Ever looked at the stats on how often that happens? In the 20 years I've been a (mostly non-professional) pilot, I've heard about it twice, and I follow the trade magazines. I'll take those odds over the odds that an engineer who's never flown anything other than his computer has gotten 100% of the code right, even in all edge cases.
But seriously, autonomous or remote-piloted vehicles can't be hijacked.
True...as long as you can't upload a trojan. "The more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works." --Scotty. Unfortunately, an autonomous aircraft has the downside of only being able to cope with the emergencies that the engineers thought to plan for. The Gimli Glider is a good example of a failure that the engineers never considered. Well, how about remotely piloted, then? Great...as long as you don't have a communications outage. However, as I mentioned above, I've been a pilot for 20 years, and I've seen radios fail. No thanks -- I have no desire to be on an airplane that has no human pilot on board and no controls that someone on board can physically operate. Humans have their failings, but I trust a person far more than I will ever trust any electronic device.
And when the emergency is coupled with a communications failure? I'm not worried about it, but that's because I *am* a pilot (but not an Airline Transport Pilot, so I may hedge a bit on my previous statement). Were I not, however, I would categorically refuse to get on an airplane that had no human pilot on board.
...but the lack of ability to implement anything in terms of building code or infrastructure programs...
Understatement of the year. I was in San Pedro La Laguna, San Juan La Laguna and Guatemala City four months ago. The electrical wiring alone was enough to send shivers down my spine...and I'm not an electrician (IOW, the wiring was even worse than I, being a layman, would do). Having said that, I really, really enjoyed Guatemala, and hope I get to go back again.
I was in Guatemala (and Guatemala City) in January, so let me provide a little perspective on this. Guatemala is a country of contrasts -- downtown Guatemala City is very modern, and very nice, for the most part. It's industrialized, and most (U.S.) Americans wouldn't feel *that* out-of-place, other than the barbed-wire everywhere (don't be out alone after dark...) and the Spanish on all the signs. However, most of us in the U.S. or Europe have no concept of the degree of poverty that lives right next to the upper and middle class. There is an entire community of people living in the *dump* in Guatemala City; generations have spent their entire lives living in the city dump. There's a lower-middle class neighborhood right next to the airport that would be a slum in the U.S.; it certainly wasn't the nicest part of Guatemala City, but it wasn't exceptional. And the city isn't small, either. It might not be L.A., New York or Chicago, but you're talking about a non-trivial number of people.In other words, while moving the city might be the logical thing to do, you've got to understand that Guatemala is not a particularly prosperous country. Furthermore, Guatemala is pretty much filled with volcanoes. Sure, building a city of two million people on a porous ash field might not be particularly smart, but there isn't much else to build on there, except for the volcanoes themselves. As you can see, cinder-cone volcanoes (which I believe these are; geologists, please correct me if I'm wrong) have pretty steep sides; you aren't going to move the city there.
Having said that, there is precedent for moving the city. It wasn't Guatemala City, but the city of Antigua in Guatemala had to be moved...but it was a lot smaller than Guatemala City is today.
I didn't say it would be easy, but I absolutely refuse to be a doormat. You may choose the path of least resistance, but I've always preferred to stand up for what's right. YMMV.
In any case, my point, which still stands, is that I would not want someone like the woman in my example testifying against me because even though I was operating well within the bounds of the law (20 mph in a 25 mph zone), she still thought I was going too fast. If you can be obeying both the spirit and the letter of the law and still be penalized, that's a Really Big Problem.
What can I say? Despite the frustration I vent here on/. about injustice in the U.S., I am still an optimist:)
Anyway, not to get into a theological debate, but for a different perspective on your views of the future of government and religion, check out "victorious eschatology" by a guy named Harold Eberle.
With all due respect, you are either very mistaken, or full of crap. You state twice in your post that it is illegal to videotape "anyone you want" to which I reply, [citation needed]. If that were truly the case, tourists, paparrazzi and every idiot on YouTube with a Hero helmet cam would be in jail. However, the courts have repeatedly upheld that in public places, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore it is perfectly legal (in the U.S. anyway - if you live elsewhere, YMMV) to take pictures and video in public places...except, in three states now, of police officers, which is complete crap.
According to the GP post, he was parked illegally, and therefore he apparently _was_ a criminal.
Read his post again:
Just a couple nights ago, I was (to the best of my knowledge) parked legally. I came out of where I was visiting, and saw a patrol car stopped in the road with his spot light aimed at a house across the street...it's illegal to park along any road in the county, even though it's not posted anywhere, and it's done all the time.
