What a waste of time, money, and explosives. I have a better question.... why bother? The drug war is not just a lost cause, it was never a great idea to begin with. It was predicated upon lies, and the need to find something for federal agents to do once alcohol prohibition was over. Its results have been far worst, and far more damaging than alcohol prohibition ever was.
All to deny people their most basic human right, the right to make decisions for their own bodies and minds. It is disgraceful.
I am with you but...on some things I have to ask why?
Why should we assume that the exact same regulatory scheme is correct for pot as it is alcohol? In fact, there is ample evidence that they are wildly different, and should be treated as such.
Should prohibition on driving, for example, be based on actual evidence of risk? Sadly, only one study has ever been done that wasn't tained by bad process. I hope we can all agree that pulling non-smokers off the street, to experience it for their first time, for driving tests is not an accurate measurement of impairment. Secondly, I hope we can agree that looking at "marijuana related accidents" without any attempt to seperate out those on marijuana from those drunk who also smoked (which accounted for the majority of cases btw)...is also suboptimal.
Only one study (of which I am aware), by the UK Highway Safety Administration, saw these errors, commented on them, and did a better study, using actual smokers in actual impairment tests. What did they find? They found little to no impairment. In fact, they found that what little decreases in reaction time were measured were more than made up for by an abundance of caution on the part of drivers.
So... shouldn't we.... actually attempt to get some unbiased studies around the issue BEFORE we decide how to regulate it? Maybe, I don't know, take the ability to approve or disapprove studies away from the NIDA who has no interest in anything but proving their existing conclusion?
> I mean, who else hasn't daydreamed about how we would do crime. Personally I'd never actually do anything of this nature... not only for reasons of morality and > ethics.. but because I'm somewhat of a coward.
Well ethics? I dunno, that all depends on where your ethics and morality derive from. Law is not ethics, and neither is morality, all three can be in conflict. There is nothing unethical, or immoral, about breaking the law, especially if you don't believe in the rights of the government to restrict the activity in question. It is no more unethical to transmit contraband over a border than escaped slaves, in some people's minds (including my own).
On the other hand..... these cartels are not just moving drugs, they often expand their business, traffic human beings AS slaves. etc. Some people have moral and ethical problems with that, even if they don't have one with the border subversion and drug trafficking.
Between that and the very practical matter of working for people who may bury you in a ditch if you mess up, yet are willing to name names themselves and tell the courts how you built them an amazing tunnel when its their ass on the line? Who needs ethics or morals to decide working for them is just a bad idea. Thats now cowardice, thats sanity.
And I found it to be the first uplifting story about North Korea. You mean.... there is no Christmas there? Shit, theres at least a couple of weeks every year where that makes cutting my hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle sound appealing.
Well this is a first, we should mark it. This is the first glimmer of hope from that Regieme. The first time they have been worried about an enemy which really is insidious and they have every reason to keep out of their culture at all costs.... Christmas.
That ruiner of December, that event so horrible, that it can only be seen by the shear number of songs that are made to declare it the best time of the year. Summer needs no accolades. Nobody has to tell you "Isn't spring wonderful". A tradition which begins with the "waiting in line" and annoying people, and coordinating secret lists.
Of course, you can't be against it...for the children.
I say...good call Kim Jong Il. Lets hope this is a start of your countries march towards sensibility. In this one way, we could learn from you.
Well, when you work for a large company, and know how disorganized they are, I can see how a person would get to thinking "they will never know" and 99.9% of the time... be right.
I distinctly remember a few incidents...very very minor stuff I am thiniing of. One machine, can't find it in the asset DB. So I look up an old work order, there it is... with asset tag info. I look up the tag, different machine. What gives?
So we track it down (because we needed to submit work order for the original machine).... turns out, somebody never updated the asset DB, so whoever submitted this old work order must have just put the name in, and selected a different asset tag, just because he had no way to look up the real one (we only found it because we asked the right person who had it on a spreadsheet). No fraud, just "this place is so big, and tracks things so poorly, that I can enter anything" even more "I have to to get my job done".
