Man. What idiot marketing shill came up with that harebrained scheme? Talk about corporate desperation. So we'll trade in a perfectly good MBA for half what it's worth in credit toward a glorified tablet that M$ can't seem to give away? (yes, I know that's last year's news but no reason to believe anything will change with version 3 IMHO). No thanks. I'm not really a huge fan of the MBA either, but this is ridiculous.
Oh, sure, that'll work. Those nice senators are always SO ready to listen to people's phone calls. I'm sure they just sit around all day hoping that someone will call them and tell them what to do, because they just get so much pleasure out of serving the people. I mean, they just put so MUCH importance on the will of the people. Guess that's why their approval rating is so gosh-darn high.
Neither do I, IMHO the state doesn't really have any business forcing the owner to do anything. The idea was to make a point; there's no way the state would agree to independent oversight of their inspection practices since they don't give a flying #*&$ about safety; it's about revenue.
Here's a proposal for a minor change in the legislation. If this law is all about protecting the consu--I mean citizen, and limiting abuses of the inspectors, providing an accurate record, etc, then instead of the inspectors wearing a recording device, how about requiring those being inspected to wear them instead? Same results, right? Surely the state inspectors won't have ANY problem whatsoever being recorded doing their jobs - if everything's so above board, then they have nothing to fear.
Meaningless posturing. The UN is utterly powerless against the NSA and its whims. This resolution carries about as much weight as a post on Slashdot critisizing it.
No argument with any of that, and great points re: NSA's deceit and the fact if Snowden could make off with such a database, it was likely child's play for most governments with an interest in it. However, expecting Apple to actually follow through with installing privacy controls like what you've described is probably the height of foolish optimism. I'm perfectly comfortable taking the matter into my own hands, hence the destruction or careful blocking of the camera.
I'm not an electronics engineer, but I dunno. That seems a little harsh on apple; the camera and led could have different power sources for any one of many innocuous reasons. That said, if you're paranoid (like me), a nail and jeweler's hammer will make quick work of the camera, and then power sources don't matter much. If you don't want to damage it permanently, some electrical tape works great too.
...seeding the database with strings that could be construed to create a hostile work environment...
That's more or less where I was going with that line of thought - even if not truly a "hostile environment," at least enough that finding people to take the job is pretty difficult - or perhaps enough that the postal service doesn't think it's funny that they're delivering mountains of mail to Mr and Mrs C*********g F*******s at a couple hundred different addresses.
And that's why we use a VPN/some-other-obfuscation-tool. While you're at it, unsubscribe a few (hundred) other random addresses. Impossible to prove it was you, and you have the added bonus of knowing you further hurt their intrusive marketing campaign.
So just visit their website and lie about everything. Make the information offensive, even, or obviously false (all except the address, I guess, which they have to have). 99% of the mail I get is junk mail anyway, so much so that I rarely look at it and just use automatically it for fire starter, animal bedding, etc.
Never give up privacy, even under duress. When this kind of thing happens, meet them on a level playing field and corrupt their database with junk info.
Yep, don't care. They lost me 2 years ago and short of their entire executive team kissing my bare ass on national TV, there's no way in hell I'm ever going back. Doing business with them was exactly like being raped.
No, I seriously doubt the government is going to give up tax revenue. The merchant is still going to pay 13 cents on that.99 purchase. The merchant will lose 2c. Or, as is more likely, they'll raise their prices accordingly; if they charge $1.01 for it, it'll get rounded up to $1.15.
That's nice in theory, but in practice, the "top priority" of code is to meet the deadline and get shipped. Everything after that is secondary.
This. This is exactly why 99% of code written under corporate auspices sucks major ass. Try getting a Director/VP/C-suite to understand why unmaintainable, shitty code sucks and hurts the business. Believe me, I've tried. Maybe 1 in 100 understands. The rest have the same response: "we met the ship date, it works. So what? And by the way, since you can't understand that, you're not an asset to the business. So don't bring me this crap again."
