Just because you can, does not mean you should. You can lose bad in geo-politics by alienating your allies. What happens when we need that ally's support in negotiating a trade agreement? What happens when you need their support but you have burnt up feelings of good will?
Think of your best friend. Would he do a significant favor for you? You are asking a lot, but he trusts you. Now violate his trust. Will he still do a favor for you? Why should he expose himself to harm again? Should he just trust you?
Trust is astoundingly fragile, and it takes a lot of work to earn in the first place. Earning it back after losing it is much harder if at all possible. In my life, I have never encountered a situation where it was more beneficial to violate the trust of a friend than it was to preserve that trust.
It's a term used for the person who is ultimately responsible for maximizing safety at a 'range'. While others have pointed out that a Range Safety Officer is often the person responsible for safety at a shooting range, it is a general term and I'm most familiar with them at Test Ranges for government equipment.
This is in general, and sometimes the responsibilities are split to different roles, but in general: In order to maximize safety, it is the Range Safety Officer (or similar term) who has ultimate authority over any test being conducted. They are responsible for giving final approval to proceed with testing. Test Plans, Procedures, Inspection Reports, etc. All of these items should be reviewed by the Range Safety Officer (sometimes more than once, ie at Design Reviews, Test Readiness Reviews, pre-test, etc). Then it is the Range Safety Officer's responsibility to maintain oversight as the test proceeds to ensure that the procedures are being followed and that nothing is going on which may pose an unmitigated safety risk.
If the range safety officer decides to halt the test, the test halts. He has ultimate authority (and responsibility), and can overrride the Test Director if he feels that safety is being compromised. It's sometimes recommended that the safety officer be someone who is independent of the Test Director (or Program Manager). That way, they can feel free to abort a test without fear of reprisal or pressure to 'let things slide'.
That concept of ultimate authority and independence is important, and is why I brought it up with respect to court approval of warrants. A Safety Officer who feels pressured to compromise his goal of maximizing safety cannot effectively execute the duties of his position. In addition, a Safety Officer who becomes complacent (and it IS easy to have that happen), will increase the risk of safety incidents and thus be 'failing' in his job even though no safety incidents occur.
A judge which approves a warrant without reviewing it in an independent and thorough manner for each and every warrant is increasing the risk that a civil rights violation occurs. Even if no eventual violation occurs, the judge still failed in meeting the responsibilities of his position. When it comes to approving warrants, a judge is the judicial analog to a range safety officer.
I remember reading that someone called the police because someone stole his illegal drugs. The police _did_ arrest the thief. They also arrested the guy who called the police...
In the classic/maudlin/blackhumor fashion, the title of the article for that encounter should have been:
and just repost every complaint about going to 1080p form 10 years ago? Jest replace 1080 with 4k. Or flat screen with 4k. People are going to want 4k because it's stunning. If I had time I would look at the history of the loud complainers and see if they were the people saying no one would do HD or pay for a flat screen.
Stunning for what purpose? I have no content which will run on a 4k display. My video card cannot handle a game running at 4k resolution. I suppose I would like the increased desktop space, or if I did video/picture editing I'd like the resolution (but I do not do that). Would I LIKE a 4k screen? Yes, if all other things were equal, but they are not. Cost is a big factor, and to support a 4k screen, I'm going to have to upgrade several other components. My internet connection isn't good enough to stream 4k, my STB will need to be upgraded (additional monthly fee), my cable subscription will likely have a premium 4k tier (increased cost). Those are all going to be monthly increases in cost to me, and that's even before you consider the cost of replacing a current television which is 'good enough'.
I already am comfortable in streaming internet videos at resolutions which are 640x480. Is it ideal? Nope, but that's what the infrastructure supports, and that's how the content gets created. I liked 1080p because it helped with the 'pan-and-scan' issue that existed on movies, that's not exactly a problem anymore unless we were going to cinema aspect ratios with the 4k TVs and I don't think that's in the plans.
If there is no content, if there is no way to deliver the content, if my eyesight isn't getting any better, if my television is still working, what possible reason would there be for me (a typical viewer), to incur the cost?
(As an aside, my 50" plasma just broke on Monday, I haven't even considered a 4k replacement, what would I need it for?)
Try to get competent at it without breaking U.S. law. I believe the criminal trespass laws when into effect in 1984, and Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested under the DMCA when he went to DefCon after being granted a Visa for the purpose of attending the conference.
That isn't hard at all, as another poster pointed out, setup a lab in your basement with previous generation networking gear. $20,000 routers of that generation can be had for less than $100 bucks. Learn how to setup virtual machines and emulate a few hosts on the network, or just stick one or two old physical machines on it. Then practice.
