, to each according to his desire to consume" philosophy of life). Others find the give and take of competition pleasurable and enjoy winning while also enjoying learning from their losses. Some have an intense sense of independence and would rather be independent and hungry than caged and well fed. Others would happily give up all their freedom for a steady diet of yummy food and all the cable channels.
Obviously these differing views of "happiness" (assuming that everyone seeks "happiness" - which is not necessarily the case) are likely to result in different evaluations of a particular system.
Look at Wal-Mart, who is such a behemoth that it can dictate the price it wants to pay for goods.
To some extent, Walmart (and brethren such as Target) has done to retail what modern agricultural technology (biological, engineering, chemical, etc) did to the field of agriculture. In 1900 41% of the US population was engaged in agriculture, in 2000 only 1.9% were. Yet, during this same time, farm productivity went up. Sure, this displaced a lot of farm workers and families and created anxiety for them - but it meant those resources were eventually put to better use. As well, food prices declined as a result so people had more discretionary income (to buy things like transportation and improved medical care). The forces that the likes of Walmart put on the market have had similar beneficial effects and have created similar anxiety. The anxiety arising from such innovation is passing while the benefits are lasting and accrue to future generations.
Walmart does not "dictate" the price it pays for goods. It tells a producer what it's willing to pay for a product and the producer tries to convince them to pay more. Both sides desire to maximize profits and certainly not to lose money. Walmart buyers are strong negotiators, but Walmart can't force anyone to sell them products at any particular price. If a producer is inefficient and a more efficient producer comes along, Walmart will likely shift to that producer in exchange for a lower price -- some of which, in the aggregate, Walmart's retail customer will see via lower prices on the shelf.
This is little different than what the American car buyers did to the inefficient producers of cars such as GM, Chrysler, and Ford. The customers chose better value cars from Honda and Toyota - no matter how "big" GM was, they still lost the battle. That failure is what killed Detroit, not "foreign labor". Toyotas were just better cars and a Toyota worker (even though a US citizen working in the US) was willing to sweep the floor if the line was down for some reason -- unlike the GM worker whose union rules "protected" him from this indignity and allowed him to do nothing for two hours until the line was restarted (while a "janitorial" worker was called over, and paid, to sweep the floor - frigging insane).
I believe that initially no state or local government employees participated in SS. Later, all such government employees who didn't have a pension plan were required to join in the SS system. State and local governments which had pension plans were not required to join in the SS system, but some have. Some more info here suggests that about 25% of the public service employees are not covered by SS and that most are teachers, fire fighters, and police.
Note that there is some "benefits coordination" for those that spend part of their career in SS and part in public employee pension plan instead. This "windfall elimination provision" can dramatically reduce SS benefits due to offsets applied for benefits received under their public employee pension fund.
(Railroad workers also have their own independent pension plan and are outside the SS system.)
"Banks" are regulated and the amount of money thay can "create" is limited, in part, by government mandated reserve requirements. And, yes, we do know this.
Indeed, the government can just "print" money to pay for social welfare programs. However, the result is a highly regressive "tax" in the form of inflation (it hits everything, including necessities such as food and transportation). Such inflation causes interest rates to climb -- and makes it even harder for people who really need loans (to buy a used car so they can get to work for example) to get them. The interest rate increase also means that the cost of servicing the US debt would go up - in a vicious cycle... Hyper inflation is a really bad thing which wipes out people's nest eggs -- resulting in more people needing more benefits, resulting in "printing" more money, resulting in more inflation and higher interest rates, resulting in.... well you get the idea.
Unfortunately, the United States has decayed into a culture of lazy, undeserved, luxury in the past 75 years or so -- now it's up to the next couple of generations to pay for it and fix it. It won't be pretty, maybe after India and China have standards of living as high as the US (which will might be in the next 100 years as the US standard of living declines and the standard of living in China and India improves), the US can try again for first world status.
