Sometimes I look for a good answer to a question and can't find it. I ran into that problem a lot when looking for information on my new used car.
The solution: figure it out myself and write my own answer.
So I made an automotive blog out of the idea. :)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Grand Review of Every Zombie Movie Ever
"Oh what hell science hath wrought."
This is the message every one of these tries to hammer in to your skull. "Science is bad because bad people use it to do bad things." Sometimes they roll out the evergreen "civilization breaks down in disasters."
They open with an accident. Usually a leak in a lab that infects a worker. That worker lacks the character to quarantine himself, so he goes out and infects half the town. Because a lifetime of observing scientific rigor hasn't hammered in a good sense of ethics.
You think they'd just let anyone tinker with bioweapons? Come on now. It's like the people who own these labs have never seen a zombie movie. You give an average person that kind of access, and they're going to kill everyone in a thirty mile radius.
The bulk of the movie follows several people finding their normal routine shaken by the shambling horde. The protagonists are always written to follow the worst stereotypes. The boisterous, street-wise minority. The stressed-out businessman. The pasty white zombie bait. The loner with a storied past that he refuses to talk about.
Cut to our hardy protagonists fending off the shambling hordes from their retail fortress. Why do they always pick a mall or supermarket? It's always a place with nowhere to run. Those wet wipes at the entrance won't clean up a zombie bite.
Maybe they think they'll be able to ride out the apocalypse with a large selection of processed food. But retail is the first thing to fall. People get bitten, and head to the store's pharmacy. A prescription for disaster.
Pasty sees her boyfriend through the locked sliding door. She opens it. But no, he's a zombie. And he has zombie friends. Stressed Out Businessman is crippled with fear, and goes down with nothing but a whimper. Street-Wise Minority tries to fight.
You can fight all you want, but the zombies always win. Storied Loner is long gone. He knew what was coming, and didn't stick around. He's safely camped out in an open field where no zombie can catch him.
This is the message every one of these tries to hammer in to your skull. "Science is bad because bad people use it to do bad things." Sometimes they roll out the evergreen "civilization breaks down in disasters."
They open with an accident. Usually a leak in a lab that infects a worker. That worker lacks the character to quarantine himself, so he goes out and infects half the town. Because a lifetime of observing scientific rigor hasn't hammered in a good sense of ethics.
You think they'd just let anyone tinker with bioweapons? Come on now. It's like the people who own these labs have never seen a zombie movie. You give an average person that kind of access, and they're going to kill everyone in a thirty mile radius.
The bulk of the movie follows several people finding their normal routine shaken by the shambling horde. The protagonists are always written to follow the worst stereotypes. The boisterous, street-wise minority. The stressed-out businessman. The pasty white zombie bait. The loner with a storied past that he refuses to talk about.
Cut to our hardy protagonists fending off the shambling hordes from their retail fortress. Why do they always pick a mall or supermarket? It's always a place with nowhere to run. Those wet wipes at the entrance won't clean up a zombie bite.
Maybe they think they'll be able to ride out the apocalypse with a large selection of processed food. But retail is the first thing to fall. People get bitten, and head to the store's pharmacy. A prescription for disaster.
Pasty sees her boyfriend through the locked sliding door. She opens it. But no, he's a zombie. And he has zombie friends. Stressed Out Businessman is crippled with fear, and goes down with nothing but a whimper. Street-Wise Minority tries to fight.
You can fight all you want, but the zombies always win. Storied Loner is long gone. He knew what was coming, and didn't stick around. He's safely camped out in an open field where no zombie can catch him.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Are you ethical enough to run a service?
You’ve got the great idea for a service, the funds to build it, and an amazing team of founders. Are ethics in the business plan?
They need to be. Hundreds, thousands, or–if you’re lucky–millions of people are going to provide you with data, and not all of it will be known to them. Most of them wouldn’t know a traffic log from a tablet written in an ancient language.
