A more appropriate title would be: "Idiot hits pedestrians after purposely setting up his vehicle to do so, hoping it wouldn't."
Actually, it should be more like "Genius finds an easy way to sue a Multi-billion dollar company that's apparently run by idiots."
When people are on the job I see no reason they can't be monitored, that's why cops wear body cameras, their cars have dash cams, that's why trains should have cameras, and so should pilots, because if you knew what pilots were doing you probably wouldn't fly.
In some cases monitoring is quite reasonable and appropriate. In others it is pointless, wasteful and/or intrusive. Reflexively saying they should all be monitored at all times shows that you don't grasp all the nuances involved. Like you I support cameras as a general proposition but there are times when they are either useless or wasteful. There is no one size fits all answer.
Oh and I know very well what pilots do in the cockpit. I also know they have a rather spectacular safety record so I'm not especially worried about it.
There's no good reason NOT to have a camera in a train cab, cockpit, body cam, dash cam, etc, if it's ON THE JOB.
If the camera has minimal or no demonstrable safety benefit or if there are alternatives to the camera that would have a bigger bang for the buck in improving safety then there is a very good reason to not have the camera.
There also are significant (though often solvable) practical logistical and technology and economic issues in deploying cameras and saving the results. Do not be so quick to dismiss these challenges because they are not trivial or unimportant. Camera deployment isn't simply a matter of walking over to best buy and buying a few GoPros.
Whether or not it's "law" he has no right to privacy when my life is on the line.
That's a nonsense argument in such a general form because your life is constantly on the line. You ever drive a car? Do you insist that every other driver be monitored? Because you are at FAR higher statistical risk in your car than you are on any train or airplane and yet we don't insist on monitoring there.
The question is whether monitoring is reasonably likely to have a significant safety benefit. Black boxes in airliners and trains have obvious value in determining causes of crashes after the fact. Video monitoring of retail establishments has a clear benefit in reducing theft. Video monitoring of train engineers? Maybe... but the case isn't obvious because there are other options worth considering. Might be that a better solution is automation of speed controls. Might be that a better solution is a second engineer. Financial resources are finite so we should take a little time to figure out what the best solution is rather than reflexively going to the first idea we think of.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree that professionals responsible for public safety can and should expect reasonable monitoring while engaged in their professional duties. But note the word reasonable because it is important. There are legal, ethical and practical limits to what we can and should monitor. We don't have a right to view them on the toilet even if they are on duty.
Their concern is more to do with how people react under stressful situations when snap decisions are required. Knowing that your every move is being recorded and will be intensely scrutinized after the fact can alter those decisions.
That's a cop-out if I've ever heard one. Airline pilots have everything they say and every interaction with the controls recorded on every flight and somehow they manage to execute their duties quite well even in crash situations. If a train engineer is doing something they aren't supposed to be doing then they should damn well expect to get a spanking for it. Any equivocation on this point is simply trying to weasel out of being responsible for their actions.
I can understand the engineer's union attitude towards this. Would YOU want a camera on you all day? Do we really need to know whether the engineer picks his nose?
Pretty much everyone in retail has a camera on them all day. Anyone working at an airport too. And a bank. Airline pilots don't have a camera but they do have everything they say recorded. Stock traders have every piece of electronic and phone correspondence tracking in some manner.
Fact is that having a camera on you is not that big a deal as long as it is done above board and with reasonable privacy accommodations. They're really only going to review the tape if they think there is a problem. And if you are worried about whether you'll be seen picking your nose, then don't pick your nose.
The right doesn't "want stuff" taken from other people. They want to earn it.
They don't want stuff taken from other people? Bullshit. They just want the private sector to do the taking instead of the public sector. The right is all about removing restrictions from banks, deregulating industries, allowing companies to dump whatever they want into our streams, lakes and air, etc. They very much want to take things and they don't want to pay taxes so they don't have to give anything back. They are very happy to take away your rights if they don't like what you do. They want to take away women's reproductive rights. If you are an atheist they're very eager to take away your freedom to avoid organized religion. If you are gay they want to take away your right to love whomever you want. They're very eager to spend an absurd amount of money on defense and instead of taxing an appropriate amount they instead borrow the money burdening future generations.
The right doesn't take stuff? Give me a break...
It's a train he has no right to privacy.
Not strictly true at least with regard to being monitored by an employer. There are Federal and often State laws regarding whether recording is permitted in some circumstances. While employers usually have wide latitude they cannot legally record anywhere without limitation. Furthermore when a union gets involved then the right of the company to record may be subject to a collective bargaining agreement.
"Its slides are oversimplified, and bullet points omit the complexities of nearly any issue.
- I see, so the reasons to use PowerPoint are exactly the same reasons as the ones to ban PowerPoint.