Translate that to an order system, you probably have several systems, all ordering through some central department. Between all the engineers and departments, they probably get some number of these non-return fees as a matter of course. He probably found that out, and realized that they didn't have the right info to really track them down easily. My guess would be he got a bit greedy and they noticed the numbers steadily climbing and wanted to know why.
Then, well, it takes time to build a case. I bet they let him do it a couple of times before they finally fired him.
if by should they mean... in the games the red cross produces? Then yes, absolutely. In any game the red cross produces, especially any war game, players should be held to international standards of war. I can't wait... I bet its going to be a best seller. Maybe they could make it really realistic and have you only get caught if there is a camera nearby?
Maybe they could have a journalist babysitter mode where your team has an embedded journalist and does nothing but driving around missions, and is kept away from any real action.
This is just stupid. I agree, it is an avenue for providing a certain degree of realism and expanding plot lines, and probably has a place in some games, but...as an imposed requirement? Perhaps we should rename the King in chess to the President? Maybe pawns can no longer be attacked or attack?
I think they totally miss that people play games to blow off steam.
Well you have a point... the problem is not Isreal the country. The problem is Isreal, the symbol. Not even the symbol to the jews or muslims, they have their own issues. Its the symbol to the evangelical base. I have seen the evangelical bible tracts about how we need to support Isreal because God said so, and the jews taking back Isreal is part of their wacky end of the world jamboree.
Just this morning there was a story on the Republican candidates courting the pro-Isreal vote. Why? Jews mostly vote Democrat. Even if you could get every jew in this country to vote for you, it would be unlikely to make a lick of difference in the election, it was all about looking good to the Evangelical base.
Actually.... I want to expand on your liability question....and maybe scare some socks off....
So, about 15 years ago, when I built my coil, I got to know another local coiler (I still drool over the pole transformer in his basement). At that time, he told me of an incident that he alleged happened to a friend of his. Basically, he was down in his basement running his coil, when someone upstairs smelled smoke. I don't remember much more to the middle of the story but, the ending was a bit scary....
A sweater in a closet had been on a metal hanger, which had acted as an antena and "picked up" his "signal" in he basement.... causing it to draw power and heat up, causing the sweater to smoulder.
Now, is it true? I don't know... maybe you know more? However, if thats possible with a small (compared to your proposed one anyway, this was probably a good size coil for home use), is there cause to worry about this?
Actually, not sure if the FCC can do much there. I remember looking into this when I was coiling and the advice that I always got was that the FCC bans jamming, but... radio equipment is not specifically protected from interference from the operation of other equipment. So the basic rule was that a tesla coil was "probably ok" but modulating the frequency to transmit radio signals, is certainly disallowed.
Not sure how this would apply to a zeusaphone, which is definitely modulated, and I hear can be picked up on an AM radio. Then again, since the purpose is to produce sound via the expansion of air around the discharge, well.... not sure, might get away on the technicality, but I would definitely consult a real lawyer on anything so big that your neighbors can tell its you and your damned coil.
You are just looking to build the world's largest zeusaphone. I can't blame you of course, but come on, its true isn't it? If not.... you have at least considered it? Maybe play some some megazuesaphone hero?
Hmm yes but, abuse also goes on. Thats, obviously, total BS. I have seen people forced to jump through some silly hoops because of it (one co-worker was told he had to encrypt any external hard drive he is using... so now his mp3 collection is the most loss protected mp3 store that I know about).
I am not sure your case is the general case though, most of the firings, as far as I know, are not actually in IT, but other people who accessed records. Remember, admins, like myself, don't actually have the level of access to look up individual records. I could probably compromise and sniff/dump entire databases if I really wanted to dig around, but, I can't just look up anyone's within the system.... whereas actual health care workers, as I am sure you know, can't easily be so restricted since they have to respond to issues quickly, having a nurse unable to access a patient's record because someone else didn't properly transfer the access rights could be a major problem, so you have to just allow them full access and audit after the fact.
Your case sounds more like some manner of retaliation to me. As the old rule goes, if they want to get you, eventually, they will. Sounds to me like she was gunning for you. In that situation, anything can be a scapegoat factor.
I work in healthcare IT, and my mother was an X-Ray tech for years, until about 15 years ago.
