If you could choose your own map areas, this could work well.
I could easily choose map spots that could be described in a way that only I or a very select group of people would know. Things like if I showed you a map of the neighborhood where I grew up, and said "the tits", how would you know where it is? Would you guess in the park? Where in the park?
Trust me, no google earth view is going to show you the landmark in question, and it would only be visible as such from one spot.... but I know exactly where it is, I used to climb all over those rocks as a kid.
I am with you on that. Honestly, I HATE this whole "can't be done" thing. I have texted while driving, I have seen other people do it...and this study validates one thing that I noticed... technique matters.
You hear that people take their eyes off the roads for "4 seconds.... enough time to cross a football field".
Seriously? I have never taken my eyes off the road for 4 seconds to txt, except at a VERY LONG stop light. When I was... stopped. That is crossing a football field every.... divide by zero error length of time.
Usually the way I did it (I really don't do it often, and only have ever done it maybe 5 times ever), is to raise the phone UP so that I can still see the road in my peripheral vision, check the road ahead, make sure everything is moving smooth and I have plenty of room in front of me and to the sides, and then... only then.... look and hit the next letter on the phone.... then go back to the road.
It takes a minute or two to send a txt this way, but, its pretty safe. I never have to take my eyes off the road for more than 1 second because all I am doing is essentially verigying the last letter and orienting my finger, and I am right back to the road.
But no... we can never admit that an issue might be more complicated than simple black and white statements or that some people may have skills that others don't, or others need to learn. Honestly, I would mandate that driving classes TEACH how to use a phone or other device when driving.
WHy? because you have to accept REALITY and the reality is that people will do what they want and try to skirt the law. There will always be some new wizbang thing that distracts people, people will be distracted by more than phones, more than texting. So... teach to the reality of the situation!
Its far better than more and more restrictions that don't work and have unintended consequences... like making the activity MORE dangerous!
While very true.... it actually is kinda sad that thats true. One genocidal madman wears a toothbrush mustache and now nobody can rock the toothbrush. I dunno about you, but I always liked the toothbrush and occasionally silently lament that I can never even consider sporting it in peace.
As someone who works at a healthcare company, this amuses me. Up till not too long ago, we didn't have a lot of rules on this sort of promotion in our industry. There is some now in terms of doctors and other clinical people, however, I remember my days as a tech, I used to love fixing PCs for the mental health clinics because... they had all the best toys. I think one of em gave me a "Wellbutrin brain" (plush brain with a "Welbutrin" stamp on the bottom).
Now, we actually sometimes have to send things back to well meaning vendors, we are not even allowed to accept a free pen. Gone are the days when consultants could take us out to lunch on their companies dime. It doesn't even matter that we are tech folks and don't make purchasing decisions.
In fact, they have even gone so far as to come up with complicated rules as to whether or not we can eat at vendor events that supply free food. Seriously. The company took the fact that gifts could influence a persons decisions related to a product, and went so far to the other side, that we made the rules so complicated that people now think the company is being stupid. Excellent way to develop respect for doing the right thing... by taking it so far that its stupid.
Yes thats exactly what I am saying. I am saying that we keep piling on more and more laws, more and more penalties, costing people more and more money, putting restrictions on more and more people and, making little to no difference. Why are we not asking what the cost is to all the people who are "being caught"? What about the cost we are imposing on them?
I can understand if its justified by an actual, significant, improvement in the safety. However, if that improvement can't be realized, for any reason, then how is that cost justified? Cost in terms of extra police, police training, police time, court time, time off work, loss of license, loss of jobs...all... to make no difference.
I did, in fact, imply a solution. The solution is realizing that we have done all that we reasonably can in this area, and moving on to other problems. I mean, there are all manner of silly solutions. You could mandate that nobody ever drive faster than 5 mph, anywhere. However, in terms of realistic solutions, I think we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns.
Accept that there is risk involved in some activities. Frankly I think all these "solutions" fall into the trap of starting from the assumption that something must be done.
wow I fudged that second to last paragraph. I need a better proof reader, because I suck at it.... badly.
Anyway, I don't think, if done properly, its any more dangerous than listening to the radio or chatting it up with a particularly interesting passenger.
