For extra-disturbing - have your lappy set up to quietly snap a shot of the customs agent as they open the clamshell, and then automatically 'shop it into all the images as they're launched.
If the personal information is being written on a billboard in twenty-foot-high letters, does Stoddart go around forbidding people from looking at it? Is it still illegal to collect information if it's being broadcast at you 24/7?
An algorithm far worse than random is being used to select the worst of the worst to run companies.
Self-selection.
Obviously, the best solution is to promote people who don't WANT to be promoted. And hope that doesn't make them quit. I know at least one ex-boss of mine had to be almost forcibly crowbarred into management, and did a brilliant job. Of course, I turned down a lot of promotion opportunities myself because being responsible for other people's screwups would have put me in a rubber room in short order, so obviously there's some leeway for fine-tuning.:/
I've seen Ops Centers installed by professionals which were worse than useless. Sure, they were big and plush and shiny, and had a large glass partition behind them so that the executives could be walked past it and be impressed (which was probably a big clue), but they were manned by the collected deadwood of the enterprise and despite all their super-modern network-wide monitoring gear, they were usually the last ones to know about any outages.
In daily use, they usually ran a bunch of sports channels on the big screens and just sat there drooling for their entire shift. If it hadn't been for the fact that in one case, management had forcibly relocated the Network team to the little minibunker next door and demanded all calls to Networks go through the fancy Center, the rest of I.T. would most likely have just quietly cut them out of the phone network altogether and no-one would have been the wiser.
For what was paid for these places, they could have hired a warehouse, SFX team, and a bunch of actors for the one day a year the executive walked past the glass window and peered into the zoo, and come out way ahead.
I mean, not necessarily saying that all of them are better than the alternatives in all circumstances, but if Google's product X happens to truly be the best result for a given search, is it a problem if the results reflect that?
In cases where a commercial litigant or defender had been proven to attempt to use false, misleading, or inherently unverifiable data in their case, it'd be interesting if there was a requirement for the government to then go back and recheck the data validity in every other case that commercial entity had been involved in for the previous decade or so, overturning previous judgments if necessary.
It might make a business or industry think twice before deliberately lying in court, if being caught could result in them having to pay out for not only that one case, but for every other prior case they'd done the same thing for.
Considering that the company will only have to point to their N zillion other players and say "None of them appear to be adversely affected; if Mr Smallwood believes he should not be playing the game he could have told us at any time to block his client - or he could have unloaded it and sold/discarded/shredded his copy of the game - or he, y'know, could have advised us of his problem and asked for solutions", I doubt there will be much controversy.
NCSoft's marketing division is probably dancing on the tables at the moment, given the amount of free press it's likely to generate specifically in gaming and gaming-friendly circles which boils down to "Boy howdy is this game great to play!"
So working for a company that treats you like shit, cuts your pay, bullies you to work long hours, and then fires you is fine, but walking with a couple of boxes of pens is sacrilege?
Nope, just demeaning. If a box of pens is the best thing you can find to pilfer, then either the employer isn't worth stealing from or you're not thinking creatively enough.
Wiping your workstation back to the bare metal when it contains the only copy of some essential contract-retaining data you produced, having already carefully 'let slip' to your boss a month ago that such things could be (expensively) re-created in an emergency by Totally-Not-You-In-Glasses-And-A-Mustache.com... now isn't that just so much more satisfying, when they'd had every chance in the world for six months to back up that data to corporate servers?
For some reason, no-one's set up a corporate entity which exists entirely to think up and patent various ways (both legal and illegal) to be a complete dick.
Honestly, wouldn't it be great to be able to either charge or sue entities using these kind of practices? Imagine how much you could make off the RIAA and MPAA alone!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to patent "Calling someone up and annoying the shit out of them for no other reason than to try and sell them something". Also "Making craptastic movies", and "Going sue-happy to prop up a last-century business model".
"Laws may only mandate desirable or undesirable outcomes, not processes for (non-government) entities to achieve the outcome."
Seriously, screw banning electric light bulbs - just set lightbulb efficiency minimums and let the light-making industry figure out how to get the most lumens per watt. Don't ban or cripple hydrocarbon-burning cars, just mandate MPG minimums and let the fuel/electricity/whatever tipping points set themselves. Don't shut down analogue TV, just sell spectrum in smaller bands at higher prices and let the digital channels gradually squeeze out the less efficient dinosaurs over time.
And before someone chips in with an obvious this-allows-horrible/illegal-methods-of-achieving-X comeback, the requirement to for outcome X does NOT automatically mean that the entire rest of the body of law can be ignored in pursuit of X. If the quickest legal way to get to X causes other problems, add a law saying that causing those problems is illegal. If the production of the most efficient lightbulbs causes massive waterway pollution, delegalize the pollution, not any one particular chemical (which might turn out to be useful for something nonpolluting later).
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. There are scripts for that kind of thing; don't waste hours doing it manually!
Gah. TIED to train tracks!
Heroines tried to train tracks, moustaches twiddled, heroes taunted...
For extra-disturbing - have your lappy set up to quietly snap a shot of the customs agent as they open the clamshell, and then automatically 'shop it into all the images as they're launched.
Everyone convert their data into Canadian SSNs!
I have an idea for an unbreakable encryption protocol, involving translating all data into SSNs and broadcasting them in the clear...
If the personal information is being written on a billboard in twenty-foot-high letters, does Stoddart go around forbidding people from looking at it? Is it still illegal to collect information if it's being broadcast at you 24/7?
Sorry, why would I want to buy/use equipment which showed commercials, again?
Klaus Wulfenbach on line 1.