But real cybersecurity is learning about CM, audits, tests, and lots of seemingly mundane boring activities and the regulations/policies which govern industries. Sign up for the DAU courses. The hardest part about getting good is biting the bullet and getting the new certifications. What are they now? CISSP? things like that.
There is absolutely ZERO need to get involved in criminal behavior to learn about IA/Cybersecurity. If you setup your own lab, you can do whatever you want to it and it isn't illegal. The concept that you need to have some sort of shady behavior to learn the skills is a copout and postfacto justification that blackhatters like to claim to assuage their own conscience.
For those of us born in the early 80s, we get to pick and choose the best parts of generation X and the millenials. We are the generation that fell through the cracks as far as media labeling is concerned. It's great!
Media complains about Generation X, we get to poke fun on our 'cloud' access devices. Media complains about Millenials, we quickly skip to Nirvana in the playlist and scoff at this new generation.
Systems that were written largely by members of Generation X and marketed by Baby Boomers. But no, keep thinking that everything is the fault of which ever generation is the youngest.
Good point. I always shake my head at articles about how poor the millenial generation turned out. Isn't it the responsibility of the previous generation to guide the new generation? It's not like you are born with a life instruction manual. If there are problem with the current generation, the blame falls squarely on the preceeding generations. This is the world the millenials were born into, and they grew up with the guidance from the existing generations.
Like raising a dog, if it's ill-tempered, look to the owner.
I am familiar with IA, I work with it almost all the time, but it isn't my primary function. I'm currently in the market for a job in the SE Pennsylvania region AND I have a clearance. I think you are spot on with what the tasks are.
In SE PA there are a lot of medical companies, and thus their IA concerns relate to keeping their trade secrets secret, and even more importantly, keeping medical records secret. Unfortunately for me, I'd love to work for some of these companies, but damned if it's easy to meet their requirements.
Engineering? Check IT systems? Rusty on the hands on work, but I mainly work architecture level designs. Experience with medical systems? Umm no, sorry that's pretty specialized.
It's kind of like the Cheap, Fast, Reliable and other 'tri-feature' You pick two options. I can give you two, but that experience in medical systems always gets me. Unfortunately for a lot of these companies, a lot of the IA experience they ask for comes from the Defense industry, but rarely do we work with medical stuff.
I couldn't even reach the point where I was even affected by the overzealous editors. I quit long before that, and I'm sure a lot of potential editors never even got that far. It's not newbie friendly, and if you want new users, you need to have newbies.
1. The markup language. It's not as trivial to use as it should be. When I first started editing wikipedia, I figured I would start small with typo corrections, cleaning up wording, etc. It's a good thing that was my goal, because trying to figure out the process of editing and getting it looking right was a task in itself. If I were a regular person who noticed an error, or wanted to add a paragraph, by the time I figured out the markup language I'd have forgotten about the correction and probably lost interest.
2. Bots. Why is everything I change automatically reverted in a few minutes. I then have to figure out some weird protocol for defending my change on some specialized discussion page which I need to know the special rules for in order to comment and... you know what, it was just a typo, I don't care anymore
3. Deletion. Diskspace is cheap, if someone wants to devote their life to creating a series of articles on the twist and turns of the 3' wide stream behind his house, that's fine by me. But what the real problem is: Why should I risk learning the language, crafting a decent article with sources, putting it up and doing all that work... only to find out it's been deleted? No thanks, I'd rather go do something productive.
I quit (early on in wikipedia's lifetime) when a change I made when I noticed a typo in an article on the Constitution was reverted by a bot for lacking a source. My 'source' was a link to the actual photograph and transcription of the Constitution hosted on archives.gov
I just lost all motivation when I realized that I would have to 'fight' over the most trivial details.
You raise an interesting point: I've always been of the opinion that there should be a concept of 'blinders' for crime not related to the immediate emergency situation.
ie: If you call the police to report someone invading your home with a gun, you should not be afraid that when the police enter your home they will discover that you were involved in some other crime and charge you with that. The rationale behind my opinion is that I feel it is more important that people not be afraid to call the police than it is for every minor crime to be prosecuted.
Kind of like a prostitute hesitating to call the police when she gets beaten up by a client because she is afraid of being arrested for prostitution. I feel it is more important that the violent person be arrested.
The courts have long been like a Range Safety Officer who hasn't seen something go wrong in so long that they just skim the safety plans and supporting documentation.
The problem is that at least for the Range Safety Officers, when something goes wrong, the blame immediately falls on them. With the courts, it's not often easy to know when something goes wrong, and even when you do know, blame rarely falls back on the courts.
