I agree evolving the comments is good. I like the promise of disquss but it haven't gained enough traction. I don't trust a commenting system that exists outside my blog. The unreliability of services others provide isn't acceptable to me (look at how many services Google has abandoned - trusting that things will exist doesn't seem wise).
The ability to comment on a blog and have that comment shared (say via Google+ or Disqus or something) seems like it would be nice (but leave the comment in the blog itself so if Google pulls a Google and shutters their commenting everything isn't lost). It would also be great to be able to track comments for a specific person. I find it so annoying I post some of my comments on an old blogger blog I had so I can find them later, if I wanted.
Comments sparked by: How WordPress Comments are Evolving
Related: Your Online Presence and Social Networks for Managers - John Hunter online
Friday, August 02, 2013
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Living Through Your Society Becoming a Police State
I don't like the USA government hiding its actions from the citizens of the USA. I don't believe claims that most of what is hidden is for national security reasons. It is hidden for the simple reason that it is politically unacceptable to admit what they are doing and so they seek to hide what they are doing. Doing so is extremely damaging as it will force us to distrust the government's claims on national security. When you abuse national security for political expediency it is exactly like the children's story of crying wolf. When you hide your politically unpopular decisions behind a fake cry of wolf eventually people won't believe your claims - even when they are true. If you care about national security you cannot allow it to be sacrificed for political expediency.
Governing is hard. When you give in to political expediency instead of dealing with the hard challenges you sacrifice the future of the country so you can avoid having to confront the challenges. It is easy to see why people would make this choice. But it does great damage to the country.
I fear we are entering a phase where the government will move to more and more McCarthyist tactics to hide their actions: using threats against those seeking to hold the government accountable, deploying the police powers of the state against those who find their policies unconstitutional but for which the government has no right to investigate (until you accept the police state arguments that we can do whatever we want because we have police state powers that we granted ourselves secretly and no one is allowed to talk about it, character assassination of those that question the powers that be, granting powers to those that will support the policies...).
We don't have a great track record in the last 100 years. So most likely we will once again allow government to do horrendous stuff that a few decades later we say "oh boy that was bad, but it was a long time ago" (look at all the people we used the FBI to spy on and intimidate in the last 100 years including the only person we named a national holiday in honor of in the last 100 years - Martin Luther King). I always wondered how those people could sit by and watch Japanese Internment, McCarthyism, massive FBI abuses...
Now I am living through it and I see how easy it is for those with power to seize control of a society and make it into something anyone looking back on would be thinking "how could they allow such things to happen."
Related: Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - NSA and the Pandora’s box of surveillance by Jack Shafer - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA - The TSA doesn’t give a hoot about security
Governing is hard. When you give in to political expediency instead of dealing with the hard challenges you sacrifice the future of the country so you can avoid having to confront the challenges. It is easy to see why people would make this choice. But it does great damage to the country.
I fear we are entering a phase where the government will move to more and more McCarthyist tactics to hide their actions: using threats against those seeking to hold the government accountable, deploying the police powers of the state against those who find their policies unconstitutional but for which the government has no right to investigate (until you accept the police state arguments that we can do whatever we want because we have police state powers that we granted ourselves secretly and no one is allowed to talk about it, character assassination of those that question the powers that be, granting powers to those that will support the policies...).
We don't have a great track record in the last 100 years. So most likely we will once again allow government to do horrendous stuff that a few decades later we say "oh boy that was bad, but it was a long time ago" (look at all the people we used the FBI to spy on and intimidate in the last 100 years including the only person we named a national holiday in honor of in the last 100 years - Martin Luther King). I always wondered how those people could sit by and watch Japanese Internment, McCarthyism, massive FBI abuses...
Now I am living through it and I see how easy it is for those with power to seize control of a society and make it into something anyone looking back on would be thinking "how could they allow such things to happen."
Related: Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - NSA and the Pandora’s box of surveillance by Jack Shafer - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA - The TSA doesn’t give a hoot about security
Saturday, July 20, 2013
SWAT Culture
Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?
We need police to return to the thinking that makes them an important aid to society. The best work in this area that I know of is: Improving Police by the former police chief of Madison, Wisconsin.
Related: The System is Broken: SWAT Raids - Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures - More SWAT Failures - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA
The numbers are staggering. In the early 1980s, there were about 3,000 SWAT "call-outs" per year across the entire country. By 2005, there were an estimated 50,000. In New York City alone, there were 1,447 drug raids 1994. By 2002, eight years later, there were 5,117 -- a 350 percent increase. In 1984, about a fourth of towns between 25,000-50,000 people had a SWAT team. By 2005, it was 80 percent.This is a very sad state of affairs. Our police departments have lost a view of themselves as members of society aimed at promoting peace and liberty. The SWAT militarization is one outcome of this cultural mindset. Infringing on photographers rights (even violently at times) and destroying evidence of criminal action in doing so is all too common. There are still a majority of police that have not adopted the burnt earth mentality of enforcement but the overwhelming reliance on militaristic thinking has damaged the good will that good efforts provide. This cultural change is extreme and very damaging to society.
Today, the use of this sort of force is in too many jurisdictions the first option for serving search warrants instead of the last. SWAT teams today are used to break up poker games and massage parlors, for immigration enforcement, even to perform regulatory inspections.
We need police to return to the thinking that makes them an important aid to society. The best work in this area that I know of is: Improving Police by the former police chief of Madison, Wisconsin.
Related: The System is Broken: SWAT Raids - Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures - More SWAT Failures - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
USA Universities Are Poorly Managed - Due to a Failure to Focus on the Value Stream
The cost of education in the USA has exploded over the last few decades. Has this been due to spending on improving the quality of education? No. Huge expenditures go to trophy buildings, huge paychecks to administrators, football coaches and other non-educators. Most large schools pay more to multiple assistant football coaches than anyone involved in educating students.
The ballooning expenses are extremely poor management of the value chain. The schools are spending millions because administrators like the boondoggles and couldn't care less about education (actions matter far more to me that words, I don't' care that you say you care about education if you spend money of non-education and pile that burden on those seeking education you are anti-education).
What's Really 'Immoral' About Student Loans
The ballooning expenses are extremely poor management of the value chain. The schools are spending millions because administrators like the boondoggles and couldn't care less about education (actions matter far more to me that words, I don't' care that you say you care about education if you spend money of non-education and pile that burden on those seeking education you are anti-education).
What's Really 'Immoral' About Student Loans
According to a recent study by Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan at Flint, between 1978 and 2011 college tuition in the U.S. increased at an annual rate of 7.45%, vastly exceeding the rate of inflation and the almost-stagnant rate of growth in family incomes.Related: The Poor Paying for Vocational High School Education - Looking at the Value of Different College Degrees - Penn State Scandal is Horrendous and Points to the Very Deep Corruption of Our Leaders - Ackoff: Schools Are Not Led By Those Most Concerned with Education (they are led by those most concerned with themselves.
