On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:25:39 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:

>> LOL, I've actually seen a photo of Brown doctored up to make him look
>> like Stalin.  I think it was on The Daily Show....
> 
> We're even getting forced labour now... sort of
> http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/unemployed-to-be-used-for-
soup--200807211110/

<shaking head>  What's the world coming to?

>> photo capabilities, even though the phone isn't being used.  If the
>> member is an IT person who is REQUIRED to carry a phone as part of
>> their employment and the company provides a phone with a camera built
>> into it, that creates a problem.
> 
> It's an attitude shift "I'm not being paid enough to deal with the
> applications of this rule I'm just going to enforce it" instead of
> jobsworth perhaps rulesworth? Pratchettism from Going Postal regarding
> the ability to cripple the 'clacks' system - In the old days the head of
> the tower would strip the message from the list knowing they were doing
> the right thing and that the people back at Head Office would agree; not
> now.

Oh, yeah, I understand why people take "the lazy way out".  There's a 
real sense that as a society, we've become lazy, particularly in the 
areas of applying common sense to things and in behaving ethically.

>> (not very likely now, but that could change) and I didn't want to have
>> to make a choice between being able to be contacted if it was necessary
>> and being able to do my job.
> 
> I'm surprised it isn't a blanket ban, how many phones without a camera
> can still record audio?

I know mine doesn't have an application for that.  It probably could with 
the right app, but I haven't had a need.

>> kids having fun at the pool make one a criminal or a paedophile.  It's
>> the pattern of *behaviour* that does.
> 
> But patterns are hard to discern and as per above I'm not paid to think,
> so better just to go for the option that you can't be disciplined/fired
> for "Just obeying the rules!".

Yeah.  It is a "society becoming lazy" thing in my mind.

>> But as a society (and I think this is a western-societial problem
>> mostly), we are tending towards the type of "shoot first, ask questions
>> later" Zero-Tolerance policies that remove common sense and thinking
>> from the process.
>>
>> For an excellent essay on ZT problems, if you haven't seen it, have a
>> look over at http://www.thisistrue.com/zt.html
> 
> Bloody hellski. The trouble with such 'laws' is how they equate things -
> water pistol = firearm, asking a boy if he likes you = sexual
> harassment. I assume you've read Roger MacBride Allen's Caliban dealing
> with Three Law Robots, such a robot doesn't distinguish between one
> human being attacked by another and someone standing on a tall building;
> both are dangerous. As robots are omnipresent humans began to fail to
> distinguish between these dangers too.

Yep, that is the biggest problem.  There have been stories about kids 
being expelled from school for having prescription medications because 
the ZT policy of the school is "no drugs".  We're not talking about 
minimum-wage workers making those kinds of decisions - school 
*administration* people saying "we're not going to apply common sense 
here", as if there's a difference between inhaling from an albuterol 
inhaler (for asthma) and huffing from a can of compressed air.

It's absolutely *ridiculous*.

>> (And BTW, I do subscribe to the 'premium' TRUE subscription and have
>> for years - it's a very good and often quite funny newsletter - even
>> the free one is quite good, but I like the additional stories in the
>> premium edition as well.  I think you'd enjoy it, Phil)
> 
> I do like the tag line.

Each story he does comes with a tag line - it's one of the things that 
makes it fun to read.  Another reason for the premium subscription as 
well is that you can participate in a monthly "tagline challenge" where 
the readers send in suggestions for taglines for one story.

Jim

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