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A Syllogism

September 10, 2004 /

Propositions:

  • Corporations are not human, but are considered persons under some aspects of the law.
  • Corporations exist to serve people.
  • Corporations may, in effect, act autonomously.
  • These are three defining attributes of robots.

Conclusion:

Corporations are analogous to robots (or, more specifically, are a subset of the class of entities that can be considered robots).

Recommendation:

That the following three laws apply to corporations:

  1. A corporation may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A corporation must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A corporation must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Objection:

These laws were demonstrated to be incomplete and to have significant flaws, repeatedly, by their own creator. Also, there’s the question of whether the Zeroth and Fourth laws (replace “human being” in the First Law with “humanity” and “another corporation,” respectively, and maintain order of precedence) should apply; after all, a version of the Zeroth Law has recently been used to justify a war.

Still, I think it’s interesting to consider. Would applying the Three Laws with high prejudice be better or worse than the system we currently have in place?

I live with a GIRL

September 10, 2004 /

Our apartment building has a two-stage entry system: you have to buzz yourself in at the lobby, or call from the special phone there and have someone else buzz you in, and then all the individual apartment doors lock automatically as well. This is relevant because I went running, today, and forgot the key and buzzer I usually lace into my shoes.

I got back and tried to call up via the lobby phone, which redirects to my cell phone; as I’ve mentioned before, however, my phone is always (always) on silent, so Maria was unaware and couldn’t buzz me in.

I went downstairs and tried the parking garage door, which also requires buzzing but had been propped open when I left. It was closed now, though. I tried the auxiliary back gate, which frequently sticks open, but not today (you may have picked up on the fact that our apartment building is not terribly secure).

Then I noticed that, about a dozen yards away, the car-sized automatic parking garage door was still open. It was about four feet off the ground and closing rapidly.

I sprinted, dove, and rolled under the door with just inches to spare. I didn’t even trip the electric safety eye. It was that close.

I related this story to Maria. “You were rolling around on the floor of the garage?” she said. “Eeww.”

September 6, 2004 /

So Modern Humor Authority posted a second issue, which I guess means they really do intend to have a web presence. It’s still weird to me to think that Kris Straub didn’t invent MHA and its frontman–or rather, that they’re based on a real human and his magazine, instead of Scott McCloud and his ouevre. But that’s the way it is.

MHA itself is pretty obviously ripe for ridicule (read the AppleGeeks review and see for yourself), but they seem to tolerate it well, since they knew about the Checkerboard Nightmare parody and still stayed in contact with Kris. That’s the impression I got, anyway. It kind of makes me want to put together some kind of parody ezine, like a massive satire of all review publications, but I don’t know. That kind of thing is getting a little played out.

September 5, 2004 /

Hey there.

Wanna know which computer I’m posting this on?

You get three guesses.

September 3, 2004 /

Did you know that the taste you associate with copper, because of pennies, isn’t copper? It’s zinc! In 1895, a federal mandate required that all national zinc begin tasting like copper.

This message has been brought to you, by science!

I feel like getting arrested

September 3, 2004 /

Hey, wanna see if you’re a terrorist? Excuse me–“Specially Designated National or Blocked Person?” Thanks to the Department of the Treasury, you can, in PDF or ASCII flavors! (As stated above, I do feel like getting arrested, so I was going to write a form script that would search the file for you, but it’s 1.35Mb of unmarked-up plaintext, and I don’t want to kill my webhost with that much sequential search.)

I’m aware of this list because today I had to write down some personal info and sign a release form at work. My company could be getting a federal contractor as a client, so every employee name has to be checked against the list. Fair enough. I don’t like that, but it is the law.

I do have a problem, though, with the fact that we contracted an outside firm to do the checking. Everybody in this company had to sign a paper saying that neither my employer nor this firm were liable for any consequence of having yourself checked. Then everybody had to print his or her first, middle and last names, DOB, and SSN. The forms will be sent off to VeriCorp, who of course can be trusted with my SSN and corresponding information! I guess!

Keep in mind that my employers are probably paying thousands of dollars for this: VeriCorp is going to take a list of a few hundred names, then they’re going to take the text file linked above, and they’re going to have some people hit CTRL-F a few times. And if one of those people makes a typo and you go to Secret Terrorist Jail, whoops! Oh well! They’re not liable!

I am making use of hyperbole here, obviously. Nobody’s going to go to jail; if you’re on the SDN list and the FBI doesn’t know where you are, you’re certainly not going to be working under your real name, much less putting it down on that form. This whole thing is a redundancy measure, a legal fallback.

My point is that there is no reason to be sending hundreds of people’s personal info to an outside contractor, liability-free, when the list is publicly available, and we have an in-house software development team who are all experts at data correlation. I guess the potential client doesn’t trust us to verify our own employees, because we’re an interested party in the negotiations. But if they don’t trust us to verify the information correctly, why trust us to send it correctly in the first place?