Good point. First off, I'd suggest that the Canadian police not rely on two sentences of text from a newspaper article a week later to do their screening. But if that's enough info for you to rush into a school with guns drawn, shouting at people to lie on the ground and putting them in handcuffs, then who am I, a humble American, to tell you Canadians that you're overreacting.
Congratulations, it only took you four days to find a topic which was only of interest to Canadians. Strong work.
I sure look forward to you policing every article that has to do with Canada and shouting down anyone who goes off-topic by even suggesting that what happens in Canada is relevant to the rest of the world. You've done your small part here to make Canadians look like insecure asshats who crave whatever meagre attention the world gives them.
You mean the article which was about the Canadian teen who was arrested for "making at least 30 fraudulent calls — including bomb threats and 'swattings' to emergency services across North AmericaI ?" Yeah, that's pretty clear that the discussion is only about Canada. You might want to get out of your little bubble once in a while. If the issue were only about Canada it wouldn't even be news.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the rest of the world is not very much like Canada. Some parts of Europe maybe, but even then only a very small part. So the fact that you are pontificating about how this should work to the world, based on your very limited knowledge of Canada, kind of violates your rule about talking about stuff you don't know. If you intended your comments to be only about Canada then you could have mentioned that at any time: "Here in Canada, our police force has had almost no incidents of corruption and excessive force and I expect them to look into this." "Here in CANADA, our post office employees are courteous and efficient."... Then we would have had a different conversation.
Jesus, the one case I specifically mentioned occurred in Los Angeles which has a long (and recent) history of police brutality, excessive force and covering their asses. You could have said "Well, I don't know about Los Angeles, but up here that kind of thing doesn't happen. We also don't lock our doors." You didn't, you just said "trust the police." ALL the police, ALL the time.
I assume you guys have news channels up there. Do you also ask yourself why protesters in Russia, Egypt, Thailand, Los Angeles, Brazil,... are so negative and don't just trust their government to solve their problems?
I do appreciate how well we have it compared to the vast majority of other nations. It's fucking fantastic to be an affluent, middle aged white guy born in America. That doesn't mean that I don't realize how we got to the relatively less corrupt and brutal government that we have - by systematically questioning authority and holding them accountable (imperfectly, unfortunately, but at least we're trying). It also doesn't mean that I don't recognize how others less fortunate in America still get a raw deal from police and prosecutors.
Exactly. When the DMCA was enacted, the idea was that... but in general this has led to people filing DMCA requests for things that they don't have any rights to file over.
It is a fine theory, so why doesn't it work? It's a serious question.
It seems to me this is a major failure for, say Google. If the law is being so egregiously flouted they should easily be able to find a few cases of the worst offenders and set an example. This would cost them nothing and gain them much credibility. Since they don't do that, there must be something else in play that we (maybe just I) don't know of.
The theory is sound even if, perhaps, the details aren't quite right. The European privacy case is significantly more complicated, but it should also be a manageable problem (if it even was a problem in the first place).
EXACTLY. Thanks for making my point. You choose to trust them because you cannot be efficient otherwise. We have people in place to do jobs. When shit hits the fan people are questioned and the wheels of change are put in motion.
Do you trust he post office when you drop a letter in the mail box? The answer is YES.
EXACTLY what? I trust people or organizations based on their history. The post office has a history of delivering my mail with 99.999% surety and within a reasonable amount of time. They also have a history of extremely poor customer service at the post office itself, so I certainly don't trust them to do anything to make my wait time shorter or interaction with the staff any less surly. Of course, you would believe that they're doing everything possible (and have been for 50 years?) to solve that problem, right? No need to nudge them, even a little?
Let got a little bit and let them deal with it.... If swatting is a problem they are doing what they can to resolve it.....
I don't how know how many times I can say this: BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT. First off their problems are different than our problems. The police have never done a good job of policing their excesses and they will take shortcuts when necessary. This has been shown to be the case over and over and over and over again, even in recent history. Are you ignorant of history and patterns of behavior or just dumb. Seriously, you cannot believe that police will just sort out their own problems if there were no aggressive oversight from the public, the press, and a handful of honest politicians.
if you take the time to look you'll find out the government for the most part is open.
Only when they are forced to be, which needs to happen over and over. You really want to believe that I'm a crackpot who criticizes everyone and everything, that makes it easier to dismiss my viewpoint, I guess. Recently, a local government contracted to put up cameras to monitor traffic, but unfortunately did not notify the residents. Some of those residents are irate about being lied to and spied upon,... (I was not one of them). Except that this government has a good pattern of being open and responsive and they, IMO, communicated well what they were doing, what mistake they made in this case and plans for doing better in the future. I trust them, because they have earned it.
... ill informed people like you make huge assumptions without having all the information... If you are going to write about it in a public forum one would expect a minimum amount of research to be done.
It is not the public's place to stay quiet and not question authority - you are in the wrong country and wrong era if you still believe that. It is the job of the government and bureaucracy to demonstrate that they are doing a good job. Just as it is your responsibility to publish status/bug reports and respond to incidents openly and honestly - it is not the job of everyone else at your company who has concerns to spend a week diving into details and analyzing data before speaking up. If they see something not working ("why do we have all these left over parts?") they should not just shrug and say, "I'm sure they know what they're doing."
I am (now) more of an expert on swatting than all but 1 in 1,000 people and I am entitled to voice my opinion based on whatever facts I have at hand. IF this other open and honest information that you claim exists were so easily available then it would have been trivial for you to have inserted it into the conversation at any point. Even better, the authorities should have responded in all the published articles themselves about what the mistakes they've made and what they're doing about it. Not just "we are aware of the problem, trust us."
It certainly makes sense to be skeptical and there is no reason to expect these particular guys are going to make this project work, but the idea has merit and I think certainly could be practical in some places for some conditions. There are many benefits and other considerations which mitigate your concerns (many of which have been mentioned in other posts, possibly by you). Here are a few random thoughts:
You wouldn't use the heating in all conditions and all roads, e.g. you might not use it for a 4 lane highway in a blizzard. It many cases it may be more cost-effective to plow, assuming you had a plow that wouldn't tear up the street. In extreme conditions you'd plow first to get rid of the bulk of the snow and use the heating to get rid of the remaining snow and ice patches. Even light snow (and ice) can be dangerous, and this would be far more useful in the vast majority of cases where plows currently don't get called out.