Call me old fashioned, but I think I'll look fondly on the days when I could get a scratch on my watchband and not have my hand burst into flames as the battery fails.
Now take Samsung's watch. It SHOULD be the core of the system. It should have your CPU, storage, networking, etc, because it is a non-invasive device that billions of people are already used to wearing all day every day. It is the optimum form factor for having with you all the time everywhere you go (even while swimming, etc). But instead they made it a mere peripheral for their phones / tablets.
The watch should be the core of the system. You can do simple tasks with its small display, it can vibrate in different places (on the bottom of the band, in the watch, etc) in different patterns that could communicate a variety of things without any annoying sound effects (since it's on the wrist the vibration could be very light, unlike a cell phone which has to be felt through clothing, etc). Then if you need a bigger display, you grab a tablet IO device (a mere wireless peripheral for IO for your watch), or a device like Google Glass, or you simply output media from your watch to the nearest TV, etc
And here is where we disagree. The watch should be a peripheral due to several unavoidable drawbacks:
1. Heat - Have you ever felt how hot a phone can get when it's operating? It would get very uncomfortable to have that heat strapped on your wrist. I'd hate to start sweating because my cellWatch was doing some processing.
2. Batteries - All those extra features means power, and to get a usable life you need batteries. And putting those batteries on your arm is not going to be confortable or small.
3. Features and antennas take space - Features, processors, antennas, all have design considerations which take up space. Sure, you can get them into a phone form factor, but the phone form factor is still much larger than what you want to put on someone's wrist.
Personally, I think that a nearly dumb 'terminal' or thin-client interface on the wrist is the way to go. Because of number 4:
4: Interoperability and upgradeability: With a thin-client like interface, where the standalone phone does the heavy lifting, you allow people to use your iWatch thing with an assortment of phones, and they have the option to upgrade at a later date. As long as you provide a decent interface spec, the phones can come and go, be upgraded, repaired, traded, and so on without the user having to replace their watch. It give you the flexibility to introduce a lot of colors/shapes/sizes without having to literally rebuild a phone into each of your iWatch designs.
Sometimes the "angry commuter horn" means you're drifting into their lane and half a second from side-swiping them... ignoring it is a bad idea in that case.
Once my "angry commuter horn" meant "I'm hauling a load of cinderblocks, it's 10 degrees, and some psycho sprayed water on a steep downhill slope heading to an intersection"
Trust me, that wasn't a horn you wanted to tune out.
Here is my system for not being rude in today's "Tech-enhanced society":
I'll stick my phone in my pocket when I'm speaking with someone. It stays there, untouched, with the following exceptions:
1. Phone rings - I reach down in my pocket without breaking the conversation and tap a button to silence the call. Often I include "Excuse me." while I perform the action. I can check the call number later. 2. Phone rings again almost immediately - I tell the person, "It seems like someone really needs to get ahold of me. Please excuse me for a moment."
Pretty much anything else I'll leave to a 'Bathroom Break'.
They were too busy figuring out which mushrooms and berries were deadly poison to worry about spoiled milk.
Lothar: Hey, the milk smells funny again, what's left to eat? Gunthar: All that's left are these berries that Motan gathered last week. Lothar: Didn't Motan just die the other day? Gunthar: Yup, spewing from both ends. Lothar:... *Holds nose* *Chugs spoiled milk*
*Later* Lotar: Well, that spoiled milk was so spoiled it turned into... something interesting. Let's call it Yogurt!
I don't want to be inconsiderate... but I really don't get it how could people be bullied and not respond to it.
I did respond to it. It's just that fighting back doesn't really work. I responded elsewhere that I was repeatedly disciplined by the school for daring to fight back, and other times I picked the wrong bully to stand up to who had gang-member cousins who would go out of their way to really hurt you. I'm talking about near hospitalization hurt you. Kind of like the whole 'snitches get stitches' insanity we have today. Cross one of our 'cuz' and get hurt.
Fighting back is the only way bullies will respect you and leave you alone.
Taught? No, I had first hand experience with 'fighting back'. I received detention at school for fighting back 152 times (trust me, there was a lawsuit by my parents, the quantity was checked) by the time I reached fifth grade. I didn't initiate a single fight. Let me tell you what would happen in middle school:
You get cornered in the hallway. You get 3-4 guys on you, and good luck fighting back then. So one day you have had enough and fight back, and guess what, you win the fight. In Hollywood, this is the cathartic point of the film and the bullied kid becomes the hero, the bully is dumped by his GF, and we are treated to a follow-up montage of how the kid went on to cure cancer and the bully became a prison guard and got shivved. Here is what happens to real people: The bully that lost gets his older cousin who is 19 and in 11th grade to catch the 12 year old at the playground. He and 4 of his friends (however many they can fit into the car) jump out and proceed to beat the crap out of the 12 year old until they have decided he learned his lesson.
