6 ms·

"Nothing is allowed unless its completely perfect" is a dangerous attitude. Its made a lot of people homeless, closed a ton of the soup kitchens and shelters th

"Nothing is allowed unless its completely perfect" is a dangerous attitude. Its made a lot of people homeless, closed a ton of the soup kitchens and shelters those homeless might have sought refuge in and IMHO prevented a great deal of innovation from seeing the light of day. Its possible that this pervasive bit of anal retentiveness has made some(1) individuals marginally safer, but its super dangerous to societies. (1) Except for the aforementioned homeless. They're not safer.

DanBC 15y ago
> "Nothing is allowed unless its completely perfect" is a dangerous attitude. But you can see that there is a big difference between "not completely perfect" and "likely to cause death or serious injury"?
- raverbashing 15y ago
  "likely to cause death or serious injury" No You don't know what parts they were, but I'm sure the repairer evaluated the situation. This is an extreme sheltering mentality An old product certainly does not conform to modern standarts, but it's reasonably safe (given you don't do anything stupid to it)
  - DanBC 15y ago
    "frayed cord" == risk of fire or death. That's not sheltering, it's true.
    - sophacles 15y ago
      I don't think that is a necessarily true statement. I would need to see the cord. Given how horrible reporters are at getting tech and science right, I don't assume "frayed cord" in the article translates to the technical meaning of the term. That being said, this argument seems to largely consist of 1) some people who assume the repair-man is incompetent and possibly has a psycopathic desire to kill people via shoddy repairs, and at the same time assuming the technical descriptions are 100% accurate, and 2) some people who assume the reporter was being a reporter and willfully being incompetent in reporting, while the humble repairman (basically a hacker working on items) is good enough to know what he is doing with extremely reasonable margins of safety. Neither of these sets of assumptions particularly valid and they appear to stem from deeper assumptions: what is an acceptable margin of risk, what value various safety rules have on actual safety and so on. IMHO, discussions on these would be far more interesting than wrangling about a passage from a single report without any other evidence of what was (not) done.
      - DanBC 15y ago
        I am amazed that anyone thinks this is some kind of over-protective nannying, or expensive over-engineering. When you have a 2000 watt device operating on 220 v ac mains you can't afford to bodge safety critical components. Irons are not double insulated (they have a huge chunk of metal on the base) and thus you need to be really careful with earthing and mains cords. This is especially true in a device that needs water to operate. Since 1.5 metres of good quality mains flex costs hardly anything, and they have have the iron open anyway, there's little reason not to replace the flex. You replace the mains plug at the same time, thus avoiding another common source of risk. You mention the potential for safety standards to be over-protective and over engineered. I gently agree, some of them do seem a bit much. But then I remember when TV adverts warned people about mains-socket safety - about shoving the wires into the socket by using matches. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYwmrBXHFO4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYwmrBXHFO4) All electrical appliances need to come with a pre-fitted plug in the UK. Perhaps the wiring coming from mass producing Chinese factories is scary, but so is the wiring I've seen many friends do (skimpy short earth leads and big loops of live leads) with over-tightened or loose screws - I've seen many nasty errors.
        excuse-me 15y ago
        It can go a bit too much the other way. A lab full of PhD physicists and engineers designing and building an advanced radar sat and we can't get an extension cord. Instead we get the extension block and a separate plug and wire. We then need an maintenance 'engineer' who has been on the half day PAT course to come and fit the cable for us.
        raverbashing 15y ago
        Well, if the issue is a frayed cord, I agree, substitution, as you said, is cheap. But of course you could describe a cord as "frayed" but only because it's a little dirty, but the isolation is still in good shape
        konstruktor 15y ago
        I like that the PSA ends with "fix things properly", which is sensible, as opposed to "don't fix electronic appliances"
dhx 15y ago
Would you: * sleep on a heavily soiled mattress made of highly flammable material * dress your baby in highly flammable second-hand sleepwear * consume unsanitary meat that has been sitting out in the heat for too long * feed your family a diet of donated junk food including chocolate, biscuits, chips and frozen pizzas * give your teenage daughter a second hand hair dryer with a frayed electrical lead exposing live wires * wear bright fluorescent green clown-like clothing that has been collecting dust in someone's attic for 20 years * allow your children to play with lead-painted toys that pose a choke/suffocation hazard What makes it acceptable to purchase a brand new electrical appliance and dispose of the old, worn and unsafe one to the less fortunate? What message does it send? Charities are forced at great expense to dispose of huge amounts of junk similar to the items listed above. It's not just a case of charities looking out for everyone's safety and well-being. To a large extent it's also a desire not to insult those in need by offering junk that the rest of the world wouldn't want to purchase and use. The rule of thumb that charities use is: donate items that you would purchase yourself or gift to your friends and family.
- sltkr 15y ago
  I eat junk food, cook food that's past the expiration date as long as it doesn't look/smell fishy, and I wear old clothes. My clothing probably isn't too fashionable either and my mattress isn't spotless. No, I probably wouldn't dress a baby in “highly flammable second-hand sleepwear” but the critical part of that phrase is “highly flammable”, not “second-hand”. It's ridiculous to suggest that because clothing isn't good-as-new to automatically assume it's a “highly flammable” health hazard. > What makes it acceptable to purchase a brand new electrical appliance and dispose of the old, worn and unsafe one to the less fortunate? What message does it send? I use old appliances all the time. Sometimes I do replace them. But just the act of buying something new does not make the old any less usable. What message does it send that those old appliances are good enough for me, but they are below the standards of people who can't afford to buy their own?
  - dhx 15y ago
    You missed the point of my comment — donors contemning the less fortunate by throwing them scraps. It was not an argument about the minimum technical specifications of donated goods. Nor was it an argument about donated goods needing to be brand new.
spitfire 15y ago
This attitude has killed many in aviation. The aviation industry is so conservative they've resisted electronic fuel injection for decades. Sticking instead with carburetors which can ice up. and many many people have in fact died from carb icing.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  My flight instructor said it best: "At least then we know what killed them". In aviation it seems like its way better to have lots of know risks vs fewer unknown ones. People are desperate for something (or someone) concrete to blame in air mishaps.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  But hasn't there been fuel injected engines since the 1960s at least? There are planes like the Beechcraft Musketeer Super III that had a fuel injected Lycoming IO-360 engine for example. I don't know much about motors or aviation to know what the difference would be although. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Musketeer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Musketeer