See I actually think the whole issue misses the real issue. They are playing whack a mole with symptoms. Its one thing to bathe a patient in ice to lower a fever but, any doctor that expects that treating the fever is going to treat the underlying cause would be deservedly laughed at in this day and age.
The real problem is that people are not all that good at judging their abilities and multitasking. Taking away one of the plethora of distractions available to them is not going to fix anything. People can get distracted by anything from talking on the phone, to playing with the radio, to checking out cute girls walking by on the side of the road. Which of these will we ban next? Eating while driving? Thinking while driving?
Frankly, I think texting while driving, if done with proper technique (I can do it, albeit slowly, without ever taking my eyes off the road longer than it takes to look in my rear view, if you are willing to take a full minute to type a message, it does work)
In the end, I think it comes down to simple attention management and judgement. As such, I think we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns on making driving safer. So long as humans are doing the driving, I doubt we will ever see further reductions in traffic accidents and or deaths.
The problem seems to be, in my eyes, that the shoe just... keeps on fitting.
BO is a huge improvement over bush. Of course, thats kind of like your doctor saying "good news, it turns out its just lupus".
What I find is that, a lot of people talk about the issues where democrats and republicans differ. Frankly, its the vast majority of issues where they agree that scares the bejesus out of me. Neither side has any problem with courts accepting "oh national security" as a lame ass blanket excuse to remove ANY issue that they want. (god forbid the truth be known! Our reputation is clearly more important than truth and justice!)
Neither side really cares about personal privacy or liberty, or even truth. We have a government full of guys like Ray Lahood who, when a study came out showing that states which banned txting while driving had NO decrease in accidents, called the study "irresponsible". Yes, its irresponsible to challenge our assumptions and guesses about how to fix things with data that contradicts them. Quite irresponsible.
The republicans don't deserve all the blame by far.
I have a reason... because people will rely on it. When someone compromises the right keys, or database, or equipment and replaces your Iris signature with his own, he will walk right into the bank, withdraw your money, sell your house, and be long gone while you pick up the pieces.
Of course, has anyone collected large city sized samples of biometric data before? I doubt it...I am thinking that this has a high likelyhood of being a major disaster.
I don't see how that is a foregone conclusion. Its entirely possible that, in time, the atrocities would lessen and we could convince them not to expand in military means again, then if they try, well... eventually military means can't control the whole world, centralized power by force is limited in how much it can really control, eventually internal forces can pull any empire apart.
I would rather just not fight and let them "take" whatever they want. I don't really care what flag the regime in power flys. I will go about my life and mostly ignore them, no matter who claims dominion over the land. Emperor of Japan, President of the US, an oppressor is an oppressor, they are all equally repugnant to me.
There is little stupider than killing or getting killed over what flag flys from poles.
I really don't care what they should or should not have gotten. Ending the war and restoring peace is more important than any other goal in my mind. Even if it leaves the perpetrators in power, and or with more land than they started... as long as the war is stopped the most major of all ongoing atrocities is stopped.
A bit more about your setup please. Are you on the net directly with a public ip? That is, does your windows machine have the public IP? Or is it behind a NATing router that gives you a private IP?
Being behind a simple firewall really does cut your exposure way down, and may be responsible for the majority of your protection. The time to compromise of a machine connected to the internet really does mean, connected to the net directly, without a firewall in the way.
If you have ever had cause to look at sniffer logs, or access logs on a public web server (even one thats rather unknown), exploit attempts of various types come on a rather regular basis, of many different types... all they need is one that works on you.
A firewall blocks 100% of these attempts (unless configured to allow some traffic), leaving you, as you say, to be 99% of the problem.
> Funny you should mention that. There's a belief that Ahmadinejad is attempting to bring the world to chaos so > that the 12th Imam may appear to this world and save it. In doing so, heralding an unprecedented period of peace > under Islam. Baby Jesus doesn't fit in to that very well.
Heh, well theories always abound, though, I have trouble believing that anyone in power would want to diminish his own power with chaos, no matter what he "believed".
That said, this sounds very similar to some of the things I have seen preached by whacko christians. There is a great Jack Chick pamphlet about how good christians should support Isreal because the Bible says that Isreal will be opposed by all the nations of the world, and god will then smite all those nations and protect Isreal as part of the end times.