Even back when she was in the hospital, she saw people getting slapped and fired for it. Whenever someone famous came in, Princess Di was one of the big ones that I heard of, someone would go look up that persons info who shouldn't have, and of course, for famous people they would audit, and people got caught.
Now? Now you get flagged for all manner of things (I don't know exactly what, but it is well known that it includes looking up family members or people living on your own street etc) and its automatic. We have training on "Ethical Standards" every year, which talks about all of these records access issues. Still... I hear the single most common reason for anyone at the hospital getting fired is.... you guessed it.... inappropriate records access.
Here in MA they have the "CORI" system for doing criminal records checks. You are supposed to need consent to search it for someones info...unless you are a police officer doing his job or that sort of thing. Some auditing was done a while back and they found absolutely RAMPANT abuse. Police looking up their neighbors, looking up spouses, ex-girlfriends etc. (this was several years back... no idea if anything came of it...can't find any articles on it anymore)
Personally, I favor the Full Public Diclosure route. You have them a chance, you even told them how to fix it. The shareholders, yes they should know, but its the customers whose accounts are exposed, and the public who may become customers. Don't they really deserve to know what they are signing up for or trusting?
So, you can do a full disclosure.... but they know who you are...its a risk.
Another possibility.... wait a week or a month or so, and then anonymously release it to the public, swear up and down it wasn't you (use tor, etc etc)
Or, you could just leak it into some IRC channels where you can be sure it will be abused.... then come out later with a public disclosure after its found that they had a major breech, include your conversations with them.
Sure you could just walk away but.... don't the customers really deserve to know? They are paying for the service afterall.
Yes but....France is not the US, the devil is always in the details. Its not just can it work but, do I trust the people who would be implementing it to do it in a way that is actually safety conscious rather than simply in a base attempt to rake in revenue. Its a trust issue and, so far, I see little reason to trust that they have our best interests at heart.... or even if they do not intend that sort of corruption, don't seem capable of not creating systems where it is absolutely endemic.
I would rather avoid enforcement as the tool, because I simply don't trust the government that is implementing it. I don't trust them to not farm it out to private companies with perverse incentives. I don't trust them not to push the police to go for the easy ones and get as many people as possible, whether a safety issue or not, just to pump up numbers. I don't trust them because, while these may not all happen everywhere, they happen in enough places to make me very wary.
Lets take an example. Here in MA, state police patrol highways. Period. Their mandate is not to catch everyone but to keep traffic flowing. They do an ok job of that (can hardly blame them for the number of cars). However, other states? We are not so lucky there. Other states allow city cops to patrol highways they cross the city, and allow cities to set the speed limit on their stretches of highway....and keep the fine money.
Whats the result? I see it all the time, all I have to do is leave MA... speed limits suddenly dip 10-15 mph every time a city border is crossed, even if there is no apparent reason as to why (and traffic congestion is hardly a reason since speed limits are not relevant in traffic jams).
Even here... when was it that they started using unmarked cars and pulling over way more cars than before? You really going to tell me it was a coincidence that all that started up within months of the cities and towns around here complaining about using money? If they really care about safety, then why go after simple violations of the letter of the law rather than ones that actually create safety issues? You mean to tell me comming almost but not quite technically to a stop at a 4 way stop sign at an empty intersection is a safety issue? Really?
Actually, to be really honest.... I see many times more cars pulled over than I see people actually driving in a manner that indicates to me that they are the least bit unsafe. Yet.... you think I am going to support more kinds of enforcement? No way. I am not supporting giving them any more hammers until they start demonstrating that they can tell the difference between a nail and a screw, and which one they should pound in.
> Your approach appears to be throwing your hands up in the air saying people will never change anyway so that we should go out of our way to make > sure that the worst drivers cannot cause accidents. That seems like a lost cause to me.
Partially, I would say that there are limits to how much we can expect people, in general, to change. Not just change but, there is a sort of lowest common denominator of driving skill/ability to pay attention. I am not convinced that you can move that average more than small amounts at a time, in any direction.
