The bigger the rollout, the harder the crash
on
Why New Systems Fail
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"But we don't have time for a pilot"
Also heard as "Why, don't you have confidence in your project"
Putting aside the sheer commonsense approach of not giving a porsche to a newly passed driver, most projects are run in a state of panic. Panic that the timetable is slipping (although this is almost always due to poor time-estimating, it seems to get presented as being due to slothful or untalented techies), Panic that it's costing too much - again due to poor cost estimation, rather than ovespending. Panic about bugs, Panic about training (ha!). Panic about compatibility with other systems. Panic about all the little patches, workarounds, working practices and hacks that have developed in the old system - that everyone knows about, but have never been documented.
All these, could have been identified and most of them fixed just by running a small scale prototype in parallel to the existing system. However by the time the project is halfway through, most of the directors are firmly engaged in either "buyers remorse" or utter denial. They become deaf to bad news and generally take full aim at the messenger, while leaving the culprits of all the problems unscathed. This is usually because all the biggest mistakes are made right at the start - in the design stages. However, these have been completed and signed off, so by definition cannot be at fault. The blame gets transferred down the line, to the people who have their hands-on right at the time the deadline is due. It's the original smoking gun: "The project ran over time / budget today - you were working on it when that happened, therefore you must be to blame". It's simplistic, always wrong and always starts off the finger pointing part of the process. You can't get away from it.
Although the biggest problem I see is "seagull" consultants. They fly in, make a lot of noise, crap over everything and fly off. The trouble usually only surfaces once they've disappeared.
Yet we don't think of them as cute and cuddly. What I think we have with cats is just a case of parallel development - it may be that all animals (incl. human ones) who have the same basic vocal chords and hearing range, will make the same sort of sounds. That cat owners anthropomorphise (sp?) this might tell you about some inner needs they have, or something about their personalities - though quite what that would be, I haven't a clue.
Just like some birds have learned to mimic the ring tones of mobile phones (and normal phones, too). There's no evolutionary pressure here, it's just that cats do have some (small - very small) glimmer of intelligence and learn that making certain noises will get them what they want. Babies also do this, so we're not talking about anything that's particularly difficult. Dogs are also known to respond to their names - though to to all the other chatter that their owners seem to think they'll understand.
In fact, pretty much any animal - even my goldfish, can be conditioned to respond to a food stimulus - they know what precedes them being fed and act accordingly.
The only surprising thing about this is that the cats haven't got their owners better trained in all this time.
What mental model of orbital dynamics are you working with? You think it's going to fall off its sky-hook or something?
Err, no. Just conservation of angular momentum in it''s orbit, plus maybe some things about not getting it spinning. Disassembly will never be simply the opposite of assembly. Also don't forget that it'll be the occupants who have to take it apart - so avoiding bumping large chunks of old space-station into their only means of getting home could make it quite a tricky operation.
P.S. it's not on a skyhook - I don't know what they've been teaching you guys.
With the russians being the only people (once the scuttle is sent to the knacker's yard) who have the ability to send people to the ISS, and the europeans with their independent supply craft, it may even be possible to ignore whatever NASA wants to do. Come 2016, it may even be that there were no more americans on the station - in which case all the existing occupants would have to do would be to stop any more of them arriving. Once the high costs of construction have been met and the station enters a lower cost maintenance phase of it's life, there could well be deals to be done with other countries to keep the station supplied and crews rotated and some real work done.
Last of all, I would really laugh if the de-orbiting project threw up some show-stoppers which showed that the station was now TOO BIG to be safely taken apart, without affecting it's overall stability - and the risk of the whole thing crashing back in one large piece.
The first word in it's title is "International" and a lot of countries have put a lot of money into building it. Maybe they would like to start getting some returns on their payments now that it's finally almost finished, rather than having one single country decide that just because they're bored with it the whole thing should be crashed into the sea.
A lot of times, you have a photo of the "suspect" who's movement you want to track (either from other surveillance, or a mugshot - or even from their passport phot. The reason you're told not to smile is because the P.R. software has a harder time dealing with it - same with glasses wearers.). All that's needed is to feed the photo into the recognition system and give it all your CCTV footage to crunch. This is how surveillance societies like Britain tend to do it now.