More seriously, mining companies might be interested in it as a way to transport temporary housing to and from minesites.
It's not the message, it's the fact that it's being said by the chief purveyor of a very well-known reality... uh... "augmenting"... meme-set.
It'd be like Bill Gates warning against badly-programmed security architectures or blatantly copied GUIs. Anyone else saying it would get "Well duh."
An algorithm far worse than random is being used to select the worst of the worst to run companies.
Self-selection.
Obviously, the best solution is to promote people who don't WANT to be promoted. And hope that doesn't make them quit. I know at least one ex-boss of mine had to be almost forcibly crowbarred into management, and did a brilliant job. Of course, I turned down a lot of promotion opportunities myself because being responsible for other people's screwups would have put me in a rubber room in short order, so obviously there's some leeway for fine-tuning. :/
Secondlife has been thoroughly, totally mismanaged for years so
I have no sympathy for anyone who gives away national secrets.
Giving away things is just unAmerican. It's the highest bidder or nothing!
I've seen Ops Centers installed by professionals which were worse than useless. Sure, they were big and plush and shiny, and had a large glass partition behind them so that the executives could be walked past it and be impressed (which was probably a big clue), but they were manned by the collected deadwood of the enterprise and despite all their super-modern network-wide monitoring gear, they were usually the last ones to know about any outages.
In daily use, they usually ran a bunch of sports channels on the big screens and just sat there drooling for their entire shift. If it hadn't been for the fact that in one case, management had forcibly relocated the Network team to the little minibunker next door and demanded all calls to Networks go through the fancy Center, the rest of I.T. would most likely have just quietly cut them out of the phone network altogether and no-one would have been the wiser.
For what was paid for these places, they could have hired a warehouse, SFX team, and a bunch of actors for the one day a year the executive walked past the glass window and peered into the zoo, and come out way ahead.
...if Google's own products are genuinely better?
I mean, not necessarily saying that all of them are better than the alternatives in all circumstances, but if Google's product X happens to truly be the best result for a given search, is it a problem if the results reflect that?
In cases where a commercial litigant or defender had been proven to attempt to use false, misleading, or inherently unverifiable data in their case, it'd be interesting if there was a requirement for the government to then go back and recheck the data validity in every other case that commercial entity had been involved in for the previous decade or so, overturning previous judgments if necessary.
It might make a business or industry think twice before deliberately lying in court, if being caught could result in them having to pay out for not only that one case, but for every other prior case they'd done the same thing for.
Does that mean if everyone here sues whatsherface at the same time, we're bound to win most of the cases?
Hmm, I wonder if I could farm that off on a botnet...
Considering that the company will only have to point to their N zillion other players and say "None of them appear to be adversely affected; if Mr Smallwood believes he should not be playing the game he could have told us at any time to block his client - or he could have unloaded it and sold/discarded/shredded his copy of the game - or he, y'know, could have advised us of his problem and asked for solutions", I doubt there will be much controversy.
NCSoft's marketing division is probably dancing on the tables at the moment, given the amount of free press it's likely to generate specifically in gaming and gaming-friendly circles which boils down to "Boy howdy is this game great to play!"
So working for a company that treats you like shit, cuts your pay, bullies you to work long hours, and then fires you is fine, but walking with a couple of boxes of pens is sacrilege?
Nope, just demeaning. If a box of pens is the best thing you can find to pilfer, then either the employer isn't worth stealing from or you're not thinking creatively enough.
Wiping your workstation back to the bare metal when it contains the only copy of some essential contract-retaining data you produced, having already carefully 'let slip' to your boss a month ago that such things could be (expensively) re-created in an emergency by Totally-Not-You-In-Glasses-And-A-Mustache.com... now isn't that just so much more satisfying, when they'd had every chance in the world for six months to back up that data to corporate servers?
For some reason, no-one's set up a corporate entity which exists entirely to think up and patent various ways (both legal and illegal) to be a complete dick.
Honestly, wouldn't it be great to be able to either charge or sue entities using these kind of practices? Imagine how much you could make off the RIAA and MPAA alone!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to patent "Calling someone up and annoying the shit out of them for no other reason than to try and sell them something". Also "Making craptastic movies", and "Going sue-happy to prop up a last-century business model".
People still dumb, film at 11.
"Laws may only mandate desirable or undesirable outcomes, not processes for (non-government) entities to achieve the outcome."
Seriously, screw banning electric light bulbs - just set lightbulb efficiency minimums and let the light-making industry figure out how to get the most lumens per watt. Don't ban or cripple hydrocarbon-burning cars, just mandate MPG minimums and let the fuel/electricity/whatever tipping points set themselves. Don't shut down analogue TV, just sell spectrum in smaller bands at higher prices and let the digital channels gradually squeeze out the less efficient dinosaurs over time.
And before someone chips in with an obvious this-allows-horrible/illegal-methods-of-achieving-X comeback, the requirement to for outcome X does NOT automatically mean that the entire rest of the body of law can be ignored in pursuit of X. If the quickest legal way to get to X causes other problems, add a law saying that causing those problems is illegal. If the production of the most efficient lightbulbs causes massive waterway pollution, delegalize the pollution, not any one particular chemical (which might turn out to be useful for something nonpolluting later).
They stole the amulet of theft prevention from Honest Bob's Really Truly Genuine Magic Shop?
In one case, a manager suggested everyone install a virtual machine to run the apps that require IE6.
My employer does that. Half the corporate apps require the end users to fire up W2K in a VM to access them. I wish I was kidding.
Except that due to some IE-specific bug, it will instead say "upgrade to Google Chrome". Oops.