Colleges have responded to the availability of easy federal money by doing what subsidized industries generally do: Raising prices to capture the subsidy.
If we want to solve the very real problem of excessive student-loan debt, college costs need to be brought under control. A 2010 study by the Goldwater Institute identified "administrative bloat" as a leading reason for higher costs. The study found that many American universities now have more salaried administrators than teaching faculty.
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Library for All
There are many efforts looking at providing access to content to those in the developing world. We can use all sorts of good efforts to make the world a better place. The Library for All is another good effort.
Related: Letting Children Learn – Hole in the Wall Computers - Given Tablets but No Teachers, Kids Teach Themselves – Having Never Seen Advanced Technology Before - Providing Computers to Remote Students in Nepal - Action Is More Important Than Sympathy - You Can Help Reduce Extreme Poverty
Thursday, July 04, 2013
I Can Spy on You, But You Can't Spy on Me
It seems to me there are numerous essentially vassal states of the USA that adopt largely whatever measures the USA really presses them on - for security or enforcing extremely long and counterproductive copyrights (the system doesn't do what it was suppose to do - instead has been turned into a system to help a few big business copyright cartel companies that give USA politicians lots of cash) but he USA has pretty much dictated legislation to numerous other nations that have capitulated.
I don't have much info but my impression is that states like Canada, UK, Germany and Australia are pretty much going to let the USA have whatever it wants. If they seek to avoid being vassal states to the USA it seems to me you have to chose a legal system and government that have shown some ability to stand up to USA pressure. I have thought this would be a smart thing for some countries to do for years but I haven't noticed any countries interested in taking on this role.
Germans accuse U.S. of Stasi tactics before Obama visit. My guess is Germany does nothing, other than making a few harmless noises. Pretty much Europe has been limited to voicing a bit of displeasure occasionally but for anything that requires action they act like a vassal state and go along with the USA (which often means big USA campaign contributors). Maybe Germany, or others, will want to step out from the shadow they have been in basically since the end of World War II, but I doubt it. There just haven't been any significant examples.
My guess is eventually some nations will, but my guess it will be nations that are not so tied to the USA and that can play the USA and China against each other to refuse to be a vassal to either one (but that is just a wild guess). How much longer it will take is the question. Or maybe people will just end up choosing between which police state policies they want to accept USA, China or some other one. Maybe countries like Canada will be like flavors of Linux so Canada is USA vassal but actually refuses to go along with a couple minor points here or there (and if you care most about those minor points you chose Canada).
It will be interesting to see if any nation stands up to the USA spying on their citizens. It doesn't seem too likely - other than a few oddballs that don't expect the USA the USA could do anything more to them, short to attacking the country militarily, and figure that isn't likely. It is odd to hear the USA talk about China tech companies facilitating Chinese government spying and then give secret order that the USA tech companies (or librarians) are not allowed to disclose that result in spying on citizens of other countries (and citizens of the USA).
Other than might makes right I don't exactly understand the philosophical system the idea that "you can't spy on us but we of spy on whoever we want"?
Here is one example of the perniciousness of the spying: U.S. officials sent back to German Facebook-mails. If you want to argue that we have to ignore Jefferson, Franklin, Patrick Henry, etc. due to big huge scary risks you must not abuse the spying for trivial matters. Yes, government agencies get caught up in their own fear mongering and grabs for power (which is one reason most sensible people and bright people don't trust government to gain absolute power to spy on citizens) and start to believe silly things like their security theatre is related to what they said the constitution needed to be abandoned to protect us from big scary things. If you use the abdication of liberty to block people from violating minor rules (such as working without a permit - the link above) in my mind you forfeit the right to claim your constitution defying actions are needed for a more important purpose.
Related: Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions - Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Liberty Again Denied, It is Sad How Little We Seem to Care - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA (May 2013)
I don't have much info but my impression is that states like Canada, UK, Germany and Australia are pretty much going to let the USA have whatever it wants. If they seek to avoid being vassal states to the USA it seems to me you have to chose a legal system and government that have shown some ability to stand up to USA pressure. I have thought this would be a smart thing for some countries to do for years but I haven't noticed any countries interested in taking on this role.
Germans accuse U.S. of Stasi tactics before Obama visit. My guess is Germany does nothing, other than making a few harmless noises. Pretty much Europe has been limited to voicing a bit of displeasure occasionally but for anything that requires action they act like a vassal state and go along with the USA (which often means big USA campaign contributors). Maybe Germany, or others, will want to step out from the shadow they have been in basically since the end of World War II, but I doubt it. There just haven't been any significant examples.
My guess is eventually some nations will, but my guess it will be nations that are not so tied to the USA and that can play the USA and China against each other to refuse to be a vassal to either one (but that is just a wild guess). How much longer it will take is the question. Or maybe people will just end up choosing between which police state policies they want to accept USA, China or some other one. Maybe countries like Canada will be like flavors of Linux so Canada is USA vassal but actually refuses to go along with a couple minor points here or there (and if you care most about those minor points you chose Canada).
It will be interesting to see if any nation stands up to the USA spying on their citizens. It doesn't seem too likely - other than a few oddballs that don't expect the USA the USA could do anything more to them, short to attacking the country militarily, and figure that isn't likely. It is odd to hear the USA talk about China tech companies facilitating Chinese government spying and then give secret order that the USA tech companies (or librarians) are not allowed to disclose that result in spying on citizens of other countries (and citizens of the USA).
Other than might makes right I don't exactly understand the philosophical system the idea that "you can't spy on us but we of spy on whoever we want"?
Here is one example of the perniciousness of the spying: U.S. officials sent back to German Facebook-mails. If you want to argue that we have to ignore Jefferson, Franklin, Patrick Henry, etc. due to big huge scary risks you must not abuse the spying for trivial matters. Yes, government agencies get caught up in their own fear mongering and grabs for power (which is one reason most sensible people and bright people don't trust government to gain absolute power to spy on citizens) and start to believe silly things like their security theatre is related to what they said the constitution needed to be abandoned to protect us from big scary things. If you use the abdication of liberty to block people from violating minor rules (such as working without a permit - the link above) in my mind you forfeit the right to claim your constitution defying actions are needed for a more important purpose.