DanBC 15y ago

> "Nothing is allowed unless its completely perfect" is a dangerous attitude. But you can see that there is a big difference between "not completely perfect" and "likely to cause death or serious injury"?

raverbashing 15y ago
"likely to cause death or serious injury" No You don't know what parts they were, but I'm sure the repairer evaluated the situation. This is an extreme sheltering mentality An old product certainly does not conform to modern standarts, but it's reasonably safe (given you don't do anything stupid to it)
- DanBC 15y ago
  "frayed cord" == risk of fire or death. That's not sheltering, it's true.
  - sophacles 15y ago
    I don't think that is a necessarily true statement. I would need to see the cord. Given how horrible reporters are at getting tech and science right, I don't assume "frayed cord" in the article translates to the technical meaning of the term. That being said, this argument seems to largely consist of 1) some people who assume the repair-man is incompetent and possibly has a psycopathic desire to kill people via shoddy repairs, and at the same time assuming the technical descriptions are 100% accurate, and 2) some people who assume the reporter was being a reporter and willfully being incompetent in reporting, while the humble repairman (basically a hacker working on items) is good enough to know what he is doing with extremely reasonable margins of safety. Neither of these sets of assumptions particularly valid and they appear to stem from deeper assumptions: what is an acceptable margin of risk, what value various safety rules have on actual safety and so on. IMHO, discussions on these would be far more interesting than wrangling about a passage from a single report without any other evidence of what was (not) done.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      I am amazed that anyone thinks this is some kind of over-protective nannying, or expensive over-engineering. When you have a 2000 watt device operating on 220 v ac mains you can't afford to bodge safety critical components. Irons are not double insulated (they have a huge chunk of metal on the base) and thus you need to be really careful with earthing and mains cords. This is especially true in a device that needs water to operate. Since 1.5 metres of good quality mains flex costs hardly anything, and they have have the iron open anyway, there's little reason not to replace the flex. You replace the mains plug at the same time, thus avoiding another common source of risk. You mention the potential for safety standards to be over-protective and over engineered. I gently agree, some of them do seem a bit much. But then I remember when TV adverts warned people about mains-socket safety - about shoving the wires into the socket by using matches. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYwmrBXHFO4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYwmrBXHFO4) All electrical appliances need to come with a pre-fitted plug in the UK. Perhaps the wiring coming from mass producing Chinese factories is scary, but so is the wiring I've seen many friends do (skimpy short earth leads and big loops of live leads) with over-tightened or loose screws - I've seen many nasty errors.
      - excuse-me 15y ago
        It can go a bit too much the other way. A lab full of PhD physicists and engineers designing and building an advanced radar sat and we can't get an extension cord. Instead we get the extension block and a separate plug and wire. We then need an maintenance 'engineer' who has been on the half day PAT course to come and fit the cable for us.
      - raverbashing 15y ago
        Well, if the issue is a frayed cord, I agree, substitution, as you said, is cheap. But of course you could describe a cord as "frayed" but only because it's a little dirty, but the isolation is still in good shape
      - konstruktor 15y ago
        I like that the PSA ends with "fix things properly", which is sensible, as opposed to "don't fix electronic appliances"