There has been real innovation in healthcare and it does save lives. Just consider the impact that a variety of monoclonal antibodies have had on survival/cure rates for selected cancers. Outside of pharma, MRI and CT and PET scans are all great things that extend life expectancy. Of course, all of these are useful when used correctly - and some (such as CT and PET) are actually harmful when used in excess of benefits.
Yes, patients don't know what things cost, doctors usually don't care what they cost (at least if the patient doesn't care), and patients, doctors (and even all of medical science collectively) don't know what the benefits/costs of generic vs. patented drugs are for a particular situation in a particular patient.
Note, however, that many patients do have an incentive to use generics and DO so. In some cases, it's because they face a greater cost sharing for non-generics. In other cases, such as some Medicare Part D plans, the expensive patented version is only approved if the various generics don't work or the doctor can make a compelling case why the generics would specifically not work or that their side effects would endanger this specific patient.
Agreed that healthcare is heavily regulated - and this is part of the problem. For example, FDA approval is a big cost to getting a drug to market and is one reason that drugs are so expensive. The drug manufactures rely on blockbuster drugs (for those with large audiences) or extraordinary prices (for those with small audiences - such as specialty cancer drugs which only tens of thousands of people a year benefit from). The "obscene" profits from each of these drugs funds the R&D of other drugs which may have been abandoned after spending $100M or more just to get into trials and discovering that they are either unsafe or have limited benefit. Another example, through a variety of government mandated or sanctioned licensing schemes, supply of doctors is limited which keeps their wages (and your medical bills) high. Another example, government requires that anyone be treated for life threatening conditions independent of their ability to pay - resulting in the costs of their care being pushed, in part, to those who can pay. Another example, Medicare bullies doctors and medical establishments into accepting rates that in many cases don't cover costs (except, of course, for the scumbags sucking off the few cases that seem to pay because their lobbyists have kept reimbursements high enough - electric "scooters" for people who don't really need them, lucrative O2 contracts, etc) - resulting in the difference being, again, passed onto those who have insurance. All that regulation has resulted in high costs - I'm not sure how much more regulation we can afford.
We need more personal responsibility and accountability in healthcare and less disconnect between the cost and the person receiving the care. Going through lobbyists and marches on Washington to get priority for your "favorite" disease seems unlikely to improve the situation (except for, of course, government workers). Unfortunately, our reliance in recent decades on employers providing health insurance has removed much of the natural cost control mechanisms -- and the irony of this is that employers involvement in health insurance was accelerated because of government intervention in the form of wage controls during WWII (wages were controlled, but other fringe benefits weren't, so when companies were unable to compete on wages, they competed on fringe benefits -- health insurance being a big one).
But I wish you'd tell us who you are so I can sell you stuff you don't need at inflated prices and you won't care.
Do you eschew markets when you buy or sell things (used cars, new cars, houses, your labor etc...). Do you willingly sell well below "market" price or refuse to accept "market" price (meaning you never find a buyer)?
Why do people reject markets - are they scared of them and trust politicians and the electorate to treat them more nicely? If you're 60 or 70 years old, maybe you can get away with that as you will probably die before the SS system collapses under its own weight (coupled with a general permanent decline in the US economy now that we have exited the "Century of America" and move into the "Century of Asia"). If you're 30 or below, the older folks will "own" your paycheck by their voting power through much of your career - get used to it.
Ah, that would be called "welfare". We already have that program so we can just wind SS down (contributions stop today, everyone gets benefits based on creditable quarters to date).
Making SS highly "needs based" (it is somewhat today in the sense that some SS benefits become taxable if you have enough other income) will cause support for it to drop quickly. It's pretty hard to justify taking 12.4% of a person's salary through their entire working career just for a welfare program which they will likely see no benefit from. It also discourages people from saving for their own retirement -- "Let's see, I can save this $2K into my retirement nest egg and end up getting less SS because I have income from that $2K or I can buy that neat big screen TV and keep my SS payments up -- hmm... let me think about this one - Not."
And, perhaps you should explain why she only gets $76/mo from SS?
My guess would be that she spent most of her career in a government pension fund instead of contributing to SS so had very few SS credits having contributed to it only for a few quarters.