Related: Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions - Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Liberty Again Denied, It is Sad How Little We Seem to Care - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA (May 2013)
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Blog Readers (for Reading RSS Feeds)
RSS feed readers are the best way to keep up with blogs you want to read, in my opinion. You subscribe to those blogs you want to follow and can group them into categories (management, engineering, travel, investing, funny, etc.). Google Reader become the most popular way to manage your subscriptions. But Google is closing down reader this week.
If you read blogs and are not using a RSS feed reader you really should try using a reader. It something I can't imagine doing without.
Thankfully one of the things Google does well is to let you retrieve the data you put into there various products. So you can download your subscriptions (which you should do). But now you are left to go find a replacement.
Last year I got Reeder to improve the experience of reading my feeds. But Reeder used Google Reader as the database for blogs you subscribe. I still like them, but they have done a pretty horrible job of providing details on what you are suppose to do given the imminent demise of Google Reader. I might just drop using Reeder.
The best option I found for me, is The Old Reader (which is super easy to setup and import your Google Reader setting from). I would make sure whatever option you chose has an export option (to get your subscriptions out). Some companies do not support good export options - I would pass on those companies products (for readers and other things).
Options include:
If you read blogs and are not using a RSS feed reader you really should try using a reader. It something I can't imagine doing without.
Thankfully one of the things Google does well is to let you retrieve the data you put into there various products. So you can download your subscriptions (which you should do). But now you are left to go find a replacement.
Last year I got Reeder to improve the experience of reading my feeds. But Reeder used Google Reader as the database for blogs you subscribe. I still like them, but they have done a pretty horrible job of providing details on what you are suppose to do given the imminent demise of Google Reader. I might just drop using Reeder.
The best option I found for me, is The Old Reader (which is super easy to setup and import your Google Reader setting from). I would make sure whatever option you chose has an export option (to get your subscriptions out). Some companies do not support good export options - I would pass on those companies products (for readers and other things).
Options include:
-
Top choices:
- Update (2014): I now use inoreader.
- NetNewsWire - [new addition] - free and open source RSS reader for Mac, iPhone, and iPad
- The Old Reader - easy import, provides export, free, web based
- Feedly - easy import, web based (and plugins), also has Android and iOS apps, can integrate with Reeder (and other front ends), $6/m (2022)
- Feedbin - $5 a month (2022), integrates with numerous front ends Including Reeder) More choices:
- NewsBlur - free version (then $3+ /month), web based and iOS and Android apps.
- Reeder - iOS and Mac front end to access your feeds (looks like they are going to allow some backend options but the information is sparse (Feedly is one option)
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Separated Bike Lanes Reduced Injuries by 45% and Increased Retail Sales 49% (for nearby stores)
Results from first protected bicycle lane in the US: 8th and 9th Avenues (Manhattan):
- Injuries reduced 45%
- Retail sales increased 49% (near the new lane, compared to 3% increase for the whole "borough" - essentially the large surrounding area)
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Police State
The USA (and maybe other countries) seem to think that police states are only police states if the police are consciously, actively, only interested in evil. Most of those creating and maintaining police states are not evil. They are just doing what they can within the system. The individual actions make sense to someone trying to do good. They just neglect liberty a bit in order to get things done and then a bit more and then a bit more but don't see themselves as creating a new police state.
The USA constitution has fairly good protections in place. McCarthyism gives a extremely clear example of the dangers when those with power allow a few to abuse the system. And we have many more than a few abusing the system now.
I doubt most of those in the KGB wanted the KGB to have more and more power to be evil. They wanted the KGB to have more and more power because they saw challenges to what the KGB wanted to accomplish and giving the KGB more power would help. And they really believed that this would be good for people. If they could just stop the troublemakers then thing would be better.
I believe most of those required to carry out the security theatre of the TSA are repulsed by what they have to do. They need a job though. And so they do what people do in those situations they justify the behavior to themselves. They attempt to justify their behavior to themselves in order to make it tolerable to participate in such behavior. Many will suffer as the attempts to mask their true feelings are far from perfect. A few will actually enjoy mistreating others. And some will not see a problem - there are plenty of people that happily go along with things many others believe they have to be corrupt to go along with (but that assumption is wrong, they see things differently and most often have overly simplistic world views that work pretty well for keeping them happy, I just do what the TSA tells me and whatever they tell me must be good because they are in charge).
Not that this is 100% of what everyone thought that everyday, but this is the main model of those police states. Sure you have a few deranged people that see a system ripe for abuse and they have power and take advantage of it. And sure, authoritarian police state administration will attract more power hungry psychopaths that don't have much respect for individual liberty. But I still think the main force is just people trying to get by and if the rules are such that authoritarianism and disrespect for individual liberty are allowed they go along because such thinking has been made acceptable (not because they think they are being evil and they like it).
The police state apparatus builds an ethos that freedom is risky and must be monitored - not to be evil - but to help. Those in the USA perpetuating the police state are not doing so to promote big brother government. They just got trapped into a system where they see the dangers of freedom and they believe they are on the site of right and good.
The danger of authoritarian government was understood. The constitution puts barriers in place to protect society. But those with power see the barriers are mere inconviences to avoid. In the last 10 years the extent of our slip into a police state has been dramatic and is critically dangerous to our society. But the most important point is once you reach a point where this is beyond all reasonable debate it is far far far too late. Corruption of liberty must be addressed early on. If the police state is allowed to grow it becomes nearly impossible to turn back. I fear we are already too late in the USA. But who knows where that fulcrum really is. Maybe we are not too late.
Totalitarian thinkers don't like freedom of citizens, so they are likely to outlaw using tech that doesn't allow the police state full access. So the most totalitarian states won't allow citizens legal access to protection from the state. My guess is many states are going to take extreme totalitarian views on this. It sure seems the USA couldn't be more totalitarianism in their current stance on this issue. It appears to be that you have no rights to freedom if technology is involved.
It is hard to separate that thinking from evil-big-brother-thinking but I think it is a mistake to think that those wanting big brother style government intrusion think they are trying to create the big-brother-government from Orwell's 1984. They have convinced themselves that really we are just trying to get a bit of information why can't you just trust us to be different than all those warnings you have that actions such as ours (police state) are bad. We are not like all those others that did it for bad reasons (either in history of literature) we are doing so because how else can we control dangerous risks. This is true for the SWAT team members crashing into innocent people's houses over and over and over. And it is true for the politicians that really seem unable to both appeal to voters and think effectively about policy.
And is probably most true for leaders of those at the DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA, NSC and in the White House. They are so fearful of all the risk and they have so much trust of their government organizations that they can't see the obvious comparison of what they have created and a police state. They know they will be blamed if catastrophes happen. Eliminating the risks of those events in the short term is nearly 100% of their focus. Concerns about individual liberty just don't enter their thoughts. They don't see themselves as big brother. They see that as ludicrous, not worthy of consideration. Certainly not something to moderate their behavior. That is the risk. That is the danger. And we have already created such a powerful police state that dialing back the big brother thinking is going to be extremely difficult, if it is possible at all.