I really don't think people understand how neglectful the adults in a school can be.
This isn't about the speech being offensive or not, it is about people not having the capability to retreat from the speech.
The best example I can give as to why this is not an attack on free speech is this:
Situation 1: A person on a soapbox with a megaphone in the town square. Situation 2: A person on a soapbox with a megaphone following you to school, at your locker, in your classroom, in the hallway, at recess, on the bus.
At what point do you propose that speech transitions into a felony akin to armed robbery? How do you make that distinction?...
In a manner similar to how we deal with most other forms of harassment. If the person asks you to stop, or reports your behavior as harassing, and you do not stop, that makes it a situation where you have to make an explicit attempt to violate the request that you stop. It takes an active step on the harrasser's end after they have been notified that their behavior is unwelcome.
If bullying-leads-to-suicide is a crime that justifies 5 years, does bullying-without-suicide justifies 1.5 years? I think not.
I don't see why we shouldn't consider lighter sentences for situations which result in less harm inflicted.
If you get drunk and push someone and they fall and break their arm, that's battery. If you get drunk and push someone and they fall and break their neck, that's manslaughter.
In both cases, the act was the same but the harm of that act was different. If you bully someone, and they commit suicide, and someone else bullies another person to the same extent, but that person doesn't commit suicide, perhaps instead of worrying that that other person got 'lucky' maybe you should reconsider engaging in reckless behavior. It is reckless, because you can't know the possible repercussions before hand. But again, punishment commensurate with harm is not a byproduct of an unjust system just because the same action can cause variable amounts of harm.
Not if the punishment is commensurate with the harm caused. With regard to armed robbery, as long as that was the only offense, the impact of the crime is of relatively short duration. It is theft of property under threat of violence. Assuming you can get over being threatened with violence, it's just theft of property, and the impact of the loss of that property (assuming total loss) to an individual is really a minor impact in the overall lifetime of the individual. Bullying can be threats of violence against an individual (like armed robbery), except it also often involves continued harassement, literal violence, and an implication that the threats/violence/harassement will continue, day after day, with no real way out.
Think of a kid who goes to school, maybe it is only once a week he is cornered and detained, physically attacked, perhaps robbed, and harassed. He lives in in a state of perpetual paranoia and emotional pain because he knows that it IS going to happen again, because it has happened many times before. Contrast that to someone mugging you on the street for your wallet. Frightening, maybe costly if you had much cash, and that moment might bother you for years to come.
I've survived an attempted kidnapping (age 11), and I've also been bullied (Ages 7-13). With regard to the kidnapping attempt, I can remember that the guy had curly hair, and the general gist of his conversation, I remember curling up in fear after he fled. But that's about it, I never really worried that he might be back or that I'd be kidnapped again. Yet for the bullying, I can remember every single person who was involved, their actions, their names, their faces. I'll withold their names, but I remember the one who would secretly punch me whenever the teacher turned away. I remember the one who would attack me in the stairwells. I remember the one who threatened to cut me for defending myself from another bully (his cousin). I remember the general taunter in my 7th grade Literature class. I remember the one who would punch me in the back during 6th grade science class. I remember the group who would gather during recess and select a person for 'Random Beatdowns' which were a staple in my school until they finally broke a kid's arm. There are more, but I think the point is made. One of the more vile ones died young, another is incarcerated for murder, none really amounted to much, but I still remember them, and I remember the absolute fear that I had in going to school because it was a place where there was no safety, and no means to defend yourself. Fight back, and you get punished, and the gang mentality kicks in and the bullying increases. (If you think fighting back is an option, you never went to an inner-city school, the only way out there is to 'gang' up, which of course, isn't really a good option).
The point is, here I am, 30 years later, and I can remember the fear, anxiety, fake sickness to avoid school, poor performance, and all of the other aspects of the bullying. But the kidnapping? It's a minor footnote in my memory, a story I tell from time to time when it suits the conversation. But if 30 years later I can pick up the newspaper and glance at an obituary and remember that he was the same guy that made my life hell for several years, I think it helps illustrate that the impacts from bullying are lasting because unlike something like being robbed, bullying isn't a one-off event and can persist for years.
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Just because you can, does not mean you should. You can lose bad in geo-politics by alienating your allies. What happens when we need that ally's support in negotiating a trade agreement? What happens when you need their support but you have burnt up feelings of good will?
Think of your best friend. Would he do a significant favor for you? You are asking a lot, but he trusts you.