And it doesn’t have to be some big service. Every administrator needs to think about these things, whether they run a small blog or a global e-commerce site.
Honesty
Are you honest enough to not peek? Can you know that any number of people, from friends to enemies, might be using that service and not try to use their data for personal gain?
This is something you need to know in advance. If not, you need to find someone who can be trusted, and give them the keys to user data. Even better: Make it so no one has access to raw data without a great deal of effort.
An honesty problem is something that will fester until something goes wrong. “Umms” and “ahhs” or silence when things blow up will look bad. Make sure you’re ready to answer the common contingencies–the data breach, natural disaster, and so on.
Openness and accountability
But it’s not enough to have good safeguards on user data. Your users need to know what you do with it. You need to be accountable.
Most people won’t consider openness until it matters. But when it matters, they’ll come looking. If you try to hide what happened, or you can’t account for it, you might as well write your business off.
Imagine you’ve launched a hit e-mail service, and traffic is growing by 20% every day. Half your visitors are signing up. Even better, some of the biggest names in technology are checking it out. They swap a few e-mails with friends.
There’s nothing you would consider personal, but it’s still private. Then six months in, an audit by your new administrator discovers that the person he replaced–who found a great job in another state–was snooping on users.
Make sure you know how you’re going to handle this situation. There’s a lot of different opinions on what warrants telling users, and you need to take your stance before you start letting people in. Maybe even publish this policy so customers know how you’ll handle it.
Ethics
Ethics isn’t just some buzzword you put on marketing copy. You have to understand what it means to run an ethical business, and you have to believe it. Then you have to practice it.
Ethics are your perception of good and bad. If you don’t consider it bad to peek at user data without good cause, then your ethics might not be compatible with those of your customers.
If you and your customers have an incompatible ethos, you shouldn’t have access to their data. Everyone you hire needs to make this self-assessment.
They need to be. Hundreds, thousands, or–if you’re lucky–millions of people are going to provide you with data, and not all of it will be known to them. Most of them wouldn’t know a traffic log from a tablet written in an ancient language.
And it doesn’t have to be some big service. Every administrator needs to think about these things, whether they run a small blog or a global e-commerce site.
Honesty
Are you honest enough to not peek? Can you know that any number of people, from friends to enemies, might be using that service and not try to use their data for personal gain?
This is something you need to know in advance. If not, you need to find someone who can be trusted, and give them the keys to user data. Even better: Make it so no one has access to raw data without a great deal of effort.
An honesty problem is something that will fester until something goes wrong. “Umms” and “ahhs” or silence when things blow up will look bad. Make sure you’re ready to answer the common contingencies–the data breach, natural disaster, and so on.
Openness and accountability
But it’s not enough to have good safeguards on user data. Your users need to know what you do with it. You need to be accountable.
Most people won’t consider openness until it matters. But when it matters, they’ll come looking. If you try to hide what happened, or you can’t account for it, you might as well write your business off.
Imagine you’ve launched a hit e-mail service, and traffic is growing by 20% every day. Half your visitors are signing up. Even better, some of the biggest names in technology are checking it out. They swap a few e-mails with friends.
There’s nothing you would consider personal, but it’s still private. Then six months in, an audit by your new administrator discovers that the person he replaced–who found a great job in another state–was snooping on users.
Make sure you know how you’re going to handle this situation. There’s a lot of different opinions on what warrants telling users, and you need to take your stance before you start letting people in. Maybe even publish this policy so customers know how you’ll handle it.
Ethics
Ethics isn’t just some buzzword you put on marketing copy. You have to understand what it means to run an ethical business, and you have to believe it. Then you have to practice it.
Ethics are your perception of good and bad. If you don’t consider it bad to peek at user data without good cause, then your ethics might not be compatible with those of your customers.
If you and your customers have an incompatible ethos, you shouldn’t have access to their data. Everyone you hire needs to make this self-assessment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)