So overall, I think focusing on "how to we modify people's behavior behind the wheel" should focus less on direct attempts to influence conscious behavior and more on setting up situations which mitigate the inherent risks in people's already normal behavior. Its not that there is no use in the latter, but, I think its more work, takes more time, and likely, has less dramatic results.
Amusingly, we come to the same conclusion... increase the length of yellow lights, and delay the green slightly (change the phase between sides of the street slightly, and it makes left turns easier too btw).
We had to read the communist manifesto in school. I have long thought a lot of people who dislike Marx/Engels ideas don't fully understand what he was saying. The premise was not a utopian "this is how things should be, this is what we should do", it was much more "if you look at history through this filter, general trends in these directions can be seen", was much more how it was worded and how it makes a lot of sense. (of course, it could be said that many people who really like Marx make the same misreading)
Overall, I think he made some very important points about organization, and really hit the nail on the head with the observations about ownership of the means of production. If we own a printing press, then you have say about what we print, who works with us, and how we share in any profits. If I own a printing press, and pay you to work for me, then I have all the say in what is printed, who works with us, and I keep any profits beyond what I paid you.
Now, I am not saying this is necessarily, on its face, a bad thing. You are trading potential profit, and potential liability, in exchange for (hopefully) steady pay. I am taking all the immediate risk of failure (of course, you are too when you rely on the paycheck I give you, but thats external to our arrangement). Thats all well and good.... but, as the model scales (and i do think a lot of these issues are scaling issues) more and more profit, from more and more of these arrangements concentrates in me.
It also means that now decisions relating to the livelihood (which relates to that implicit risk thats external to the arrangements) of many workers is in my hands, the person who is already profiting the most. The power imbalance is an issue even in small shops but, as we scale up to larger and larger operations, it has the effect of creating an aristocratic upper class and working lower class, who increasingly are shut out from the opportunity to be the owners of the means of production themselves by the ability of those with wealth to leverage it to buy up ever increasing amounts.
That is a rather hard to deny trend, and we easily see it today, and I think we would do well to find new and interesting ways of dealing with this, and finding ways to spread ownership out, and stop concentrating everything in ever shrinking circles.
Though, if we don't, thats fine too. Fairness is a rather innate sense and, while it can be ignored, when entire populations feel it.... when you have lost the ability to even provide the appearance of equity.... civility simply cannot be maintained indefinitely. Not a threat, just a trend.
I never said it was a valid reason. I said that the previous comment implicitly assumed that it was not a factor.
You are talking about blame and responsibility, which are great AFTER an accident has occured. I am ignoring that entire topic and focusing on what, in the real world, with real humans behind the wheel, will actually prevent those accidents.
I think you are right.... I was actually googling around trying to find the phrase, and couldn't find it, so went with what I remembered. Thanks for the reference.
I know, which is why I brought it up. Inevitably in these discussions you find people who think its great to "catch more people" or to just focus narrowly on the person who is running the light and what to "do about them" and totally miss the forest for the trees. It doesn't matter if you catch them or not because, they are nearly everyone on one day or another, in one situation or another.
That and, its obvious that "traffic enforcement" is used as a way to justify budgets and bring in cash. I should FOIA numbers for tickets before and after the bubble because I noticed that ever since the bubble burst and cities started talking about needing more money, right around then I started noticing more unmarked cars on the road (can sometimes see the lights), more people pulled over. etc.
Its just so blatantly about the money on the implementation side that I really feel the point needs to be made.
Of course, you are making an error of assumption in assuming that people who run lights generally do it willfully by thought, and not negligently by distraction, or though misjudgment.
Actually, thats one of the few things that I remember from taking the one social psych course that I took.... they called it the "fundamental error of assumption". That is, that people tend to ascribe internal motivations to other people's actions, and external ones to our own. So, you ran the red light because you are impatient and try to cut it as close as you can. I ran the red light because the yellow was excessively short, and you were sitting in the passenger seat talking to me and distracting me.
Sounds ridiculous when you say it like that but, its actually pretty common.
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What a waste of time, money, and explosives. I have a better question.... why bother? The drug war is not just a lost cause, it was never a great idea to begin with. It was predicated upon lies, and the need to find something for federal agents to do once alcohol prohibition was over. Its results have been far worst, and far more damaging than alcohol prohibition ever was.