I don't know the answer to that particular debacle, myself - such that I usually just shut up about it and tell the devs working for me that, "yes, you can write shitty code. It will get you a pat on the back from management and a slap in the face by the guys you have to work with every day. Your choice."
If management wants your opinion of your coworkers, they'll ask for it.
Not necessarily; having managed a few dev teams I actually appreciated it when someone would come to me with issues like this (privately, non-confrontationally, without a lot of arrogance, etc - any of those things would probably just make me ignore you). Management isn't telepathic; they can't see every single problem like magic.
That said, if your manager a) doesn't have at least enough understanding of coding best practice to know why the stuff you're bringing him is bad, b) is an arrogant asshole himself, or c) is one of those types that believes the ladder to success is built from the heads of underlings, then yeah - STFU. And start job-hunting.
Yeah, I'm not sure I like this actually. All this really does it put data caps in the hands of the government - doesn't mean they're going away. I'd rather not have them at all, but if they're going to happen I'd rather the providers control them than the FCC.
Yes. That doesn't matter - the point still stands. If you take only countries where that isn't the case, you still can't draw a definite line showing that high gun crime is directly linked to gun ownership by the populace - and that still doesn't address the fact that gun deaths in the US are extremely low - low enough that gun death can't even be considered a leading cause of death in the US. Not remotely.
Your data doesn't pan out, boss. Check this out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
Sort that chart by "Rank by rate of ownership" and you'll see a problem. The US has a relatively high murder rate (compared to 1st-world countries) by firearms, and the US is #1 in gun ownership. But the problem is that Switzerland, Finland, Serbia, and Cyprus are ranked 3, 4, 5 and 6 in gun ownership - and they have very low homicide rates by firearm. The problem that data presents to you argument is that it undeniably demonstrates that gun ownership does not directly affect the murder rate. If it did, you would expect a gradual and more-or-less parallel drop in the murder rate as the gun ownership rates drop as well. But that just isn't the case.
The other interesting point this data makes is the fact that the murder rate by firearms (rate per 100,000 population) is not very high in 1st-world countries. In the US, where the rate is relatively high, less that 3 people are killed each year per 100,000. Cancer, on the other hand, causes 178.7 deaths per 100,000 people in the US ( http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html ) each year. Accidents or inintentional injuries: 38.4 per 100,000 per year.
I'm not purporting to know what the cause of incidents like Newtown and Aurora is; that's beyond my abilities. But what I can say, based on hard data, is that gun ownership is not a direct cause of gun deaths, and gun deaths in the US are not high enough to warrant this kind of fanatical attention. You want to really cut down on senseless violence? Go after cancer and the other big terminal killers. Guns just aren't that big of a problem.
Every business has a phone. Failing that, most folks in the rural US will be happy to make a call for you (on their landline) if you ask nicely and don't look and smell like a bum. Hitch-hiking is a lost art, but in a real pinch even that might work. If you're not in the rural US (meaning you're in the urban US; I don't know how this works elsewhere), you're near a business, and it's gonna have a phone.
Again I ask, how do you think people pre-1995 did this? Just sat in their cars and starved to death?
I guess your argument makes sense if you live deep in the woods somewhere, but if you're as far out as I am your cell phone doesn't work anyway. Most places in the US have plenty of civilization around, and plenty of ways of getting help in an extreme situation like that...
HA! And what do you think people did before everyone had a cell phone? I got my first cell phone in '99 (i think), 13 measly years ago. Believe it or not, you don't actually need one to live.
Essentially what you're pointing out is that capitalism, while admirable in terms of the freedom it provides in its early stages (anyone can start a business and probably be successful just by working hard), eventually always ends in monopolies (eventually those businesses will be bought up or bullied into selling, creating one central mega-power - first one in each market, but eventually even different market verticals are all controlled by the same umbrella corporation - that's why you can buy bullets, baby diapers, and a gallon of milk at the same checkout at Walmart). There has to be a system to keep power decentralized - whether it's by regulation, taxation, incentive - whatever.