The spot is aimed at a house across the street. People park along this particular street all the time. Yes, he violated a law, but it's an (apparently) obscure law that (apparently) is rarely enforced. Then the cop got huffy, when this guy did something completely reasonable (got in his car after leaving his friend's house and started to drive away). If he's a criminal, then every one of us should be in jail.
If I respectfully, but firmly, require that the cop comply with the law, and he then pepper sprays me, beats me and/or arrests me, I will then find the very best lawyer money can buy and spend the rest of my life sitting on a beach in Kauai drinking fruit-flavored drinks with paper umbrellas out of a tiny straw (well, probably not, but you get the idea).
...anyone can testify to a visual estimate of speed in court...
I'm not saying that isn't the way it *is*, but I'll say it isn't the way it *should be*. Just a couple of years ago, I came around a corner near where I work and a very nice lady on the side of the road, who apparently thought I was travelling at excessive speed, motioned for me to slow down. I was doing 5 mph *UNDER* the posted speed limit at the time...until she decided to play God's Little Helper and pissed me off.
If she can go to court and testify that I was driving too fast, then Houston (well, Cleveland, anyway), we have a problem.
...or perhaps with Divine intervention, if you swing that way
I do, but that's a topic for another time. In any case, I'm not sure I agree that *only* armed revolution can change governments. Ultimately, the government exists as an extension of the will of the people. Right now, in the U.S. the only people with the will to affect the government are special interests. As has been stated in the comments to this article already, as long as the populace has enough American Idol, Prozac and McDonald's, they don't care about the government. If enough people are affected by the corruption, however, that will change. For right now I believe armed revolution would do more harm than good. That can change, however, so I'm hoping that America (the people) wake up before that becomes the only option left.
When 90% the people you deal with professionally on a day to day basis are truly reprehensible...it is difficult to treat anyone else...with any amount of respect.
Translation: Most people I work with are scum. I am working with you. Therefore, you are scum.
This does not make such things excusable, but it is the reality of the situation.
Translation: It's inexcusable, but I'm going to excuse it anyway.
Also keep in mind that not everyone is going to submit quietly to arrest, and when the police do use force, there is absolutely no way it will look good on camera.
Translation: If you piss me off, I want to be able to beat the living **** out of you without having to worry about whether or not I'll show up on the news tonight.
Having said that, I do think that it would be a good idea for police to be recorded during every moment that they interact with the public. Doing this will do a great deal to protect the rights of those the police interact with, and protect the police from false accusations.
Translation: I am now going to contradict everything I just said.
There are some very good cops. But by and large, cops are just people -- just like us. They have the same flaws that all of us do. Wearing a uniform and a badge does not magically transform an ordinary person into someone of exemplary character. My wife used to be a police dispatcher. One of the sargents was "a really good guy" by all reports...until he was caught doing drugs and abusing his girlfriend. On another case, when my wife and I were just dating, I met her and some of the cops she worked with at a local club one night. When I showed up and started talking to her, one of the cops was basically ready to get into a bar-fight with me, until he found out that we were already dating. Awesome. Alcohol and sexual tension doing the exact same thing to an immature idiot with a gun and a badge that it does to the people he locks up every freaking night for the exact same reasons. The only difference: "If you're not one of us, you're one of the little people." This is why these are bad, bad laws.
Yeah, we've got problems. Name a place that doesn't. Maybe I'm naive, but I like to think that we are reaching a tipping point and Real Soon Now, enough people are going to figure out that it's time for us to clean house to start making a difference. FWIW, there are still free and brave people here. Read TFA -- one of the people in trouble with the law intentionally *sought out* the conflict just to challenge the law.
I had a campus cop pull me over at the University of Alaska in 1989, citing "failure to stop at a stop sign as the reason." It was a three way intersection, and the cop was behind a hedge (which blocked the view of that road and the road I was on, if you stopped behind the white painted line, as the law in Alaska requires). There was a car in the intersection when I arrived. I waited until the car had cleared the intersection, then proceeded through the intersection. At that point, the campus cop flipped on his lights, pulled me over and told me I had just run a stop sign. I told him, no, I hadn't; I had come to a full and complete stop while waiting for the other car to clear the intersection, and that the only reason it looked to him like I had run the stop sign is because his view had been blocked by a hedge. He argued for a minute, until my brother, who was in the car with me, verified everything I had just told him. He eventually let me go "with a warning" (for what? I had obeyed both the spirit and the letter of the law!). I now have a video camera on my motorcycle; I wish I had had the camera then. It would have been very entertaining to go to court and shown what a moron the cop was.