You don't have to melt the snow completely for it to be effective. I imagine just heating the bottom of the snow pack combined with vehicles driving on the road and possibly warmer weather would be very effective. Compared to the current status where snow gets packed down and never melts, even on warmer days, can't get pushed off the road.
You wouldn't have to pay to keep all lanes clear. Even having one lane clear on that highway might be better than the status quo and every foot of roadway that you pay for the electricity to clear now can be used to power the clearing of the rest for "free".
How much would we save in having a reduced number of plows (and drivers), no damage from salt (to both car and road), and reduced number of accidents/deaths. That certainly has some value, possibly not enough, but it should be considered.
A for the issue, a public list was already available with over 600 items to fix including this one but I wouldn't expect anybody to look at it...
Your view of who and what I am are wrong and that's fine by me. I've always rated very well in peer reviews so I know where I sit.
I couldn't care less who you are or how your peers rate you in your podunk company. I only judge you on the information provided and you have taken the tack of saying "They're experts, they know what you want and they know what they're doing. Trust them." Then you gave an example of that in your real life. You did not say that they guy should not have bothered you because you communicated all this info in detailed project/bug reports and countless meetings. You said "I'm an expert. The guy should just trust me." The more details you give on your story the less it sounds analogous and weakens your argument.
The way I see it you're just another bitter person complaining in a public forum but not doing anything about it. Have you actually questioned the authorities or do you just write on/. about it?
I don't have the time to personally investigate every issue I have an opinion on and care to make a comment about online. If you're making the claim that you do then I believe you are a liar. If you're not claiming that then you're just a hypocrite.
When it comes to issues like this one I use my vote and, far more importantly, my money to elect public officials who believe that the police (and every other part of government) should be open, transparent and accountable. Instead of "just trusting them."
All your comments so far have shown me that you trust nobody. This means if you were a manager you would not delegate work because you would not trust it wasn't being handled to your liking.
That's true in the sense that I don't trust people blindly. You seem to trust people who have repeatedly given you no reason to believe in them.
Believe me when I say there are people involved that are looking at these numbers and reacting accordingly. With failure comes opportunity which often later results into solutions. If this is truly a problem there is a solution underway.
If you know who these people are, then why not tell us who they are, what they're working on and how they plan to deploy their results out to police forces around the world. If you don't know these things then you are throwing your hands up in the air as much as I am. Police forces around the nation have repeatedly demonstrated they are often quite unwilling to correct egregious or dangerous behavior until the public forces them too. Do I really have to provide you these examples? How many times will you just trust them before you ask for more transparency and accountability?
I deal with people that believe solutions are just suppose to pop up of thin air. E.g. Had a guy tell me the application I wrote was causing extra parts to be manufactured. I told him I was aware and that it wasn't a priority at this time. He threw his hands in the air (a little like what you've been doing in your comments) but what he didn't know is that the cost of this mistake was less than $20 per week where as the project I was about to finish was going to save $2000 per week. You are an outsider with no information and you aren't trusting the people in charge after they have been made aware of the issue.
Frankly, you sound just as untrustworthy as the police. NOT because you don't know what you're doing, but because you are arrogant and don't communicate well. How hard would it have been to explain your priorities? Why wouldn't you let him know about the issue before he had to discover it himself? What other problems are you secretly taking care of that you also neglected to inform him? What history do you have to demonstrate your trustworthiness?
When I was a development manager I did feel free to delegate blindly to some developers. Those people had a proven track record, kept me informed of what I needed to know and were willing to answer openly my questions. Then there were some who needed to be micromanaged because they often made bad choices and didn't understand my priorities. Then there were others (sounds like you) who were unmanageable because they were competent programmers, but they wanted me to leave them alone and just "trust me", unable (or unwilling) to tell me what they were working on, what the issues were and they rarely wanted to hear what my priorities were.
Take a step back, trust that the people in charge will do everything in their power to make things right.
The fact and the matter is that emergency calls are very much dependent on the honor system (If I call about a fire the firefighters will show up).
Sure, that's a fine system. Up until the point that firefighters are getting false calls and they are breaking windows and dousing houses in water that are not on fire. Just in case.
What you are asking is to put aside the honor system in time of need so that we can avoid Swat calls?
Whereas you are asking that every call be taken at face value no matter the risk?
How many valid swat calls for the 30 fake ones actually occurred. If the number of invalid is less than 1% I'd say the call handlers are doing a great job.
That is the question isn't it? If you are willing to shoot 3 innocent victims of a swatting to save the life of one legitimate caller (or police officer) then I'd say you have your priorities way off. However, if, as I've already said, you want to do a fair accounting of the damage caused by overreacting to false calls vs. under reacting to real calls then we can have a discussion about where the line should be.
It is much less expensive and far more efficient to deal with the small % of invalid calls than to hinder the service by creating road blocks for the people in need.
Is it? Show me the math. That may have been the situation 10 years ago, but obviously things have changed. So don't ask me to blindly trust you, because "we, the police, know what we're doing and we're doing it for your benefit. So bend over and take it like a man."
You haven't "discussed" anything. You are an extremist who sees no reasonable middle ground, no compromise, everything is completely black and white. In your head if someone supports laws that prevent union busting then they must support every industry and every worker being forced into a union; if someone supports affirmative action (in whatever form) they think "negros" are fundamentally less intelligent and it is impossible for them to make it on their own.
I honestly hope that you find a place with laws that support your ridiculous view of the world. You will find it is an impossible, ugly and uncivilized world and despite the tremendous advantages you've been given in this life, you will find yourself at the mercy of an even smarter, more affluent and more vicious asshole than yourself.
The problem isn't that they're not "doing their job to the of their ability", the problem is that you've pulled a standard out of your ass and decided they've failed to live up to that standard - without providing any justification for that standard.
The standard being that "breaking down doors and shooting innocents should be an incredible rarity." You call that pulling it out of my ass and you really have an issue with that standard?
Hindsight is always 20/20, especially when the person looking back wasn't there, and is completely lacking in relevant experience, relevant knowledge, and heavily biased to boot.