The sticky point, though, is that whatever method is used to keep that power decentralized must not either a) infringe on individual freedom, or b) simply make the government the monopoly.
From what I can tell, it appears to mostly be changes in 1) what information can be gathered, 2) on whom (don't need suspicion of terrorist activity anymore to search through someone's files), 3) how long it can be retained (5 years for innocent people, forever for anyone suspected of criminal activity), and 4) more importantly, the methods that can be used to gather it. In the past, it wasn't possible to do "dragnet" type searches looking for a specific pattern (i.e., show me everyone who searched for "how to make a bomb" on Google in the past 6 months and purchased more than 500 rounds of ammunition), but had to be a search on a specific person of interest (i.e., show me what Mohammad Mohammad searched for on Google last week).
As far as I can tell, there hasn't yet been a change in what actions can be taken based on the findings in that info, but the groundwork for action without due process has been laid for some time already.
Google, if I recall correctly, was sued by a woman when their maps told her to take a pedestrian route that didn't have sidewalks and she was hit by a car.
Ok. I just can't resist this anymore. Who, in the bloody hell, is so stupid that they follow their stupid GPS device around like a damn lemming - so the extent that they walk in the middle of the damn street and get their ass plastered by oncoming traffic? What a really top-notch example of natural selection - follow that up with the fact that she sued Google for her own stupidity, and I'm having real trouble feeling any sympathy.
Come on, people - GPS is a tool to help you get your general bearings in unknown territory; always has been, always will be. It won't ever be perfect and it doesn't have to be. Computers cannot (and should not) think for you.
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Man. What idiot marketing shill came up with that harebrained scheme? Talk about corporate desperation. So we'll trade in a perfectly good MBA for half what it's worth in credit toward a glorified tablet that M$ can't seem to give away? (yes, I know that's last year's news but no reason to believe anything will change with version 3 IMHO). No thanks. I'm not really a huge fan of the MBA either, but this is ridiculous.
Right. That's why they keep bringing it back again and again until it passes. All those phone calls really got their attention.
Oh, sure, that'll work. Those nice senators are always SO ready to listen to people's phone calls. I'm sure they just sit around all day hoping that someone will call them and tell them what to do, because they just get so much pleasure out of serving the people. I mean, they just put so MUCH importance on the will of the people. Guess that's why their approval rating is so gosh-darn high.
Neither do I, IMHO the state doesn't really have any business forcing the owner to do anything. The idea was to make a point; there's no way the state would agree to independent oversight of their inspection practices since they don't give a flying #*&$ about safety; it's about revenue.
Here's a proposal for a minor change in the legislation. If this law is all about protecting the consu--I mean citizen, and limiting abuses of the inspectors, providing an accurate record, etc, then instead of the inspectors wearing a recording device, how about requiring those being inspected to wear them instead? Same results, right? Surely the state inspectors won't have ANY problem whatsoever being recorded doing their jobs - if everything's so above board, then they have nothing to fear.
Meaningless posturing. The UN is utterly powerless against the NSA and its whims. This resolution carries about as much weight as a post on Slashdot critisizing it.
No argument with any of that, and great points re: NSA's deceit and the fact if Snowden could make off with such a database, it was likely child's play for most governments with an interest in it. However, expecting Apple to actually follow through with installing privacy controls like what you've described is probably the height of foolish optimism. I'm perfectly comfortable taking the matter into my own hands, hence the destruction or careful blocking of the camera.
I'm not an electronics engineer, but I dunno. That seems a little harsh on apple; the camera and led could have different power sources for any one of many innocuous reasons. That said, if you're paranoid (like me), a nail and jeweler's hammer will make quick work of the camera, and then power sources don't matter much. If you don't want to damage it permanently, some electrical tape works great too.
