Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: The Race to The Bottom Begins! (Score 2) 595

by rbanzai (#38986385) Attached to: US Approves Two New Nuclear Reactors

Now the legions of contractors and subcontractors will sweep in on a tidal wave of self-service and mediocrity to see who can offer the lowest price for their labor and the best kickbacks to the politicians and NRC people in charge of protecting us.

It doesn't matter how good your design is or how strict your regulations are when the people that build, own, maintain and oversee nuclear power plants prize money over all other things, including the safety of the population. This is why we continue to have huge industrial disasters. Not because nuclear power is unsafe, or drilling for oil in the gulf is unsafe. It's because the people in positions of responsibility are weak, selfish idiots.

Comment: People were hooked on SPACE INVADERS (Score 2) 401

by rbanzai (#37728040) Attached to: Who Killed Videogames?

If you expose a product to at least 100 million people you're going to collect some of those who have addictive personalities. If you think it requires modern marketing analysis to create an addictive game, replacing "real" content with material designed to addict then you must have missed out on the late 1970s/early 1980s when kids were glued to arcade games. Space Invaders, Pac-Man et al were drawing children intro scrounging for every last quarter just for one more play. This happened worldwide, with none of the benefit of the cold, computer-aided fine-tuning that we're told is luring people in.

Can they make a video game more addictive? Possibly, but the idea that only specialized work on a title is what makes people addicted to it is not accurate.

Comment: But will they pay? (Score 1) 57

by rbanzai (#36705078) Attached to: UCLA Hospital Hit With HIPAA Fine On Celeb Records

We read about fines like this all the time but there is no follow-up to see if they are ever paid. It's similar to the drug busts where law enforcement agencies assign an arbitrary massively inflated value to the confiscated material to make themselves look good. Agencies declare these fines so they look good in the press, but are they ever actually paid? In full? On time?

Comment: From a dispatcher: this is dumb (Score 2) 238

by rbanzai (#35571720) Attached to: System Measures Stress In Emergency Callers' Voice

I don't understand this article at all because emergency dispatching is not prioritized based on the caller's choice of priority. I could have ten calls at once all insisting they are the top priority and that information would be irrelevant. The nature of the emergency is what's important, not how badly the caller wants assistance.

I dispatched during the L.A. riots and believe me every caller wanted someone to help them RIGHT NOW and I don't blame them. But calls for people being beaten got priority over property crime calls. I question the thought process behind this article that dispatchers do not or cannot already properly prioritize calls.

Comment: Re:This was not about accuracy. (Score 1) 1277

by rbanzai (#35431398) Attached to: Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy

Any politician who believes that somewhere in America schoolchildren are being "indoctrinated in socialism" must have his motives questioned. This was not about accuracy, this was about a politician chasing the socialism bugbear. It was a strange political agenda couched in the name of accuracy. The validity of the change is undermined by the agenda and acting on one part without addressing the other is disingenuous.

The law was prompted by a bad motive and the citizens should not be held to a higher, more objective standard when assessing the law than the people who sponsored it and put it into place.

Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about. -- Philippe Schnoebelen

Working...