Spoken like someone who doesn't want to learn from their mistakes. Are you in law enforcement? Perhaps you should be if you think that every action you took was always the best option and that you don't need to reevaluate your tactics based on real world results.
Swattings are effective because they emulate actual situations - one where real people die or are seriously injured.
Attempt to emulate actual situations, often poorly. So just show me (and the rest of the world) the stats that show how effective the police are in these situations. Why is it unreasonable to ask that the police cause less harm by overreacting than would have been done by underreacting?
Sure. Provide me all the 911 recordings, not just the transcripts, of all the incidents of swattings and of real life or death hostage situations. I'll look at them, for free even, to analyze what could and couldn't have been done in each individual cases and what differentiates the real ones from the fake ones. Also provide all the statistics for the response to these calls and I'll lay down guidelines for what kind of response should be used in each situation. Sometimes it might be a phone call to the house, sometimes a drive by or a knock on the door (with gun holstered). As I said breaking down doors with guns drawn should be a rarity. Yes, I could do their jobs for them, and I will if they are unwilling, but I think they should take first crack at it. I'll even help them with the math, if that's the stumbling block.
Consider the Patrick Frey (Patterico) case, for example. Listen to the transcript and tell me that the caller was credible and that an immediate response with guns drawn, and rousting a man out of his home and putting him in handcuffs on the street was the best response.
To say that the police should always respond with guns drawn is just as dumb as saying they should ignore all calls. I'm asking them to do their job to the best of their ability which means a measured response proportional to the real threat. Rather than just barge in with their guns drawn and putting more lives at risk. Basically giving the swatters what they want and encouraging such behavior.
Swattings are only effective because they prey on the tendency of police, who crave adrenaline and action, to overreact. When you spend a lot of money (and reputation) on armed response (e.g. a SWAT team) you tend to look for uses of that SWAT team where none exist. A smart police force would resist that tendency (and if not they should be compelled through legal means, criminal or civil).
If Ford is offering $40 ($35) under the union contract, no sane person would turn that down to work at GM instead, modulo if GM treats their workers better, etc. Therefore, GM must offer at least as much as the union deal offers.
This is nonsense. Ford does not have an unlimited number of jobs. If there are 120K workers in the labor force Ford will employ the first 50K and the other 70K will fight over the 50K GM jobs at a significantly lower salary. If Ford or GM were willing to offer $45 on the free market then it would have been insane for the union to negotiate a lower wage. Ford WAS paying only $30 or $35 and the union worked to get that higher. Do you know nothing about unions? Historically, union jobs have been in very high demand and often not easy to get.
Of course, "as much" might mean something employees value more than an extra fifty cents, like on-site child care provided, where parents can walk over and have lunch with their children.
There may be some limited cases where that is true, but it is far from the norm. Companies do not offer those perks unless they have to. It is far more likely that they will offer slightly better pay to avoid those perks, to the limit that they legally can. Again, many workers would make poor short term decisions, take a little extra easy cash and cross their fingers that they don't get sick or that there's a downturn in the economy, etc.
My (non-union) job has different scheduling options and several workers have started tele-commuting, working from home, even from a different state.
You have the luxury of being in a profession that is in high demand and where workers have hugely varying skills and many options. To use this as an example of why unions would never work is ridiculous. This is the major logical fallacy that hardcore libertarians make, they assume everyone else has the same resources, the same advantages growing up, the same abilities, etc. "I don't need a union in my $150k a year programming job, so nobody does." "I don't need the government to protect me from usurious loans with obscure rates and payments, so caveat emptor."...
The union contract can't treat people as individuals, recognizing that Sally needs to leave early every Friday to pick up her kid and Ray needs time to move around assisting other employees rather than being stuck at his station all day. Instead, the union contract has to treat employees as interchangeable things, rather than as individual people . The employer benefits from Ray lending a hand wherever needed, and expediting work through the relationships he builds, but the union contract has to pigeonhole him into a specific task all day, every day. Can't have him lend a hand in any role he's not assigned to - he's not on that payscale. These are the facts of my daily working life.
There is no reason that a union contract has to work that way at all, it's not a fundamental rule of how unions and union contracts work any more than saying that unions are always bad because they are run by organized crime. Those rules are equally a product of a stiffly run organization typical of industries and companies where unions have proven to be necessary. Teachers, for example, often have a lot of flexible time and can switch jobs for which they are competent.
For this reason, the non-union shop can very well attract the best workers with a truly better offer - better for the employee and better for the employer.
Show me, in the industries that are heavily unionized where this consistently is true. Better for the employer certainly, but as long as the unions don't ask so much that the employer goes out of business or has to close shop it's typically better for the worker to be in a union.
You jump from that to wanting to force people to work your union contracts against their will. On that we disagree.
Please quote where I have said anything of the kind. I have said that unions need to be protected by more than just the free market and that employees and employers can come to agreement on union rules (e.g. that all employees in a shop must be union members). Very, very different.
Your arrogance is insulting. That's the elitist liberal snobbery that turns people off so much. You tell people that they are too stupid to make their own decisions, so you should make their choices for them. You know so much more about their lives than they do about their own, right? It's stomach-turning. Just like when you say black people are too stupid to score high enough on the SAT to get into college, so you should give them extra points for being a stupid negro. It's just disgusting.
What world are you living in where everyone always makes the best long term decisions? It's fine to espouse the philosophy that everyone should be responsible for their own actions, at least that's consistent and rational (if not compassionate), but to ignore that the vast majority of people make poor short term decisions is just frankly insane. Your ignorance of affirmative action is equal to your ignorance of labor law and history. Plus, you are clearly a racist accusing others of being racist as a cover. Maybe you feel that if you just throw enough random anti-liberal garbage out there that some of it will stick. BENGHAZI!
Speaking of cherry-picking, government schools are over twice as likely to require grade school teachers to have a masters degree or PhD compared to private schools, who are allowed to hire based on actual competency. Yeah, people with master's and PhDs required by union contract make more than people with a bachelor's degree.(Minus their student loan payments).