You're right though, that you can't just type in "tell me where Joe Soap went on thursday afternoon" into the system and get an list of his/her whereabouts, but for targeted individuals, tracking without their permission has been available for some time.
That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent.
People already are easilt trackable. CCTV coupled with facial recognition is a far more effective way to follow an individual than relying on a web of RFID sensors, needed one every 20 feet. This is especially true when the RFID sniffing is so easily defeated - keep your passport under your tinfoil hat. (To be fair, face recog. is also pretty easy to fool: fale beard and dark glasses, anyone?)
However, keep up the paranoia, guys One day all your fears might just come to pass.
Although I agree, the term is so misused these days (particularly in reference to "theft" of copyrighted information) that it has been devalued. Because we are all brought up to consider stealing to be bad, the spin-doctors are tapping into our conditioning to elicit an emotional response that is rarely warranted.
In my mind, if you have something and I take it off you, that's stealing as you don't have it any more.
If you have something and I copy it, that may well be a crime, or immoral, but provided you still have the same use of it as before, I would never consider that "stealing".
It will be interesting to see how todays children view "stealing" as they grow up. Will it still be considered the heinous act it was when I was a child, or will they be so hardened to its misuse that reference to stealing will be the equivalent to telling them something is rude.
With all the sh.... they pump out from the EHT circuitry and SMPS, I would expect them to do a pretty good job of blowing away any microvolts that come from the keyboard.
So far as this being a practical way of eavesdropping - I don't buy it. There are lots more established methods of discovering what people are typing, plus this seems to completely overlook all the activity from the mouse. Governmant agencies? Nah, if money was an issue, they'd just kick the door down and take your PCs away. if they want to be stealthy they have far more resources to apply to the problem and far more reliable solutions.
A nice lab experiment, but no practical use.
More to the point, how can the researchers assess which female rats are "babes" and which ones are fuglies.
I really hope they're not projecting their own feelings and biases into the equation here. For this experiment to have any scientific value, there must be an objective measure of attractiveness, one with a proper definition and units (including a calibration standard). Can someone please tell me, for humans, what this measurement is based on, what the units are (Helens? the amount of beauty required to launch 1000 ships - but beauty is not attractiveness) and, most important, who the calibration reference is?
Like â40+ ($55 US) a month for a basic, capped, 2MBit/sec internet connection on top of your phone line rental.
That's if Telefonica - the national telephone monopoly will let you have a phone line, which in rural communities they often won't, due to having no spare wires.
Replace the warm surface water with colder deep water. Then the warm water will just reappear somewhere else. Unless this guy can actually remove heat from the system, he's just moving the problem around (and possibly storing up a bigger problem for later), not fixing it.
It's like using a leaf-blower. If doesn't get rid of the leaves, just moves them to somewhere else. If that "somewhere else" is is still on your property (or in the same ocean) then the problem hasn't been solved - merely pushed around a bit.
Criminals don't think "oooh here comes the crime fighting plane - I don't think I'll mug that little old lady "
They either plan around it (unlikely) or commit impulsive acts when the opportunity arises. They also don't always commit their crimes out-doors, or in cloud-free weather. They also don't ever expect to get caught (if they did, that would be a deterrent - it isn't).. So while keeping a plane in the air (and presumably a control room staffed, to watch the spy cameras) and a mechanic on standby to refule it and maintain it, might sound like a good idea - and may even impress the voters the chances of it reducing crime are small.
Luckily for the mayor, it's impossible to correlate one act of crime prevention with any movement in the crime statistics, so whatever happens (short of someone stealing the plane), he, she or it will be able to call the initiative a success.
I do have a feeling though, that this plan was not exactly thought out. Any sale to a gullible official - who isn't spending their own cash yet comes out with statements like "I've never been so excited about anything" sounds like exuberance has got the better over common sense. I would expect that the money earmarked for this plan would be far better spent on orthodox police patrols: more officers, more man-hours and maybe even a few public awareness campaigns. Not as sexy, but far more effective.
which could be the difference between life and death if the GPS unit is damaged or the batteries are dead
So what happens if you lose your map? You're just as screwed as the guy with the flat batteries?