Apparently theres multiple groups trying to immanentize the eschaton.
Rhetoric is still just that, rhetoric. Its rhetoric that plays well with a certain audience. These people don't stay in power based on what you or I think of their speeches.
As to the logic bomb idea. I get the concept, and in a perfect world, where you can write a perfect worm that can lie perfectly dormant until a perfectly authenticated activation message came, and only then did perfectly what it was intended to do.
This worm is now sitting dormant, waiting to go off, either as intended, or after being discovered and hijacked, or accidentally triggered. Creating such a thing, and deploying it into the wilds, is irresponsible and uncivilized.
Actually, I have seen some claims that it wasn't even based on military estimates as actual military estimates put the estimated loss of life for a mainland invasion at FAR LESS than the fanciful public numbers. Howard Zinn have a great talk on this called "Three Holy Wars".
Not to mention that the invasion of the mainland wasn't necessary, Japan was pretty much defeated before the first bomb dropped.
I liked Zinns way of asking what if we reverse the question and ask "What if we could end WWII right this moment, today, but to do it, we would have to kill 100,000 American children." Why are japanese ok to kill but, Americans are somehow deserving of life?
I don't buy the whole us vs them meme. For me "them" is anyone who believes that fighting a war ever helped anyone.
Yup, and so far, every Iranian that I have talked to for more than a few minutes has extolled the virtues of Persia and Zoroastrianism and maligns the Arabs (often using the term "towel head") for having forced their people to convert to Islam.
You could look at it that way. Frankly, I think calling it "idealistic" is a cop out. If anything, I find the idea that these actions are needed to secure safety and peace to be pretty laughable. Just because someone else spouts rhetoric? Seriously? When is the last time Iran (as if a whole country is one guy with a single consistent opinion, another laughable concept) did anything to Isreal other than spout off rhetoric?
Its one thing to make academic arguments about what may or may not happen or what may or may not being about some manner of safety for one group, even at the epxense of another, but, when you cross over from making statements about what you think to actually taking risks with other peoples lives, you lose my support.
So far, I am entirely unconvinced of the "threat", and wish the Iranians the best of luck in producing nuclear power for themselves.
Or better, if so, what does it say about the moral character of the person who wrote it?
I mean seriously, say what you want about international politics, there are human beings there, on the ground. Any action that intentionally endangers those people is irresponsible. Whoever wrote it, CIA or not, should spend the rest of his life behind bars... along with whoever authorized its production and distribution.
This is just not an acceptable action... no matter who the target is or why.
Whenever a law is made, we are saying "the use of violence by armed thugs is authorized to enfiorce this". I see no legitimate reason to authorize the use of armed thugs to stop the sale of games to anyone... minor or otherewise. Nobody should be subject to arrest for it, nobody should be subject to arrest for not paying a fine for it, and no fine should be leveyed for it.
There is no evidence of harm (correlation is not causation). Even if there was, its clearly a parents job to police.
I support no such law for several reasons but mostly because throwing a bone to people on an irrational crusade is nothing I want my taxes supporting!
See now.... I agree with you totally on the party hosts in this case but... I tend to think it comes down to "appropriate response". Here in boston, I have seen the same thing... a few cops come out, and warn people sternly. Then they come back, act like pricks, and cart people away in chains.
That doesn't sit well with me, I am not sure "being a selfish prick who annoys people" warrants being dragged off in chains. A stern talking to? Certainly! Maybe some sort of public humiliation or something? Overall, I would much prefer seeing the nieghbor himself come knocking on the door and explaining the situation and showing his anger, rather than having intermediaries have to come out.
Here the government seems to suffer from "when you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail" syndrome. "Oh this is a problem, lets see who we can cart off in chains to make the problem go away."
Slashdot Mirror
At which point everyone slowly began backing away from the guy with the 70s Nazi Porn fetish.
If you could choose your own map areas, this could work well.
I could easily choose map spots that could be described in a way that only I or a very select group of people would know. Things like if I showed you a map of the neighborhood where I grew up, and said "the tits", how would you know where it is? Would you guess in the park? Where in the park?