This is just nonsense. You repeatedly duck the questions asked of you to demonstrate your point and veer off on some other tangent. The simple fact is that for all their drawbacks, teacher's unions give the average teacher a higher wage and better benefits than if their were no teacher's union.
And then when someone calls 911 because of a real hostage situation or bomb threat, then people go all up in arms because SWAT was too slow, never mind that they were only checking if the call was legit.
And those people should be ignored, the police should not overreact (e.g. to the backpack in the example provided) just for public perception.
So the solution is for the police to react calmly, professionally using their presumably expert knowledge with a little bit of common sense. They should be able to suss out these swattings and act appropriately in the vast majority of cases. Breaking down doors and shooting innocents should be an incredible rarity.
You seem to be overlooking the difference between being forced to work a union contract that is far worse than what you can get on the free market vs being able to choose to join a union.
Not overlooking it at all, just saying that the situation you're envisioning would rarely if ever happen with no labor protection for unions, where every individual employee and employer has no limits on what tactics they can use.
The libertarian platform isn't that unions are bad. It's that choice is good - people should be able to join unions if they want to.
Choice is good, but without restrictions the bargaining power for certain jobs and industries is completely unbalanced. Again, it is fair as a libertarian to argue that the fair price for labor in those markets is near zero, because that is whatever the market will bear.
Consider the union makes a deal with Ford for $X (minus $Y paid to the union). GM doesn't strike a deal with the union, so they offer $Z. Workers then have a choice of either the union deal Ford or the non-union offer at GM. You can get all the union benefits and drawbacks at Ford, if that's what you want. The alternative you propose is that all workers must take the union deal. You work for $X-Z or you don't work at all.
That is a fine example, but you haven't thought it out. Let's look at it more closely and put real numbers on it.
Let's keep it simple and say that Ford is paying $40 and the union dues are $5. How much is GM going to pay their non unionized workers? You seem to believe that it will be more than $40 because GM doesn't have to pay for union extracted protections, but history has proven that is not the case. First, most workers typically do not understand (and thus don't value) the union benefits until it is too late. Second, GM would have complete flexibility to offer cut rate salaries, hire and fire at will, shut down the plant, etc. At times of high labor demand, it's possible they would offer $40 or more, but that would be rare and they would more than recoup their costs when labor was plentiful.
But why would Ford enter into such an agreement with a union if they weren't compelled to? They wouldn't. They would use every tactic (e.g. banning union activities, threatening shutdowns or moving the plant, retribution against union employees, etc.) to make sure that unions never took hold. Further, they would collude with GM to set low labor prices so they wouldn't be competing for the same laborers. All perfectly legal and fair in a pure libertarian world.
In the US, programmers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, nurses, web designers, fashion designers, clothing designers, and architects are not unionized. Assembly line workers, chicken pluckers, and school teachers are unionized. Guess which group gets the best salaries?
First off, you're cherry picking the data that suits your argument. Professional basketball players get paid far more than accountants. Walmart employees get far less than teachers. You were asked to provide evidence to support your argument that in a libertarian world that workers are better off in a given profession. Would the average auto worker be better off with no union?
The fact that lower paid workers often have unions should tell you something - that lower paid worker are more in need of unions, not that unions lead to lower paid workers. You seem to think I'm making the case that every occupation should be unionized in country in every era. Unions are a useful method of balancing out the huge disparity in bargaining power that employers have - in some industries (e.g. programming in America in the last 30 years) it is not necessary. Workers in a coal mine (in America in 1900 and South America/China now) are in a totally different circumstance.
School teachers are a great example. Their union gets someone with a masters degree $50,000, then takes a chunk of that
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that freedom is bad.
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that workers have a right to be exploited. Can we stop trading ridiculous hyperbole now?
The reality is that if every worker has complete freedom to do whatever they want at all times then a union would never have any leverage. Workers would undercut each other on pay (not just make a benefit swap as in your example). If there ever were any meager benefits extracted by the unions then the free-riders would reduce the unions power (leverage and lobbying ability) to near zero. Why pay dues and follow union rules if you get the benefits without having to?
It's fine to say that in a pure libertarian world unions don't need to exist because workers will, through their individual choices, get what they're worth. However, you are delusional if you think that workers in all industries and professions would be as well off without the protection of unions and laws which protect how employers can deal with unions. Can you provide any examples anywhere in the world where this has worked?
So somewhere between your absolute stalinist style totalitarianism and the libertarian free-for-all is the reasonable compromise that we've come to in the last 150 years, and one that changes as time moves on and the world changes.
Now since you seem to be opposed to what Apple and Google have done here (and you errantly lambaste me for supporting it) can you tell where in your libertarian ideals that they have done anything wrong? Under pure libertarianism they have every right to decide to act together and not poach each other's employees.
Its not about knowing more, its about how you retrieve the information
It's certainly about both, isn't it? If you don't have the data, understanding the question isn't of much help. I could ask my device to show me images of pubs near chancery lane and there's a good chance I'll recognize the one I want. Whereas you are expecting the cabbie to have encyclopedic knowledge of all the pubs on every street which is just not realistic. Your selection bias about the times he amazingly got it right biases you against all the times he would have no idea what you're talking about (or take you to the one with the yellow sign on the corner, as opposed to the one in the middle of the block which you could have differentiated yourself by the photo).
A human being is always better at understanding what you are asking for than a computer when asking complicated questions.
That is absolutely not true. Some humans are better at moderately complex, fuzzy questions than others and it may be that London cabbies are better at many of these cases for the average customer than the average smartphone. But that certainly won't be true in the future. Even if that were true, a concierge service on a smartphone (perhaps provided by the car service) that uses a central information center with a human who has access to all the web information would yield far better results and be more cost effective.
Now read that with s/LGBT/animals/.
Now read that with s/LGBT/power tools/.
Let's do that. So you're suggesting that we have a game/simulation where players can act as people (male or female, black or white or asian or...), animals (of various kinds) or power tools. Now if you want to add a "marrying" type relation for the players of the game the only reason not to let every player relate to every other player is if you think that relationship isn't proper or reasonable. That is a conscious decision they should be held accountable for.
Slashdot Mirror
Says the guy who revives a thread that has been dead for 4 days.