Anyhow, everyone who ever goes into a landscape with only one, single source of information is a fool - the motto "be prepared" applies, especially when your life is at stake. Carry a map, a GPS a mobile phone, the correct clothing, a distress flare and a spare set of batteries.
Any directions that start with "You can't miss it" should be immediately disregarded. The direction-giver is telling you straight away that they are so familiar with a destination that they drive there on autopilot and therefore have no actual clue about what signposts, landmarks or other indicators exist - except in their mis-remembered minds.
Congratulations - you have discovered that people believe information from sources they have invested in. Whether that investment is financial (they've paid for it) or emotional (they've worked for it) or whatever. They'll give it a higher credibility than info they get for free - i.e. from other people.
The reason is quite straightforward. If the free information contradicts the earned / paid-for data, and they then go with it, they'll have wasted the investment in the non-free source. It's just human nature. If you want them to believe what you tell your visitors, get a toll number, so when they call you for help / directions they won't want to waste the cost of the call - thereby ensuring they'll follow your instructions.
Oh yes, one more thing (call it the consultants rule): the more they pay, the more care they'll take and the more likely they are to do what they're told.
Satnav is faster, more reliable and easier to use than paper maps.
That's why they are popular. It's also possible to update a Satnav with new data if roads change, or new ones are built. Most people's car-atlases are obsolete if more than a few years old - meaning we have to replace them regularly to keep up-to-date. While the cost is small, it adds up with a new atlas every couple of years.
The biggest problem with using a map is knowing where you are starting from. It does have a larger "page" than a Satnav screen, which means you get more context at once, but if you are lost it's impossible to work out how to get to where you want to be - as you don't know where you are to start with. Similarly, if you're alone in a car, probably the single most dangerous thing you can possibly do while driving is keep looking down to refer to a map on your lap, while trying not to shunt the vehicle in front if it slows down.
The point in the article about men disliking taking instructions from a woman's voice shows how out of touch the writer is (and therefore how completely lacking in credibility the whole article is). If you don't like one vioce CHANGE IT. If your budget Satnav only comes with one vioce BUY ANOTHER if it annoys you that much. So far as comparing map-reading with calligraphy or thatching - this is completely spurious: almost no-one in past eras could do either of these crafts, just like very few people have ever really had the skill to read a map (Question: do you know how to tell which way a river flows, by looking at the direction of the contours? Congratulations, you're in the top 1%)
This technology is going to need an awful lot of pee. 60 litres in an average tank - that's all got to come from someone's (or something's bladder) Even if you only fill up once a month, that's 2 litres a day - which is pretty much what we're recommended as a daily fluid intake (depends on body mass, age etc.). Plus, of course the urea content of the average whizz is nowhere near 100%, and when sweating and vapour in breath is included we're going to need all the urine from every driver and all the passengers - just to keep our cars on the road.
The biggest problem I can see, is that if we are all producing the fuel to run our cars, how are the government every going to tax it? None of the solutions seems that pleasant!
Governments love tracking tech. Unfortunately the idea of spying on citizens provokes a few "idealists" to object on the basis of "liberties" (as if we ever had any?)
However mobile phones are merely "technology", not people. So the ability to track them is a much easier sell - especially as it wouldn't involve the people at all, just some computers 'n' stuff.It seems to me that all a government has to do is make tha carrying of a mobile phone an obligation for citizens, visitors and the like. Getting rid of anonymous phones would also be part of the deal, but in many places they're already gone or on the way out.
What happens next is that people have been issued with de-facto ID cards. Ones that can be accessed passively without the owner's knowledge or permission. Yes you could turn it off, but people are so addicted to them, and so afraid of missing "that" call (we know this: almost everyone will stop doing *anything* to answer a call when the phone rings - they just can't ignore it or let it ring). amd so insecure, that hardly anyone would. It might even become socially unacceptable - like smoking in public, or travelling naked.
Even better, the cost to the government is much lower than for an ID card scheme, and once everyone has one, all the time, they can be used for issuing summones, texting out tax demands, traffic tickets and almost anything else that a government or official body would need to send to it's citizens.
Presumably the next step would be to have them implanted at birth?
At least with Wikipedia (most) people have the sense to take everything they read with a grain of salt.