All to deny people their most basic human right, the right to make decisions for their own bodies and minds. It is disgraceful.
Damned outsourcing!
I am with you but...on some things I have to ask why?
Why should we assume that the exact same regulatory scheme is correct for pot as it is alcohol? In fact, there is ample evidence that they are wildly different, and should be treated as such.
Should prohibition on driving, for example, be based on actual evidence of risk? Sadly, only one study has ever been done that wasn't tained by bad process. I hope we can all agree that pulling non-smokers off the street, to experience it for their first time, for driving tests is not an accurate measurement of impairment. Secondly, I hope we can agree that looking at "marijuana related accidents" without any attempt to seperate out those on marijuana from those drunk who also smoked (which accounted for the majority of cases btw)...is also suboptimal.
Only one study (of which I am aware), by the UK Highway Safety Administration, saw these errors, commented on them, and did a better study, using actual smokers in actual impairment tests. What did they find? They found little to no impairment. In fact, they found that what little decreases in reaction time were measured were more than made up for by an abundance of caution on the part of drivers.
So... shouldn't we.... actually attempt to get some unbiased studies around the issue BEFORE we decide how to regulate it? Maybe, I don't know, take the ability to approve or disapprove studies away from the NIDA who has no interest in anything but proving their existing conclusion?
> I mean, who else hasn't daydreamed about how we would do crime. Personally I'd never actually do anything of this nature... not only for reasons of morality and
> ethics.. but because I'm somewhat of a coward.
Well ethics? I dunno, that all depends on where your ethics and morality derive from. Law is not ethics, and neither is morality, all three can be in conflict. There is nothing unethical, or immoral, about breaking the law, especially if you don't believe in the rights of the government to restrict the activity in question. It is no more unethical to transmit contraband over a border than escaped slaves, in some people's minds (including my own).
On the other hand..... these cartels are not just moving drugs, they often expand their business, traffic human beings AS slaves. etc. Some people have moral and ethical problems with that, even if they don't have one with the border subversion and drug trafficking.
Between that and the very practical matter of working for people who may bury you in a ditch if you mess up, yet are willing to name names themselves and tell the courts how you built them an amazing tunnel when its their ass on the line? Who needs ethics or morals to decide working for them is just a bad idea. Thats now cowardice, thats sanity.
And I found it to be the first uplifting story about North Korea. You mean.... there is no Christmas there? Shit, theres at least a couple of weeks every year where that makes cutting my hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle sound appealing.
Well this is a first, we should mark it. This is the first glimmer of hope from that Regieme. The first time they have been worried about an enemy which really is insidious and they have every reason to keep out of their culture at all costs.... Christmas.
That ruiner of December, that event so horrible, that it can only be seen by the shear number of songs that are made to declare it the best time of the year. Summer needs no accolades. Nobody has to tell you "Isn't spring wonderful". A tradition which begins with the "waiting in line" and annoying people, and coordinating secret lists.
Of course, you can't be against it...for the children.
I say...good call Kim Jong Il. Lets hope this is a start of your countries march towards sensibility. In this one way, we could learn from you.
Well, when you work for a large company, and know how disorganized they are, I can see how a person would get to thinking "they will never know" and 99.9% of the time... be right.
I distinctly remember a few incidents...very very minor stuff I am thiniing of. One machine, can't find it in the asset DB. So I look up an old work order, there it is... with asset tag info. I look up the tag, different machine. What gives?
So we track it down (because we needed to submit work order for the original machine).... turns out, somebody never updated the asset DB, so whoever submitted this old work order must have just put the name in, and selected a different asset tag, just because he had no way to look up the real one (we only found it because we asked the right person who had it on a spreadsheet). No fraud, just "this place is so big, and tracks things so poorly, that I can enter anything" even more "I have to to get my job done".
Translate that to an order system, you probably have several systems, all ordering through some central department. Between all the engineers and departments, they probably get some number of these non-return fees as a matter of course. He probably found that out, and realized that they didn't have the right info to really track them down easily. My guess would be he got a bit greedy and they noticed the numbers steadily climbing and wanted to know why.