Now violate his trust. Will he still do a favor for you? Why should he expose himself to harm again? Should he just trust you?
Trust is astoundingly fragile, and it takes a lot of work to earn in the first place. Earning it back after losing it is much harder if at all possible. In my life, I have never encountered a situation where it was more beneficial to violate the trust of a friend than it was to preserve that trust.
what is a range safety officer
It's a term used for the person who is ultimately responsible for maximizing safety at a 'range'. While others have pointed out that a Range Safety Officer is often the person responsible for safety at a shooting range, it is a general term and I'm most familiar with them at Test Ranges for government equipment.
This is in general, and sometimes the responsibilities are split to different roles, but in general: In order to maximize safety, it is the Range Safety Officer (or similar term) who has ultimate authority over any test being conducted. They are responsible for giving final approval to proceed with testing. Test Plans, Procedures, Inspection Reports, etc. All of these items should be reviewed by the Range Safety Officer (sometimes more than once, ie at Design Reviews, Test Readiness Reviews, pre-test, etc). Then it is the Range Safety Officer's responsibility to maintain oversight as the test proceeds to ensure that the procedures are being followed and that nothing is going on which may pose an unmitigated safety risk.
If the range safety officer decides to halt the test, the test halts. He has ultimate authority (and responsibility), and can overrride the Test Director if he feels that safety is being compromised. It's sometimes recommended that the safety officer be someone who is independent of the Test Director (or Program Manager). That way, they can feel free to abort a test without fear of reprisal or pressure to 'let things slide'.
That concept of ultimate authority and independence is important, and is why I brought it up with respect to court approval of warrants. A Safety Officer who feels pressured to compromise his goal of maximizing safety cannot effectively execute the duties of his position. In addition, a Safety Officer who becomes complacent (and it IS easy to have that happen), will increase the risk of safety incidents and thus be 'failing' in his job even though no safety incidents occur.
A judge which approves a warrant without reviewing it in an independent and thorough manner for each and every warrant is increasing the risk that a civil rights violation occurs. Even if no eventual violation occurs, the judge still failed in meeting the responsibilities of his position. When it comes to approving warrants, a judge is the judicial analog to a range safety officer.
I remember reading that someone called the police because someone stole his illegal drugs. The police _did_ arrest the thief. They also arrested the guy who called the police...
In the classic/maudlin/blackhumor fashion, the title of the article for that encounter should have been:
"And what did we learn..."
Change is the only constant.
and just repost every complaint about going to 1080p form 10 years ago? Jest replace 1080 with 4k.
Or flat screen with 4k. People are going to want 4k because it's stunning. If I had time I would look at the history of the loud complainers and see if they were the people saying no one would do HD or pay for a flat screen.
Stunning for what purpose? I have no content which will run on a 4k display. My video card cannot handle a game running at 4k resolution. I suppose I would like the increased desktop space, or if I did video/picture editing I'd like the resolution (but I do not do that). Would I LIKE a 4k screen? Yes, if all other things were equal, but they are not. Cost is a big factor, and to support a 4k screen, I'm going to have to upgrade several other components. My internet connection isn't good enough to stream 4k, my STB will need to be upgraded (additional monthly fee), my cable subscription will likely have a premium 4k tier (increased cost). Those are all going to be monthly increases in cost to me, and that's even before you consider the cost of replacing a current television which is 'good enough'.
I already am comfortable in streaming internet videos at resolutions which are 640x480. Is it ideal? Nope, but that's what the infrastructure supports, and that's how the content gets created. I liked 1080p because it helped with the 'pan-and-scan' issue that existed on movies, that's not exactly a problem anymore unless we were going to cinema aspect ratios with the 4k TVs and I don't think that's in the plans.
If there is no content, if there is no way to deliver the content, if my eyesight isn't getting any better, if my television is still working, what possible reason would there be for me (a typical viewer), to incur the cost?
(As an aside, my 50" plasma just broke on Monday, I haven't even considered a 4k replacement, what would I need it for?)
Try to get competent at it without breaking U.S. law. I believe the criminal trespass laws when into effect in 1984, and Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested under the DMCA when he went to DefCon after being granted a Visa for the purpose of attending the conference.
That isn't hard at all, as another poster pointed out, setup a lab in your basement with previous generation networking gear. $20,000 routers of that generation can be had for less than $100 bucks. Learn how to setup virtual machines and emulate a few hosts on the network, or just stick one or two old physical machines on it. Then practice.
But real cybersecurity is learning about CM, audits, tests, and lots of seemingly mundane boring activities and the regulations/policies which govern industries. Sign up for the DAU courses. The hardest part about getting good is biting the bullet and getting the new certifications. What are they now? CISSP? things like that.