That's exactly the problem - people don't question it. Especially when the defence solicitor is presented with the prosecutions "evidence" on the steps, on the way in to court (i.e. so late that they don't have time to examine it, or refute it - but not late enough that they can complain to the court that they never received it. This is a common practice.)
Add in to this, most solicitors and judges are wholly clueless when it comes to technical matters. Most will not have heard of Wikipedia, and those who have know it to be an "online encyclopedia" - as that's what their children tell them it is.
Apart from a few high level murder cases, the quality of evidence and the conclusions drawn from it are excruciatingly bad. I suppose in that case, Wiki "evidence" is therefore no worse than any other kind.
There is no "expert" validation of the information posted there. A lot of stuff is anonymous and that which isn't cannot be 100% validated to be from the individual who claims authorship. The writers cannot be cros-examined in a court (as an expert witness could).
The other MAJOR problem is that it is too easy to fabricate a case. If the police were to start writing Wiki articles about the people they arrest, or the possessions they have when arrested, it becomes a farce.
Finally, if citing Wiki is enough to get your university work marked down (or dismissed altogether) it should be inadmissable in law
If you form a think-tank, or oversight committee, or regulatory office with a nice, big budget and charge them with feeding into the decision making process, that's what they'll do. They are hardly likely to say "we've checked - everything's fine". The two obvious reasons being:
There might be something they missed
If there is no "threat", they're out of a job
So it happens that every time a new office is created to look into the potential of a hazard to the country - lo and behold: they find one. Amazing!
So far as the first reason is concerned, there will always be the possibility that (maybe for reasons outside their control) the watchers were unaware of a potential problem. However, that doesn't matter - they'll still get it in the neck if a threat in their "area" materialises. Far better to say: "we've looked, but to be absolutely sure, we need more money." Since this approach can be repeated ad-infinitum, or until the money runs out it's a great way to CYA.
The second reason is simply human nature. they try to stay on the gravy train for as long as possible. If there are no BIG threats, they'll find little ones and exaggerate their importance. Or find non-existant ones and use so many weasel-words like: "could", "might", "possibly", with everyone too cowed by the infinitesimal possibility there might be something in it, to challenge their vague mutterings.
The problem is that the real problems are too hard. Things like lack of education, opportunity, addictive personalities, crime, uncertainty, greed are all much bigger problems. However they're too big for a government to fix (certainly within one or two electorial terms). So it's better to go for the "quick" fixes, that have no real cause and no real fix. That way, whatever a government does can be called a success as the threat wasn't that real to begin with.
What we have at present is (still) an immature industry. No-one knows how to write high-quality code, that will work unconditionally and predictably under all circumstances - simply because no-one has ever written any. Everything being produced today - from a kiddy with a visual basic IDE through to life-support and aviation systems contains known bugs and even more unknown bugs. What we have now is akin to mechanical engineering from 1000 years ago. Some enormous structures we create today (e.g. the internet) will remain for generations, but they'll be hopelessly complex, inefficient, need constant maintaining and may not even be that suitable. A bit like the roads system (well, in those countries that have been around for a thousand years, anyway). Other products of our time will be marvelled at, but more along the lines of "why did they do that" or "what were they thinking" or "here's an example of how NOT to do it".
To get a professional basis for future work, we need something like the IEE or IEEE. Which upholds standards of professional work and polices the quality of product from it;s members.
It would still make room for non-members (or "cowboys" as they would no doubt be termed) to be employed, though presumably they couldn't command the same rates of pay as the professionals, as they would not have the backing and guarantees from the organisation and the qualifications it demands. Until we get somehting like that, we're simply just playing at programming.
One presumes they did - otherwise it would have been mentioned. In which case it's just a sorry tale of someone, one of many every day, who gets stopped. Nothing much to see here. Let's have another story please.
Slashdot Mirror
Also heard as "Why, don't you have confidence in your project"
Putting aside the sheer commonsense approach of not giving a porsche to a newly passed driver, most projects are run in a state of panic. Panic that the timetable is slipping (although this is almost always due to poor time-estimating, it seems to get presented as being due to slothful or untalented techies), Panic that it's costing too much - again due to poor cost estimation, rather than ovespending. Panic about bugs, Panic about training (ha!). Panic about compatibility with other systems. Panic about all the little patches, workarounds, working practices and hacks that have developed in the old system - that everyone knows about, but have never been documented.