The recent news on the NSA has sparked outrage and fear but this doesn't seem like much news to me. The police state mentality of the last 10+ years has carried with it this type of thinking. I find many of the previous revelations much more troubling than this latest one.
Related: Librarians Standing Up to the Madness (2009) - Freedom Increasingly at Risk (2008) - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA - Watching the Watchmen (2008) - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment (2007) - Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures (2007) - Lawmakers now use so much 1984 Orwellian speak you can't trust what they say (2005) (check them with trustworthy authorities EFF and others)
The USA constitution has fairly good protections in place. McCarthyism gives a extremely clear example of the dangers when those with power allow a few to abuse the system. And we have many more than a few abusing the system now.
I doubt most of those in the KGB wanted the KGB to have more and more power to be evil. They wanted the KGB to have more and more power because they saw challenges to what the KGB wanted to accomplish and giving the KGB more power would help. And they really believed that this would be good for people. If they could just stop the troublemakers then thing would be better.
I believe most of those required to carry out the security theatre of the TSA are repulsed by what they have to do. They need a job though. And so they do what people do in those situations they justify the behavior to themselves. They attempt to justify their behavior to themselves in order to make it tolerable to participate in such behavior. Many will suffer as the attempts to mask their true feelings are far from perfect. A few will actually enjoy mistreating others. And some will not see a problem - there are plenty of people that happily go along with things many others believe they have to be corrupt to go along with (but that assumption is wrong, they see things differently and most often have overly simplistic world views that work pretty well for keeping them happy, I just do what the TSA tells me and whatever they tell me must be good because they are in charge).
Not that this is 100% of what everyone thought that everyday, but this is the main model of those police states. Sure you have a few deranged people that see a system ripe for abuse and they have power and take advantage of it. And sure, authoritarian police state administration will attract more power hungry psychopaths that don't have much respect for individual liberty. But I still think the main force is just people trying to get by and if the rules are such that authoritarianism and disrespect for individual liberty are allowed they go along because such thinking has been made acceptable (not because they think they are being evil and they like it).
The police state apparatus builds an ethos that freedom is risky and must be monitored - not to be evil - but to help. Those in the USA perpetuating the police state are not doing so to promote big brother government. They just got trapped into a system where they see the dangers of freedom and they believe they are on the site of right and good.
The danger of authoritarian government was understood. The constitution puts barriers in place to protect society. But those with power see the barriers are mere inconviences to avoid. In the last 10 years the extent of our slip into a police state has been dramatic and is critically dangerous to our society. But the most important point is once you reach a point where this is beyond all reasonable debate it is far far far too late. Corruption of liberty must be addressed early on. If the police state is allowed to grow it becomes nearly impossible to turn back. I fear we are already too late in the USA. But who knows where that fulcrum really is. Maybe we are not too late.
Totalitarian thinkers don't like freedom of citizens, so they are likely to outlaw using tech that doesn't allow the police state full access. So the most totalitarian states won't allow citizens legal access to protection from the state. My guess is many states are going to take extreme totalitarian views on this. It sure seems the USA couldn't be more totalitarianism in their current stance on this issue. It appears to be that you have no rights to freedom if technology is involved.
It is hard to separate that thinking from evil-big-brother-thinking but I think it is a mistake to think that those wanting big brother style government intrusion think they are trying to create the big-brother-government from Orwell's 1984. They have convinced themselves that really we are just trying to get a bit of information why can't you just trust us to be different than all those warnings you have that actions such as ours (police state) are bad. We are not like all those others that did it for bad reasons (either in history of literature) we are doing so because how else can we control dangerous risks. This is true for the SWAT team members crashing into innocent people's houses over and over and over. And it is true for the politicians that really seem unable to both appeal to voters and think effectively about policy.
And is probably most true for leaders of those at the DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA, NSC and in the White House. They are so fearful of all the risk and they have so much trust of their government organizations that they can't see the obvious comparison of what they have created and a police state. They know they will be blamed if catastrophes happen. Eliminating the risks of those events in the short term is nearly 100% of their focus. Concerns about individual liberty just don't enter their thoughts. They don't see themselves as big brother. They see that as ludicrous, not worthy of consideration. Certainly not something to moderate their behavior. That is the risk. That is the danger. And we have already created such a powerful police state that dialing back the big brother thinking is going to be extremely difficult, if it is possible at all.
The recent news on the NSA has sparked outrage and fear but this doesn't seem like much news to me. The police state mentality of the last 10+ years has carried with it this type of thinking. I find many of the previous revelations much more troubling than this latest one.
Related: Librarians Standing Up to the Madness (2009) - Freedom Increasingly at Risk (2008) - Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA - Watching the Watchmen (2008) - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment (2007) - Failure to Address Systemic SWAT Raid Failures (2007) - Lawmakers now use so much 1984 Orwellian speak you can't trust what they say (2005) (check them with trustworthy authorities EFF and others)
Saturday, June 08, 2013
We Should Build Secure Software Systems
Once again Bruce Schneier is insightful and provides much more sensible advice than that given by the homeland-security-complex that spends billions to provide massively inconvenient and ineffective security theatre.
It's impossible to build a communications system that allows the FBI surreptitious access but doesn't allow similar access by others.
Related: Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions - The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through - Bad Security on Government Required RFID e-passports
It's impossible to build a communications system that allows the FBI surreptitious access but doesn't allow similar access by others.
The FBI wants a new law that will make it easier to wiretap the Internet. Although its claim is that the new law will only maintain the status quo, it's really much worse than that. This law will result in less-secure Internet products and create a foreign industry in more-secure alternatives. It will impose costly burdens on affected companies. It will assist totalitarian governments in spying on their own citizens. And it won't do much to hinder actual criminals and terrorists.
...
When it comes to security, we have two options: We can build our systems to be as secure as possible from eavesdropping, or we can deliberately weaken their security. We have to choose one or the other.
Related: Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions - The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through - Bad Security on Government Required RFID e-passports
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Security Theatre Thinking is Damaging the USA
The simplistic security theatre thinking that pervades USA actions for "homeland security" is damaging to society and ineffective at providing security. Two extremely important aspects are the trumping of liberty by bureaucrats focused on theatre and their own power and control over those they are suppose to serve and disrespect for evidence based thinking.
The high school girl arrested for an school experiment gone wrong wrote a great article: Why a Science Experiment Gone Bad Doesn't Make Me a Criminal
The security theatre and SWAT team thinking pervades our policing today. We desperately need to learn from those like former Madison, Wisconsin chief of Police, David Couper a much better way of thinking for policing society.