There is absolutely ZERO need to get involved in criminal behavior to learn about IA/Cybersecurity. If you setup your own lab, you can do whatever you want to it and it isn't illegal. The concept that you need to have some sort of shady behavior to learn the skills is a copout and postfacto justification that blackhatters like to claim to assuage their own conscience.
For those of us born in the early 80s, we get to pick and choose the best parts of generation X and the millenials. We are the generation that fell through the cracks as far as media labeling is concerned. It's great!
Media complains about Generation X, we get to poke fun on our 'cloud' access devices.
Media complains about Millenials, we quickly skip to Nirvana in the playlist and scoff at this new generation.
Systems that were written largely by members of Generation X and marketed by Baby Boomers. But no, keep thinking that everything is the fault of which ever generation is the youngest.
Good point. I always shake my head at articles about how poor the millenial generation turned out. Isn't it the responsibility of the previous generation to guide the new generation? It's not like you are born with a life instruction manual. If there are problem with the current generation, the blame falls squarely on the preceeding generations. This is the world the millenials were born into, and they grew up with the guidance from the existing generations.
Like raising a dog, if it's ill-tempered, look to the owner.
I am familiar with IA, I work with it almost all the time, but it isn't my primary function. I'm currently in the market for a job in the SE Pennsylvania region AND I have a clearance. I think you are spot on with what the tasks are.
In SE PA there are a lot of medical companies, and thus their IA concerns relate to keeping their trade secrets secret, and even more importantly, keeping medical records secret. Unfortunately for me, I'd love to work for some of these companies, but damned if it's easy to meet their requirements.
Engineering? Check
IT systems? Rusty on the hands on work, but I mainly work architecture level designs.
Experience with medical systems? Umm no, sorry that's pretty specialized.
It's kind of like the Cheap, Fast, Reliable and other 'tri-feature' You pick two options. I can give you two, but that experience in medical systems always gets me. Unfortunately for a lot of these companies, a lot of the IA experience they ask for comes from the Defense industry, but rarely do we work with medical stuff.
I couldn't even reach the point where I was even affected by the overzealous editors. I quit long before that, and I'm sure a lot of potential editors never even got that far. It's not newbie friendly, and if you want new users, you need to have newbies.
1. The markup language. It's not as trivial to use as it should be. When I first started editing wikipedia, I figured I would start small with typo corrections, cleaning up wording, etc. It's a good thing that was my goal, because trying to figure out the process of editing and getting it looking right was a task in itself. If I were a regular person who noticed an error, or wanted to add a paragraph, by the time I figured out the markup language I'd have forgotten about the correction and probably lost interest.
2. Bots. Why is everything I change automatically reverted in a few minutes. I then have to figure out some weird protocol for defending my change on some specialized discussion page which I need to know the special rules for in order to comment and... you know what, it was just a typo, I don't care anymore
3. Deletion. Diskspace is cheap, if someone wants to devote their life to creating a series of articles on the twist and turns of the 3' wide stream behind his house, that's fine by me. But what the real problem is: Why should I risk learning the language, crafting a decent article with sources, putting it up and doing all that work... only to find out it's been deleted? No thanks, I'd rather go do something productive.
I quit (early on in wikipedia's lifetime) when a change I made when I noticed a typo in an article on the Constitution was reverted by a bot for lacking a source. My 'source' was a link to the actual photograph and transcription of the Constitution hosted on archives.gov
I just lost all motivation when I realized that I would have to 'fight' over the most trivial details.
You raise an interesting point: I've always been of the opinion that there should be a concept of 'blinders' for crime not related to the immediate emergency situation.
ie: If you call the police to report someone invading your home with a gun, you should not be afraid that when the police enter your home they will discover that you were involved in some other crime and charge you with that. The rationale behind my opinion is that I feel it is more important that people not be afraid to call the police than it is for every minor crime to be prosecuted.
Kind of like a prostitute hesitating to call the police when she gets beaten up by a client because she is afraid of being arrested for prostitution. I feel it is more important that the violent person be arrested.
The courts have long been like a Range Safety Officer who hasn't seen something go wrong in so long that they just skim the safety plans and supporting documentation.
The problem is that at least for the Range Safety Officers, when something goes wrong, the blame immediately falls on them. With the courts, it's not often easy to know when something goes wrong, and even when you do know, blame rarely falls back on the courts.
Buddy wants to work with high explosives in his garage,
Black powder is not a high explosive.
No, I've never heard that saying. Replace 'cunning' with 'nuttier' and that's the version I've heard.
