"BEFORE YOU POST HERE: Please realize that this user was NOT blocked for vandalism, joking, or 'poking fun at Wikipedia'. This user was banned for violation of Wikipedia's Username policies which state that "Names of well-known living or recently deceased people" are inappropriate and should be indefinitely blocked until confirming evidence (in this case, from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central) shows that this is, in fact, Stephen Colbert. Although Mr. Colbert 'made the edits on national television', he was also joking and it is not at all certain if he was in fact the person who made the edits attributed to this account. Until the blocking administrator (Tawker) receives word from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central that this is Mr. Colbert, this account will remain blocked."
One thing to consider is: are these expelled printer particles carcinogenic. Cigarette smoke and asbestos are, and much of their affect on the human body are related to that. Is printer in carcinogenic?
Another thing to consider is quantity. People who get breathing problems from cigarette smoke, asbestos, coal, silica, and other substances like them tend to have very high exposure rates. They smoke 2 packs a day for 30 years. They manipulate asbestos/silica containing products in the workplace 8 hours a day for 40 years. They work in or near a coal mine with little or no breathing protection. Yes, these particles can be microscopic and invisible, but most of the people who are seriously hurt by these products could see "dust" in the air while they were working.
Is the quantity that these printers are spewing excessively high? Or is it no different than "background levels" of particles people experience while walking down the streets of a major city?
He's 22! If someone handed me a stack of backup tapes to take home when I was 16 I might have done it, but not at 22! Anything you take home from work is a risk, you should know that by that point. But if you were an intern and you were told to do something, would you just say no? Perhaps they would laud you for your insight an initiative, or perhaps they'd just fire you and get a more compliant intern. Not everyone wants to take that risk, especially someone who is in their first or one of their first jobs.
Part of me always thinks some of these stories are really fishy... I currently work for a small business where this "take the backup tapes home with you for the night" is exactly their "disaster plan." I'm not saying it's a good plan. But it may be more common than you think.
People take laptops home for one night and it gets stolen, and it just so happens to have a million people's information on it. The article did say he'd been doing the same thing for 3 months before the theft occurred. It's not like that was the one and only night he took the tapes home in that manner.
UW didn't "cave," at least not yet. They forwarded RIAA settlement letters to students, but specifically said that they were not forwarding the students' information on to the RIAA.
Verizon and other phone companies should switch customers who overspend like this to an unlimited price plan, retrospectively for that month - so that the customer never pays that high bill. They would lose money on this deal, but in return they would gain the gratitude of their customers, who are more likely to stay with them, bringing in a steady flow of income from their unlimited-messaging plans every month.
Sometimes they do. Usually you just have to ask, and as a last resort, threaten to switch cell phone companies due to your "dissatisfaction with their customer service."
I'm also confused by the overwhelmingly negative reaction. Most of the complaints about this.bank suggestion fall under the category of "It doesn't solve problem X, therefore it's a worthless security measure."
Not every solution can solve every problem, but adding the.bank TLD does solve at least some problems. So why not implement it, and come up with other solutions for the problems that it doesn't solve?
I would say this is more than just a "PITA" for the soldiers. No one would argue that soldiers should have unhindered freedom of speech, considering the sensitivity of their job. It's understandable that soldiers (or their commanders) have to censor what they say about troop locations, operations, etc. But this level of control over blogs and emails could potentially be very stifling to the point of effectively eliminating soldier blogs altogether. What about the soldier who happens to disagree with an (unclassified) Army policy (e.g. treatment of gays in the military). Of course their opinion is no secret if they're blogging about it, but the blog does in some situations offer a bit of anonymity. But if a soldier has to clear such blog entries through a superior officer every time they're posted, in essence waiving their opinion in their superior's face, the soldier may decide not to post it at all for fear of internal political/social repercussions.
Couple that with reviewing all of a soldier's private emails, you may as well just ban soldiers from use of the internet altogether.
And he was perfectly willing to turn the tape over to the Judge so that the Judge could review it and confirm that no crimes were depicted on the tape, which would have allowed the contents of the tape to be reviewed by an impartial third party without allowing the government to use the tape to go on any fishing expeditions. It was the prosecution that refused such a compromise.
The reason I mentioned it is because so many posters above have said "how dare he withhold a tape that shows a felony being committed," and that's just not an accurate assessment of the situation. It would be more accurate to say that he was withholding a tape which the prosecution believed to show a felony being committed, but which Wolf denied to be the case. It's not so cut and dry as saying "he should clearly cooperate because his actions are hindering prosecution of evil nasty felons."
