Recently a dude decided to go on a rampage murdering six other people and then himself. I won't be publishing his name or any links to pictures because quite frankly he wanted to be notorious, to be known, and I want to give him as little of that as possible. I will refer to him as FUD. The key to FUD's fame is that he published a video of himself on youtube where he blamed women for not having sex with him for his angst and eventual murderous behaviour and outlined his plan. Many groups have claimed this incident as a compelling reason to support their cause and while I support these causes by and large I think they end up missing the best thing we can do to prevent such tragedies in future.
Anti gun lobbyists want to make this about getting better gun control since FUD had multiple weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his vehicle. Someone in their twenties with no criminal record is going to be able to buy weapons in any country that allows them for use in sport or hunting, which is pretty near all countries. In addition most of the murders were committed with a knife or a vehicle so even if he had no guns it is not at all clear that would have helped. I support strict gun laws but this incident isn't an example of where they would help - this other one where a licenced, experienced carrier blew someone away in a moment of idiocy is.
Other people have called for greater mental health support to prevent people like FUD from going over the edge. Again this doesn't hold up to scrutiny since FUD had a huge amount of medical and social assistance trying to deal with his issues and still nobody saw this coming despite the fact that he had been planning it for a year. I also support trying to help people who have mental health issues and I think we really need to work on removing the stigma associated with them but nonetheless none of that would have stopped FUD. Some even go so far as to suggest that we just need more empathy to detect these things - good luck with that, since you can't lock somebody up indefinitely just because you are kinda sure they are thinking about killing some people.
There has been quite the furor between feminists and men's rights advocates surrounding this incident. Some of the more loathsome MRAs have suggested that we have to get women to have sex with men to prevent this sort of behaviour. Corralling women to have sex with violent psychopaths to placate them is revolting even if it would work and surely it would not. Many feminists have suggested that the problem is the culture of entitlement to women's bodies that is to blame and that is what we should be focusing on. I agree that such entitlement is awful and wrong and should be combatted but the idea that FUD would have become a normally functioning sort of person if he weren't exposed to misogynistic ideas simply doesn't work. FUD hated everybody and felt entitled about everything - go find his videos if you want to see that.
To quote the late Tychus Findlay: That guy ain't right in the head brother. I can appreciate some good, honest craziness. But that guy? He's got something broke inside.
FUD was a murderous psychopath. One of the reasons he didn't have close ties and had no luck with romance was presumably because other people could tell that he had something broke inside. He desperately wanted recognition, adoration, to be someone important. He could not achieve that through normal human interaction so he decided to go the sure route to infamy - a villainous laugh uploaded to youtube and a deadly killing spree. The best way to prevent this sort of incident from happening again is to refuse to offer such evil people the fame they crave. Give them ugly nicknames like FUD, refuse to show their pictures, and leave them buried in obscurity. Deny them that which they strive to achieve.
We should promote gun control, we should develop better treatment and understanding of mental illness, and we should end male entitlement of women's bodies. All of these things are important, all of them can save many lives, but they aren't the key to stopping indiscriminate violence by people like FUD. The key to that lies in making sure that such violence leads only to being dead and forgotten, unknown and unmourned by society. Future FUDs must know that killing is no ticket to immortality.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Alternate revenue streams
Law enforcement has plenty of issues with haphazard enforcement of laws particularly when it comes to things that really should be legal like prostitution and drugs. Things get a lot worse though when they are financially incentivized to crack down on minor crimes like speeding and disobeying posted signs and such. There are lots of instances of police issuing more tickets to generate revenue when other sources of cash dry up and this sort of activity absolutely destroys public trust in the police, for good reason. There are some very interesting questions coming up surrounding self driving cars and how this will play out with traffic tickets levied by police.
Obviously self driving cars are going to be set up to obey traffic laws and stick to speed limits. However, everybody knows that everybody drives 10 kph over the limit and that doing so won't get you a ticket but it seems like people are going to have a problem with robot cars intentionally breaking the law but people aren't going to want to drive in them if they have to go slower than all the regular cars. I suspect that over the next couple decades we are going to see speed limits raised slightly and enforcement of those speed limits be very strict. Robot cars won't violate the limits and it will be very easy to pick out the people driven cars that do.
It won't be feasible to just ticket more often when robot cars are the norm so police budgets will suddenly lack a serious amount of income that they are currently used to. This is a very good thing because the police will no longer be pressured to bump revenue by enforcing the law more than they otherwise would. On the other hand police budgets will need to make up the difference somehow; if the current direction of politics is any indication they will be able to slash their costs by ceasing to worry about prostitution and most drugs and likely cutting back on traffic enforcement.