Call me old fashioned, but I think I'll look fondly on the days when I could get a scratch on my watchband and not have my hand burst into flames as the battery fails.
Now take Samsung's watch. It SHOULD be the core of the system. It should have your CPU, storage, networking, etc, because it is a non-invasive device that billions of people are already used to wearing all day every day. It is the optimum form factor for having with you all the time everywhere you go (even while swimming, etc). But instead they made it a mere peripheral for their phones / tablets.
The watch should be the core of the system. You can do simple tasks with its small display, it can vibrate in different places (on the bottom of the band, in the watch, etc) in different patterns that could communicate a variety of things without any annoying sound effects (since it's on the wrist the vibration could be very light, unlike a cell phone which has to be felt through clothing, etc). Then if you need a bigger display, you grab a tablet IO device (a mere wireless peripheral for IO for your watch), or a device like Google Glass, or you simply output media from your watch to the nearest TV, etc
And here is where we disagree. The watch should be a peripheral due to several unavoidable drawbacks:
1. Heat - Have you ever felt how hot a phone can get when it's operating? It would get very uncomfortable to have that heat strapped on your wrist. I'd hate to start sweating because my cellWatch was doing some processing.
2. Batteries - All those extra features means power, and to get a usable life you need batteries. And putting those batteries on your arm is not going to be confortable or small.
3. Features and antennas take space - Features, processors, antennas, all have design considerations which take up space. Sure, you can get them into a phone form factor, but the phone form factor is still much larger than what you want to put on someone's wrist.
Personally, I think that a nearly dumb 'terminal' or thin-client interface on the wrist is the way to go. Because of number 4:
4: Interoperability and upgradeability: With a thin-client like interface, where the standalone phone does the heavy lifting, you allow people to use your iWatch thing with an assortment of phones, and they have the option to upgrade at a later date. As long as you provide a decent interface spec, the phones can come and go, be upgraded, repaired, traded, and so on without the user having to replace their watch. It give you the flexibility to introduce a lot of colors/shapes/sizes without having to literally rebuild a phone into each of your iWatch designs.
Sometimes the "angry commuter horn" means you're drifting into their lane and half a second from side-swiping them... ignoring it is a bad idea in that case.
Once my "angry commuter horn" meant "I'm hauling a load of cinderblocks, it's 10 degrees, and some psycho sprayed water on a steep downhill slope heading to an intersection"
Trust me, that wasn't a horn you wanted to tune out.
Here is my system for not being rude in today's "Tech-enhanced society":
I'll stick my phone in my pocket when I'm speaking with someone. It stays there, untouched, with the following exceptions:
1. Phone rings - I reach down in my pocket without breaking the conversation and tap a button to silence the call. Often I include "Excuse me." while I perform the action. I can check the call number later.
2. Phone rings again almost immediately - I tell the person, "It seems like someone really needs to get ahold of me. Please excuse me for a moment."
Pretty much anything else I'll leave to a 'Bathroom Break'.
Seems to be a courteous approach to me.
What were people using before that?
They were too busy figuring out which mushrooms and berries were deadly poison to worry about spoiled milk.
Lothar: Hey, the milk smells funny again, what's left to eat? ... *Holds nose* *Chugs spoiled milk*
Gunthar: All that's left are these berries that Motan gathered last week.
Lothar: Didn't Motan just die the other day?
Gunthar: Yup, spewing from both ends.
Lothar:
*Later*
Lotar: Well, that spoiled milk was so spoiled it turned into... something interesting. Let's call it Yogurt!
I don't want to be inconsiderate... but I really don't get it how could people be bullied and not respond to it.
I did respond to it. It's just that fighting back doesn't really work. I responded elsewhere that I was repeatedly disciplined by the school for daring to fight back, and other times I picked the wrong bully to stand up to who had gang-member cousins who would go out of their way to really hurt you. I'm talking about near hospitalization hurt you. Kind of like the whole 'snitches get stitches' insanity we have today. Cross one of our 'cuz' and get hurt.
Then you were taught wrong.
Fighting back is the only way bullies will respect you and leave you alone.
Taught? No, I had first hand experience with 'fighting back'. I received detention at school for fighting back 152 times (trust me, there was a lawsuit by my parents, the quantity was checked) by the time I reached fifth grade. I didn't initiate a single fight. Let me tell you what would happen in middle school:
You get cornered in the hallway. You get 3-4 guys on you, and good luck fighting back then. So one day you have had enough and fight back, and guess what, you win the fight. In Hollywood, this is the cathartic point of the film and the bullied kid becomes the hero, the bully is dumped by his GF, and we are treated to a follow-up montage of how the kid went on to cure cancer and the bully became a prison guard and got shivved. Here is what happens to real people: The bully that lost gets his older cousin who is 19 and in 11th grade to catch the 12 year old at the playground. He and 4 of his friends (however many they can fit into the car) jump out and proceed to beat the crap out of the 12 year old until they have decided he learned his lesson.