Portions of a video being taken out of context and posted online, for example an officer hitting a person, yet conveniently skipping the part where said citizen assaulted another person and multiple officers. Jams up the press and judicial system, etc.
Jams up the press and judicial system? That really sucks. You're right. Let's just let the cops do whatever they need to keep the peace. After all, they're doing it to protect us, so what could possibly go wrong?
That said, it seems like better justification for all officers having their own tapes of everything they do, which can be used to refute said segments.
Just solved your own problem, didn't you? Unfortunately, when only the cops have access to the footage, the deck is stacked one way only. They can show just the footage they want seen. "I'm sorry, your honor, but the footage before this scene was unrecoverable. Seems there was a bad sector on the disk it was downloaded onto, and the data was corrupted. This is all we were able to salvage from the arrest." And then, you're screwed. However, if *both* the cops and the alleged criminal have footage, the truth will come out.
As well, another common argument revolved around informed consent private conversation recording laws, and whether a police officer is allowed to have a reasonable expectation of privacy (and thus must give consent to being recorded) while performing his duties. Cops say 'yes', citizens say 'no'.
Wait, I thought that was already decided. Cops can videotape us in public, because in public there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Now you are telling me that if I'm wearing the right gang colors^W^Wuniform, I *do* have an expectation of privacy in public places, but if I'm not, I don't? Which is it?
Why should the rules that affect a police officer be any different than the rules that affect me (and just to be clear, IANAPO)? If it is legal for the state (or my employer) to record me during the course of my day, whether I am sitting at my desk at work, driving home, or shopping in the local mall, why should it be any different if I whip out a camera when I see a cop nearby? Either there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, or there is. All I ask is that the laws be consistent.
Slashdot Mirror
...and drunk.
Ever looked at the stats on how often that happens? In the 20 years I've been a (mostly non-professional) pilot, I've heard about it twice, and I follow the trade magazines. I'll take those odds over the odds that an engineer who's never flown anything other than his computer has gotten 100% of the code right, even in all edge cases.
But seriously, autonomous or remote-piloted vehicles can't be hijacked.
True...as long as you can't upload a trojan. "The more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works." --Scotty. Unfortunately, an autonomous aircraft has the downside of only being able to cope with the emergencies that the engineers thought to plan for. The Gimli Glider is a good example of a failure that the engineers never considered. Well, how about remotely piloted, then? Great...as long as you don't have a communications outage. However, as I mentioned above, I've been a pilot for 20 years, and I've seen radios fail. No thanks -- I have no desire to be on an airplane that has no human pilot on board and no controls that someone on board can physically operate. Humans have their failings, but I trust a person far more than I will ever trust any electronic device.
As for government spying...I'm an exhibitionist.
Yeah, I'm not going to touch that one...
Which is why I don't fly on Airbus airplanes. I'll stick to Boeing, thank you.
And when the emergency is coupled with a communications failure? I'm not worried about it, but that's because I *am* a pilot (but not an Airline Transport Pilot, so I may hedge a bit on my previous statement). Were I not, however, I would categorically refuse to get on an airplane that had no human pilot on board.
Well, yes...but that doesn't necessarily mean the converse is true.
Sweet! :)
Hey, scream "Conspiracy Theory!!!" long enough, and sooner or later, you are *bound* to be right!
...but the lack of ability to implement anything in terms of building code or infrastructure programs...
Understatement of the year. I was in San Pedro La Laguna, San Juan La Laguna and Guatemala City four months ago. The electrical wiring alone was enough to send shivers down my spine...and I'm not an electrician (IOW, the wiring was even worse than I, being a layman, would do). Having said that, I really, really enjoyed Guatemala, and hope I get to go back again.
I was in Guatemala (and Guatemala City) in January, so let me provide a little perspective on this. Guatemala is a country of contrasts -- downtown Guatemala City is very modern, and very nice, for the most part. It's industrialized, and most (U.S.) Americans wouldn't feel *that* out-of-place, other than the barbed-wire everywhere (don't be out alone after dark...) and the Spanish on all the signs. However, most of us in the U.S. or Europe have no concept of the degree of poverty that lives right next to the upper and middle class. There is an entire community of people living in the *dump* in Guatemala City; generations have spent their entire lives living in the city dump. There's a lower-middle class neighborhood right next to the airport that would be a slum in the U.S.; it certainly wasn't the nicest part of Guatemala City, but it wasn't exceptional. And the city isn't small, either. It might not be L.A., New York or Chicago, but you're talking about a non-trivial number of people.In other words, while moving the city might be the logical thing to do, you've got to understand that Guatemala is not a particularly prosperous country. Furthermore, Guatemala is pretty much filled with volcanoes. Sure, building a city of two million people on a porous ash field might not be particularly smart, but there isn't much else to build on there, except for the volcanoes themselves. As you can see, cinder-cone volcanoes (which I believe these are; geologists, please correct me if I'm wrong) have pretty steep sides; you aren't going to move the city there.