...seeding the database with strings that could be construed to create a hostile work environment...
That's more or less where I was going with that line of thought - even if not truly a "hostile environment," at least enough that finding people to take the job is pretty difficult - or perhaps enough that the postal service doesn't think it's funny that they're delivering mountains of mail to Mr and Mrs C*********g F*******s at a couple hundred different addresses.
And that's why we use a VPN/some-other-obfuscation-tool. While you're at it, unsubscribe a few (hundred) other random addresses. Impossible to prove it was you, and you have the added bonus of knowing you further hurt their intrusive marketing campaign.
So just visit their website and lie about everything. Make the information offensive, even, or obviously false (all except the address, I guess, which they have to have). 99% of the mail I get is junk mail anyway, so much so that I rarely look at it and just use automatically it for fire starter, animal bedding, etc.
Never give up privacy, even under duress. When this kind of thing happens, meet them on a level playing field and corrupt their database with junk info.
Yep, don't care. They lost me 2 years ago and short of their entire executive team kissing my bare ass on national TV, there's no way in hell I'm ever going back. Doing business with them was exactly like being raped.
No, I seriously doubt the government is going to give up tax revenue. The merchant is still going to pay 13 cents on that .99 purchase. The merchant will lose 2c. Or, as is more likely, they'll raise their prices accordingly; if they charge $1.01 for it, it'll get rounded up to $1.15.
That's nice in theory, but in practice, the "top priority" of code is to meet the deadline and get shipped. Everything after that is secondary.
This. This is exactly why 99% of code written under corporate auspices sucks major ass. Try getting a Director/VP/C-suite to understand why unmaintainable, shitty code sucks and hurts the business. Believe me, I've tried. Maybe 1 in 100 understands. The rest have the same response: "we met the ship date, it works. So what? And by the way, since you can't understand that, you're not an asset to the business. So don't bring me this crap again."
I don't know the answer to that particular debacle, myself - such that I usually just shut up about it and tell the devs working for me that, "yes, you can write shitty code. It will get you a pat on the back from management and a slap in the face by the guys you have to work with every day. Your choice."
If management wants your opinion of your coworkers, they'll ask for it.
Not necessarily; having managed a few dev teams I actually appreciated it when someone would come to me with issues like this (privately, non-confrontationally, without a lot of arrogance, etc - any of those things would probably just make me ignore you). Management isn't telepathic; they can't see every single problem like magic.
That said, if your manager a) doesn't have at least enough understanding of coding best practice to know why the stuff you're bringing him is bad, b) is an arrogant asshole himself, or c) is one of those types that believes the ladder to success is built from the heads of underlings, then yeah - STFU. And start job-hunting.
Yeah, I'm not sure I like this actually. All this really does it put data caps in the hands of the government - doesn't mean they're going away. I'd rather not have them at all, but if they're going to happen I'd rather the providers control them than the FCC.
Yes. That doesn't matter - the point still stands. If you take only countries where that isn't the case, you still can't draw a definite line showing that high gun crime is directly linked to gun ownership by the populace - and that still doesn't address the fact that gun deaths in the US are extremely low - low enough that gun death can't even be considered a leading cause of death in the US. Not remotely.
Meant to include the link for accidental deaths for the stats above: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/acc-inj.htm
That link also contains data about traffic deaths - 11.2 per 100,000. Still much higher than gun deaths. So cars are far deadlier than guns.
Your data doesn't pan out, boss. Check this out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list Sort that chart by "Rank by rate of ownership" and you'll see a problem. The US has a relatively high murder rate (compared to 1st-world countries) by firearms, and the US is #1 in gun ownership. But the problem is that Switzerland, Finland, Serbia, and Cyprus are ranked 3, 4, 5 and 6 in gun ownership - and they have very low homicide rates by firearm. The problem that data presents to you argument is that it undeniably demonstrates that gun ownership does not directly affect the murder rate. If it did, you would expect a gradual and more-or-less parallel drop in the murder rate as the gun ownership rates drop as well. But that just isn't the case.