Then, well, it takes time to build a case. I bet they let him do it a couple of times before they finally fired him.
Touche, even worst, seems every one they did get back seems to weigh just a little less than half of what their records show in lbs.
Um... why would they report the number as "500" and include 218 samples that were "returned". Wouldn't those, by definition, no longer be "lost"?
Thats nearly half.... so only 282 missing,
That or he is really confused and thought VMS was a Unix variant :)
if by should they mean... in the games the red cross produces? Then yes, absolutely. In any game the red cross produces, especially any war game, players should be held to international standards of war. I can't wait... I bet its going to be a best seller. Maybe they could make it really realistic and have you only get caught if there is a camera nearby?
Maybe they could have a journalist babysitter mode where your team has an embedded journalist and does nothing but driving around missions, and is kept away from any real action.
This is just stupid. I agree, it is an avenue for providing a certain degree of realism and expanding plot lines, and probably has a place in some games, but...as an imposed requirement? Perhaps we should rename the King in chess to the President? Maybe pawns can no longer be attacked or attack?
I think they totally miss that people play games to blow off steam.
Well you have a point... the problem is not Isreal the country. The problem is Isreal, the symbol. Not even the symbol to the jews or muslims, they have their own issues. Its the symbol to the evangelical base. I have seen the evangelical bible tracts about how we need to support Isreal because God said so, and the jews taking back Isreal is part of their wacky end of the world jamboree.
Just this morning there was a story on the Republican candidates courting the pro-Isreal vote. Why? Jews mostly vote Democrat. Even if you could get every jew in this country to vote for you, it would be unlikely to make a lick of difference in the election, it was all about looking good to the Evangelical base.
Actually.... I want to expand on your liability question....and maybe scare some socks off....
So, about 15 years ago, when I built my coil, I got to know another local coiler (I still drool over the pole transformer in his basement). At that time, he told me of an incident that he alleged happened to a friend of his. Basically, he was down in his basement running his coil, when someone upstairs smelled smoke. I don't remember much more to the middle of the story but, the ending was a bit scary....
A sweater in a closet had been on a metal hanger, which had acted as an antena and "picked up" his "signal" in he basement.... causing it to draw power and heat up, causing the sweater to smoulder.
Now, is it true? I don't know... maybe you know more? However, if thats possible with a small (compared to your proposed one anyway, this was probably a good size coil for home use), is there cause to worry about this?
Actually, not sure if the FCC can do much there. I remember looking into this when I was coiling and the advice that I always got was that the FCC bans jamming, but... radio equipment is not specifically protected from interference from the operation of other equipment. So the basic rule was that a tesla coil was "probably ok" but modulating the frequency to transmit radio signals, is certainly disallowed.
Not sure how this would apply to a zeusaphone, which is definitely modulated, and I hear can be picked up on an AM radio. Then again, since the purpose is to produce sound via the expansion of air around the discharge, well.... not sure, might get away on the technicality, but I would definitely consult a real lawyer on anything so big that your neighbors can tell its you and your damned coil.
You are just looking to build the world's largest zeusaphone. I can't blame you of course, but come on, its true isn't it? If not.... you have at least considered it? Maybe play some some megazuesaphone hero?
Hmm yes but, abuse also goes on. Thats, obviously, total BS. I have seen people forced to jump through some silly hoops because of it (one co-worker was told he had to encrypt any external hard drive he is using... so now his mp3 collection is the most loss protected mp3 store that I know about).
I am not sure your case is the general case though, most of the firings, as far as I know, are not actually in IT, but other people who accessed records. Remember, admins, like myself, don't actually have the level of access to look up individual records. I could probably compromise and sniff/dump entire databases if I really wanted to dig around, but, I can't just look up anyone's within the system.... whereas actual health care workers, as I am sure you know, can't easily be so restricted since they have to respond to issues quickly, having a nurse unable to access a patient's record because someone else didn't properly transfer the access rights could be a major problem, so you have to just allow them full access and audit after the fact.