Having said that, there is precedent for moving the city. It wasn't Guatemala City, but the city of Antigua in Guatemala had to be moved...but it was a lot smaller than Guatemala City is today.
...whereas humans are able to make decisions from reasonable thought.
You're new here, aren't you?
I didn't say it would be easy, but I absolutely refuse to be a doormat. You may choose the path of least resistance, but I've always preferred to stand up for what's right. YMMV.
Dang it!!! I'm so disillusioned, now :)
In any case, my point, which still stands, is that I would not want someone like the woman in my example testifying against me because even though I was operating well within the bounds of the law (20 mph in a 25 mph zone), she still thought I was going too fast. If you can be obeying both the spirit and the letter of the law and still be penalized, that's a Really Big Problem.
What can I say? Despite the frustration I vent here on /. about injustice in the U.S., I am still an optimist :)
Anyway, not to get into a theological debate, but for a different perspective on your views of the future of government and religion, check out "victorious eschatology" by a guy named Harold Eberle.
With all due respect, you are either very mistaken, or full of crap. You state twice in your post that it is illegal to videotape "anyone you want" to which I reply, [citation needed]. If that were truly the case, tourists, paparrazzi and every idiot on YouTube with a Hero helmet cam would be in jail. However, the courts have repeatedly upheld that in public places, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore it is perfectly legal (in the U.S. anyway - if you live elsewhere, YMMV) to take pictures and video in public places...except, in three states now, of police officers, which is complete crap.
According to the GP post, he was parked illegally, and therefore he apparently _was_ a criminal.
Read his post again:
Just a couple nights ago, I was (to the best of my knowledge) parked legally . I came out of where I was visiting, and saw a patrol car stopped in the road with his spot light aimed at a house across the street...it's illegal to park along any road in the county, even though it's not posted anywhere, and it's done all the time.
The spot is aimed at a house across the street. People park along this particular street all the time. Yes, he violated a law, but it's an (apparently) obscure law that (apparently) is rarely enforced. Then the cop got huffy, when this guy did something completely reasonable (got in his car after leaving his friend's house and started to drive away). If he's a criminal, then every one of us should be in jail.
If I respectfully, but firmly, require that the cop comply with the law, and he then pepper sprays me, beats me and/or arrests me, I will then find the very best lawyer money can buy and spend the rest of my life sitting on a beach in Kauai drinking fruit-flavored drinks with paper umbrellas out of a tiny straw (well, probably not, but you get the idea).
You can be a doormat all you want, I but I won't.
Great idea. Just play along and let the police harass and delay you all they want, whether you've violated any law or not. Sorry, I'm not a sheeple.
...anyone can testify to a visual estimate of speed in court...
I'm not saying that isn't the way it *is*, but I'll say it isn't the way it *should be*. Just a couple of years ago, I came around a corner near where I work and a very nice lady on the side of the road, who apparently thought I was travelling at excessive speed, motioned for me to slow down. I was doing 5 mph *UNDER* the posted speed limit at the time...until she decided to play God's Little Helper and pissed me off.
If she can go to court and testify that I was driving too fast, then Houston (well, Cleveland, anyway), we have a problem.
...or perhaps with Divine intervention, if you swing that way
I do, but that's a topic for another time. In any case, I'm not sure I agree that *only* armed revolution can change governments. Ultimately, the government exists as an extension of the will of the people. Right now, in the U.S. the only people with the will to affect the government are special interests. As has been stated in the comments to this article already, as long as the populace has enough American Idol, Prozac and McDonald's, they don't care about the government. If enough people are affected by the corruption, however, that will change. For right now I believe armed revolution would do more harm than good. That can change, however, so I'm hoping that America (the people) wake up before that becomes the only option left.
When 90% the people you deal with professionally on a day to day basis are truly reprehensible...it is difficult to treat anyone else...with any amount of respect.
Translation: Most people I work with are scum. I am working with you. Therefore, you are scum.