(Isn't it odd that one of the few groups that gets to opt out of SS are some government workers - while almost every other worker and their employer is forced to stay in SS? Goose, Gander comes to mind for some reason...)
When I was managing developers
[...]
You can buy steaks [...] A 10pm or 11pm run for [...] cigarettes
You must have managed in a different time and place than I have:) Hard to find a smoker in environments I've worked in the past 15 years and almost as hard to find a group which doesn't have several developers who would rather starve than eat a steak (probably for religious, moral, or health reasons - I care nor ask why).
Well, anyone can file a sexual harassment complaint for any reason. What matters is if the complaint is upheld. It's just like suing someone - you're free to do it and the defendant is free to ask the court to dismiss the case or issue a summary judgment in their favor to avoid going to trial.
IANAL, but I think under US law (as opposed to state or municipal laws), the "reasonable person" rule generally applies (but in the context of the particular workplace and considering the perspective of the accuser). See Guidance : C. Determining Whether a Work Environment Is "Hostile" (actually, if you're a manager, reading the whole thing isn't a bad idea if you've not been marinated in corporate training courses about "sexual harassment" recently!)
I doubt that the "rumors of pool table incident at prior employer" would qualify since a reasonable person with no knowledge of the rumor mills at the accuser's past jobs would have any reason to expect that a mere invitation to play pool would be perceived in any way except what it was (an offer to play pool).
Or, the pirates could just buy weapons they need on the international market.
It's likely Locker Ship Services which often lost the stuff entrusted to them would see a rapid decline in their client list -- not unlike how most people would stop patronizing a parking lot which often permanently lost their car. I suspect the more successful Locker Ship Services would have enough security on their locker ships to thwart pirates.
You are making an assumption that this needs some sort of international standard and UN involvement. Of course that would make it hard -- but none of that is needed. It doesn't even require the cooperation or involvement of the port or countries the ships are docking at.
Blackwater (oops, Xe Services LLC), for example, might provide this service off the coast of one or more ports. If they lose your ship's weapons, well, no different than if they had contracted to deliver medical services to your ship and failed to do so -- both parties look at their contract and decide what to do. Maybe Risky Joe's Locker Ship Service makes no guarantee about the safety of weapons given to them but offers a great price. Maybe Honest Ahab's Locker Ship Service charges more but guarantees replacement of things entrusted to them and not returned on demand.
There's no additional need to ensure that "the offloaded weapons lockers contain all weapons". If a ship docks at your port and your port has a "no weapons" rule, it's no different than today -- the ship is subject to inspection and, if it's got banned weapons aboard, you take the same action you do today. The responsibility lies with the ship to not dock with banned materials aboard -- if they forget to offload something to the weapons locker support ship(s), they suffer the consequences they do today (whatever those are).
The ship's owner would pay for this service. The biggest companies such as Maersk might choose to maintain their own locker ships near very busy ports which ban weapons they wish to carry on their shipping vessels rather than rely on other parties.
I suppose, if they feel left out, the UN could issue a statement every so often expressing "our grave concerns about Locker Ship Services" and periodically issue a call for "an international standard that insures all shippers, rich or poor, have equal access to this important service". Perhaps, given the current worldwide economic downturn, they could economize by drafting these statements at the same meetings they draft statements expressing their "grave concerns about piracy off the coast of Somalia" and "demanding that pirates stop doing bad things". I'm confident the UN can handle the cost of additional caviar and champagne consumed due to extending the "Drafting Important Meaningless Statements" meeting a day or two.
If everyone had always assumed that "it hasn't be done before so it must not be viable", we would still be eating raw meat from animals killed by our bare hands. Google wouldn't exist. Microsoft wouldn't exist. IBM wouldn't exist. Well, you get the idea...