There is some speculation as to who is responsible when a robot car is involved in an accident; should it be the driver or the producer of the car who must take responsibility? I suspect it will end up being the driver being entirely responsible legally but that car manufacturers will offer all kinds of warranties and programs to cover accidents and tickets. That would be a great selling point for someone who is somewhat unsure of buying a robot car and offers even more opportunity for car salespeople to fleece the rubes with additional costs.
Obviously self driving cars are going to be set up to obey traffic laws and stick to speed limits. However, everybody knows that everybody drives 10 kph over the limit and that doing so won't get you a ticket but it seems like people are going to have a problem with robot cars intentionally breaking the law but people aren't going to want to drive in them if they have to go slower than all the regular cars. I suspect that over the next couple decades we are going to see speed limits raised slightly and enforcement of those speed limits be very strict. Robot cars won't violate the limits and it will be very easy to pick out the people driven cars that do.
It won't be feasible to just ticket more often when robot cars are the norm so police budgets will suddenly lack a serious amount of income that they are currently used to. This is a very good thing because the police will no longer be pressured to bump revenue by enforcing the law more than they otherwise would. On the other hand police budgets will need to make up the difference somehow; if the current direction of politics is any indication they will be able to slash their costs by ceasing to worry about prostitution and most drugs and likely cutting back on traffic enforcement.
There is some speculation as to who is responsible when a robot car is involved in an accident; should it be the driver or the producer of the car who must take responsibility? I suspect it will end up being the driver being entirely responsible legally but that car manufacturers will offer all kinds of warranties and programs to cover accidents and tickets. That would be a great selling point for someone who is somewhat unsure of buying a robot car and offers even more opportunity for car salespeople to fleece the rubes with additional costs.
Costly defence
I found an interesting article yesterday about the huge number of security flaws in the computer code that our society is so dependent on. The basic idea is that the code base that supports all of our downloading of cat pictures and pornography is incredibly vulnerable and even though we have a lot of clever folks patching it up as fast as they can we simply can't avoid exposing ourselves to the destructive urges of hackers.
It is true that much of the code out there sucks. Once a piece of code becomes standard everyone builds around it even if it isn't very good. We end up pushing code out the door as fast as possible and doing so based on release dates rather than quality control. We focus on sizzle instead of steak and make sure that it is big, bright, and pretty instead of secure because the end user can't tell if it is secure anyway.
The author is aghast at this state of affairs. I on the other hand think it really isn't such a big deal. Look at the buildings we build. Do we cover every window in bars? Build our walls of solid concrete? Install barbed wire, electric fences, and fingerprint locks on the doors? Of course not. We don't want people to break into our houses and steal our stuff but the cost of protecting our stuff in ways like that greatly exceeds the expected cost of burglaries.
Consider one area in which we absolutely do go bonkers for maximum security - airport security checkpoints. They have porno scanners, patdowns, and chemical sniffers. They take away your water because it is in a bottle larger than 100ml. They take away your nail clippers because they could be used as a weapon. They make you take off your shoes because you might somehow slip a bomb into your soles or something? Virtually everyone agrees that airline security is an absolute nightmare and doesn't prevent anywhere near enough disasters to warrant its existence; this is what maximum security looks like.
It is a good thing to write better code. It is also excellent to have planes arrive at their destination intact, and to have our houses not be broken into. In all cases though it isn't true that we need perfect defence, but rather that we should make a sensible calculation as to the probability of loss and the cost of protection against that loss. Striving for perfection is a fine thing to do in art but it makes terrible public policy.
The fact is that a determined attacker can take down nearly any system and the cost of making it slightly harder for them rapidly becomes prohibitive. What regular people actually want out of their code is that it be mostly secure most of the time and show up quickly and cheaply. That may not appeal to the aesthetic desires of those who write that code but it does reflect the way we build everything else, and the desires of the populace who will end up using it and suffering through its failures.
It is true that much of the code out there sucks. Once a piece of code becomes standard everyone builds around it even if it isn't very good. We end up pushing code out the door as fast as possible and doing so based on release dates rather than quality control. We focus on sizzle instead of steak and make sure that it is big, bright, and pretty instead of secure because the end user can't tell if it is secure anyway.
The author is aghast at this state of affairs. I on the other hand think it really isn't such a big deal. Look at the buildings we build. Do we cover every window in bars? Build our walls of solid concrete? Install barbed wire, electric fences, and fingerprint locks on the doors? Of course not. We don't want people to break into our houses and steal our stuff but the cost of protecting our stuff in ways like that greatly exceeds the expected cost of burglaries.