This does not make such things excusable, but it is the reality of the situation.
Translation: It's inexcusable, but I'm going to excuse it anyway.
Also keep in mind that not everyone is going to submit quietly to arrest, and when the police do use force, there is absolutely no way it will look good on camera.
Translation: If you piss me off, I want to be able to beat the living **** out of you without having to worry about whether or not I'll show up on the news tonight.
Having said that, I do think that it would be a good idea for police to be recorded during every moment that they interact with the public. Doing this will do a great deal to protect the rights of those the police interact with, and protect the police from false accusations.
Translation: I am now going to contradict everything I just said.
There are some very good cops. But by and large, cops are just people -- just like us. They have the same flaws that all of us do. Wearing a uniform and a badge does not magically transform an ordinary person into someone of exemplary character. My wife used to be a police dispatcher. One of the sargents was "a really good guy" by all reports...until he was caught doing drugs and abusing his girlfriend. On another case, when my wife and I were just dating, I met her and some of the cops she worked with at a local club one night. When I showed up and started talking to her, one of the cops was basically ready to get into a bar-fight with me, until he found out that we were already dating. Awesome. Alcohol and sexual tension doing the exact same thing to an immature idiot with a gun and a badge that it does to the people he locks up every freaking night for the exact same reasons. The only difference: "If you're not one of us, you're one of the little people." This is why these are bad, bad laws.
I jokingly said
"No, ma'am. We at the FBI have no sense of humor that we're aware of." --K
Yeah, we've got problems. Name a place that doesn't. Maybe I'm naive, but I like to think that we are reaching a tipping point and Real Soon Now, enough people are going to figure out that it's time for us to clean house to start making a difference. FWIW, there are still free and brave people here. Read TFA -- one of the people in trouble with the law intentionally *sought out* the conflict just to challenge the law.
I had a campus cop pull me over at the University of Alaska in 1989, citing "failure to stop at a stop sign as the reason." It was a three way intersection, and the cop was behind a hedge (which blocked the view of that road and the road I was on, if you stopped behind the white painted line, as the law in Alaska requires). There was a car in the intersection when I arrived. I waited until the car had cleared the intersection, then proceeded through the intersection. At that point, the campus cop flipped on his lights, pulled me over and told me I had just run a stop sign. I told him, no, I hadn't; I had come to a full and complete stop while waiting for the other car to clear the intersection, and that the only reason it looked to him like I had run the stop sign is because his view had been blocked by a hedge. He argued for a minute, until my brother, who was in the car with me, verified everything I had just told him. He eventually let me go "with a warning" (for what? I had obeyed both the spirit and the letter of the law!). I now have a video camera on my motorcycle; I wish I had had the camera then. It would have been very entertaining to go to court and shown what a moron the cop was.
Have the web server write it to bit torrent as soon as it arrives...
Portions of a video being taken out of context and posted online, for example an officer hitting a person, yet conveniently skipping the part where said citizen assaulted another person and multiple officers. Jams up the press and judicial system, etc.
Jams up the press and judicial system? That really sucks. You're right. Let's just let the cops do whatever they need to keep the peace. After all, they're doing it to protect us, so what could possibly go wrong?
That said, it seems like better justification for all officers having their own tapes of everything they do, which can be used to refute said segments.
Just solved your own problem, didn't you? Unfortunately, when only the cops have access to the footage, the deck is stacked one way only. They can show just the footage they want seen. "I'm sorry, your honor, but the footage before this scene was unrecoverable. Seems there was a bad sector on the disk it was downloaded onto, and the data was corrupted. This is all we were able to salvage from the arrest." And then, you're screwed. However, if *both* the cops and the alleged criminal have footage, the truth will come out.
As well, another common argument revolved around informed consent private conversation recording laws, and whether a police officer is allowed to have a reasonable expectation of privacy (and thus must give consent to being recorded) while performing his duties. Cops say 'yes', citizens say 'no'.
Wait, I thought that was already decided. Cops can videotape us in public, because in public there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Now you are telling me that if I'm wearing the right gang colors^W^Wuniform, I *do* have an expectation of privacy in public places, but if I'm not, I don't? Which is it?
Why should the rules that affect a police officer be any different than the rules that affect me (and just to be clear, IANAPO)? If it is legal for the state (or my employer) to record me during the course of my day, whether I am sitting at my desk at work, driving home, or shopping in the local mall, why should it be any different if I whip out a camera when I see a cop nearby? Either there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, or there is. All I ask is that the laws be consistent.