More directly, I don't think the "weapons aboard ships in dock" problem is really the problem it's made out to be -- simply for the reason it's simple to solve. The reasons commercial ships didn't/don't carry weapons have little to do with the docking problem -- they have, for example, to do with more with insurance/safety concerns. However, there is some evidence this trade-off is changing. Notice the Maersk Alabama foiled a piracy attempt on November 18, 2009 because they DID change their security measures (such as including a "highly trained ex-military personnel"). I imagine the captain and the crew of the Alabama that day are glad that the owners didn't just say "Oh, there's nothing we can do to protect the ship, else it would have been done already. All people who claim otherwise are obviously vastly under estimating the problem".
The areas where piracy is a problem is quite limited - ships docking at Long Beach California, for example, have little fear of piracy nearby. If the US banned arms on ships entering its ports, "locker ships" could be plying the waters outside Long Beach (12+ miles out or whatever is legal). Ships would only be unarmed for that 12 miles where the chance of piracy of a commercial shipping vessel is vanishingly close to zero.
The locker ships would have every motivation to return your weapons -- else you wouldn't do business with them again. To make themselves more attractive, they might be bonded and/or insured by a recognized entity like Lloyds of London. The value of the weapons we are talking about here is pretty small in the big picture anyway.
I doubt there are very many, if any, ports that such a locker ship couldn't be positioned where it was "legal" and the risk of piracy between the locker ship and the target port is significant. If there are any such ports that ban weapons maybe ships would refuse to dock (or, charge shippers extra for pickups/deliveries there).
That's a bad idea. Typically the pirates don't kill the crew. If you started having hostile crews using lethal force against pirates, you may see the pirates escalate their attack and use more deadly force. In the end everyone loses.
If, on the average, 20% of the pirate attacks result in all the pirates being killed...
Pirate recuiting gets harder.
Unarmed ships will still be taken...
But pirates can't kill the crew members of unarmed ships (a dead guy isn't worth much ransom).
Unarmed ships decide each month (unknown to the pirates) if they want to continue to be prey or invest in protection.
a staff of 12 in the Midwest could deal with most of this if alerted by the ships' captains.
Again, WHY MAKE THIS SO HARD? THE PIRATES ARE THUGS WITH NOTHING TO BACK THEM UP. They remind me of "sword vs. gun" scene with Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark which gets spontaneous applause when shown in theaters.
Well, perhaps countries that have such restrictions will just find that fewer commercial ships sail under their flag (at the expense of revenue) - that's fine, each to their own. If commercial ships want to protect themselves, they will pick flags that allow it.
As far as "ports of call", see my "locker ship" proposal up-thread.
Who said this is only going to be used after repeated auditory warnings?
Much as all/.postings are not banned because it's possible to post a link to some illegal material. If abused in violation of some international law, prosecute the violators.
I feel like a broken record - WHY MAKE THIS SO HARD?
I think the problem comes only when they come into ports that prohibit weapons.
Solution... Just outside the jurisdictional boundaries of the ports (usually very safe places) weapons are offloaded to "locker ships" (for a fee of course) and are loaded back aboard as the commercial/merchant vessel passes back through.
A new commercial opportunity. Perhaps gWeaponsOffload.com.
A few gullible opportunist kids would die in the first couple weeks. No, I don't like it. But, the gang leaders do what works and stop doing what doesn't (like all organized crime).
But, here in the USA, we don't usually consider an 18 year old gang member who murdered/threatened an innocent person as a victim. Why do so with Pirate Kids?
Boats with dead engines rarely out manuver and chase big ships with big engines. Not hard to distinguish between "dead engine boat" and "boat that is actively countering/intercepting us".
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, in my experience, most of the developers who are best at doing prototypes are among the worst at writing robust, maintainable code. The single threaded, low locking granularity prototype is easy and looks much like the real one -- but the real one requires a level of attention to detail the prototypers seem to usually lack.
This is why I always leave lots of bugs in the code, and name the variables: a, aa, aAa, Aa, etc. They can never fire me.
Hey, Intron, good to hear from you again. Seriously, we are really sorry we never sent you your last check after we fired you (your code had a bug in it which corrupted our terminated employee database beyond repair so we didn't have your address anymore).