Consider one area in which we absolutely do go bonkers for maximum security - airport security checkpoints. They have porno scanners, patdowns, and chemical sniffers. They take away your water because it is in a bottle larger than 100ml. They take away your nail clippers because they could be used as a weapon. They make you take off your shoes because you might somehow slip a bomb into your soles or something? Virtually everyone agrees that airline security is an absolute nightmare and doesn't prevent anywhere near enough disasters to warrant its existence; this is what maximum security looks like.
It is a good thing to write better code. It is also excellent to have planes arrive at their destination intact, and to have our houses not be broken into. In all cases though it isn't true that we need perfect defence, but rather that we should make a sensible calculation as to the probability of loss and the cost of protection against that loss. Striving for perfection is a fine thing to do in art but it makes terrible public policy.
The fact is that a determined attacker can take down nearly any system and the cost of making it slightly harder for them rapidly becomes prohibitive. What regular people actually want out of their code is that it be mostly secure most of the time and show up quickly and cheaply. That may not appeal to the aesthetic desires of those who write that code but it does reflect the way we build everything else, and the desires of the populace who will end up using it and suffering through its failures.
Friday, May 23, 2014
For the right reasons
There is a feel good story going about the internets about a restaurant owner who got a request from a customer for the staff at the restaurant to 'show more skin'. The owner responded by having a special deal where the profits from selling potato skins would be donated to charitable organizations trying to help rape victims. Lots of people are tripping over themselves to give the restaurant owner kudos and while I approve of the sentiment I find some parts of this very frustrating. My issue in particular is "I am the father of a 12-year-old girl and I've got five sisters. The way that women are treated is pretty personal as far as I'm concerned."
See the problem there? The way he puts it suggests that the reason this is an issue is because he is close to women so he cares about other women. Here is the thing: Treating your staff respectfully has *nothing* to do with the gender of your children or siblings. Would it suddenly be less crappy to objectify women and demand that they show off in a sexual fashion if you had only male children or brothers? No! It is a crappy thing regardless. I see this kind of thing all the time when the topic of sexual assault comes up and men talk about it as a problem, but only because they happen to be emotionally close to some particular women.
Note I am not trying to slam this guy in particular. He did something I approve of and that is great and all but the fact that people feel compelled to justify compassion on the basis that the person suffering is superficially similar to someone they know drives me *crazy*. We should be perfectly happy be good to others even if the only thing we have in common is our simple humanity. It is much like the way in which people get completely bent out of shape if someone from their own country has a problem but people from other countries don't matter. Just see how often news stories feel compelled to report on how many Canadians are involved in a particular air crash or other disaster for examples.
When you get mad that women are mistreated that is useful. Jump around, make some noise, cause a ruckus. Get that message out there! But please don't torpedo your efforts by then suggesting that you only really care because they kinda resemble these people you actually care about. That just tells them that you are actually pretty fine with them getting dumped on as long as it doesn't affect *you* in particular. If you don't feel that way then don't phrase it that way. If you do feel that way then you are part of the damn problem.
See the problem there? The way he puts it suggests that the reason this is an issue is because he is close to women so he cares about other women. Here is the thing: Treating your staff respectfully has *nothing* to do with the gender of your children or siblings. Would it suddenly be less crappy to objectify women and demand that they show off in a sexual fashion if you had only male children or brothers? No! It is a crappy thing regardless. I see this kind of thing all the time when the topic of sexual assault comes up and men talk about it as a problem, but only because they happen to be emotionally close to some particular women.
Note I am not trying to slam this guy in particular. He did something I approve of and that is great and all but the fact that people feel compelled to justify compassion on the basis that the person suffering is superficially similar to someone they know drives me *crazy*. We should be perfectly happy be good to others even if the only thing we have in common is our simple humanity. It is much like the way in which people get completely bent out of shape if someone from their own country has a problem but people from other countries don't matter. Just see how often news stories feel compelled to report on how many Canadians are involved in a particular air crash or other disaster for examples.
When you get mad that women are mistreated that is useful. Jump around, make some noise, cause a ruckus. Get that message out there! But please don't torpedo your efforts by then suggesting that you only really care because they kinda resemble these people you actually care about. That just tells them that you are actually pretty fine with them getting dumped on as long as it doesn't affect *you* in particular. If you don't feel that way then don't phrase it that way. If you do feel that way then you are part of the damn problem.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Tool users
Ferrett wrote today about how frustrated he was at Facebook for not showing him the stuff he wanted to see. He wants to keep up on friends' divorces, marriages, babies, tragedies, and other big events in their lives but he really wants to avoid all of the clickbait and buzzfeed links and game spam that comes along with the decent stuff people put on Facebook. His solution is to refuse to friend anybody new on Facebook. This makes about as much sense as trying to polish windows by hitting them with a wrench, complaining that the wrench is a terrible tool that broke all your windows, and then solving the problem by refusing to buy new windows.