dhx 15y ago

Would you: * sleep on a heavily soiled mattress made of highly flammable material * dress your baby in highly flammable second-hand sleepwear * consume unsanitary meat that has been sitting out in the heat for too long * feed your family a diet of donated junk food including chocolate, biscuits, chips and frozen pizzas * give your teenage daughter a second hand hair dryer with a frayed electrical lead exposing live wires * wear bright fluorescent green clown-like clothing that has been collecting dust in someone's attic for 20 years * allow your children to play with lead-painted toys that pose a choke/suffocation hazard What makes it acceptable to purchase a brand new electrical appliance and dispose of the old, worn and unsafe one to the less fortunate? What message does it send? Charities are forced at great expense to dispose of huge amounts of junk similar to the items listed above. It's not just a case of charities looking out for everyone's safety and well-being. To a large extent it's also a desire not to insult those in need by offering junk that the rest of the world wouldn't want to purchase and use. The rule of thumb that charities use is: donate items that you would purchase yourself or gift to your friends and family.

sltkr 15y ago
I eat junk food, cook food that's past the expiration date as long as it doesn't look/smell fishy, and I wear old clothes. My clothing probably isn't too fashionable either and my mattress isn't spotless. No, I probably wouldn't dress a baby in “highly flammable second-hand sleepwear” but the critical part of that phrase is “highly flammable”, not “second-hand”. It's ridiculous to suggest that because clothing isn't good-as-new to automatically assume it's a “highly flammable” health hazard. > What makes it acceptable to purchase a brand new electrical appliance and dispose of the old, worn and unsafe one to the less fortunate? What message does it send? I use old appliances all the time. Sometimes I do replace them. But just the act of buying something new does not make the old any less usable. What message does it send that those old appliances are good enough for me, but they are below the standards of people who can't afford to buy their own?
- dhx 15y ago
  You missed the point of my comment — donors contemning the less fortunate by throwing them scraps. It was not an argument about the minimum technical specifications of donated goods. Nor was it an argument about donated goods needing to be brand new.

spitfire 15y ago

This attitude has killed many in aviation. The aviation industry is so conservative they've resisted electronic fuel injection for decades. Sticking instead with carburetors which can ice up. and many many people have in fact died from carb icing.

noonespecial 15y ago
My flight instructor said it best: "At least then we know what killed them". In aviation it seems like its way better to have lots of know risks vs fewer unknown ones. People are desperate for something (or someone) concrete to blame in air mishaps.
mahyarm 15y ago
But hasn't there been fuel injected engines since the 1960s at least? There are planes like the Beechcraft Musketeer Super III that had a fuel injected Lycoming IO-360 engine for example. I don't know much about motors or aviation to know what the difference would be although. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Musketeer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Musketeer