Trust me, no google earth view is going to show you the landmark in question, and it would only be visible as such from one spot.... but I know exactly where it is, I used to climb all over those rocks as a kid.
-Steve
I am with you on that. Honestly, I HATE this whole "can't be done" thing. I have texted while driving, I have seen other people do it...and this study validates one thing that I noticed... technique matters.
You hear that people take their eyes off the roads for "4 seconds.... enough time to cross a football field".
Seriously? I have never taken my eyes off the road for 4 seconds to txt, except at a VERY LONG stop light. When I was... stopped. That is crossing a football field every.... divide by zero error length of time.
Usually the way I did it (I really don't do it often, and only have ever done it maybe 5 times ever), is to raise the phone UP so that I can still see the road in my peripheral vision, check the road ahead, make sure everything is moving smooth and I have plenty of room in front of me and to the sides, and then... only then.... look and hit the next letter on the phone.... then go back to the road.
It takes a minute or two to send a txt this way, but, its pretty safe. I never have to take my eyes off the road for more than 1 second because all I am doing is essentially verigying the last letter and orienting my finger, and I am right back to the road.
But no... we can never admit that an issue might be more complicated than simple black and white statements or that some people may have skills that others don't, or others need to learn. Honestly, I would mandate that driving classes TEACH how to use a phone or other device when driving.
WHy? because you have to accept REALITY and the reality is that people will do what they want and try to skirt the law. There will always be some new wizbang thing that distracts people, people will be distracted by more than phones, more than texting. So... teach to the reality of the situation!
Its far better than more and more restrictions that don't work and have unintended consequences... like making the activity MORE dangerous!
-Steve
While very true.... it actually is kinda sad that thats true. One genocidal madman wears a toothbrush mustache and now nobody can rock the toothbrush. I dunno about you, but I always liked the toothbrush and occasionally silently lament that I can never even consider sporting it in peace.
-Steve
As someone who works at a healthcare company, this amuses me. Up till not too long ago, we didn't have a lot of rules on this sort of promotion in our industry. There is some now in terms of doctors and other clinical people, however, I remember my days as a tech, I used to love fixing PCs for the mental health clinics because... they had all the best toys. I think one of em gave me a "Wellbutrin brain" (plush brain with a "Welbutrin" stamp on the bottom).
Now, we actually sometimes have to send things back to well meaning vendors, we are not even allowed to accept a free pen. Gone are the days when consultants could take us out to lunch on their companies dime. It doesn't even matter that we are tech folks and don't make purchasing decisions.
In fact, they have even gone so far as to come up with complicated rules as to whether or not we can eat at vendor events that supply free food. Seriously. The company took the fact that gifts could influence a persons decisions related to a product, and went so far to the other side, that we made the rules so complicated that people now think the company is being stupid. Excellent way to develop respect for doing the right thing... by taking it so far that its stupid.
-Steve
All I know is, watch out if they show up offering us a bunch of blankets. We know that trick.
-Steve
I can neither confirm nor deny what I may or may not have been doing when I may or may not have written that statement.
Yes thats exactly what I am saying. I am saying that we keep piling on more and more laws, more and more penalties, costing people more and more money, putting restrictions on more and more people and, making little to no difference. Why are we not asking what the cost is to all the people who are "being caught"? What about the cost we are imposing on them?
I can understand if its justified by an actual, significant, improvement in the safety. However, if that improvement can't be realized, for any reason, then how is that cost justified? Cost in terms of extra police, police training, police time, court time, time off work, loss of license, loss of jobs...all... to make no difference.
Sounds like a monumental waste to me.
-Steve
I did, in fact, imply a solution. The solution is realizing that we have done all that we reasonably can in this area, and moving on to other problems. I mean, there are all manner of silly solutions. You could mandate that nobody ever drive faster than 5 mph, anywhere. However, in terms of realistic solutions, I think we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns.
Accept that there is risk involved in some activities. Frankly I think all these "solutions" fall into the trap of starting from the assumption that something must be done.
-Steve
wow I fudged that second to last paragraph. I need a better proof reader, because I suck at it.... badly.
Anyway, I don't think, if done properly, its any more dangerous than listening to the radio or chatting it up with a particularly interesting passenger.