There were serious suspicions that the government was trying to get this tape as a way of documenting the protesters and possibly flagging them as subversives/terrorists/pariahs-du-jour.
Oh, and the fact that the government was willing to take over the case from California State officials, claiming that the case belonged in Federal jurisdiction because the SF police department receive a little Homeland Security money, shows just how far the government was willing to go to do an end-run around the California shield law.
1. TFA clearly states that the footage this guy was withholding did not contain the alleged crimes authorities are investigating, and he had told them that from the beginning. 2. If you take your argument to its most logical conclusion, then no one should get journalistic protection, journalists would constantly be harassed into turning over their sources due to some social need/homeland security issue, and the media would finally completely transform into just a mouthpiece for government goodspeak/doublespeak.
If you had actually read TFA (oh noes, people on/. don't RTFA???), you would have seen that the footage this guy was withholding did not contain the alleged crimes authorities are investigating, and he had told them from the beginning that that was the case. If you had read any of the other articles about this case, you would also know that the blogger was not concerned about protecting "some people damaging a cop car and setting it on fire," but rather protecting the identities of the rest of the law abiding protesters who had attended the protest. There were serious suspicions that the government was trying to get this tape as a way of documenting the protesters and possibly flagging them as subversives/terrorists/pariahs-du-jour. He was also concerned with the protection of a journalist from having to reveal sources and showing in Court that those protections extend to freelance bloggers as well. Without those protections, the press turns into nothing more than a mouthpiece for the government's "goodspeak." None of which has anything directly to do with protecting a couple vandals.
I could have said "1% higher than the rest of the state except for Allegheny County" but then I wouldn't have left you with the opportunity to nitpick.
Or move to Philadelphia, where there's a 7% sales tax (1% higher than for the rest of the state), a 3.07% state income tax, and a 4.26% city wage tax. Sounds so much better than a flat 9% on all sales.
I would actually bet that more mutation occurs with the bdelloids than with most sexually reproducing species (at least those that are more complex) since the more complex organisms are likely to have better checks against mutation (correction of mistakes). I would also bet that bdelloids reproduce like bunnies. High rate of mutation + lots of offspring = lots of possible chances for a beneficial mutation. Even if 90% of the offspring die out due to failing to develop a mutation that helps in the current environment, or from mutating in an unfavorable manner, if you have lots of offspring, 10% may still be enough to allow the species to flourish.
I would say that's more akin to moneys trying to kill a victim by flinging poo at them. The stick is a weapon crafted from thier environment, not secreted from them.
I don't think how complex the action appears to us really matters (crafted vs. secreted or whatever). There is some serious craft involved in the construction of a spiderweb, much more than "flinging poo." What matters in determining intelligence is the thought behind the action. Was it instinct? Mimicry? Or innovation?
There is a big difference between saying "the changes that were made were unnecessary and meaningless" and "no changes should be made to the way airline security is handled." You're conflating the two for your own purposes.
I guess my question is, how do you tell people that it would have been acceptable to DO NOTHING with regard to air security after 9/11, and actually have them believe you?
No one is saying that. You're just putting words into everyone's mouths to make your arguments sound oh-so-much more insightful than they really are.
This isn't a question of making changes vs. not making changes. This is about making changes that temporarily made people feel better vs. making REAL changes that actually do some good. Do I feel safer now that I have to carry my ID and ticket in one hand, my jacket in another hand, my bag in another hand, my shoes in another hand, my laptop in another hand, my liquids in 3 oz or less containers in a clear ziplock baggie in other hand (whoops, I seem to have run out of hands 4 hands ago)? No. Because that type of security is an obvious farce. Would I feel safer hearing that the government had instituted measures that to me may be invisible (bulletproof cockpits and the like) but nonetheless would have an enormous benefit to aircraft security? Yes. I don't need to see it to know it's there, and I think the US population for the most part realizes the same thing. They know the knee-jerk reaction to ban the terrorist method du jour is not going to work forever. Why else do you think the most common joke I've heard recently is "I'm glad that the shoe bomber wasn't an underwear bomber!"? Because people know that these regulations are crazy, if followed to their logical albeit extreme conclusion.
Well, many states have taken to banning cell phone use in cars by drivers, or at the very least cell phone use that isn't "hands-free." It's possible they could do the same thing with computers/internet use. Though considering how long it took for those laws to catch up to the reality of cell phone use on the road (assuming you believe they even have caught up yet), I have to wonder how many accidents will happen before such laws manage to get on the books.