Good point. First off, I'd suggest that the Canadian police not rely on two sentences of text from a newspaper article a week later to do their screening. But if that's enough info for you to rush into a school with guns drawn, shouting at people to lie on the ground and putting them in handcuffs, then who am I, a humble American, to tell you Canadians that you're overreacting.
Congratulations, it only took you four days to find a topic which was only of interest to Canadians. Strong work.
I sure look forward to you policing every article that has to do with Canada and shouting down anyone who goes off-topic by even suggesting that what happens in Canada is relevant to the rest of the world. You've done your small part here to make Canadians look like insecure asshats who crave whatever meagre attention the world gives them.
You mean the article which was about the Canadian teen who was arrested for "making at least 30 fraudulent calls — including bomb threats and 'swattings' to emergency services across North AmericaI ?" Yeah, that's pretty clear that the discussion is only about Canada. You might want to get out of your little bubble once in a while. If the issue were only about Canada it wouldn't even be news.
Which would be far more successful without competition from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, ...
I hate to burst your bubble, but the rest of the world is not very much like Canada. Some parts of Europe maybe, but even then only a very small part. So the fact that you are pontificating about how this should work to the world, based on your very limited knowledge of Canada, kind of violates your rule about talking about stuff you don't know. If you intended your comments to be only about Canada then you could have mentioned that at any time: "Here in Canada, our police force has had almost no incidents of corruption and excessive force and I expect them to look into this." "Here in CANADA, our post office employees are courteous and efficient." ... Then we would have had a different conversation.
Jesus, the one case I specifically mentioned occurred in Los Angeles which has a long (and recent) history of police brutality, excessive force and covering their asses. You could have said "Well, I don't know about Los Angeles, but up here that kind of thing doesn't happen. We also don't lock our doors." You didn't, you just said "trust the police." ALL the police, ALL the time.
I assume you guys have news channels up there. Do you also ask yourself why protesters in Russia, Egypt, Thailand, Los Angeles, Brazil, ... are so negative and don't just trust their government to solve their problems?
I do appreciate how well we have it compared to the vast majority of other nations. It's fucking fantastic to be an affluent, middle aged white guy born in America. That doesn't mean that I don't realize how we got to the relatively less corrupt and brutal government that we have - by systematically questioning authority and holding them accountable (imperfectly, unfortunately, but at least we're trying). It also doesn't mean that I don't recognize how others less fortunate in America still get a raw deal from police and prosecutors.
Exactly. When the DMCA was enacted, the idea was that ... but in general this has led to people filing DMCA requests for things that they don't have any rights to file over.
It is a fine theory, so why doesn't it work? It's a serious question.
It seems to me this is a major failure for, say Google. If the law is being so egregiously flouted they should easily be able to find a few cases of the worst offenders and set an example. This would cost them nothing and gain them much credibility. Since they don't do that, there must be something else in play that we (maybe just I) don't know of.
The theory is sound even if, perhaps, the details aren't quite right. The European privacy case is significantly more complicated, but it should also be a manageable problem (if it even was a problem in the first place).
EXACTLY. Thanks for making my point. You choose to trust them because you cannot be efficient otherwise. We have people in place to do jobs. When shit hits the fan people are questioned and the wheels of change are put in motion.
Do you trust he post office when you drop a letter in the mail box? The answer is YES.
EXACTLY what? I trust people or organizations based on their history. The post office has a history of delivering my mail with 99.999% surety and within a reasonable amount of time. They also have a history of extremely poor customer service at the post office itself, so I certainly don't trust them to do anything to make my wait time shorter or interaction with the staff any less surly. Of course, you would believe that they're doing everything possible (and have been for 50 years?) to solve that problem, right? No need to nudge them, even a little?
Let got a little bit and let them deal with it.... If swatting is a problem they are doing what they can to resolve it. ....
I don't how know how many times I can say this: BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT. First off their problems are different than our problems. The police have never done a good job of policing their excesses and they will take shortcuts when necessary. This has been shown to be the case over and over and over and over again, even in recent history. Are you ignorant of history and patterns of behavior or just dumb. Seriously, you cannot believe that police will just sort out their own problems if there were no aggressive oversight from the public, the press, and a handful of honest politicians.
if you take the time to look you'll find out the government for the most part is open.
Only when they are forced to be, which needs to happen over and over. You really want to believe that I'm a crackpot who criticizes everyone and everything, that makes it easier to dismiss my viewpoint, I guess. Recently, a local government contracted to put up cameras to monitor traffic, but unfortunately did not notify the residents. Some of those residents are irate about being lied to and spied upon, ... (I was not one of them). Except that this government has a good pattern of being open and responsive and they, IMO, communicated well what they were doing, what mistake they made in this case and plans for doing better in the future. I trust them, because they have earned it.
... ill informed people like you make huge assumptions without having all the information ... If you are going to write about it in a public forum one would expect a minimum amount of research to be done.
It is not the public's place to stay quiet and not question authority - you are in the wrong country and wrong era if you still believe that. It is the job of the government and bureaucracy to demonstrate that they are doing a good job. Just as it is your responsibility to publish status/bug reports and respond to incidents openly and honestly - it is not the job of everyone else at your company who has concerns to spend a week diving into details and analyzing data before speaking up. If they see something not working ("why do we have all these left over parts?") they should not just shrug and say, "I'm sure they know what they're doing."
I am (now) more of an expert on swatting than all but 1 in 1,000 people and I am entitled to voice my opinion based on whatever facts I have at hand. IF this other open and honest information that you claim exists were so easily available then it would have been trivial for you to have inserted it into the conversation at any point. Even better, the authorities should have responded in all the published articles themselves about what the mistakes they've made and what they're doing about it. Not just "we are aware of the problem, trust us."
I wish people were m
It certainly makes sense to be skeptical and there is no reason to expect these particular guys are going to make this project work, but the idea has merit and I think certainly could be practical in some places for some conditions. There are many benefits and other considerations which mitigate your concerns (many of which have been mentioned in other posts, possibly by you). Here are a few random thoughts:
You wouldn't use the heating in all conditions and all roads, e.g. you might not use it for a 4 lane highway in a blizzard. It many cases it may be more cost-effective to plow, assuming you had a plow that wouldn't tear up the street. In extreme conditions you'd plow first to get rid of the bulk of the snow and use the heating to get rid of the remaining snow and ice patches. Even light snow (and ice) can be dangerous, and this would be far more useful in the vast majority of cases where plows currently don't get called out.