Related: Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through - Exposing Bad Behavior
The high school girl arrested for an school experiment gone wrong wrote a great article: Why a Science Experiment Gone Bad Doesn't Make Me a Criminal
I was really hurt and scared. I was crying. They didn't read me any rights. They arrested me after sitting in the office for a couple minutes. They handcuffed me. It cut my wrist, and really hurt sitting on my hands behind my back. They took me to a juvenile assessment center. I was sitting in this room with no clock so it felt like years of me sitting there. When my mom came, she didn't say anything. She just had this really disappointed look, and told me I lost privileges. But she's really been supportive of me. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't have my mom.We need our watchman to care about our society. We need them to see themselves as servants of society. We don't need bullies. We need to stop accepting horrible practices from proponents of security theatre and we need to find watchmen in the vein of Sheriff Taylor not those that see SWAT teams as a sensible reaction thousands of times a year.
The security theatre and SWAT team thinking pervades our policing today. We desperately need to learn from those like former Madison, Wisconsin chief of Police, David Couper a much better way of thinking for policing society.
Related: Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through - Exposing Bad Behavior
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Governments Shouldn't Prevent Citizens from Having Secure Software Solutions
It has always seen obvious to me if you force a system to be designed to have a backdoor (to allow spying) that you have created a security hole. It seems to me these security holes are being misused all over the world by governments and others.
How the FBI’s online wiretapping plan could get your computer hacked
Certainly in the USA I can't see any reason why we should accept insecure software solutions because the government wants to be able to spy more readily. If they governments track record showed a respect for citizens rights maybe I would consider the tradeoff worth debating but given the realities of how poorly the government has explained their spying so far I don't see any reason to even consider crippling the security of USA citizens.
I am not as familiar with other countries - if their constitution have liberty as secondary and authoritarianism is accepted then sure crippling citizens security to make the state have an easier time of spying would be consistent. I don't see how it is arguably consistent with the US constitution.
I said, after 9-11, that if the government actually believes terrorism is a critical threat they had to extremely careful to not use fear as an excuse for non-terrorist related restrictions on liberty. Human history has shown governments abuse power. The US Constitution was created with this in mind. If you want to have citizens except restrictions on liberty their is an huge duty to provide evidence you are not just going to be like almost every other instance where government abused the power. Failing to do so, would mean people have to restrict government abuse, even at the risk of security.
The obligation was on government to show how seriously they took the risk to behave differently and not abuse the power they had. Instead the last two administration have been worse than any other (with the possible exception of the Nixon administration) with respect to abusing the liberty of citizens. This is a very sad state of affairs. They have chosen to rely on the ability of fear mongering, hiding behind false claims of "necessary secrecy" and the ability so many previous governments have had to take away liberty and get away with it (McCarthyism, KGB, all sorts of dictators that either the USA supported or apposed over the last 50 years and many many more). The problem with this option is that the citizens suffer while the bureaucracies get what they want. This isn't a good model. And it means thinking people should appose the government as they attempt to impose such models on their country.
Both administrations have done an absolutely atrocious job of making the case they would avoid political and authoritarian abuse while claiming terrorist justify the governments actions (Orwellian "Free Speech Zones" violate the constitution, Systemic SWAT RAID Failures, Watching the Watchmen, 2/3rd of USA Population Lives in Limited Constitutional Rights Zone According the Obama Administration - the DoJ is secretly enabling AT&T and others to evade wiretapping laws, Bikinis For Liberty, Our Internet Surveillance State, Justice Department Subpoena of AP Journalists Shows Need to Protect Calling Records). They consistently abuse liberty, using fear mongering and have lost any reasonable claim that their claims should treated as trust-worthly without much more evidence than they have been providing. Sadly it is not surprising that neither administration could put the security of the country before their personal interests, but the evidence is clear that they did not do so.
That evidence means we risk further losses to liberty without any evidence that security (rather than politics and the frequent tendency for bureaucracies to desire absolute power) will be enhanced.
I do think lots of great things are done to fight real threats. And those had been done for decades prior to 9-11. Some of the additional measures after 9-11 were wise. Huge amounts of the efforts are mainly about security theatre and gaining bureaucrats power at the expense of the liberty of citizens. This path is not one we should continue to reward. Sadly we currently are mainly going along with the politicians who have a long track record of being anti-liberty.
Relying on demagoguery and people accepting the government taking away their liberty does have a long history of working for governments. Relying on that risks the citizens getting so tired of government abuse of liberty that the citizens react by not only taking away the governments power to judiciously use power but take away significant sensible powers from government also. I fear that is where we are headed. This is the result of two administrations failing to take security seriously and instead just behaving as so many governments have in the past to amass bureaucratic power at the expense of citizens and the country.
It is a lot to ask those in government to put the well being of the country above the human nature to abuse power. It has certainly been far too much for the last two administrations to make it a priority to prevent abuse because the risks of doing so were so high.
The anti-liberty side is definitely winning. I hope we turn it around before I have to see how people must have felt as they experienced similar failures of will in the past (such as McCarthyism). But I think we may well have already past that point. It is just a matter of time before we have the distance of time to acknowledge and accept how horribly we have failed yet again to prevent abuse of power to go to extremes that are nearly incomprehensible looking back on them later. I remember thinking how unbelievably pitiful it was that the USA allowed McCarthyism to take place, yet not much later we are well on our way to repeating the same types of failures (though, as always, the exact clothing the abuse of power takes is somewhat different).
Related: Librarians Standing Up to the Madness - Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots - Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Liberty Again Denied, It is Sad How Little We Seem to Care
They make it easier for the U.S. government to spy on the bad guys. But they also make it easier for the bad guys to hack our computers and spy on us. And, the researchers say, the Internet’s decentralized architecture makes it particularly hard to build effective and secure wiretapping capabilities online.The track record of governments worldwide using these backdoors properly seems very poor to me. They make up tiny exceptions for when they will supposedly spy and then use the backdoor they created far more often. Then you have funny situations where the different governments expect their spying to be respected by everyone but don't like it if other governments want to have backdoors to allow spying themselves.
Certainly in the USA I can't see any reason why we should accept insecure software solutions because the government wants to be able to spy more readily. If they governments track record showed a respect for citizens rights maybe I would consider the tradeoff worth debating but given the realities of how poorly the government has explained their spying so far I don't see any reason to even consider crippling the security of USA citizens.
I am not as familiar with other countries - if their constitution have liberty as secondary and authoritarianism is accepted then sure crippling citizens security to make the state have an easier time of spying would be consistent. I don't see how it is arguably consistent with the US constitution.