It would be incorrect to assume that everyone who advocates free market solutions believes they are a "magic spring of happiness for society". However, many people believe that free markets based solutions tend to be better than the next best alternative - and believe that's sufficient justification to consider free market solutions.
Also, definition of "happiness" varies from person to person. Some people would be happiest with a system that gives them everything they want and requires them do nothing (this is the "From each according to his willingness to get off his fat butt, to each according to his desire to consume" philosophy of life). Others find the give and take of competition pleasurable and enjoy winning while also enjoying learning from their losses. Some have an intense sense of independence and would rather be independent and hungry than caged and well fed. Others would happily give up all their freedom for a steady diet of yummy food and all the cable channels.
Obviously these differing views of "happiness" (assuming that everyone seeks "happiness" - which is not necessarily the case) are likely to result in different evaluations of a particular system.
To some extent, Walmart (and brethren such as Target) has done to retail what modern agricultural technology (biological, engineering, chemical, etc) did to the field of agriculture. In 1900 41% of the US population was engaged in agriculture, in 2000 only 1.9% were. Yet, during this same time, farm productivity went up. Sure, this displaced a lot of farm workers and families and created anxiety for them - but it meant those resources were eventually put to better use. As well, food prices declined as a result so people had more discretionary income (to buy things like transportation and improved medical care). The forces that the likes of Walmart put on the market have had similar beneficial effects and have created similar anxiety. The anxiety arising from such innovation is passing while the benefits are lasting and accrue to future generations.
Walmart does not "dictate" the price it pays for goods. It tells a producer what it's willing to pay for a product and the producer tries to convince them to pay more. Both sides desire to maximize profits and certainly not to lose money. Walmart buyers are strong negotiators, but Walmart can't force anyone to sell them products at any particular price. If a producer is inefficient and a more efficient producer comes along, Walmart will likely shift to that producer in exchange for a lower price -- some of which, in the aggregate, Walmart's retail customer will see via lower prices on the shelf.
This is little different than what the American car buyers did to the inefficient producers of cars such as GM, Chrysler, and Ford. The customers chose better value cars from Honda and Toyota - no matter how "big" GM was, they still lost the battle. That failure is what killed Detroit, not "foreign labor". Toyotas were just better cars and a Toyota worker (even though a US citizen working in the US) was willing to sweep the floor if the line was down for some reason -- unlike the GM worker whose union rules "protected" him from this indignity and allowed him to do nothing for two hours until the line was restarted (while a "janitorial" worker was called over, and paid, to sweep the floor - frigging insane).
I believe that initially no state or local government employees participated in SS. Later, all such government employees who didn't have a pension plan were required to join in the SS system. State and local governments which had pension plans were not required to join in the SS system, but some have. Some more info here suggests that about 25% of the public service employees are not covered by SS and that most are teachers, fire fighters, and police.
Note that there is some "benefits coordination" for those that spend part of their career in SS and part in public employee pension plan instead. This "windfall elimination provision" can dramatically reduce SS benefits due to offsets applied for benefits received under their public employee pension fund.
(Railroad workers also have their own independent pension plan and are outside the SS system.)
"Banks" are regulated and the amount of money thay can "create" is limited, in part, by government mandated reserve requirements. And, yes, we do know this.
.... well you get the idea.
Indeed, the government can just "print" money to pay for social welfare programs. However, the result is a highly regressive "tax" in the form of inflation (it hits everything, including necessities such as food and transportation). Such inflation causes interest rates to climb -- and makes it even harder for people who really need loans (to buy a used car so they can get to work for example) to get them. The interest rate increase also means that the cost of servicing the US debt would go up - in a vicious cycle... Hyper inflation is a really bad thing which wipes out people's nest eggs -- resulting in more people needing more benefits, resulting in "printing" more money, resulting in more inflation and higher interest rates, resulting in
Unfortunately, the United States has decayed into a culture of lazy, undeserved, luxury in the past 75 years or so -- now it's up to the next couple of generations to pay for it and fix it. It won't be pretty, maybe after India and China have standards of living as high as the US (which will might be in the next 100 years as the US standard of living declines and the standard of living in China and India improves), the US can try again for first world status.