All these, could have been identified and most of them fixed just by running a small scale prototype in parallel to the existing system. However by the time the project is halfway through, most of the directors are firmly engaged in either "buyers remorse" or utter denial. They become deaf to bad news and generally take full aim at the messenger, while leaving the culprits of all the problems unscathed. This is usually because all the biggest mistakes are made right at the start - in the design stages. However, these have been completed and signed off, so by definition cannot be at fault. The blame gets transferred down the line, to the people who have their hands-on right at the time the deadline is due. It's the original smoking gun: "The project ran over time / budget today - you were working on it when that happened, therefore you must be to blame". It's simplistic, always wrong and always starts off the finger pointing part of the process. You can't get away from it.
Although the biggest problem I see is "seagull" consultants. They fly in, make a lot of noise, crap over everything and fly off. The trouble usually only surfaces once they've disappeared.
Yet we don't think of them as cute and cuddly. What I think we have with cats is just a case of parallel development - it may be that all animals (incl. human ones) who have the same basic vocal chords and hearing range, will make the same sort of sounds. That cat owners anthropomorphise (sp?) this might tell you about some inner needs they have, or something about their personalities - though quite what that would be, I haven't a clue.
In fact, pretty much any animal - even my goldfish, can be conditioned to respond to a food stimulus - they know what precedes them being fed and act accordingly.
The only surprising thing about this is that the cats haven't got their owners better trained in all this time.
What mental model of orbital dynamics are you working with? You think it's going to fall off its sky-hook or something?
Err, no. Just conservation of angular momentum in it''s orbit, plus maybe some things about not getting it spinning. Disassembly will never be simply the opposite of assembly. Also don't forget that it'll be the occupants who have to take it apart - so avoiding bumping large chunks of old space-station into their only means of getting home could make it quite a tricky operation.
P.S. it's not on a skyhook - I don't know what they've been teaching you guys.
With the russians being the only people (once the scuttle is sent to the knacker's yard) who have the ability to send people to the ISS, and the europeans with their independent supply craft, it may even be possible to ignore whatever NASA wants to do. Come 2016, it may even be that there were no more americans on the station - in which case all the existing occupants would have to do would be to stop any more of them arriving. Once the high costs of construction have been met and the station enters a lower cost maintenance phase of it's life, there could well be deals to be done with other countries to keep the station supplied and crews rotated and some real work done.
Last of all, I would really laugh if the de-orbiting project threw up some show-stoppers which showed that the station was now TOO BIG to be safely taken apart, without affecting it's overall stability - and the risk of the whole thing crashing back in one large piece.
The first word in it's title is "International" and a lot of countries have put a lot of money into building it. Maybe they would like to start getting some returns on their payments now that it's finally almost finished, rather than having one single country decide that just because they're bored with it the whole thing should be crashed into the sea.
You're right though, that you can't just type in "tell me where Joe Soap went on thursday afternoon" into the system and get an list of his/her whereabouts, but for targeted individuals, tracking without their permission has been available for some time.
That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent.
People already are easilt trackable. CCTV coupled with facial recognition is a far more effective way to follow an individual than relying on a web of RFID sensors, needed one every 20 feet. This is especially true when the RFID sniffing is so easily defeated - keep your passport under your tinfoil hat. (To be fair, face recog. is also pretty easy to fool: fale beard and dark glasses, anyone?)
However, keep up the paranoia, guys One day all your fears might just come to pass.
In my mind, if you have something and I take it off you, that's stealing as you don't have it any more.
If you have something and I copy it, that may well be a crime, or immoral, but provided you still have the same use of it as before, I would never consider that "stealing".
It will be interesting to see how todays children view "stealing" as they grow up. Will it still be considered the heinous act it was when I was a child, or will they be so hardened to its misuse that reference to stealing will be the equivalent to telling them something is rude.
