You guys seem to love to call people morons, but how moronic would it be if someone used just on of those devices as a trigger for a claymore type device. Or what if they used one for a decoy that was near a trigger. There are a ton of scenarios where something like this COULD be used to deliver lethal force.
Sept 10, 2001 everyone thought that terrorists flying planes into WTC was possible but farfetched. I am not saying that people can't over react, but in THIS case the Government got a 911 call that in all likelyhood was made by someone assosiated with this project. Everyone wants to let these guys skate on this but keep one thing in mind. This was national news for HOURS. If these guys did not want this to seem like a bomb scare they could have picked up the phone, called 911 and defused the whole thing in minutes. These guys used tried to use the panic FOR ADVERTISING and that is why they are all getting what they deserve.
The problem with your theory is that it places a ceiling on how high you can go in the industry. The fact is that in todays society people change jobs a lot. Add to that the fact that the higher up the job ladder you go, the smaller the circle of people that you run work with. This makes it increasingly likely that you will start running into more and more people that you have worked with before. If you get a reputation as someone who will abandon a job and leave the employer hanging you will find it harder and harder to attract better jobs.
Your plan also boils down to screw them on the off chance that they might screw you. The fact is that if you work with people honestly and professionally they will do the same for you. I am not suggesting that you no be prepared, but you are creating a self fulfilling prophesy and an adversarial relationship.
I don't know why everyone is giving this guys such a hard time about the tubes analogy. While it was clearly harder to understand than he and his speech writer intended, it was not inaccurate. There is a common misconception among the non-tech savvy that the internet is this ocean of data where information goes in and magically comes out the other end.
The Senator was using an analogy to illustrate that the internet was like tubes or pipes that big ISP's could restrict to serve their own political agenda. If a young Senator had used the same analogy, it would have never made the news. Because Ted Stevens is an old guy, it is more fun to mock him than it is to understand and acknowledge his analogy.
I think that it is tragic that we let the opponents to Net Neutrality use this mockery of an ally to divert attention from the issue just so that we can have a good laugh.
Way to go guys.
I remember in the mid 90's I was in Cellular Ones office when they were talking about this super cool phone that everyone was going to want. It was called the Star-Tac and it retailed for $800-$1,100. That was in mid 90's money. They sold as many as they could ship in and finally the price fell to the point where they were eventually giving them away. Are the iPhones high? sure they are. But all new tech is high, and then as they business model matures the price comes down. Even if this tech is buggy at first, it represents a milestone in Apples storied career as tech innovators.
I am still trying to figure out why the one hundred dollar cash register that I bought at Sam's Club is more accurate and reliable than these voting machines. If you ask me the reason that they can't get them right is because the government is in charge of designing them.
Not only is the technology available to do this the right way, it is commonly used every day. For those of you who have forgotten how we got started on this e-voting project, I would remind you of the hanging chad.
It is ok if the system that we ultimately use prints out a paper ballot that is scanned by an optical scanner. The point of this exercise was to create indisputable ballots. I like the idea of a machine that prints out a ballot with a computer generated X by my choice and some sort of check sum to verify the validity of the ballot.
Some one is going to invent a better music player and beat the crap out of Apple and then all of you nay sayers are going to wish that you had listened to us super geniuses. Sure it may take ten or so years and we will have had to suffer through countless frustrating hours with music players that turned out to be crap, but in the end, if we keep believing and chanting long enough, it will be true.
Excuse me. I need to go chant.
ooooommmmm Bill Gate is King, Bill Gates is King ooooommmmm ooooommmmm
Since when does the ACLU advocate personal responsibility? If this legislation has gone so far out of whack that the ACLU can't make it someone elses responsibility it must suck.
I understand that you feel that the government is well suited to handle these things. This is just where Europeans and Americans differ philosphically. My experience with government agencies is simply that they are only empowered to work within a VERY fixed set of parameters. While the people who work at these agencies are for the most part good people who mean well, the process of changing those parameters when necessary is so onerous that they simply become unwilling to put forth that extra effort. You seem to have faith that the government can come up with a suitable solution when a, b and c are obsolete. but more often than not, by the time they are finished arguing about solutions d, e and f, the problem has changed again but we still get solutions d, e and f.