There has been real innovation in healthcare and it does save lives. Just consider the impact that a variety of monoclonal antibodies have had on survival/cure rates for selected cancers. Outside of pharma, MRI and CT and PET scans are all great things that extend life expectancy. Of course, all of these are useful when used correctly - and some (such as CT and PET) are actually harmful when used in excess of benefits.
Yes, patients don't know what things cost, doctors usually don't care what they cost (at least if the patient doesn't care), and patients, doctors (and even all of medical science collectively) don't know what the benefits/costs of generic vs. patented drugs are for a particular situation in a particular patient.
Note, however, that many patients do have an incentive to use generics and DO so. In some cases, it's because they face a greater cost sharing for non-generics. In other cases, such as some Medicare Part D plans, the expensive patented version is only approved if the various generics don't work or the doctor can make a compelling case why the generics would specifically not work or that their side effects would endanger this specific patient.
Agreed that healthcare is heavily regulated - and this is part of the problem. For example, FDA approval is a big cost to getting a drug to market and is one reason that drugs are so expensive. The drug manufactures rely on blockbuster drugs (for those with large audiences) or extraordinary prices (for those with small audiences - such as specialty cancer drugs which only tens of thousands of people a year benefit from). The "obscene" profits from each of these drugs funds the R&D of other drugs which may have been abandoned after spending $100M or more just to get into trials and discovering that they are either unsafe or have limited benefit. Another example, through a variety of government mandated or sanctioned licensing schemes, supply of doctors is limited which keeps their wages (and your medical bills) high. Another example, government requires that anyone be treated for life threatening conditions independent of their ability to pay - resulting in the costs of their care being pushed, in part, to those who can pay. Another example, Medicare bullies doctors and medical establishments into accepting rates that in many cases don't cover costs (except, of course, for the scumbags sucking off the few cases that seem to pay because their lobbyists have kept reimbursements high enough - electric "scooters" for people who don't really need them, lucrative O2 contracts, etc) - resulting in the difference being, again, passed onto those who have insurance. All that regulation has resulted in high costs - I'm not sure how much more regulation we can afford.
We need more personal responsibility and accountability in healthcare and less disconnect between the cost and the person receiving the care. Going through lobbyists and marches on Washington to get priority for your "favorite" disease seems unlikely to improve the situation (except for, of course, government workers). Unfortunately, our reliance in recent decades on employers providing health insurance has removed much of the natural cost control mechanisms -- and the irony of this is that employers involvement in health insurance was accelerated because of government intervention in the form of wage controls during WWII (wages were controlled, but other fringe benefits weren't, so when companies were unable to compete on wages, they competed on fringe benefits -- health insurance being a big one).
Too bad you don't want to...
But I wish you'd tell us who you are so I can sell you stuff you don't need at inflated prices and you won't care.
Do you eschew markets when you buy or sell things (used cars, new cars, houses, your labor etc...). Do you willingly sell well below "market" price or refuse to accept "market" price (meaning you never find a buyer)?
Why do people reject markets - are they scared of them and trust politicians and the electorate to treat them more nicely? If you're 60 or 70 years old, maybe you can get away with that as you will probably die before the SS system collapses under its own weight (coupled with a general permanent decline in the US economy now that we have exited the "Century of America" and move into the "Century of Asia"). If you're 30 or below, the older folks will "own" your paycheck by their voting power through much of your career - get used to it.
Ah, that would be called "welfare". We already have that program so we can just wind SS down (contributions stop today, everyone gets benefits based on creditable quarters to date).
Making SS highly "needs based" (it is somewhat today in the sense that some SS benefits become taxable if you have enough other income) will cause support for it to drop quickly. It's pretty hard to justify taking 12.4% of a person's salary through their entire working career just for a welfare program which they will likely see no benefit from. It also discourages people from saving for their own retirement -- "Let's see, I can save this $2K into my retirement nest egg and end up getting less SS because I have income from that $2K or I can buy that neat big screen TV and keep my SS payments up -- hmm... let me think about this one - Not."