So far as this being a practical way of eavesdropping - I don't buy it. There are lots more established methods of discovering what people are typing, plus this seems to completely overlook all the activity from the mouse. Governmant agencies? Nah, if money was an issue, they'd just kick the door down and take your PCs away. if they want to be stealthy they have far more resources to apply to the problem and far more reliable solutions.
A nice lab experiment, but no practical use.
I really hope they're not projecting their own feelings and biases into the equation here. For this experiment to have any scientific value, there must be an objective measure of attractiveness, one with a proper definition and units (including a calibration standard). Can someone please tell me, for humans, what this measurement is based on, what the units are (Helens? the amount of beauty required to launch 1000 ships - but beauty is not attractiveness) and, most important, who the calibration reference is?
Men need to know.
That's if Telefonica - the national telephone monopoly will let you have a phone line, which in rural communities they often won't, due to having no spare wires.
It's like using a leaf-blower. If doesn't get rid of the leaves, just moves them to somewhere else. If that "somewhere else" is is still on your property (or in the same ocean) then the problem hasn't been solved - merely pushed around a bit.
They either plan around it (unlikely) or commit impulsive acts when the opportunity arises. They also don't always commit their crimes out-doors, or in cloud-free weather. They also don't ever expect to get caught (if they did, that would be a deterrent - it isn't).. So while keeping a plane in the air (and presumably a control room staffed, to watch the spy cameras) and a mechanic on standby to refule it and maintain it, might sound like a good idea - and may even impress the voters the chances of it reducing crime are small.
Luckily for the mayor, it's impossible to correlate one act of crime prevention with any movement in the crime statistics, so whatever happens (short of someone stealing the plane), he, she or it will be able to call the initiative a success.
I do have a feeling though, that this plan was not exactly thought out. Any sale to a gullible official - who isn't spending their own cash yet comes out with statements like "I've never been so excited about anything" sounds like exuberance has got the better over common sense. I would expect that the money earmarked for this plan would be far better spent on orthodox police patrols: more officers, more man-hours and maybe even a few public awareness campaigns. Not as sexy, but far more effective.
which could be the difference between life and death if the GPS unit is damaged or the batteries are dead
So what happens if you lose your map? You're just as screwed as the guy with the flat batteries?
Anyhow, everyone who ever goes into a landscape with only one, single source of information is a fool - the motto "be prepared" applies, especially when your life is at stake. Carry a map, a GPS a mobile phone, the correct clothing, a distress flare and a spare set of batteries.
Any directions that start with "You can't miss it" should be immediately disregarded. The direction-giver is telling you straight away that they are so familiar with a destination that they drive there on autopilot and therefore have no actual clue about what signposts, landmarks or other indicators exist - except in their mis-remembered minds.
The reason is quite straightforward. If the free information contradicts the earned / paid-for data, and they then go with it, they'll have wasted the investment in the non-free source. It's just human nature. If you want them to believe what you tell your visitors, get a toll number, so when they call you for help / directions they won't want to waste the cost of the call - thereby ensuring they'll follow your instructions.
Oh yes, one more thing (call it the consultants rule): the more they pay, the more care they'll take and the more likely they are to do what they're told.
That's why they are popular. It's also possible to update a Satnav with new data if roads change, or new ones are built. Most people's car-atlases are obsolete if more than a few years old - meaning we have to replace them regularly to keep up-to-date. While the cost is small, it adds up with a new atlas every couple of years.
The biggest problem with using a map is knowing where you are starting from. It does have a larger "page" than a Satnav screen, which means you get more context at once, but if you are lost it's impossible to work out how to get to where you want to be - as you don't know where you are to start with. Similarly, if you're alone in a car, probably the single most dangerous thing you can possibly do while driving is keep looking down to refer to a map on your lap, while trying not to shunt the vehicle in front if it slows down.
The point in the article about men disliking taking instructions from a woman's voice shows how out of touch the writer is (and therefore how completely lacking in credibility the whole article is). If you don't like one vioce CHANGE IT. If your budget Satnav only comes with one vioce BUY ANOTHER if it annoys you that much. So far as comparing map-reading with calligraphy or thatching - this is completely spurious: almost no-one in past eras could do either of these crafts, just like very few people have ever really had the skill to read a map (Question: do you know how to tell which way a river flows, by looking at the direction of the contours? Congratulations, you're in the top 1%)
The biggest problem I can see, is that if we are all producing the fuel to run our cars, how are the government every going to tax it? None of the solutions seems that pleasant!