"They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss."
I think that's true to a point. In many cases, the environment at a company is colored by the behavior and the policies of the boss (or bosses). So it may be too simplistic to say that the boss is entirely to blame, but they can be responsible for things about a company that don't at first glance appear to be directly their fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, you know, not:
b ert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stephencol
"BEFORE YOU POST HERE: Please realize that this user was NOT blocked for vandalism, joking, or 'poking fun at Wikipedia'. This user was banned for violation of Wikipedia's Username policies which state that "Names of well-known living or recently deceased people" are inappropriate and should be indefinitely blocked until confirming evidence (in this case, from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central) shows that this is, in fact, Stephen Colbert. Although Mr. Colbert 'made the edits on national television', he was also joking and it is not at all certain if he was in fact the person who made the edits attributed to this account. Until the blocking administrator (Tawker) receives word from Stephen Colbert or Comedy Central that this is Mr. Colbert, this account will remain blocked."
One thing to consider is: are these expelled printer particles carcinogenic. Cigarette smoke and asbestos are, and much of their affect on the human body are related to that. Is printer in carcinogenic?
Another thing to consider is quantity. People who get breathing problems from cigarette smoke, asbestos, coal, silica, and other substances like them tend to have very high exposure rates. They smoke 2 packs a day for 30 years. They manipulate asbestos/silica containing products in the workplace 8 hours a day for 40 years. They work in or near a coal mine with little or no breathing protection. Yes, these particles can be microscopic and invisible, but most of the people who are seriously hurt by these products could see "dust" in the air while they were working.
Is the quantity that these printers are spewing excessively high? Or is it no different than "background levels" of particles people experience while walking down the streets of a major city?
UW didn't "cave," at least not yet. They forwarded RIAA settlement letters to students, but specifically said that they were not forwarding the students' information on to the RIAA.
but i don't.
Verizon and other phone companies should switch customers who overspend like this to an unlimited price plan, retrospectively for that month - so that the customer never pays that high bill. They would lose money on this deal, but in return they would gain the gratitude of their customers, who are more likely to stay with them, bringing in a steady flow of income from their unlimited-messaging plans every month.
Sometimes they do. Usually you just have to ask, and as a last resort, threaten to switch cell phone companies due to your "dissatisfaction with their customer service."
I'm also confused by the overwhelmingly negative reaction. Most of the complaints about this .bank suggestion fall under the category of "It doesn't solve problem X, therefore it's a worthless security measure."
.bank TLD does solve at least some problems. So why not implement it, and come up with other solutions for the problems that it doesn't solve?
Not every solution can solve every problem, but adding the
I would say this is more than just a "PITA" for the soldiers. No one would argue that soldiers should have unhindered freedom of speech, considering the sensitivity of their job. It's understandable that soldiers (or their commanders) have to censor what they say about troop locations, operations, etc. But this level of control over blogs and emails could potentially be very stifling to the point of effectively eliminating soldier blogs altogether. What about the soldier who happens to disagree with an (unclassified) Army policy (e.g. treatment of gays in the military). Of course their opinion is no secret if they're blogging about it, but the blog does in some situations offer a bit of anonymity. But if a soldier has to clear such blog entries through a superior officer every time they're posted, in essence waiving their opinion in their superior's face, the soldier may decide not to post it at all for fear of internal political/social repercussions.
Couple that with reviewing all of a soldier's private emails, you may as well just ban soldiers from use of the internet altogether.
"Soldier's Can't Blog Without Approval" was not the title I gave it. Perhaps CmdrTaco has just had a long day.
And he was perfectly willing to turn the tape over to the Judge so that the Judge could review it and confirm that no crimes were depicted on the tape, which would have allowed the contents of the tape to be reviewed by an impartial third party without allowing the government to use the tape to go on any fishing expeditions. It was the prosecution that refused such a compromise.
The reason I mentioned it is because so many posters above have said "how dare he withhold a tape that shows a felony being committed," and that's just not an accurate assessment of the situation. It would be more accurate to say that he was withholding a tape which the prosecution believed to show a felony being committed, but which Wolf denied to be the case. It's not so cut and dry as saying "he should clearly cooperate because his actions are hindering prosecution of evil nasty felons."
Oh, and the fact that the government was willing to take over the case from California State officials, claiming that the case belonged in Federal jurisdiction because the SF police department receive a little Homeland Security money, shows just how far the government was willing to go to do an end-run around the California shield law.