You don't have to melt the snow completely for it to be effective. I imagine just heating the bottom of the snow pack combined with vehicles driving on the road and possibly warmer weather would be very effective. Compared to the current status where snow gets packed down and never melts, even on warmer days, can't get pushed off the road.
You wouldn't have to pay to keep all lanes clear. Even having one lane clear on that highway might be better than the status quo and every foot of roadway that you pay for the electricity to clear now can be used to power the clearing of the rest for "free".
How much would we save in having a reduced number of plows (and drivers), no damage from salt (to both car and road), and reduced number of accidents/deaths. That certainly has some value, possibly not enough, but it should be considered.
A for the issue, a public list was already available with over 600 items to fix including this one but I wouldn't expect anybody to look at it...
Your view of who and what I am are wrong and that's fine by me. I've always rated very well in peer reviews so I know where I sit.
I couldn't care less who you are or how your peers rate you in your podunk company. I only judge you on the information provided and you have taken the tack of saying "They're experts, they know what you want and they know what they're doing. Trust them." Then you gave an example of that in your real life. You did not say that they guy should not have bothered you because you communicated all this info in detailed project/bug reports and countless meetings. You said "I'm an expert. The guy should just trust me." The more details you give on your story the less it sounds analogous and weakens your argument.
The way I see it you're just another bitter person complaining in a public forum but not doing anything about it. Have you actually questioned the authorities or do you just write on /. about it?
I don't have the time to personally investigate every issue I have an opinion on and care to make a comment about online. If you're making the claim that you do then I believe you are a liar. If you're not claiming that then you're just a hypocrite.
When it comes to issues like this one I use my vote and, far more importantly, my money to elect public officials who believe that the police (and every other part of government) should be open, transparent and accountable. Instead of "just trusting them."
All your comments so far have shown me that you trust nobody. This means if you were a manager you would not delegate work because you would not trust it wasn't being handled to your liking.
That's true in the sense that I don't trust people blindly. You seem to trust people who have repeatedly given you no reason to believe in them.
Believe me when I say there are people involved that are looking at these numbers and reacting accordingly. With failure comes opportunity which often later results into solutions. If this is truly a problem there is a solution underway.
If you know who these people are, then why not tell us who they are, what they're working on and how they plan to deploy their results out to police forces around the world. If you don't know these things then you are throwing your hands up in the air as much as I am. Police forces around the nation have repeatedly demonstrated they are often quite unwilling to correct egregious or dangerous behavior until the public forces them too. Do I really have to provide you these examples? How many times will you just trust them before you ask for more transparency and accountability?
I deal with people that believe solutions are just suppose to pop up of thin air. E.g. Had a guy tell me the application I wrote was causing extra parts to be manufactured. I told him I was aware and that it wasn't a priority at this time. He threw his hands in the air (a little like what you've been doing in your comments) but what he didn't know is that the cost of this mistake was less than $20 per week where as the project I was about to finish was going to save $2000 per week. You are an outsider with no information and you aren't trusting the people in charge after they have been made aware of the issue.
Frankly, you sound just as untrustworthy as the police. NOT because you don't know what you're doing, but because you are arrogant and don't communicate well. How hard would it have been to explain your priorities? Why wouldn't you let him know about the issue before he had to discover it himself? What other problems are you secretly taking care of that you also neglected to inform him? What history do you have to demonstrate your trustworthiness?
When I was a development manager I did feel free to delegate blindly to some developers. Those people had a proven track record, kept me informed of what I needed to know and were willing to answer openly my questions. Then there were some who needed to be micromanaged because they often made bad choices and didn't understand my priorities. Then there were others (sounds like you) who were unmanageable because they were competent programmers, but they wanted me to leave them alone and just "trust me", unable (or unwilling) to tell me what they were working on, what the issues were and they rarely wanted to hear what my priorities were.
Take a step back, trust that the people in charge will do everything in their power to make things right.
Now I just think you're fucking with me.
The fact and the matter is that emergency calls are very much dependent on the honor system (If I call about a fire the firefighters will show up).
Sure, that's a fine system. Up until the point that firefighters are getting false calls and they are breaking windows and dousing houses in water that are not on fire. Just in case.
What you are asking is to put aside the honor system in time of need so that we can avoid Swat calls?
Whereas you are asking that every call be taken at face value no matter the risk?
How many valid swat calls for the 30 fake ones actually occurred. If the number of invalid is less than 1% I'd say the call handlers are doing a great job.
That is the question isn't it? If you are willing to shoot 3 innocent victims of a swatting to save the life of one legitimate caller (or police officer) then I'd say you have your priorities way off. However, if, as I've already said, you want to do a fair accounting of the damage caused by overreacting to false calls vs. under reacting to real calls then we can have a discussion about where the line should be.
It is much less expensive and far more efficient to deal with the small % of invalid calls than to hinder the service by creating road blocks for the people in need.
Is it? Show me the math. That may have been the situation 10 years ago, but obviously things have changed. So don't ask me to blindly trust you, because "we, the police, know what we're doing and we're doing it for your benefit. So bend over and take it like a man."
Remember when you said that "negroes are not intelligent and they needed help to succeed in America." There's your answer.
You haven't "discussed" anything. You are an extremist who sees no reasonable middle ground, no compromise, everything is completely black and white. In your head if someone supports laws that prevent union busting then they must support every industry and every worker being forced into a union; if someone supports affirmative action (in whatever form) they think "negros" are fundamentally less intelligent and it is impossible for them to make it on their own.
I honestly hope that you find a place with laws that support your ridiculous view of the world. You will find it is an impossible, ugly and uncivilized world and despite the tremendous advantages you've been given in this life, you will find yourself at the mercy of an even smarter, more affluent and more vicious asshole than yourself.
The problem isn't that they're not "doing their job to the of their ability", the problem is that you've pulled a standard out of your ass and decided they've failed to live up to that standard - without providing any justification for that standard.
The standard being that "breaking down doors and shooting innocents should be an incredible rarity." You call that pulling it out of my ass and you really have an issue with that standard?
