Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#91

Post by cjbprime » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:16 AM UTC

emily37 wrote: post #28

subsystem wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were actually about to abort the "bruteforce" operation before they got a call that someone had found the suspect in their boat, outside the perimeter. I really hope they evalute the operation properly. A good outcome doesn't necessarily validate the process.

I thought it was really odd that they told people they could go about their business after completing the Watertown search without finding him. It seemed to me at that point the probability of us being injured had just gone up. However, lifting the stay-indoors request turned out to be crucial, because a man spotted the blood on the boat only after going outside for the first time all day. On the other hand, if they…

> On the other hand, if they had simply expanded the search area block by block without lifting the stay-indoors request, then they probably would have found him quickly with less risk to Watertown residents.

On the other other hand, it was getting dark -- the stay-indoors request was lifted an hour from sunset -- and it would have been harder to see the blood without daylight. So maybe they lifted it just in time, or should have lifted it much earlier?

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#92

Post by Jach » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:17 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #4

It took hundreds of police and probably millions of dollars to catch a teenager who didn't even bother to leave the area or go into hiding - and even TWEETED after the event. If we were attacked by real, organized terrorists, we are screwed. I really do not get all the celebration and back-patting, it's disturbing. Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks for guns, the most basic bill fa…

Perhaps most people might support more background checks in principle, but it's not really close to what people really care about right now: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-only-4-americans-thin... Personally I don't support the latest gun legislation because it's not about guns or violence and if it were passed all it would lead to is a round of undeserved self-satisfied back-patting. If people want to get serious on curbing gun violence, maybe they should try their methods in say Chicago first before forcing the whole country to play along. (I know one method that could likely work but it's politically infeasible given the nature of the US's power structure. Are there any methods that can work with the current power structure?)

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#93

Post by cjbprime » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:18 AM UTC

lurker14 wrote: post #11

ck2 wrote: post #4

It took hundreds of police and probably millions of dollars to catch a teenager who didn't even bother to leave the area or go into hiding - and even TWEETED after the event. If we were attacked by real, organized terrorists, we are screwed. I really do not get all the celebration and back-patting, it's disturbing. Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks for guns, the most basic bill fa…

What's the maximum reasonable spend to catch a bomber, for an efficient force? $1M? $100k? A large part of the expense was due to the successful effort to apprehend him without killing him or bystanders. Tweets aren't precisely geolocated, so that's not really relevant.

> What's the maximum reasonable spend to catch a bomber, for an efficient force? $1M? $100k?

The US has a "value of a statistical life"[1] of around $7M, and they had already killed 4 people and injured over a hundred more, so $50M seems like it would be very easily justified.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#94

Post by beezee » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:18 AM UTC

How many commenters in support of this perspective were in the area and part of all this? As someone who was a short distance from the explosions during the marathon, and the focused area of the manhunt during todays lockdown, I'd expect the answer would be none. And if I'm wrong, I'm shocked at the lack of empathy, or even lack of ability to emulate empathy through simple taste and common sense. This is a really disappointing thing for me to see on HN.

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#95

Post by lotyrin » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:19 AM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #48

ck2 wrote: post #4

It took hundreds of police and probably millions of dollars to catch a teenager who didn't even bother to leave the area or go into hiding - and even TWEETED after the event. If we were attacked by real, organized terrorists, we are screwed. I really do not get all the celebration and back-patting, it's disturbing. Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks for guns, the most basic bill fa…

Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks or database for guns. Background checks are already required for almost all gun sales, including ones at gun-shows. This whole discussion is a red-herring. And what the f%!# good do you think a "database for guns" is going to do? You think the terrorists buy their guns over the counter, with legit IDs and happily register them with the authorities…

But it's worth sacrificing our freedoms in exchange for (only theoretically improved) safety (from causes of death that we are already extremely safe from - statistically speaking).

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#96

Post by HarryHirsch » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:19 AM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #55

HarryHirsch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to say it, but Stallman has a good point. Plant safety cuts into profits, left to itself management will not encourage safe working practice - there must be meaningful oversight by an outside agency. Thanks to regulatory capture oversight is weak, and this is not an accident but an intended outcome of the political system.

Plant safety cuts into profits, left to itself management will not encourage safe working practice - there must be meaningful oversight by an outside agency. Yes, because it's obviously good for business to have your plant blow sky high, destroying the entire surrounding neighborhood and killing most of your employees. If I were a plant manager, I'd make sure to put doing all that right at the top of my TODO list. Or…

> Yes, because it's obviously good for business to have your plant blow sky high

You know how this is - most often poor working practice has no immediate consequence. Perhaps a critical patch is installed a few days late, and the website does not get hacked, no adverse consequences most of the time. At some point someone will run the numbers, and conclude that good safety practice isn't that necessary. That's a recipe for disaster. Most everyone here should be familiar with the Challenger explosion and the runup to it.

> maybe, just maybe, accidents happen, some of which are damn near unpredictable and unavoidable.

That's the issue of fault-tolerant design. In an ammonium nitrate plant there is a risk of explosion; they quite simply do not belong anywhere near a town.

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#97

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:20 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #59

mindcrime wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks or database for guns. Background checks are already required for almost all gun sales, including ones at gun-shows. This whole discussion is a red-herring. And what the f%!# good do you think a "database for guns" is going to do? You think the terrorists buy their guns over the counter, with legit IDs and happily register them with the authorities…

People talk about the "90%" or whatever support that universal background checks had among the voting public. However, ignoring the problems of legislating based on shallow polls, nobody seems to be talking about the 90+% of sherrifs and police officers who believed that neither universal background checks nor a so-called "assault weapons ban" would have any beneficial effect on gun crime.

90% is some BS fake skewed poll run by some organization with an anti gun agenda. It's not possibly accurate. You can make any poll say anything if you word the question skewed enough.

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#98

Post by technoluster » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:20 AM UTC

I get his point, it raises an important lesson. But the lock down was fairly voluntarily throughout most of the Boston metro area, perhaps except those areas where active investigations were being conducted. People were outside in Back Bay; I walked by plenty of uniformed officers, none of which asked me to return to my home.

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#99

Post by krapp » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:20 AM UTC

cdash wrote: post #89

ryanhuff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about celebration for the simple matter that a couple of murderers are off the street, and people can stop hiding in their houses?

Why was it necessary for so many people to be hiding in their houses? I certainly have never seen an entire city shut down and hiding at home because a couple of murders were out there.

Probably, doing so makes it more likely that anyone the cops find outside is the suspect, while lessening the likelihood that a confrontation will lead to civilian casualties.

Also, no one knew how many other bombs there may have been, so public areas still posed an unknown risk.

Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

#100

Post by homosaur » Sat, Apr 20, 2013, 3:20 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #58

mindcrime wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks or database for guns. Background checks are already required for almost all gun sales, including ones at gun-shows. This whole discussion is a red-herring. And what the f%!# good do you think a "database for guns" is going to do? You think the terrorists buy their guns over the counter, with legit IDs and happily register them with the authorities…

Why do we bother to have laws at all if people are going to break them? I mean look at all the silencers people have to get away with murder - oh wait, they don't - because they are illegal and highly regulated.

maybe in your state.