However mobile phones are merely "technology", not people. So the ability to track them is a much easier sell - especially as it wouldn't involve the people at all, just some computers 'n' stuff.It seems to me that all a government has to do is make tha carrying of a mobile phone an obligation for citizens, visitors and the like. Getting rid of anonymous phones would also be part of the deal, but in many places they're already gone or on the way out.
What happens next is that people have been issued with de-facto ID cards. Ones that can be accessed passively without the owner's knowledge or permission. Yes you could turn it off, but people are so addicted to them, and so afraid of missing "that" call (we know this: almost everyone will stop doing *anything* to answer a call when the phone rings - they just can't ignore it or let it ring). amd so insecure, that hardly anyone would. It might even become socially unacceptable - like smoking in public, or travelling naked. Even better, the cost to the government is much lower than for an ID card scheme, and once everyone has one, all the time, they can be used for issuing summones, texting out tax demands, traffic tickets and almost anything else that a government or official body would need to send to it's citizens.
Presumably the next step would be to have them implanted at birth?
At least with Wikipedia (most) people have the sense to take everything they read with a grain of salt.
That's exactly the problem - people don't question it. Especially when the defence solicitor is presented with the prosecutions "evidence" on the steps, on the way in to court (i.e. so late that they don't have time to examine it, or refute it - but not late enough that they can complain to the court that they never received it. This is a common practice.)
Add in to this, most solicitors and judges are wholly clueless when it comes to technical matters. Most will not have heard of Wikipedia, and those who have know it to be an "online encyclopedia" - as that's what their children tell them it is.
Apart from a few high level murder cases, the quality of evidence and the conclusions drawn from it are excruciatingly bad. I suppose in that case, Wiki "evidence" is therefore no worse than any other kind.
There is no "expert" validation of the information posted there. A lot of stuff is anonymous and that which isn't cannot be 100% validated to be from the individual who claims authorship. The writers cannot be cros-examined in a court (as an expert witness could).
The other MAJOR problem is that it is too easy to fabricate a case. If the police were to start writing Wiki articles about the people they arrest, or the possessions they have when arrested, it becomes a farce.
Finally, if citing Wiki is enough to get your university work marked down (or dismissed altogether) it should be inadmissable in law
There might be something they missed
If there is no "threat", they're out of a job
So it happens that every time a new office is created to look into the potential of a hazard to the country - lo and behold: they find one. Amazing!
So far as the first reason is concerned, there will always be the possibility that (maybe for reasons outside their control) the watchers were unaware of a potential problem. However, that doesn't matter - they'll still get it in the neck if a threat in their "area" materialises. Far better to say: "we've looked, but to be absolutely sure, we need more money." Since this approach can be repeated ad-infinitum, or until the money runs out it's a great way to CYA.
The second reason is simply human nature. they try to stay on the gravy train for as long as possible. If there are no BIG threats, they'll find little ones and exaggerate their importance. Or find non-existant ones and use so many weasel-words like: "could", "might", "possibly", with everyone too cowed by the infinitesimal possibility there might be something in it, to challenge their vague mutterings.
The problem is that the real problems are too hard. Things like lack of education, opportunity, addictive personalities, crime, uncertainty, greed are all much bigger problems. However they're too big for a government to fix (certainly within one or two electorial terms). So it's better to go for the "quick" fixes, that have no real cause and no real fix. That way, whatever a government does can be called a success as the threat wasn't that real to begin with.
To get a professional basis for future work, we need something like the IEE or IEEE. Which upholds standards of professional work and polices the quality of product from it;s members.
It would still make room for non-members (or "cowboys" as they would no doubt be termed) to be employed, though presumably they couldn't command the same rates of pay as the professionals, as they would not have the backing and guarantees from the organisation and the qualifications it demands. Until we get somehting like that, we're simply just playing at programming.
One presumes they did - otherwise it would have been mentioned. In which case it's just a sorry tale of someone, one of many every day, who gets stopped. Nothing much to see here. Let's have another story please.