-Steve
See I actually think the whole issue misses the real issue. They are playing whack a mole with symptoms. Its one thing to bathe a patient in ice to lower a fever but, any doctor that expects that treating the fever is going to treat the underlying cause would be deservedly laughed at in this day and age.
The real problem is that people are not all that good at judging their abilities and multitasking. Taking away one of the plethora of distractions available to them is not going to fix anything. People can get distracted by anything from talking on the phone, to playing with the radio, to checking out cute girls walking by on the side of the road. Which of these will we ban next? Eating while driving? Thinking while driving?
Frankly, I think texting while driving, if done with proper technique (I can do it, albeit slowly, without ever taking my eyes off the road longer than it takes to look in my rear view, if you are willing to take a full minute to type a message, it does work)
In the end, I think it comes down to simple attention management and judgement. As such, I think we have long since hit the point of diminishing returns on making driving safer. So long as humans are doing the driving, I doubt we will ever see further reductions in traffic accidents and or deaths.
-Steve
The problem seems to be, in my eyes, that the shoe just... keeps on fitting.
BO is a huge improvement over bush. Of course, thats kind of like your doctor saying "good news, it turns out its just lupus".
What I find is that, a lot of people talk about the issues where democrats and republicans differ. Frankly, its the vast majority of issues where they agree that scares the bejesus out of me. Neither side has any problem with courts accepting "oh national security" as a lame ass blanket excuse to remove ANY issue that they want. (god forbid the truth be known! Our reputation is clearly more important than truth and justice!)
Neither side really cares about personal privacy or liberty, or even truth. We have a government full of guys like Ray Lahood who, when a study came out showing that states which banned txting while driving had NO decrease in accidents, called the study "irresponsible". Yes, its irresponsible to challenge our assumptions and guesses about how to fix things with data that contradicts them. Quite irresponsible.
The republicans don't deserve all the blame by far.
-Steve
I have a reason... because people will rely on it. When someone compromises the right keys, or database, or equipment and replaces your Iris signature with his own, he will walk right into the bank, withdraw your money, sell your house, and be long gone while you pick up the pieces.
Of course, has anyone collected large city sized samples of biometric data before? I doubt it...I am thinking that this has a high likelyhood of being a major disaster.
-Steve
I don't see how that is a foregone conclusion. Its entirely possible that, in time, the atrocities would lessen and we could convince them not to expand in military means again, then if they try, well... eventually military means can't control the whole world, centralized power by force is limited in how much it can really control, eventually internal forces can pull any empire apart.
I would rather just not fight and let them "take" whatever they want. I don't really care what flag the regime in power flys. I will go about my life and mostly ignore them, no matter who claims dominion over the land. Emperor of Japan, President of the US, an oppressor is an oppressor, they are all equally repugnant to me.
There is little stupider than killing or getting killed over what flag flys from poles.
-Steve
I really don't care what they should or should not have gotten. Ending the war and restoring peace is more important than any other goal in my mind. Even if it leaves the perpetrators in power, and or with more land than they started... as long as the war is stopped the most major of all ongoing atrocities is stopped.
-Steve
A bit more about your setup please. Are you on the net directly with a public ip? That is, does your windows machine have the public IP? Or is it behind a NATing router that gives you a private IP?
Being behind a simple firewall really does cut your exposure way down, and may be responsible for the majority of your protection. The time to compromise of a machine connected to the internet really does mean, connected to the net directly, without a firewall in the way.
If you have ever had cause to look at sniffer logs, or access logs on a public web server (even one thats rather unknown), exploit attempts of various types come on a rather regular basis, of many different types... all they need is one that works on you.
A firewall blocks 100% of these attempts (unless configured to allow some traffic), leaving you, as you say, to be 99% of the problem.
-Steve
> Funny you should mention that. There's a belief that Ahmadinejad is attempting to bring the world to chaos so
> that the 12th Imam may appear to this world and save it. In doing so, heralding an unprecedented period of peace
> under Islam. Baby Jesus doesn't fit in to that very well.
Heh, well theories always abound, though, I have trouble believing that anyone in power would want to diminish his own power with chaos, no matter what he "believed".