I really don't think people understand how neglectful the adults in a school can be.
Those are distinct crimes, but it's the chronic nature of them which makes them much more harmful than they would be if done individually.
This isn't about the speech being offensive or not, it is about people not having the capability to retreat from the speech.
The best example I can give as to why this is not an attack on free speech is this:
Situation 1: A person on a soapbox with a megaphone in the town square.
Situation 2: A person on a soapbox with a megaphone following you to school, at your locker, in your classroom, in the hallway, at recess, on the bus.
At what point do you propose that speech transitions into a felony akin to armed robbery? How do you make that distinction?...
In a manner similar to how we deal with most other forms of harassment. If the person asks you to stop, or reports your behavior as harassing, and you do not stop, that makes it a situation where you have to make an explicit attempt to violate the request that you stop. It takes an active step on the harrasser's end after they have been notified that their behavior is unwelcome.
If bullying-leads-to-suicide is a crime that justifies 5 years, does bullying-without-suicide justifies 1.5 years? I think not.
I don't see why we shouldn't consider lighter sentences for situations which result in less harm inflicted.
If you get drunk and push someone and they fall and break their arm, that's battery.
If you get drunk and push someone and they fall and break their neck, that's manslaughter.
In both cases, the act was the same but the harm of that act was different. If you bully someone, and they commit suicide, and someone else bullies another person to the same extent, but that person doesn't commit suicide, perhaps instead of worrying that that other person got 'lucky' maybe you should reconsider engaging in reckless behavior. It is reckless, because you can't know the possible repercussions before hand. But again, punishment commensurate with harm is not a byproduct of an unjust system just because the same action can cause variable amounts of harm.
It is wrong, but it trivialises harder crimes.
Not if the punishment is commensurate with the harm caused. With regard to armed robbery, as long as that was the only offense, the impact of the crime is of relatively short duration. It is theft of property under threat of violence. Assuming you can get over being threatened with violence, it's just theft of property, and the impact of the loss of that property (assuming total loss) to an individual is really a minor impact in the overall lifetime of the individual. Bullying can be threats of violence against an individual (like armed robbery), except it also often involves continued harassement, literal violence, and an implication that the threats/violence/harassement will continue, day after day, with no real way out.
Think of a kid who goes to school, maybe it is only once a week he is cornered and detained, physically attacked, perhaps robbed, and harassed. He lives in in a state of perpetual paranoia and emotional pain because he knows that it IS going to happen again, because it has happened many times before. Contrast that to someone mugging you on the street for your wallet. Frightening, maybe costly if you had much cash, and that moment might bother you for years to come.
I've survived an attempted kidnapping (age 11), and I've also been bullied (Ages 7-13). With regard to the kidnapping attempt, I can remember that the guy had curly hair, and the general gist of his conversation, I remember curling up in fear after he fled. But that's about it, I never really worried that he might be back or that I'd be kidnapped again. Yet for the bullying, I can remember every single person who was involved, their actions, their names, their faces. I'll withold their names, but I remember the one who would secretly punch me whenever the teacher turned away. I remember the one who would attack me in the stairwells. I remember the one who threatened to cut me for defending myself from another bully (his cousin). I remember the general taunter in my 7th grade Literature class. I remember the one who would punch me in the back during 6th grade science class. I remember the group who would gather during recess and select a person for 'Random Beatdowns' which were a staple in my school until they finally broke a kid's arm. There are more, but I think the point is made. One of the more vile ones died young, another is incarcerated for murder, none really amounted to much, but I still remember them, and I remember the absolute fear that I had in going to school because it was a place where there was no safety, and no means to defend yourself. Fight back, and you get punished, and the gang mentality kicks in and the bullying increases. (If you think fighting back is an option, you never went to an inner-city school, the only way out there is to 'gang' up, which of course, isn't really a good option).
The point is, here I am, 30 years later, and I can remember the fear, anxiety, fake sickness to avoid school, poor performance, and all of the other aspects of the bullying. But the kidnapping? It's a minor footnote in my memory, a story I tell from time to time when it suits the conversation. But if 30 years later I can pick up the newspaper and glance at an obituary and remember that he was the same guy that made my life hell for several years, I think it helps illustrate that the impacts from bullying are lasting because unlike something like being robbed, bullying isn't a one-off event and can persist for years.