The problem here is that Ferrett's friends suck and he isn't willing to take the simple steps to deal with that. They spam him with game requests and spend all day Liking random garbage on the internet and instead of just turning off messages from the people who fill his screen with junk he complains about how bad Facebook is. If you stop following the people who spam you then the important messages will get through because there won't be enough unimportant junk to block them. If people you want to receive important messages from are the same people who are spamming you then it is entirely their own fault. Getting people to hear the important things you have to say often involves not constantly vomiting forth bland filler and that rule applies both in meatspace and online.
Just like in real life you can't see all the people all the time. Hard decisions must be made because you have limited time and energy that can be parcelled out to spend time with people. Facebook and other similar platforms are the same way. Pick the people you want to hear from and stop listening to the deafening roar of the crowd that you don't care about. Consider the boy who cried wolf. If you constantly try to send messages to your friends about unimportant junk then you have no one but yourself to blame when your critical message gets lost in the shuffle. If your friends are standing around screaming about nonexistent wolves all day then get stop bloody listening.
Facebook is not some panacea and I would happily characterize the company itself as fairly evil. However, Facebook is a useful tool. Like any other tool it can be used foolishly and blaming the tool for improper use is silly and self indulgent at best.
The problem here is that Ferrett's friends suck and he isn't willing to take the simple steps to deal with that. They spam him with game requests and spend all day Liking random garbage on the internet and instead of just turning off messages from the people who fill his screen with junk he complains about how bad Facebook is. If you stop following the people who spam you then the important messages will get through because there won't be enough unimportant junk to block them. If people you want to receive important messages from are the same people who are spamming you then it is entirely their own fault. Getting people to hear the important things you have to say often involves not constantly vomiting forth bland filler and that rule applies both in meatspace and online.
Just like in real life you can't see all the people all the time. Hard decisions must be made because you have limited time and energy that can be parcelled out to spend time with people. Facebook and other similar platforms are the same way. Pick the people you want to hear from and stop listening to the deafening roar of the crowd that you don't care about. Consider the boy who cried wolf. If you constantly try to send messages to your friends about unimportant junk then you have no one but yourself to blame when your critical message gets lost in the shuffle. If your friends are standing around screaming about nonexistent wolves all day then get stop bloody listening.
Facebook is not some panacea and I would happily characterize the company itself as fairly evil. However, Facebook is a useful tool. Like any other tool it can be used foolishly and blaming the tool for improper use is silly and self indulgent at best.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Debaucherizing properly
For years I told everyone I was not a drinker. There were two reasons: First off, alcohol is disgusting. No matter how dilute the drink is, no matter what people put in it to mask the taste, there is always the underlying taint. I have always felt this way and it certainly didn't make me extra popular as a teenager - not that there was much risk of that. It is certainly possible for me to enjoy the buzz that alcohol grants but unlike most of the rest of the world I don't seem capable of enjoying the taste or the experience of drinking, just the results. Secondly I had a problem with tolerance. When I was younger I tested alcohol and found that it took an absurd amount to get me drunk. Sixteen drinks in three hours shouldn't leave you saying "Well, I guess I was kinda drunk", especially when you are the sort of person who is paranoid about money. The amount it took to get me buzzed was just too much both in terms of cash and saying "Blech, why do you people drink this stuff anyway?"
And then I got old.
Last week I, for no particular reason, had a couple glasses of kosher wine at a games night and found myself nicely buzzed. What the juh, thought I? This stuff is 5% alcohol, I shouldn't be able to tell until I have at least five of them in me. The only possible response to this is to obey the rallying call of science! and discover for myself what is going on inside me. After some experimentation during Wendy's trip (which was well timed for this particular discovery, it would seem) I have determined that my alcohol tolerance is now much more like a normal person and much less like a rock. While some might lament the loss I am extremely pleased at my new lightweight status and ready to fit better into society. Now when somebody asks "Do you want something to drink?" I can say Yes.
Of course I know nothing about alcohol so I needed a formula to determine what to buy. I don't want any soft stuff since the taste is still yucky so I decided to go to the hard liquor portion of the store and look for the bottle that had the highest alcohol content per dollar spent. I had no idea what I would end up with but it turns out at my local liquor store this is the big winner: Prince Igor Extreme Vodka.