That's all the ID the IRS requires to use their "secure" site???
Jaysus, you can get most of that (SSN & DoB) by looking at someone's Driver License in most States.
And guessing Married Filing Jointly will work more often than not, I expect....
I know, it's hilarious. These agencies/companies get hacked due to their own willful negligence... then scream "Hackers did it!" like hackers have magic hacking wands that turn servers inside out. It seems that the only piece of info that would have been remotely hard to get was filing status... which the "hackers" just guessed at. It looks like they were 50% successful, and I bet if compared with the victims filing status, they likely had a 50% chance of filing jointly or something. What a joke. This is completely and entirely the IRS's fault.
Make a new law, if you get hacked, you have to pay the person whos data you lost $100,000. Problem solved. You can then decide if spending time on securing the data is worth it, or if you just want to not store it. It IS possible to prevent this sort of thing. These agencies and companies just don't think it's profitable to do so when the penalty for losing a persons info is nothing more than a press release.
I bet the only time it's a distraction is when you have a helicopter boss who is constantly nagging you if you aren't always 100% focused on your task.
More or less yes. Monitoring is not the same as micromanaging. When part of your job is public safety (pilots, engineers, cops, etc) then a bit of passive monitoring is very much in the public interest and generally will outweigh the worker's right to privacy while performing their job.
A human in the cockpit is going to assess those situations much faster than an automated system can in many of these situations.
Depends on the human and depends on the automation and depends on the circumstances. Your assertion is far to broad to be correct as a general proposition.
You want to stop trains from speeding? screw the cameras, Put GPS in the engine
Already being worked on but controlling train speed isn't quite that simple. GPS has trouble in some locations on the ground so a reliable speed limiting system would necessitate something a bit more complicated. However I agree that there really isn't any good reason not to have it be a part of the technology package on trains.
More than a century of research establishes that monitoring workers actually reduces the ability to perform complex tasks, such as operating a train, because of the distractive effect.
Citation please? I'm an industrial engineer professionally and monitoring of workers is a pretty big part of my professional life. I'm not aware of any credible evidence that as a general principle that monitoring workers reduces ability to perform tasks. Perhaps a clumsy system in specific circumstances but claims of any "distracting effect" sound like union representative talking points rather than actual scientific facts. In fact in my experience the opposite is typically true. I find that people tend to be more vigilant when they are aware they are being monitored as a general rule. Some people dislike it but as long as they aren't interrupted the monitoring is rarely actually distracting. Pilots in aircraft have everything they say monitored and yet somehow they manage to operate a vehicle that is even more complex than a train quite competently.
If 90% of your business is done via selling online then shipping, this cost must be built into the item. I don't pay Walmart a separate fee for someone to unbox a carton and stock the shelves. Nor do I pay a fee for someone to put my stuff in a bag.
Just because you don't pay the fee separately doesn't mean you don't pay it. And if you go to the grocery store and someone puts your groceries in the bag you had better believe their paycheck is partly covered by your bill. They aren't doing it as a charity. Some are just more clever about hiding the charge than others.
There is no such thing as free shipping or free handling. Whether you break out the charge separately or lump it all together you'll end up paying it one way or the other.
I think he was saying that a tiny USB PacMan light is going to be so small as to not actually cost $7 to ship it.
Even a 1 pound ground package will be cost something close to $7-10 and probably more if it is any distance. UPS and Fedex don't deal in weights less than a pound - they round up to the nearest pound. You don't have to take my word for it. Go ahead and try to get a better price from Fedex or UPS. I promise you that you cannot do it.
It should be about $3 or less.
It isn't $3 and won't be unless you ship a HUGE (meaning many tens of thousands) number of packages. The only way you might get a shipping cost that low would be to ship it in a padded envelope using first class mail via USPS with no tracking. I've been shipping via UPS and Fedex for literally decades. Your perception of what it should cost to ship doesn't match reality.
The prices are already marked up so fucking high I can see up Ms. PacMan's skirt, they can afford to let a couple of small items ship for free
High prices does not mean they are necessarily profitable and no it doesn't mean they necessarily can afford to ship stuff for free. Maybe they can but you simply don't have the information to make that judgement.
There are a couple of assholes sellers on Amazon charging $18 to ship a fucking $7 item, but for the most part Amazon ships stuff for very little, or free.
There is no such thing as free shipping. If it is "free" then it is simply rolled into the price of the item, possibly at the expense of the profit margin of the vendor. Companies like Amazon get good shipping rates because they ship an enormous volume of packages. I use their Prime service and it's great but I have no illusions that the service is actually free of charge.
Ah, yes, back in the day before Dice ruined slashdot, those were fine times, weren't they...
You think Dice ruined slashdot and yet you are still here. Curious...
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