In your posts you advocate letting the government arbitrate these disputes according to a fixed set of rules that a parlimentary type organization establishes. My point is simply that your system replaces a big corporate bully with an even bigger government bully. Where the government may be subject to elections, corporations can be sued out of existence if they behave badly enough (Enron). I have never seen a government removed from existence for doing a bad job. The players may change but the song remains the same.
Lest we digress to far from the original point, I think that this post shows the fundamental difference in the way Americans think and the way Europeans think. In America, we saw two hundred years ago that governments have a problem with inertia that is often confused with imorality. What I mean by that is that governments by necessity have to set out a fairly fixed set of methods by which it solves problems. Simplistically, they can choose between solution a, b or c. These solutions are debated ad nauseum until finally, after tremendous pain they are finally set in stone as fair to all concerned. The problems arrise when the nature of the problem changes, as it inevitably does, or the law of unintended consequenses rears its ugly head. By this time, government organizations are used to "efficiently" handling this "catagory" of problems using solution a, b or c. It is such a pain to get things changed that even though these solutions become less viable every day people inside the government would rather let the status quo remain rather than suffer the pain of getting things changed. The belief that centralize government is better is the primary reason that we left Europe over two hundred years ago.
Efficiency does not have a one to one correlation to fairness. While it is popular to portray business people as greedy, soulless villans, and consumers are innocent lambs who are always being taken advantage of. The truth is that consumers are no more or less greedy than the businesses that they trade with. And these "Consumer Protection Agencies" throw there considerable weight around often to the detriment of small businesses that can't afford to fight them. The simple fact is that for every deal that a person gets "cheated" on, there is another deal that they made out like a bandit on that they conveniently forget. As for the guy that wanted the DVD distributor to pay his return shipping. I agree that would be fair. But, I don't think that that policy should be legislated. If enough companies get complaints about that policy, you can bet that someone is going to enact it and use the fact that they gover shipping to their advantage. I know of several internet clothing companies that do just that and make a great business of it.
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You guys seem to love to call people morons, but how moronic would it be if someone used just on of those devices as a trigger for a claymore type device. Or what if they used one for a decoy that was near a trigger. There are a ton of scenarios where something like this COULD be used to deliver lethal force. Sept 10, 2001 everyone thought that terrorists flying planes into WTC was possible but farfetched. I am not saying that people can't over react, but in THIS case the Government got a 911 call that in all likelyhood was made by someone assosiated with this project. Everyone wants to let these guys skate on this but keep one thing in mind. This was national news for HOURS. If these guys did not want this to seem like a bomb scare they could have picked up the phone, called 911 and defused the whole thing in minutes. These guys used tried to use the panic FOR ADVERTISING and that is why they are all getting what they deserve.
The problem with your theory is that it places a ceiling on how high you can go in the industry. The fact is that in todays society people change jobs a lot. Add to that the fact that the higher up the job ladder you go, the smaller the circle of people that you run work with. This makes it increasingly likely that you will start running into more and more people that you have worked with before. If you get a reputation as someone who will abandon a job and leave the employer hanging you will find it harder and harder to attract better jobs. Your plan also boils down to screw them on the off chance that they might screw you. The fact is that if you work with people honestly and professionally they will do the same for you. I am not suggesting that you no be prepared, but you are creating a self fulfilling prophesy and an adversarial relationship.
I don't know why everyone is giving this guys such a hard time about the tubes analogy. While it was clearly harder to understand than he and his speech writer intended, it was not inaccurate. There is a common misconception among the non-tech savvy that the internet is this ocean of data where information goes in and magically comes out the other end. The Senator was using an analogy to illustrate that the internet was like tubes or pipes that big ISP's could restrict to serve their own political agenda. If a young Senator had used the same analogy, it would have never made the news. Because Ted Stevens is an old guy, it is more fun to mock him than it is to understand and acknowledge his analogy. I think that it is tragic that we let the opponents to Net Neutrality use this mockery of an ally to divert attention from the issue just so that we can have a good laugh. Way to go guys.