Hindsight is always 20/20, especially when the person looking back wasn't there, and is completely lacking in relevant experience, relevant knowledge, and heavily biased to boot.
Spoken like someone who doesn't want to learn from their mistakes. Are you in law enforcement? Perhaps you should be if you think that every action you took was always the best option and that you don't need to reevaluate your tactics based on real world results.
Swattings are effective because they emulate actual situations - one where real people die or are seriously injured.
Attempt to emulate actual situations, often poorly. So just show me (and the rest of the world) the stats that show how effective the police are in these situations. Why is it unreasonable to ask that the police cause less harm by overreacting than would have been done by underreacting?
Sure. Provide me all the 911 recordings, not just the transcripts, of all the incidents of swattings and of real life or death hostage situations. I'll look at them, for free even, to analyze what could and couldn't have been done in each individual cases and what differentiates the real ones from the fake ones. Also provide all the statistics for the response to these calls and I'll lay down guidelines for what kind of response should be used in each situation. Sometimes it might be a phone call to the house, sometimes a drive by or a knock on the door (with gun holstered). As I said breaking down doors with guns drawn should be a rarity. Yes, I could do their jobs for them, and I will if they are unwilling, but I think they should take first crack at it. I'll even help them with the math, if that's the stumbling block.
Consider the Patrick Frey (Patterico) case, for example. Listen to the transcript and tell me that the caller was credible and that an immediate response with guns drawn, and rousting a man out of his home and putting him in handcuffs on the street was the best response.
To say that the police should always respond with guns drawn is just as dumb as saying they should ignore all calls. I'm asking them to do their job to the best of their ability which means a measured response proportional to the real threat. Rather than just barge in with their guns drawn and putting more lives at risk. Basically giving the swatters what they want and encouraging such behavior.
Swattings are only effective because they prey on the tendency of police, who crave adrenaline and action, to overreact. When you spend a lot of money (and reputation) on armed response (e.g. a SWAT team) you tend to look for uses of that SWAT team where none exist. A smart police force would resist that tendency (and if not they should be compelled through legal means, criminal or civil).
If Ford is offering $40 ($35) under the union contract, no sane person would turn that down to work at GM instead, modulo if GM treats their workers better, etc. Therefore, GM must offer at least as much as the union deal offers.
This is nonsense. Ford does not have an unlimited number of jobs. If there are 120K workers in the labor force Ford will employ the first 50K and the other 70K will fight over the 50K GM jobs at a significantly lower salary. If Ford or GM were willing to offer $45 on the free market then it would have been insane for the union to negotiate a lower wage. Ford WAS paying only $30 or $35 and the union worked to get that higher. Do you know nothing about unions? Historically, union jobs have been in very high demand and often not easy to get.
Of course, "as much" might mean something employees value more than an extra fifty cents, like on-site child care provided, where parents can walk over and have lunch with their children.
There may be some limited cases where that is true, but it is far from the norm. Companies do not offer those perks unless they have to. It is far more likely that they will offer slightly better pay to avoid those perks, to the limit that they legally can. Again, many workers would make poor short term decisions, take a little extra easy cash and cross their fingers that they don't get sick or that there's a downturn in the economy, etc.
My (non-union) job has different scheduling options and several workers have started tele-commuting, working from home, even from a different state.
You have the luxury of being in a profession that is in high demand and where workers have hugely varying skills and many options. To use this as an example of why unions would never work is ridiculous. This is the major logical fallacy that hardcore libertarians make, they assume everyone else has the same resources, the same advantages growing up, the same abilities, etc. "I don't need a union in my $150k a year programming job, so nobody does." "I don't need the government to protect me from usurious loans with obscure rates and payments, so caveat emptor." ...
The union contract can't treat people as individuals, recognizing that Sally needs to leave early every Friday to pick up her kid and Ray needs time to move around assisting other employees rather than being stuck at his station all day. Instead, the union contract has to treat employees as interchangeable things, rather than as individual people . The employer benefits from Ray lending a hand wherever needed, and expediting work through the relationships he builds, but the union contract has to pigeonhole him into a specific task all day, every day. Can't have him lend a hand in any role he's not assigned to - he's not on that payscale. These are the facts of my daily working life.
There is no reason that a union contract has to work that way at all, it's not a fundamental rule of how unions and union contracts work any more than saying that unions are always bad because they are run by organized crime. Those rules are equally a product of a stiffly run organization typical of industries and companies where unions have proven to be necessary. Teachers, for example, often have a lot of flexible time and can switch jobs for which they are competent.
For this reason, the non-union shop can very well attract the best workers with a truly better offer - better for the employee and better for the employer.
Show me, in the industries that are heavily unionized where this consistently is true. Better for the employer certainly, but as long as the unions don't ask so much that the employer goes out of business or has to close shop it's typically better for the worker to be in a union.
You jump from that to wanting to force people to work your union contracts against their will. On that we disagree.
Please quote where I have said anything of the kind. I have said that unions need to be protected by more than just the free market and that employees and employers can come to agreement on union rules (e.g. that all employees in a shop must be union members). Very, very different.
Your arrogance is insulting. That's the elitist liberal snobbery that turns people off so much. You tell people that they are too stupid to make their own decisions, so you should make their choices for them. You know so much more about their lives than they do about their own, right? It's stomach-turning. Just like when you say black people are too stupid to score high enough on the SAT to get into college, so you should give them extra points for being a stupid negro. It's just disgusting.
What world are you living in where everyone always makes the best long term decisions? It's fine to espouse the philosophy that everyone should be responsible for their own actions, at least that's consistent and rational (if not compassionate), but to ignore that the vast majority of people make poor short term decisions is just frankly insane. Your ignorance of affirmative action is equal to your ignorance of labor law and history. Plus, you are clearly a racist accusing others of being racist as a cover. Maybe you feel that if you just throw enough random anti-liberal garbage out there that some of it will stick. BENGHAZI!
Speaking of cherry-picking, government schools are over twice as likely to require grade school teachers to have a masters degree or PhD compared to private schools, who are allowed to hire based on actual competency. Yeah, people with master's and PhDs required by union contract make more than people with a bachelor's degree.(Minus their student loan payments).