The other interesting point this data makes is the fact that the murder rate by firearms (rate per 100,000 population) is not very high in 1st-world countries. In the US, where the rate is relatively high, less that 3 people are killed each year per 100,000. Cancer, on the other hand, causes 178.7 deaths per 100,000 people in the US ( http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html ) each year. Accidents or inintentional injuries: 38.4 per 100,000 per year.
I'm not purporting to know what the cause of incidents like Newtown and Aurora is; that's beyond my abilities. But what I can say, based on hard data, is that gun ownership is not a direct cause of gun deaths, and gun deaths in the US are not high enough to warrant this kind of fanatical attention. You want to really cut down on senseless violence? Go after cancer and the other big terminal killers. Guns just aren't that big of a problem.
Every business has a phone. Failing that, most folks in the rural US will be happy to make a call for you (on their landline) if you ask nicely and don't look and smell like a bum. Hitch-hiking is a lost art, but in a real pinch even that might work. If you're not in the rural US (meaning you're in the urban US; I don't know how this works elsewhere), you're near a business, and it's gonna have a phone.
Again I ask, how do you think people pre-1995 did this? Just sat in their cars and starved to death?
I guess your argument makes sense if you live deep in the woods somewhere, but if you're as far out as I am your cell phone doesn't work anyway. Most places in the US have plenty of civilization around, and plenty of ways of getting help in an extreme situation like that...
HA! And what do you think people did before everyone had a cell phone? I got my first cell phone in '99 (i think), 13 measly years ago. Believe it or not, you don't actually need one to live.
:)
Now get off my lawn!
Essentially what you're pointing out is that capitalism, while admirable in terms of the freedom it provides in its early stages (anyone can start a business and probably be successful just by working hard), eventually always ends in monopolies (eventually those businesses will be bought up or bullied into selling, creating one central mega-power - first one in each market, but eventually even different market verticals are all controlled by the same umbrella corporation - that's why you can buy bullets, baby diapers, and a gallon of milk at the same checkout at Walmart). There has to be a system to keep power decentralized - whether it's by regulation, taxation, incentive - whatever.
The sticky point, though, is that whatever method is used to keep that power decentralized must not either a) infringe on individual freedom, or b) simply make the government the monopoly.
Here are another couple of links: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/12/12/a-comparison-of-the-2008-and-2012-nctc-guidelines/ and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html.
From what I can tell, it appears to mostly be changes in 1) what information can be gathered, 2) on whom (don't need suspicion of terrorist activity anymore to search through someone's files), 3) how long it can be retained (5 years for innocent people, forever for anyone suspected of criminal activity), and 4) more importantly, the methods that can be used to gather it. In the past, it wasn't possible to do "dragnet" type searches looking for a specific pattern (i.e., show me everyone who searched for "how to make a bomb" on Google in the past 6 months and purchased more than 500 rounds of ammunition), but had to be a search on a specific person of interest (i.e., show me what Mohammad Mohammad searched for on Google last week).
As far as I can tell, there hasn't yet been a change in what actions can be taken based on the findings in that info, but the groundwork for action without due process has been laid for some time already.
Google, if I recall correctly, was sued by a woman when their maps told her to take a pedestrian route that didn't have sidewalks and she was hit by a car.
Ok. I just can't resist this anymore. Who, in the bloody hell, is so stupid that they follow their stupid GPS device around like a damn lemming - so the extent that they walk in the middle of the damn street and get their ass plastered by oncoming traffic? What a really top-notch example of natural selection - follow that up with the fact that she sued Google for her own stupidity, and I'm having real trouble feeling any sympathy.
Come on, people - GPS is a tool to help you get your general bearings in unknown territory; always has been, always will be. It won't ever be perfect and it doesn't have to be. Computers cannot (and should not) think for you.