And, perhaps you should explain why she only gets $76/mo from SS?
My guess would be that she spent most of her career in a government pension fund instead of contributing to SS so had very few SS credits having contributed to it only for a few quarters.
(Isn't it odd that one of the few groups that gets to opt out of SS are some government workers - while almost every other worker and their employer is forced to stay in SS? Goose, Gander comes to mind for some reason...)
You must have managed in a different time and place than I have :) Hard to find a smoker in environments I've worked in the past 15 years and almost as hard to find a group which doesn't have several developers who would rather starve than eat a steak (probably for religious, moral, or health reasons - I care nor ask why).
Well, anyone can file a sexual harassment complaint for any reason. What matters is if the complaint is upheld. It's just like suing someone - you're free to do it and the defendant is free to ask the court to dismiss the case or issue a summary judgment in their favor to avoid going to trial.
IANAL, but I think under US law (as opposed to state or municipal laws), the "reasonable person" rule generally applies (but in the context of the particular workplace and considering the perspective of the accuser). See Guidance : C. Determining Whether a Work Environment Is "Hostile" (actually, if you're a manager, reading the whole thing isn't a bad idea if you've not been marinated in corporate training courses about "sexual harassment" recently!)
I doubt that the "rumors of pool table incident at prior employer" would qualify since a reasonable person with no knowledge of the rumor mills at the accuser's past jobs would have any reason to expect that a mere invitation to play pool would be perceived in any way except what it was (an offer to play pool).
Including the guy calling 911 to report the terrorist DDOS attack - oh, wait... never mind...
Or, the pirates could just buy weapons they need on the international market.
It's likely Locker Ship Services which often lost the stuff entrusted to them would see a rapid decline in their client list -- not unlike how most people would stop patronizing a parking lot which often permanently lost their car. I suspect the more successful Locker Ship Services would have enough security on their locker ships to thwart pirates.
You are making an assumption that this needs some sort of international standard and UN involvement. Of course that would make it hard -- but none of that is needed. It doesn't even require the cooperation or involvement of the port or countries the ships are docking at.
Blackwater (oops, Xe Services LLC), for example, might provide this service off the coast of one or more ports. If they lose your ship's weapons, well, no different than if they had contracted to deliver medical services to your ship and failed to do so -- both parties look at their contract and decide what to do. Maybe Risky Joe's Locker Ship Service makes no guarantee about the safety of weapons given to them but offers a great price. Maybe Honest Ahab's Locker Ship Service charges more but guarantees replacement of things entrusted to them and not returned on demand.
There's no additional need to ensure that "the offloaded weapons lockers contain all weapons". If a ship docks at your port and your port has a "no weapons" rule, it's no different than today -- the ship is subject to inspection and, if it's got banned weapons aboard, you take the same action you do today. The responsibility lies with the ship to not dock with banned materials aboard -- if they forget to offload something to the weapons locker support ship(s), they suffer the consequences they do today (whatever those are).
The ship's owner would pay for this service. The biggest companies such as Maersk might choose to maintain their own locker ships near very busy ports which ban weapons they wish to carry on their shipping vessels rather than rely on other parties.
I suppose, if they feel left out, the UN could issue a statement every so often expressing "our grave concerns about Locker Ship Services" and periodically issue a call for "an international standard that insures all shippers, rich or poor, have equal access to this important service". Perhaps, given the current worldwide economic downturn, they could economize by drafting these statements at the same meetings they draft statements expressing their "grave concerns about piracy off the coast of Somalia" and "demanding that pirates stop doing bad things". I'm confident the UN can handle the cost of additional caviar and champagne consumed due to extending the "Drafting Important Meaningless Statements" meeting a day or two.
If everyone had always assumed that "it hasn't be done before so it must not be viable", we would still be eating raw meat from animals killed by our bare hands. Google wouldn't exist. Microsoft wouldn't exist. IBM wouldn't exist. Well, you get the idea...