This is just nonsense. You repeatedly duck the questions asked of you to demonstrate your point and veer off on some other tangent. The simple fact is that for all their drawbacks, teacher's unions give the average teacher a higher wage and better benefits than if their were no teacher's union.
And then when someone calls 911 because of a real hostage situation or bomb threat, then people go all up in arms because SWAT was too slow, never mind that they were only checking if the call was legit.
And those people should be ignored, the police should not overreact (e.g. to the backpack in the example provided) just for public perception.
So the solution is for the police to react calmly, professionally using their presumably expert knowledge with a little bit of common sense. They should be able to suss out these swattings and act appropriately in the vast majority of cases. Breaking down doors and shooting innocents should be an incredible rarity.
You seem to be overlooking the difference between being forced to work a union contract that is far worse than what you can get on the free market vs being able to choose to join a union.
Not overlooking it at all, just saying that the situation you're envisioning would rarely if ever happen with no labor protection for unions, where every individual employee and employer has no limits on what tactics they can use.
The libertarian platform isn't that unions are bad. It's that choice is good - people should be able to join unions if they want to.
Choice is good, but without restrictions the bargaining power for certain jobs and industries is completely unbalanced. Again, it is fair as a libertarian to argue that the fair price for labor in those markets is near zero, because that is whatever the market will bear.
Consider the union makes a deal with Ford for $X (minus $Y paid to the union). GM doesn't strike a deal with the union, so they offer $Z. Workers then have a choice of either the union deal Ford or the non-union offer at GM. You can get all the union benefits and drawbacks at Ford, if that's what you want. The alternative you propose is that all workers must take the union deal. You work for $X-Z or you don't work at all.
That is a fine example, but you haven't thought it out. Let's look at it more closely and put real numbers on it.
Let's keep it simple and say that Ford is paying $40 and the union dues are $5. How much is GM going to pay their non unionized workers? You seem to believe that it will be more than $40 because GM doesn't have to pay for union extracted protections, but history has proven that is not the case. First, most workers typically do not understand (and thus don't value) the union benefits until it is too late. Second, GM would have complete flexibility to offer cut rate salaries, hire and fire at will, shut down the plant, etc. At times of high labor demand, it's possible they would offer $40 or more, but that would be rare and they would more than recoup their costs when labor was plentiful.
But why would Ford enter into such an agreement with a union if they weren't compelled to? They wouldn't. They would use every tactic (e.g. banning union activities, threatening shutdowns or moving the plant, retribution against union employees, etc.) to make sure that unions never took hold. Further, they would collude with GM to set low labor prices so they wouldn't be competing for the same laborers. All perfectly legal and fair in a pure libertarian world.
In the US, programmers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, nurses, web designers, fashion designers, clothing designers, and architects are not unionized. Assembly line workers, chicken pluckers, and school teachers are unionized. Guess which group gets the best salaries?
First off, you're cherry picking the data that suits your argument. Professional basketball players get paid far more than accountants. Walmart employees get far less than teachers. You were asked to provide evidence to support your argument that in a libertarian world that workers are better off in a given profession. Would the average auto worker be better off with no union?
The fact that lower paid workers often have unions should tell you something - that lower paid worker are more in need of unions, not that unions lead to lower paid workers. You seem to think I'm making the case that every occupation should be unionized in country in every era. Unions are a useful method of balancing out the huge disparity in bargaining power that employers have - in some industries (e.g. programming in America in the last 30 years) it is not necessary. Workers in a coal mine (in America in 1900 and South America/China now) are in a totally different circumstance.
School teachers are a great example. Their union gets someone with a masters degree $50,000, then takes a chunk of that
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that freedom is bad.
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that workers have a right to be exploited. Can we stop trading ridiculous hyperbole now?
The reality is that if every worker has complete freedom to do whatever they want at all times then a union would never have any leverage. Workers would undercut each other on pay (not just make a benefit swap as in your example). If there ever were any meager benefits extracted by the unions then the free-riders would reduce the unions power (leverage and lobbying ability) to near zero. Why pay dues and follow union rules if you get the benefits without having to?
It's fine to say that in a pure libertarian world unions don't need to exist because workers will, through their individual choices, get what they're worth. However, you are delusional if you think that workers in all industries and professions would be as well off without the protection of unions and laws which protect how employers can deal with unions. Can you provide any examples anywhere in the world where this has worked?
So somewhere between your absolute stalinist style totalitarianism and the libertarian free-for-all is the reasonable compromise that we've come to in the last 150 years, and one that changes as time moves on and the world changes.
Now since you seem to be opposed to what Apple and Google have done here (and you errantly lambaste me for supporting it) can you tell where in your libertarian ideals that they have done anything wrong? Under pure libertarianism they have every right to decide to act together and not poach each other's employees.
So they are just against effective unions then.
Its not about knowing more, its about how you retrieve the information
It's certainly about both, isn't it? If you don't have the data, understanding the question isn't of much help. I could ask my device to show me images of pubs near chancery lane and there's a good chance I'll recognize the one I want. Whereas you are expecting the cabbie to have encyclopedic knowledge of all the pubs on every street which is just not realistic. Your selection bias about the times he amazingly got it right biases you against all the times he would have no idea what you're talking about (or take you to the one with the yellow sign on the corner, as opposed to the one in the middle of the block which you could have differentiated yourself by the photo).
A human being is always better at understanding what you are asking for than a computer when asking complicated questions.
That is absolutely not true. Some humans are better at moderately complex, fuzzy questions than others and it may be that London cabbies are better at many of these cases for the average customer than the average smartphone. But that certainly won't be true in the future. Even if that were true, a concierge service on a smartphone (perhaps provided by the car service) that uses a central information center with a human who has access to all the web information would yield far better results and be more cost effective.
Now read that with s/LGBT/animals/. Now read that with s/LGBT/power tools/.
Let's do that. So you're suggesting that we have a game/simulation where players can act as people (male or female, black or white or asian or...), animals (of various kinds) or power tools. Now if you want to add a "marrying" type relation for the players of the game the only reason not to let every player relate to every other player is if you think that relationship isn't proper or reasonable. That is a conscious decision they should be held accountable for.