I said, after 9-11, that if the government actually believes terrorism is a critical threat they had to extremely careful to not use fear as an excuse for non-terrorist related restrictions on liberty. Human history has shown governments abuse power. The US Constitution was created with this in mind. If you want to have citizens except restrictions on liberty their is an huge duty to provide evidence you are not just going to be like almost every other instance where government abused the power. Failing to do so, would mean people have to restrict government abuse, even at the risk of security.
The obligation was on government to show how seriously they took the risk to behave differently and not abuse the power they had. Instead the last two administration have been worse than any other (with the possible exception of the Nixon administration) with respect to abusing the liberty of citizens. This is a very sad state of affairs. They have chosen to rely on the ability of fear mongering, hiding behind false claims of "necessary secrecy" and the ability so many previous governments have had to take away liberty and get away with it (McCarthyism, KGB, all sorts of dictators that either the USA supported or apposed over the last 50 years and many many more). The problem with this option is that the citizens suffer while the bureaucracies get what they want. This isn't a good model. And it means thinking people should appose the government as they attempt to impose such models on their country.
Both administrations have done an absolutely atrocious job of making the case they would avoid political and authoritarian abuse while claiming terrorist justify the governments actions (Orwellian "Free Speech Zones" violate the constitution, Systemic SWAT RAID Failures, Watching the Watchmen, 2/3rd of USA Population Lives in Limited Constitutional Rights Zone According the Obama Administration - the DoJ is secretly enabling AT&T and others to evade wiretapping laws, Bikinis For Liberty, Our Internet Surveillance State, Justice Department Subpoena of AP Journalists Shows Need to Protect Calling Records). They consistently abuse liberty, using fear mongering and have lost any reasonable claim that their claims should treated as trust-worthly without much more evidence than they have been providing. Sadly it is not surprising that neither administration could put the security of the country before their personal interests, but the evidence is clear that they did not do so.
That evidence means we risk further losses to liberty without any evidence that security (rather than politics and the frequent tendency for bureaucracies to desire absolute power) will be enhanced.
I do think lots of great things are done to fight real threats. And those had been done for decades prior to 9-11. Some of the additional measures after 9-11 were wise. Huge amounts of the efforts are mainly about security theatre and gaining bureaucrats power at the expense of the liberty of citizens. This path is not one we should continue to reward. Sadly we currently are mainly going along with the politicians who have a long track record of being anti-liberty.
Relying on demagoguery and people accepting the government taking away their liberty does have a long history of working for governments. Relying on that risks the citizens getting so tired of government abuse of liberty that the citizens react by not only taking away the governments power to judiciously use power but take away significant sensible powers from government also. I fear that is where we are headed. This is the result of two administrations failing to take security seriously and instead just behaving as so many governments have in the past to amass bureaucratic power at the expense of citizens and the country.
It is a lot to ask those in government to put the well being of the country above the human nature to abuse power. It has certainly been far too much for the last two administrations to make it a priority to prevent abuse because the risks of doing so were so high.
The anti-liberty side is definitely winning. I hope we turn it around before I have to see how people must have felt as they experienced similar failures of will in the past (such as McCarthyism). But I think we may well have already past that point. It is just a matter of time before we have the distance of time to acknowledge and accept how horribly we have failed yet again to prevent abuse of power to go to extremes that are nearly incomprehensible looking back on them later. I remember thinking how unbelievably pitiful it was that the USA allowed McCarthyism to take place, yet not much later we are well on our way to repeating the same types of failures (though, as always, the exact clothing the abuse of power takes is somewhat different).
Related: Librarians Standing Up to the Madness - Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots - Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Liberty Again Denied, It is Sad How Little We Seem to Care
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Universities Again Abandon Fans/Mission to Increase Pay to Administrative Staff/Coaches
If a business wants to limit access in order to increase revenue that is their choice. When a university wants to limit access to their sports teams to increase revenue that is their choice. But what really happens with all the millions of increased revenue schools get from football and basketball? Essentially it goes to pay coaches and staff more money. And they can spend more on fancy weight rooms and the like. That is it.
The schools don't use the millions to lower the ever increasing costs students must pay. They don't tell donors to stop giving money because they have gotten so much by selling rights to athletics. They don't lower the price of tickets to the games - in fact they mainly have raised them.
So the tradeoff for schools in deciding to remove March Madness games (including in the NCAA final four) and bowl games from broadcast television to massively overpriced cable TV is the tradeoff between fans and paying coaches and administrators even more than the extremely large salaries they get now (many university football programs have many assistant coaches paid more than any professors at the school).
Blocking alumni and fans from watching on broadcast TV by limiting those who can watch to those paying massively inflated cable TV bill makes perfect sense for a business trying to maximize the income they can take from fans. I have enjoyed college basketball and put up with the greedy behavior by the administrators and coaches of these programs but I think it is time to give up and focus on other sources of recreation.
I have given up on others who seek to maximize their income to such an extent it destroys the experience. I think the level of greed from the coaches and staff that have gotten the schools to put huge payments to those people above alumni and fans has risen to such a level as to make even college basketball (which I really liked) not worth the time. It is a sad state of affairs.
CBS and Turner announced Tuesday that the 2014 and 2015 national semifinals would be aired on TBS rather than CBS.Related: Penn State Scandal is Horrendous and Points to the Very Deep Corruption of Our Leaders - Many schools continue on the ego driven spiraling costs - Harvard Steps Up Defense Against Abusive Journal Publishers
...
Cable subscription fees, which over-the-air networks don’t collect, are a driving factor in who can afford these rights and why prices for them keep climbing. As long as all cable viewers, regardless of interest in sports, continue to subsidize sports watchers, this is how things are going to work.
Monday, May 06, 2013
It is Refreshing to See Our Government Protecting Us
I have been very disappointed for at least 2 decades in how little interest our attorneys general and judges have in protecting citizens for abuse by those using fraud and abusing the legal system to harm people and society.
One judge has done a great job investigating abuse he suspected. His suggestion that those responsible be tried criminally might get action due to the publicity involved. But I wouldn't be amazed to see once again the abuse ignored by those who are tasked with protecting society from such abuse. I hope my fears prove to be un-warrented.
Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators
Blind justice - Why have so few bankers gone to jail for their part in the crisis?, The Economist magazine
One judge has done a great job investigating abuse he suspected. His suggestion that those responsible be tried criminally might get action due to the publicity involved. But I wouldn't be amazed to see once again the abuse ignored by those who are tasked with protecting society from such abuse. I hope my fears prove to be un-warrented.
Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators
In today's order, Wright finds that:Related: Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Watching the Watchmen - Capital One Bank Agrees to Refund $150 Million to 2 Million Customers and Pay $60 Million in Fines - Don't Excuse Immoral Looters - Disregard for Society by FedEX and UPS - Businesses Tell the IRS They Are Not American but Executives Stay in USA
The harshest penalties are saved for last. First, Judge Wright suggests the Prenda lawyers should be disbarred, writing "there is little doubt that Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, [and] Gibbs suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." In many states, including California, crimes reaching the standard of "moral turpitude" lead to automatic disbarment. Wright will be referring the four lawyers to every state bar in which they are admitted to practice.
- Prenda shell companies like AF Holdings and Ingenuity 13 were created "for the sole purpose of litigating copyright-infringement lawsuits." They have no assets other than the pornographic movies they sue over. And despite their legal trickery using offshore vehicles, "the Principals [Steele, Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy] are the de facto owners and officers."
- Their strategy of identifying IP numbers, issuing subpoenas to ISPs, and sending demand letters offering to settle for about $4,000 "was highly successful because of statutory-copyright damages, the pornographic subject matter, and the high cost of litigation." Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy got "proceeds of millions of dollars due to the numerosity of Defendants." And Wright added, "No taxes have been paid on this income."
- The Prenda lawyers engaged in "vexatious litigation designed to coerce settlement." They showed little desire to actually fight when a "determined defendant" showed up. "Instead of litigating, they dismiss the case," notes Wright. "When pressed for discovery, the Principals offer only disinformation—even to the Court."
...
- Wright concludes: "Plaintiffs’ representations about their operations, relationships, and financial interests have varied from feigned ignorance to misstatements to outright lies. But this deception was calculated so that the Court would grant Plaintiffs’ early-discovery requests, thereby allowing Plaintiffs to identify defendants and exact settlement proceeds from them. With these granted requests, Plaintiffs borrow the authority of the Court to pressure settlement."
Blind justice - Why have so few bankers gone to jail for their part in the crisis?, The Economist magazine
For better or worse, many people would love to see more bankers behind bars for their role in blowing up the West’s financial system. In Britain not one senior banker has faced criminal charges relating to the failure of his institution. A handful have faced the lesser sanction of being barred from running another bank or company, or agreeing in settlements with regulators not to do so.Like so many instances the connection between those giving large amounts of cash to politicians and favorable treatment seems to indicate the obvious - that people are buying favors for all the cash they give. Some times that amounts to favorable tax treatment, subsidizing mansions built in dangerous areas (flood plains or in the path of hurricanes). Sometimes that amounts to using the justice system as an arm of corporate policy. Sometimes that amounts to not prosecuting, or even seriously investigating, illegal acts committed by those that give lots of cash while prosecuting plenty of others (the USA has over 2 million people, .7% of the population, in prison and jail - far more than anywhere else - also nearly 5 million more are on probation or parole).
The prosecutorial coyness of British and American authorities contrasts with the harder-charging approach taken by their predecessors and by authorities elsewhere. During America’s savings-and-loans (S&L) crisis in the 1980s more than 800 bankers were jailed. A decade later directors of Barings, a British bank that was felled by the rogue trader Nick Leeson, were barred from holding directorships despite having no direct connection to his wrongdoing. Other countries, such as Iceland and Germany, have taken a more muscular approach in this crisis.
...
But if locking people up for incompetence goes too far, regulators could still get a lot tougher. Summary justice isn’t desirable. Some justice is.
Friday, May 03, 2013
The last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through
Continually growing the "security-inustrial-complex" decreases safety. Bruce Schneier again explains the insecurity our leaders are creating with their poor understanding of how to make society safer.
It also wastes huge amounts of money to create security theatre that we don't have to waste. That we allow so many billions to be used to deny our liberty and decrease our safety is disastrous.
Related: The TSA doesn’t give a hoot about security - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Liberty Again Denied, I am Sad at How Little We Seem to Care - Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress
Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through. ... Before we start blaming agencies for failing to stop the Boston bombers, and before we push "intelligence reforms" that will shred civil liberties without making us any safer, we need to stop seeing the past as a bunch of obvious dots that need connecting.Sadly it is not only security we sacrifice due to our leaders failures but also the core principles our nation supposedly stands for: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
It also wastes huge amounts of money to create security theatre that we don't have to waste. That we allow so many billions to be used to deny our liberty and decrease our safety is disastrous.
Related: The TSA doesn’t give a hoot about security - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Liberty Again Denied, I am Sad at How Little We Seem to Care - Anti Liberty Sentiment in Congress
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Good Journalism Aids Society by Shining the Light on Corruption
Journalists do a great deal of good, even if much of what their employers publish is useless (or worse). In this example, Journalists at the Sun Sentinel wrote a 3 part series documenting
That police departments cover up abuse by their own to the public is pitiful. So many good police officers serve these systems that are failing to stop criminal behavior against the public. It shouldn't fall to journalist to protect the public, but when the police perpetrate such bad practices journalists are a potential protection to the public. If we don't support real journalism we risk great damage to our society.
Related: Real Journalism Exposes Bail Bond Corruption - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - SWAT Raids are Failing Society Systemic - Watching the Watchmen - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - USA Falls to 47th in Press Freedom Ranking
the shocking behavior of law enforcement officers behind the wheel. The reporters found nearly 800 officers who reached speeds of 90-130 mph, many of them while off duty. The accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds had caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people.
That police departments cover up abuse by their own to the public is pitiful. So many good police officers serve these systems that are failing to stop criminal behavior against the public. It shouldn't fall to journalist to protect the public, but when the police perpetrate such bad practices journalists are a potential protection to the public. If we don't support real journalism we risk great damage to our society.
Related: Real Journalism Exposes Bail Bond Corruption - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - SWAT Raids are Failing Society Systemic - Watching the Watchmen - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - USA Falls to 47th in Press Freedom Ranking
Saturday, February 09, 2013
PageRank MozPageAuthority for Various Sites - February 2013
Google pagerank is a measure of the number and importance of pages that are linking to the page (with the public page rank lowered by Google if they don't like some things the site/page does). One measure obviously has huge limitations for capture the nature or value of any page (for more info see previous post). But it does tell you something. But I still find it fun to look at the pagerank values - except when they go down for my sites :-( Now I also track the similar Moz Page Authority and can take some solace if the MozPA goes up :-)
I didn't pay much attention at first to the SEO Moz ranking details. I tried to figure out what they were measuring then gave up because it wasn't clear and figured MozRank must be the equivalent of pagerank. Well MozRank isn't (I still can't figure out what it is a measure of - maybe primarily just measuring links without factoring in the "authority" the links) but anyway Moz Page Authority is the measure that is equivalent to Google PageRank. So in the chart below the MozRank is shown inside [ ] for October 2011, while Jan 2013 I updated to MozPA /10 (because SEO Moz also decided to scale MozPA up to 100 while Google PageRank caps out at ten).