1. TFA clearly states that the footage this guy was withholding did not contain the alleged crimes authorities are investigating, and he had told them that from the beginning.
2. If you take your argument to its most logical conclusion, then no one should get journalistic protection, journalists would constantly be harassed into turning over their sources due to some social need/homeland security issue, and the media would finally completely transform into just a mouthpiece for government goodspeak/doublespeak.
If you had actually read TFA (oh noes, people on /. don't RTFA???), you would have seen that the footage this guy was withholding did not contain the alleged crimes authorities are investigating, and he had told them from the beginning that that was the case. If you had read any of the other articles about this case, you would also know that the blogger was not concerned about protecting "some people damaging a cop car and setting it on fire," but rather protecting the identities of the rest of the law abiding protesters who had attended the protest. There were serious suspicions that the government was trying to get this tape as a way of documenting the protesters and possibly flagging them as subversives/terrorists/pariahs-du-jour. He was also concerned with the protection of a journalist from having to reveal sources and showing in Court that those protections extend to freelance bloggers as well. Without those protections, the press turns into nothing more than a mouthpiece for the government's "goodspeak." None of which has anything directly to do with protecting a couple vandals.
Stop making fun of House! That's one of my favorite...
Oh. You were talking about Knight Rider. Never mind!
I could have said "1% higher than the rest of the state except for Allegheny County" but then I wouldn't have left you with the opportunity to nitpick.
Or move to Philadelphia, where there's a 7% sales tax (1% higher than for the rest of the state), a 3.07% state income tax, and a 4.26% city wage tax. Sounds so much better than a flat 9% on all sales.
I would actually bet that more mutation occurs with the bdelloids than with most sexually reproducing species (at least those that are more complex) since the more complex organisms are likely to have better checks against mutation (correction of mistakes). I would also bet that bdelloids reproduce like bunnies. High rate of mutation + lots of offspring = lots of possible chances for a beneficial mutation. Even if 90% of the offspring die out due to failing to develop a mutation that helps in the current environment, or from mutating in an unfavorable manner, if you have lots of offspring, 10% may still be enough to allow the species to flourish.
I don't think how complex the action appears to us really matters (crafted vs. secreted or whatever). There is some serious craft involved in the construction of a spiderweb, much more than "flinging poo." What matters in determining intelligence is the thought behind the action. Was it instinct? Mimicry? Or innovation?
It's not the people with the bird flu they're talking about. It's the healthy workers who decide to work from home to avoid catching the bird flu.
There is a big difference between saying "the changes that were made were unnecessary and meaningless" and "no changes should be made to the way airline security is handled." You're conflating the two for your own purposes.
I guess my question is, how do you tell people that it would have been acceptable to DO NOTHING with regard to air security after 9/11, and actually have them believe you?
No one is saying that. You're just putting words into everyone's mouths to make your arguments sound oh-so-much more insightful than they really are.
This isn't a question of making changes vs. not making changes. This is about making changes that temporarily made people feel better vs. making REAL changes that actually do some good. Do I feel safer now that I have to carry my ID and ticket in one hand, my jacket in another hand, my bag in another hand, my shoes in another hand, my laptop in another hand, my liquids in 3 oz or less containers in a clear ziplock baggie in other hand (whoops, I seem to have run out of hands 4 hands ago)? No. Because that type of security is an obvious farce. Would I feel safer hearing that the government had instituted measures that to me may be invisible (bulletproof cockpits and the like) but nonetheless would have an enormous benefit to aircraft security? Yes. I don't need to see it to know it's there, and I think the US population for the most part realizes the same thing. They know the knee-jerk reaction to ban the terrorist method du jour is not going to work forever. Why else do you think the most common joke I've heard recently is "I'm glad that the shoe bomber wasn't an underwear bomber!"? Because people know that these regulations are crazy, if followed to their logical albeit extreme conclusion.
Well, many states have taken to banning cell phone use in cars by drivers, or at the very least cell phone use that isn't "hands-free." It's possible they could do the same thing with computers/internet use. Though considering how long it took for those laws to catch up to the reality of cell phone use on the road (assuming you believe they even have caught up yet), I have to wonder how many accidents will happen before such laws manage to get on the books.
"They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss."
I think that's true to a point. In many cases, the environment at a company is colored by the behavior and the policies of the boss (or bosses). So it may be too simplistic to say that the boss is entirely to blame, but they can be responsible for things about a company that don't at first glance appear to be directly their fault.