More directly, I don't think the "weapons aboard ships in dock" problem is really the problem it's made out to be -- simply for the reason it's simple to solve. The reasons commercial ships didn't/don't carry weapons have little to do with the docking problem -- they have, for example, to do with more with insurance/safety concerns. However, there is some evidence this trade-off is changing. Notice the Maersk Alabama foiled a piracy attempt on November 18, 2009 because they DID change their security measures (such as including a "highly trained ex-military personnel"). I imagine the captain and the crew of the Alabama that day are glad that the owners didn't just say "Oh, there's nothing we can do to protect the ship, else it would have been done already. All people who claim otherwise are obviously vastly under estimating the problem".
The areas where piracy is a problem is quite limited - ships docking at Long Beach California, for example, have little fear of piracy nearby. If the US banned arms on ships entering its ports, "locker ships" could be plying the waters outside Long Beach (12+ miles out or whatever is legal). Ships would only be unarmed for that 12 miles where the chance of piracy of a commercial shipping vessel is vanishingly close to zero.
The locker ships would have every motivation to return your weapons -- else you wouldn't do business with them again. To make themselves more attractive, they might be bonded and/or insured by a recognized entity like Lloyds of London. The value of the weapons we are talking about here is pretty small in the big picture anyway.
I doubt there are very many, if any, ports that such a locker ship couldn't be positioned where it was "legal" and the risk of piracy between the locker ship and the target port is significant. If there are any such ports that ban weapons maybe ships would refuse to dock (or, charge shippers extra for pickups/deliveries there).
But, the next attempt to take the Maersk Alabama failed immediately...
BECAUSE THEY HAD SECURITY AND FOUGHT BACK.
And your point was?
That's a bad idea. Typically the pirates don't kill the crew. If you started having hostile crews using lethal force against pirates, you may see the pirates escalate their attack and use more deadly force. In the end everyone loses.
If, on the average, 20% of the pirate attacks result in all the pirates being killed...
Pirate recuiting gets harder.
Unarmed ships will still be taken...
But pirates can't kill the crew members of unarmed ships (a dead guy isn't worth much ransom).
Unarmed ships decide each month (unknown to the pirates) if they want to continue to be prey or invest in protection.
Think game theory...
Agreed...
:)
:)
:)
But... Drones
with infrared cameras
and guided missiles
Priceless...
a staff of 12 in the Midwest could deal with most of this if alerted by the ships' captains.
Again, WHY MAKE THIS SO HARD? THE PIRATES ARE THUGS WITH NOTHING TO BACK THEM UP. They remind me of "sword vs. gun" scene with Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark which gets spontaneous applause when shown in theaters.
Why agree to play the game by the losers' rules?
Well, perhaps countries that have such restrictions will just find that fewer commercial ships sail under their flag (at the expense of revenue) - that's fine, each to their own. If commercial ships want to protect themselves, they will pick flags that allow it.
As far as "ports of call", see my "locker ship" proposal up-thread.
Much as all /.postings are not banned because it's possible to post a link to some illegal material. If abused in violation of some international law, prosecute the violators.
I feel like a broken record - WHY MAKE THIS SO HARD?
I think the problem comes only when they come into ports that prohibit weapons.
Solution... Just outside the jurisdictional boundaries of the ports (usually very safe places) weapons are offloaded to "locker ships" (for a fee of course) and are loaded back aboard as the commercial/merchant vessel passes back through.
A new commercial opportunity. Perhaps gWeaponsOffload.com.
Not hard. Why do people make this so hard?
Sad. Agreed.
A few gullible opportunist kids would die in the first couple weeks. No, I don't like it. But, the gang leaders do what works and stop doing what doesn't (like all organized crime).
But, here in the USA, we don't usually consider an 18 year old gang member who murdered/threatened an innocent person as a victim. Why do so with Pirate Kids?
Boats with dead engines rarely out manuver and chase big ships with big engines. Not hard to distinguish between "dead engine boat" and "boat that is actively countering/intercepting us".
Come on, time for a dose of reality.