I remember in the mid 90's I was in Cellular Ones office when they were talking about this super cool phone that everyone was going to want. It was called the Star-Tac and it retailed for $800-$1,100. That was in mid 90's money. They sold as many as they could ship in and finally the price fell to the point where they were eventually giving them away. Are the iPhones high? sure they are. But all new tech is high, and then as they business model matures the price comes down. Even if this tech is buggy at first, it represents a milestone in Apples storied career as tech innovators.
I am still trying to figure out why the one hundred dollar cash register that I bought at Sam's Club is more accurate and reliable than these voting machines. If you ask me the reason that they can't get them right is because the government is in charge of designing them. Not only is the technology available to do this the right way, it is commonly used every day. For those of you who have forgotten how we got started on this e-voting project, I would remind you of the hanging chad. It is ok if the system that we ultimately use prints out a paper ballot that is scanned by an optical scanner. The point of this exercise was to create indisputable ballots. I like the idea of a machine that prints out a ballot with a computer generated X by my choice and some sort of check sum to verify the validity of the ballot.
Some one is going to invent a better music player and beat the crap out of Apple and then all of you nay sayers are going to wish that you had listened to us super geniuses. Sure it may take ten or so years and we will have had to suffer through countless frustrating hours with music players that turned out to be crap, but in the end, if we keep believing and chanting long enough, it will be true. Excuse me. I need to go chant. ooooommmmm Bill Gate is King, Bill Gates is King ooooommmmm ooooommmmm
What if someone wrote an article about a known hot topic that was designed to simply start an argument?
Since when does the ACLU advocate personal responsibility? If this legislation has gone so far out of whack that the ACLU can't make it someone elses responsibility it must suck.
I understand that you feel that the government is well suited to handle these things. This is just where Europeans and Americans differ philosphically. My experience with government agencies is simply that they are only empowered to work within a VERY fixed set of parameters. While the people who work at these agencies are for the most part good people who mean well, the process of changing those parameters when necessary is so onerous that they simply become unwilling to put forth that extra effort. You seem to have faith that the government can come up with a suitable solution when a, b and c are obsolete. but more often than not, by the time they are finished arguing about solutions d, e and f, the problem has changed again but we still get solutions d, e and f. In your posts you advocate letting the government arbitrate these disputes according to a fixed set of rules that a parlimentary type organization establishes. My point is simply that your system replaces a big corporate bully with an even bigger government bully. Where the government may be subject to elections, corporations can be sued out of existence if they behave badly enough (Enron). I have never seen a government removed from existence for doing a bad job. The players may change but the song remains the same.
Lest we digress to far from the original point, I think that this post shows the fundamental difference in the way Americans think and the way Europeans think. In America, we saw two hundred years ago that governments have a problem with inertia that is often confused with imorality. What I mean by that is that governments by necessity have to set out a fairly fixed set of methods by which it solves problems. Simplistically, they can choose between solution a, b or c. These solutions are debated ad nauseum until finally, after tremendous pain they are finally set in stone as fair to all concerned. The problems arrise when the nature of the problem changes, as it inevitably does, or the law of unintended consequenses rears its ugly head. By this time, government organizations are used to "efficiently" handling this "catagory" of problems using solution a, b or c. It is such a pain to get things changed that even though these solutions become less viable every day people inside the government would rather let the status quo remain rather than suffer the pain of getting things changed. The belief that centralize government is better is the primary reason that we left Europe over two hundred years ago. Efficiency does not have a one to one correlation to fairness. While it is popular to portray business people as greedy, soulless villans, and consumers are innocent lambs who are always being taken advantage of. The truth is that consumers are no more or less greedy than the businesses that they trade with. And these "Consumer Protection Agencies" throw there considerable weight around often to the detriment of small businesses that can't afford to fight them. The simple fact is that for every deal that a person gets "cheated" on, there is another deal that they made out like a bandit on that they conveniently forget. As for the guy that wanted the DVD distributor to pay his return shipping. I agree that would be fair. But, I don't think that that policy should be legislated. If enough companies get complaints about that policy, you can bet that someone is going to enact it and use the fact that they gover shipping to their advantage. I know of several internet clothing companies that do just that and make a great business of it.