* internal pages
** new url, old url forwarded
- didn't exist yet
u unranked
[blank] I don't know what the pagerank was, sometimes the site didn't exist yet.
***I have noticed my high pagerank blog posts can be at PR of 4 for years and then have no page rank at all. Meanwhile MozPA doesn't seem to disappear the authority of those page. The PageRank can often reappear in another update (I even think they may come back in between updates but I might be mistaken).
Related: Google Page Rank Updates for November 2012 - Google and Links - Using Twitter Data to Improve Search Results
Friday, January 11, 2013
Living Abroad
One lesson that many people learn is that everywhere has idiots and jerks. Everywhere has things some people like and those same people don't like. While thinking of escaping, it is often easy to ignore (or be ignorant of) the things you won't like about the place you are going to. It isn't as easy to ignore the things you don't like about where you are now.
Characteristics that has a huge bearing on whether someone enjoys being abroad or not is tolerance for what they don't enjoy and excitement at exploring new and different things. Also it is helpful if you are not looking for someone that is missing annoyances and instead looking for somewhere to enjoy for a while.
A few people do find the perfect place for them, where all the common annoyances of that place happen to line up with stuff that person doesn't care about and all the things they most enjoy are present and abundant. But most of the time you will find places that are possible to enjoy but that also have plenty of flaws.
I am living in Malaysia and it has many advantages for me but it is not perfect. I find it a huge advantage to be in a new place. I like a break from some of the annoyances of home.
I really like being able to travel around SE Asia (though I have been doing much too little of that - my plan is to do more in 2013). Of course my plan was to do more traveling in 2012 than I did. I think the prospects for 2013 are better, but we will see.
Related: More tolerant not more considerate - Travel to Cambodia: Angkor Wat... - Travel to Indonesia: Borobudur... - Travel to Thailand: Khao Lak... - I Want Out subreddit
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Decades of Failure by Those Responsible for USA Health Care System Needs to be Addressed
The reasons for the failures of the USA health care system are complex. Given decades of failure those with leadership positions (hospitals, doctors, politicians, insurers) all have failed. Drug companies I would put below those 4 (they mainly just take advantage of lots of weak politicians to buy bad policy, for the country, that favors drug companies). Exactly what percentage of the failure to put at each groups footstep is hard to judge, but the collective failure is obvious. It is something we couldn't afford in 1980 and the damage to us grows every year. The USA health care system costs twice as much as other rich countries and the results are mediocre. Big business has some responsibility but mainly they just have ignored the problem and not done anything to help (versus actually intentionally sustaining the broken system). Voters have a huge responsibility for decades of re-electing those that maintain the broken system.
Related: International Health Care System Performance - Overview of 5 Nations Health Care Systems - USA Health Care System Remains Broken, Neglected
Related: International Health Care System Performance - Overview of 5 Nations Health Care Systems - USA Health Care System Remains Broken, Neglected
Sunday, December 02, 2012
Reasonable Accommodations Becoming Unreasonable
Reasonable Accommodation: A Cautionary Tale
I think most people would like to see reasonable accommodations. Often bureaucracies get tied to their normal procedures and could use more flexibility.
It is a reality that if those who are part of a interest group you care about expand the demands to far then people will just choose to remove dealing with that group at all. It might not be fair but as you say people learn from their experiences. I think those who advocate a certain interest and don't speak out against abuses of that interest make a mistake. Without limiting the unreasonable measure people just learn to realize if they start down the slippery slope they will be stuck with unreasonable demands. So they will just seek to avoid it - even if that means denying those who wouldn't be unreasonable opportunities.
Another example of this type of slippery slope is when unions stop supporting what is in the interests of all workers and instead defend workers that are abusing all the other workers by not doing their job. I know my experiences have made me much less sympathetic to unions after I saw their behavior was to reward unreasonable behavior and punish the workers (most of them) that were trying to do a good job by making them carry along workers that were just abusing the system. Unions still have a place if they would just focus on providing value to workers but they seem to often think they need to defend anyone (no matter how unreasonable) if that person is against what to many unions see as their enemy - management. Unions should see that they need to protect workers not just from abuses by management but from abuses by other workers that are being unreasonable.
Related: Action Is More Important Than Sympathy - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Acting Consiterately
The slippery slope is a familiar one for any HR pro. Company values talented employee, stretches to make accommodation, then things go south. Attendance is usually the issue front and center, and due to the knowledge of the disability in question, the accommodation that was made, etc, things fester. Decisions aren't made. The employee states that yes, they didn't show up as expected, but that's part of the condition in question.Good thoughts. The biggest problem is that of going to extremes which are often encouraged by the way the legal system works. The larger the consequences of extreme measures the more likely people will want to avoid them.
Of course, not coming to work was never part of the reasonable accommodation. But the accommodation provides an official awareness of the condition/disability in question, so dealing with the situation is now a legal mess that takes time.
That's called a slippery slope where I come from. Or "holding the bag".
Which means the next time around, willingness to make a reasonable accommodation from the hiring manager or HR pro is much more limited. There's a business to run.
Note that I am aware of many, many talented individuals with disabilities who are among the best employees at their company. But the slippery slope outlined above happens more than anyone wants to admit, which is why you see so much resistance on the accommodation front.
I think most people would like to see reasonable accommodations. Often bureaucracies get tied to their normal procedures and could use more flexibility.
It is a reality that if those who are part of a interest group you care about expand the demands to far then people will just choose to remove dealing with that group at all. It might not be fair but as you say people learn from their experiences. I think those who advocate a certain interest and don't speak out against abuses of that interest make a mistake. Without limiting the unreasonable measure people just learn to realize if they start down the slippery slope they will be stuck with unreasonable demands. So they will just seek to avoid it - even if that means denying those who wouldn't be unreasonable opportunities.
Another example of this type of slippery slope is when unions stop supporting what is in the interests of all workers and instead defend workers that are abusing all the other workers by not doing their job. I know my experiences have made me much less sympathetic to unions after I saw their behavior was to reward unreasonable behavior and punish the workers (most of them) that were trying to do a good job by making them carry along workers that were just abusing the system. Unions still have a place if they would just focus on providing value to workers but they seem to often think they need to defend anyone (no matter how unreasonable) if that person is against what to many unions see as their enemy - management. Unions should see that they need to protect workers not just from abuses by management but from abuses by other workers that are being unreasonable.
Related: Action Is More Important Than Sympathy - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans - Acting Consiterately
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