hahahaha, awesome!
I am not planning any nuclear attacks
121–130 of 151 posts
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uhhh? The "mouse click" was a dead give away. Also, Occam's Razor. Is this guy programming a game in his apartment or is he programming a ICBM with 0 related hardware plus probably no other corroborating evidence. No reason to act like it takes more than a couple minutes of investigation to figure this shit out. Edit: for the guy below me, since I can't reply directly, find me a nuclear missile guidance system that i…
I don't need to find a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse click, because that is not what is being argued. What is being argued is that it is not out of the question to expect that such a system may or could exist. It's not unreasonable to think that it could. Occam's Razor. Are all of our nukes controlled solely by systems that do not involve a mouse, or might there be…
I can't even begin to understand how a rational person would think this.
Someone is going to launch a missile from Russia to the United States.. and this person needs a whiteboard with a crudely drawn line to DC and a blast radius drawing to help him do it?
I don't even have to read any of the text to know this is ridiculous.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
One big problem is that people take the idea of "better safe than sorry" as a way to avoid thought. Don't analyze the situation, just pick the option that appears safest after a glance! What it should mean is that you should take both probabilities and costs into account when deciding what to do, as it's often worth doing something easy to reduce the risk of something unlikely but catastrophic. But that doesn't mean…
> One big problem is that people take the idea of "better safe than sorry" as a way to avoid thought. Sure, and while things like responses to terrorism are rather dramatic examples of that, "zero tolerance policies" in general are also a place where this manifests.
>as a way to avoid thought.
no. It is a way to avoid liability, an insurance of a kind. Property owner would get his property confiscated if he knew or had reason to know about an illegal activity happening on the property. Trying to apply "thought" would expose her/him even to larger liability in case of a mistake. Thus blanket reporting of anything is the best liability minimizing strategy.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One big problem is that people take the idea of "better safe than sorry" as a way to avoid thought. Sure, and while things like responses to terrorism are rather dramatic examples of that, "zero tolerance policies" in general are also a place where this manifests.
>as a way to avoid thought. no. It is a way to avoid liability, an insurance of a kind. Property owner would get his property confiscated if he knew or had reason to know about an illegal activity happening on the property. Trying to apply "thought" would expose her/him even to larger liability in case of a mistake. Thus blanket reporting of anything is the best liability minimizing strategy.
> >as a way to avoid thought.
> no. It is a way to avoid liability
Its both, and largely the liability involved is the responsibility to apply thought.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't need to find a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse click, because that is not what is being argued. What is being argued is that it is not out of the question to expect that such a system may or could exist. It's not unreasonable to think that it could. Occam's Razor. Are all of our nukes controlled solely by systems that do not involve a mouse, or might there be…
I can't even begin to understand how a rational person would think this. Someone is going to launch a missile from Russia to the United States.. and this person needs a whiteboard with a crudely drawn line to DC and a blast radius drawing to help him do it? I don't even have to read any of the text to know this is ridiculous.
Plenty of people designing complicated things do crude whiteboard sketches to help them discuss or reason at a high level.
How much you want to bet there are whiteboards at NASA with cartoon squiggles of "Earth" --> "Mars" on them?
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then you'll never be able to rent again. At least through a letting agent, which is how most rentals occur.
I'd love to know why this is down voted, because it is unequivocally true. Nearly all letting agents (probably all?) in the UK vet potential tenants and will run various forms of check, including credit checks. They will also ask for previous addresses, and if previously renting, will demand a reference from the previous agency and landlord.
(Not legal advice.)
Someone giving you a bad reference, or refusing to give a reference, because you won a legal case against them is generally the kind of thing that could get another legal case started.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't need to find a nuclear missile guidance system that is destination controlled by a freaking mouse click, because that is not what is being argued. What is being argued is that it is not out of the question to expect that such a system may or could exist. It's not unreasonable to think that it could. Occam's Razor. Are all of our nukes controlled solely by systems that do not involve a mouse, or might there be…
We are arguing whether it is out of the question to expect that such a system's TARGETING is based on clicking a point on a imprecise map (per the rest of the whiteboard). It is completely out of the question to expect ICBM to be targeted with a mouse. You are (incorrectly) extrapolating the mouse click to mean that there is a mouse click somewhere in the process and NOT at the exact point drawn on the board. If you…
> imprecise click.
"Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear war"
When you're dealing with high-yield nuclear warheads, anywhere within a few hundred miles of your desired target is probably going to be plenty good enough.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
From his previous blog post, they could tell it was a game: “Except… the person who did the inspection did have some concerns about one thing. There were some… whiteboards? And some… drawings on them?” “Ah shit! Yeah I totally forgot about those! You mean the nuclear attack thing, right?” “Yeah, that’s right.” “Yeeeeeah…. Sorry! You see…. It’s for this game I was making! It’s like, a web thing and it uses Google Maps…
> Apparently somebody was still worried about the idea of a realistic nuclear attack simulation game. Reminds me of the time some kid was arrested for making a Counterstrike map based on his high school. This is even more ridiculous. The kid could reasonably obtain weapons and bring them to school. The likelihood of obtaining an ICBM is nil.
Sort of, but it's hard for me to get angry at the people who called the police in either case. Yeah, they should have more common sense, but the police are the ones with responsibility here. If you're scared you're scared, and you should be able to call the police for pretty much any reason and expect them to deal with it rationally and professionally.
In this case, if the police just show up, look at the whiteboard, laugh it off and leave, then I would say no harm done. Whoever called them feels safer, and everyone else has at worst been inconvenienced for a half hour.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#129Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.
You're doing well to be charged £100. We just renewed our tenancy, and got charged £120 by the letting agents to process us signing the same agreement we signed 12 months ago, and update their records to show we're not due to do so again for another year.
For anyone else in this situation who is not aware, by default an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (which you probably have if you're renting all of a self-contained dwelling) becomes a statutory periodic tenancy (i.e., usually, rolling monthly on the same terms) at the end of the initial contract period - this requires no action on the part of anyone involved so you can politely tell the agents where to stick their £100+ bill, assuming you don't mind being on a rolling monthly contract. You can of course do this next time you're due to renew even if you've paid for it before.
I've done this in four out of the five places I've rented over the years (the fifth being a special case as the landlord wanted to sell) and had no problems - although I had to argue the point with one agent who initially insisted I had no choice but to cough up. Pays to know your rights :-)
Sources: This guide is great and used to be on the UK government website:
http://www.leeds.gov.uk/docs/Tenants%27%20Tenancy%20guide.pd...
Since superseded by:
https://www.gov.uk/private-renting
which sadly doesn't seem to cover as much detail.
Re: I am not planning any nuclear attacks
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that everyone in the chain ends up buying into this. The police make a record of it 'just in case.' You end up on a no-fly list 'just in case.' Everyone in the chain is covering their ass 'just in case' this person really is a terrorist. No one ends up willing to stick their neck out and say, "this person probably isn't a terrorist"... just in case.
One big problem is that people take the idea of "better safe than sorry" as a way to avoid thought. Don't analyze the situation, just pick the option that appears safest after a glance! What it should mean is that you should take both probabilities and costs into account when deciding what to do, as it's often worth doing something easy to reduce the risk of something unlikely but catastrophic. But that doesn't mean…
> One big problem is that people take the idea of "better safe than sorry" as a way to avoid thought. Don't analyze the situation, just pick the option that appears safest after a glance!
Which in the innocuous cases is the option that is least safe:
If you flag everything as suspicious then you waste law enforcement resources investigating nothing that could have been used to investigate something.
Increasing the false positive rate makes it easier for genuine threats to blend into the noise. If you cry wolf for every neighbor's puppy the townspeople soon stop responding.
And then you make enemies out of the communities you're unnecessarily harassing, which leads to "Fuck the Police" culture where people won't even report obvious and serious threats because they don't want to attract a bunch of unthinking jackboots who might just as soon arrest victims and bystanders as the perpetrators.