Your case sounds more like some manner of retaliation to me. As the old rule goes, if they want to get you, eventually, they will. Sounds to me like she was gunning for you. In that situation, anything can be a scapegoat factor.
I work in healthcare IT, and my mother was an X-Ray tech for years, until about 15 years ago.
Even back when she was in the hospital, she saw people getting slapped and fired for it. Whenever someone famous came in, Princess Di was one of the big ones that I heard of, someone would go look up that persons info who shouldn't have, and of course, for famous people they would audit, and people got caught.
Now? Now you get flagged for all manner of things (I don't know exactly what, but it is well known that it includes looking up family members or people living on your own street etc) and its automatic. We have training on "Ethical Standards" every year, which talks about all of these records access issues. Still... I hear the single most common reason for anyone at the hospital getting fired is.... you guessed it.... inappropriate records access.
Here in MA they have the "CORI" system for doing criminal records checks. You are supposed to need consent to search it for someones info...unless you are a police officer doing his job or that sort of thing. Some auditing was done a while back and they found absolutely RAMPANT abuse. Police looking up their neighbors, looking up spouses, ex-girlfriends etc. (this was several years back... no idea if anything came of it...can't find any articles on it anymore)
The problem is a very human one.
Personally, I favor the Full Public Diclosure route. You have them a chance, you even told them how to fix it. The shareholders, yes they should know, but its the customers whose accounts are exposed, and the public who may become customers. Don't they really deserve to know what they are signing up for or trusting?
So, you can do a full disclosure.... but they know who you are...its a risk.
Another possibility.... wait a week or a month or so, and then anonymously release it to the public, swear up and down it wasn't you (use tor, etc etc)
Or, you could just leak it into some IRC channels where you can be sure it will be abused.... then come out later with a public disclosure after its found that they had a major breech, include your conversations with them.
Sure you could just walk away but.... don't the customers really deserve to know? They are paying for the service afterall.
Yes but....France is not the US, the devil is always in the details. Its not just can it work but, do I trust the people who would be implementing it to do it in a way that is actually safety conscious rather than simply in a base attempt to rake in revenue. Its a trust issue and, so far, I see little reason to trust that they have our best interests at heart.... or even if they do not intend that sort of corruption, don't seem capable of not creating systems where it is absolutely endemic.
I would rather avoid enforcement as the tool, because I simply don't trust the government that is implementing it. I don't trust them to not farm it out to private companies with perverse incentives. I don't trust them not to push the police to go for the easy ones and get as many people as possible, whether a safety issue or not, just to pump up numbers. I don't trust them because, while these may not all happen everywhere, they happen in enough places to make me very wary.
Lets take an example. Here in MA, state police patrol highways. Period. Their mandate is not to catch everyone but to keep traffic flowing. They do an ok job of that (can hardly blame them for the number of cars). However, other states? We are not so lucky there. Other states allow city cops to patrol highways they cross the city, and allow cities to set the speed limit on their stretches of highway....and keep the fine money.
Whats the result? I see it all the time, all I have to do is leave MA... speed limits suddenly dip 10-15 mph every time a city border is crossed, even if there is no apparent reason as to why (and traffic congestion is hardly a reason since speed limits are not relevant in traffic jams).
Even here... when was it that they started using unmarked cars and pulling over way more cars than before? You really going to tell me it was a coincidence that all that started up within months of the cities and towns around here complaining about using money? If they really care about safety, then why go after simple violations of the letter of the law rather than ones that actually create safety issues? You mean to tell me comming almost but not quite technically to a stop at a 4 way stop sign at an empty intersection is a safety issue? Really?
Actually, to be really honest.... I see many times more cars pulled over than I see people actually driving in a manner that indicates to me that they are the least bit unsafe. Yet.... you think I am going to support more kinds of enforcement? No way. I am not supporting giving them any more hammers until they start demonstrating that they can tell the difference between a nail and a screw, and which one they should pound in.
> Your approach appears to be throwing your hands up in the air saying people will never change anyway so that we should go out of our way to make
> sure that the worst drivers cannot cause accidents. That seems like a lost cause to me.
Partially, I would say that there are limits to how much we can expect people, in general, to change. Not just change but, there is a sort of lowest common denominator of driving skill/ability to pay attention. I am not convinced that you can move that average more than small amounts at a time, in any direction.