I couldn't tell you whether or not it is properly pronounced eee gore or eye gore but either way the stuff has the kick I am looking for and the price was right. To be frank I don't know that the quality or taste really makes any difference to me at all - at the cottage I drank some random cheap whiskey that had been opened ten years ago and was sitting in the closet that entire time and also drank some decent scotch and the difference wasn't significant.
One tumbler 1/3 full of vodka, one tumbler 1/3 full of tomato juice. Chugged in two gulps, in that order. Ready to rock for the evening. Apparently that is how I roll.
And then I got old.
Last week I, for no particular reason, had a couple glasses of kosher wine at a games night and found myself nicely buzzed. What the juh, thought I? This stuff is 5% alcohol, I shouldn't be able to tell until I have at least five of them in me. The only possible response to this is to obey the rallying call of science! and discover for myself what is going on inside me. After some experimentation during Wendy's trip (which was well timed for this particular discovery, it would seem) I have determined that my alcohol tolerance is now much more like a normal person and much less like a rock. While some might lament the loss I am extremely pleased at my new lightweight status and ready to fit better into society. Now when somebody asks "Do you want something to drink?" I can say Yes.
Of course I know nothing about alcohol so I needed a formula to determine what to buy. I don't want any soft stuff since the taste is still yucky so I decided to go to the hard liquor portion of the store and look for the bottle that had the highest alcohol content per dollar spent. I had no idea what I would end up with but it turns out at my local liquor store this is the big winner: Prince Igor Extreme Vodka.
I couldn't tell you whether or not it is properly pronounced eee gore or eye gore but either way the stuff has the kick I am looking for and the price was right. To be frank I don't know that the quality or taste really makes any difference to me at all - at the cottage I drank some random cheap whiskey that had been opened ten years ago and was sitting in the closet that entire time and also drank some decent scotch and the difference wasn't significant.
One tumbler 1/3 full of vodka, one tumbler 1/3 full of tomato juice. Chugged in two gulps, in that order. Ready to rock for the evening. Apparently that is how I roll.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Sleeping with people
Wendy is away at a conference for 11 days right now. It is not a happy thing for me in the short term but it is useful - spending time apart for a week or two each year is a very useful way to get perspective on what we mean to each other and what we want out of life. It lets Wendy indulge her wanderlust and need for freedom which usually manifests in "Hey, let's move to Europe, like right now!" and that is a good release valve.
I do get a bit jealous. It is hard to avoid that when emails consist of lists of fun places visited, old friendships rekindled, and parties. I sit and think "wow, I would love to do that... except I can't leave the condo because, you know, responsibilities." It is hard to chart a path that grants both of us the freedom that we want simultaneously, especially since part of the freedom we both want involves doing things that don't make any money. The list of things you can do to solve problems shrinks when there isn't much in the way of money to throw around.
The thing that has been difficult for me this time is sleeping alone. I have had a fair bit of adult company and generally been busy with lots of things but I struggle with going to bed and waking up alone. I really want to snuggle someone before going to sleep and to have them nearby. I cannot deal with people being up against me when I am asleep but apparently having them a meter away is important. There is also something about that first half asleep snuggle in the morning, the fuzzy warmth and pressure, that is extremely powerful. I even miss having pajamas tossed at my face in an attempt to get me to haul my carcass out of bed.
Funny thing is I can't tell if randomly popping someone else into my bed would actually change things. It is very difficult to separate my desire to have somebody there with me, just to feel the warmth and hear the breathing, and my desire to have Wendy here in particular. Unfortunately testing that theory out is logistically tricky, as you might imagine.
I do get a bit jealous. It is hard to avoid that when emails consist of lists of fun places visited, old friendships rekindled, and parties. I sit and think "wow, I would love to do that... except I can't leave the condo because, you know, responsibilities." It is hard to chart a path that grants both of us the freedom that we want simultaneously, especially since part of the freedom we both want involves doing things that don't make any money. The list of things you can do to solve problems shrinks when there isn't much in the way of money to throw around.
The thing that has been difficult for me this time is sleeping alone. I have had a fair bit of adult company and generally been busy with lots of things but I struggle with going to bed and waking up alone. I really want to snuggle someone before going to sleep and to have them nearby. I cannot deal with people being up against me when I am asleep but apparently having them a meter away is important. There is also something about that first half asleep snuggle in the morning, the fuzzy warmth and pressure, that is extremely powerful. I even miss having pajamas tossed at my face in an attempt to get me to haul my carcass out of bed.
Funny thing is I can't tell if randomly popping someone else into my bed would actually change things. It is very difficult to separate my desire to have somebody there with me, just to feel the warmth and hear the breathing, and my desire to have Wendy here in particular. Unfortunately testing that theory out is logistically tricky, as you might imagine.
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