That said, this sounds very similar to some of the things I have seen preached by whacko christians. There is a great Jack Chick pamphlet about how good christians should support Isreal because the Bible says that Isreal will be opposed by all the nations of the world, and god will then smite all those nations and protect Isreal as part of the end times.
Apparently theres multiple groups trying to immanentize the eschaton.
-Steve
Rhetoric is still just that, rhetoric. Its rhetoric that plays well with a certain audience. These people don't stay in power based on what you or I think of their speeches.
As to the logic bomb idea. I get the concept, and in a perfect world, where you can write a perfect worm that can lie perfectly dormant until a perfectly authenticated activation message came, and only then did perfectly what it was intended to do.
This worm is now sitting dormant, waiting to go off, either as intended, or after being discovered and hijacked, or accidentally triggered. Creating such a thing, and deploying it into the wilds, is irresponsible and uncivilized.
-Steve
Actually, I have seen some claims that it wasn't even based on military estimates as actual military estimates put the estimated loss of life for a mainland invasion at FAR LESS than the fanciful public numbers. Howard Zinn have a great talk on this called "Three Holy Wars".
Not to mention that the invasion of the mainland wasn't necessary, Japan was pretty much defeated before the first bomb dropped.
I liked Zinns way of asking what if we reverse the question and ask "What if we could end WWII right this moment, today, but to do it, we would have to kill 100,000 American children." Why are japanese ok to kill but, Americans are somehow deserving of life?
I don't buy the whole us vs them meme. For me "them" is anyone who believes that fighting a war ever helped anyone.
-Steve
Yup, and so far, every Iranian that I have talked to for more than a few minutes has extolled the virtues of Persia and Zoroastrianism and maligns the Arabs (often using the term "towel head") for having forced their people to convert to Islam.
You could look at it that way. Frankly, I think calling it "idealistic" is a cop out. If anything, I find the idea that these actions are needed to secure safety and peace to be pretty laughable. Just because someone else spouts rhetoric? Seriously? When is the last time Iran (as if a whole country is one guy with a single consistent opinion, another laughable concept) did anything to Isreal other than spout off rhetoric?
Its one thing to make academic arguments about what may or may not happen or what may or may not being about some manner of safety for one group, even at the epxense of another, but, when you cross over from making statements about what you think to actually taking risks with other peoples lives, you lose my support.
So far, I am entirely unconvinced of the "threat", and wish the Iranians the best of luck in producing nuclear power for themselves.
-Steve
Or better, if so, what does it say about the moral character of the person who wrote it?
I mean seriously, say what you want about international politics, there are human beings there, on the ground. Any action that intentionally endangers those people is irresponsible. Whoever wrote it, CIA or not, should spend the rest of his life behind bars... along with whoever authorized its production and distribution.
This is just not an acceptable action... no matter who the target is or why.
-Steve
So what if its easier?
Whenever a law is made, we are saying "the use of violence by armed thugs is authorized to enfiorce this". I see no legitimate reason to authorize the use of armed thugs to stop the sale of games to anyone... minor or otherewise. Nobody should be subject to arrest for it, nobody should be subject to arrest for not paying a fine for it, and no fine should be leveyed for it.
There is no evidence of harm (correlation is not causation). Even if there was, its clearly a parents job to police.
I support no such law for several reasons but mostly because throwing a bone to people on an irrational crusade is nothing I want my taxes supporting!
-steve
> (A prick is a penis.)
I knew that, I just didn't know p***k was "prick". I have never, in my life, seen anyone censor the word "prick" before this discussion.
See now.... I agree with you totally on the party hosts in this case but... I tend to think it comes down to "appropriate response". Here in boston, I have seen the same thing... a few cops come out, and warn people sternly. Then they come back, act like pricks, and cart people away in chains.
That doesn't sit well with me, I am not sure "being a selfish prick who annoys people" warrants being dragged off in chains. A stern talking to? Certainly! Maybe some sort of public humiliation or something? Overall, I would much prefer seeing the nieghbor himself come knocking on the door and explaining the situation and showing his anger, rather than having intermediaries have to come out.
Here the government seems to suffer from "when you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail" syndrome. "Oh this is a problem, lets see who we can cart off in chains to make the problem go away."
-Steve