[OT] NH protest against HP printers with RFID chips Nov. 5th

Bill McGonigle bill at bfccomputing.com
Wed Oct 26 20:46:00 EDT 2005


On Oct 26, 2005, at 19:59, Thomas M. Albright wrote:

> No. I don't lend things to people unless I know they know how to use
> them and I know what it'll be used for. tada! My ass is covered. No one
> but me uses my gun unless I'm right there to supervise. No one but me
> uses my car at all.
>
> Why is that such a difficult concept?

I think I see the problem here - we're all maximizing different 
incompatible values.

You're maximizing for liability protection.  My neighbors and I lend 
each others powertools all the time (and we don't know one of us won't 
snap and go all homicidal with the brush cutter) but we're maximizing 
for other values (cost, quality, neighborliness, etc.)

What each of us individually maximizes for is a values decision - we 
can spend all day trying to debate the relative merits and whether 
those who don't follow our beliefs should be indicted for the potential 
outcomes of said belief systems, but whether one should be 'neighborly' 
or not isn't something you can solve for without other criteria and 
trade-offs. (a game-theory simulation of cooperation models with a 
liability factor would be an intriguing exercise...)

I can only say that Free Software wouldn't be possible if liability 
protection were each participants' top priority (there, Bruce, we're 
back on topic. ;) ).

-Bill
-----
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