So overall, I think focusing on "how to we modify people's behavior behind the wheel" should focus less on direct attempts to influence conscious behavior and more on setting up situations which mitigate the inherent risks in people's already normal behavior. Its not that there is no use in the latter, but, I think its more work, takes more time, and likely, has less dramatic results.
Amusingly, we come to the same conclusion... increase the length of yellow lights, and delay the green slightly (change the phase between sides of the street slightly, and it makes left turns easier too btw).
We had to read the communist manifesto in school. I have long thought a lot of people who dislike Marx/Engels ideas don't fully understand what he was saying. The premise was not a utopian "this is how things should be, this is what we should do", it was much more "if you look at history through this filter, general trends in these directions can be seen", was much more how it was worded and how it makes a lot of sense. (of course, it could be said that many people who really like Marx make the same misreading)
Overall, I think he made some very important points about organization, and really hit the nail on the head with the observations about ownership of the means of production. If we own a printing press, then you have say about what we print, who works with us, and how we share in any profits. If I own a printing press, and pay you to work for me, then I have all the say in what is printed, who works with us, and I keep any profits beyond what I paid you.
Now, I am not saying this is necessarily, on its face, a bad thing. You are trading potential profit, and potential liability, in exchange for (hopefully) steady pay. I am taking all the immediate risk of failure (of course, you are too when you rely on the paycheck I give you, but thats external to our arrangement). Thats all well and good.... but, as the model scales (and i do think a lot of these issues are scaling issues) more and more profit, from more and more of these arrangements concentrates in me.
It also means that now decisions relating to the livelihood (which relates to that implicit risk thats external to the arrangements) of many workers is in my hands, the person who is already profiting the most. The power imbalance is an issue even in small shops but, as we scale up to larger and larger operations, it has the effect of creating an aristocratic upper class and working lower class, who increasingly are shut out from the opportunity to be the owners of the means of production themselves by the ability of those with wealth to leverage it to buy up ever increasing amounts.
That is a rather hard to deny trend, and we easily see it today, and I think we would do well to find new and interesting ways of dealing with this, and finding ways to spread ownership out, and stop concentrating everything in ever shrinking circles.
Though, if we don't, thats fine too. Fairness is a rather innate sense and, while it can be ignored, when entire populations feel it.... when you have lost the ability to even provide the appearance of equity.... civility simply cannot be maintained indefinitely. Not a threat, just a trend.
I never said it was a valid reason. I said that the previous comment implicitly assumed that it was not a factor.
You are talking about blame and responsibility, which are great AFTER an accident has occured. I am ignoring that entire topic and focusing on what, in the real world, with real humans behind the wheel, will actually prevent those accidents.
I think you are right.... I was actually googling around trying to find the phrase, and couldn't find it, so went with what I remembered. Thanks for the reference.
I know, which is why I brought it up. Inevitably in these discussions you find people who think its great to "catch more people" or to just focus narrowly on the person who is running the light and what to "do about them" and totally miss the forest for the trees. It doesn't matter if you catch them or not because, they are nearly everyone on one day or another, in one situation or another.
That and, its obvious that "traffic enforcement" is used as a way to justify budgets and bring in cash. I should FOIA numbers for tickets before and after the bubble because I noticed that ever since the bubble burst and cities started talking about needing more money, right around then I started noticing more unmarked cars on the road (can sometimes see the lights), more people pulled over. etc.
Its just so blatantly about the money on the implementation side that I really feel the point needs to be made.
Of course, you are making an error of assumption in assuming that people who run lights generally do it willfully by thought, and not negligently by distraction, or though misjudgment.
Actually, thats one of the few things that I remember from taking the one social psych course that I took.... they called it the "fundamental error of assumption". That is, that people tend to ascribe internal motivations to other people's actions, and external ones to our own. So, you ran the red light because you are impatient and try to cut it as close as you can. I ran the red light because the yellow was excessively short, and you were sitting in the passenger seat talking to me and distracting me.
Sounds ridiculous when you say it like that but, its actually pretty common.