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Like Aaron said, shouting at the gears isn't going to fix the machine. But excising the broken, unfit, insidiously malicious gear from the machine will make sa

by shiven 14y ago

Like Aaron said, shouting at the gears isn't going to fix the machine. But excising the broken, unfit, insidiously malicious gear from the machine will make said machine one gear short of harming the innocent-until-proven-guilty.

philwelch 14y ago
There are ten thousand gears coming out of law school every year. It won't make a difference.
- rosser 14y ago
  It won't make a difference. If engineers started getting sacked for breaking the build, you can be damned sure people would get very scrupulous about only committing working code, whether they're fresh out of school or greybeards. No, it's not a perfect analogy, but I don't think it needs to be.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    If you did it every time, sure. That's called changing the system. Sacking one engineer for breaking one build and then going back to encouraging all the other engineers for making as many commits as possible, and giving raises and promotions to engineers who make the most commits, while sweeping all the other broken builds under the rug, would just be scapegoating. Just like this is, actually.
    - shiven 14y ago
      Just like this is, actually. No, so not like this, actually. How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build? No, really? When a person in position of authority is maliciously responsible for driving people to the brink of suicide and then some, they need to be held to a higher standard because of the very position they hold. This episode is not an excuse for a witch-hunt of those in power, but the people who precipitated this episode need to be excised from their position precisely because of the irresponsible witch-hunt they carried out.
      - philwelch 14y ago
        > How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build? It wasn't my shitty analogy to begin with. You're missing the point: getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything, because everyone above and below that prosecutor will continue operating the exact same way.
        shiven 14y ago
        getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But de-throning that one prosecutor will, in her own words, serve as a message [0] to others of her kind that reckless, power-drunk actions have real-world repercussions. [0] http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/December/EremianVerdictPR.html http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/December/EremianVer...
        philwelch 14y ago
        The federal government is more or less designed to function by sacrificing pawns over these kinds of controversies without ever addressing the policies, cultures, or root causes that led to those controversies in the first place. And this goes all the way up to the cabinet level. Sacking one federal prosecutor will do nothing. Even sacking Eric Holder wouldn't change anything--I can't remember a single attorney general who was worth a damn and the first one I remember is Janet Reno.
        potatolicious 14y ago
        > "But de-throning that one prosecutor will, in her own words, serve as a message" No, it won't. People respond to risks and rewards, and we've shown amply over the years that the severity of punishment has little deterrent effect on future offenses if the odds of getting caught aren't high enough. In other words, by throwing one prosecutor to the wolves, we have no inspired any behavioral change in other prosecutors, because we've shown that once every few decades we will punish one person - and that's stacked against the systemic pressures they face to prosecute as many people as vigorously as possible, every day. This is the same reason why the death sentence, as severe as it is, has basically no effect on crime rates, because it's not handed out with enough regularity to be a deterrent (whether or not we should have the death sentence is another story altogether). To achieve the "message sending" you want, we will have to regularly investigate many prosecutors, such that the odds of escaping their reckless prosecutorial actions are low. This is what most other people call "changing the system" ;) Outlier one-offs is just compounding tragedy upon tragedy.
    - vidarh 14y ago
      Sacking one won't do it, no. But getting one sacked is a necessary step to getting them all sacked. You do it this time. Then you do it again. And again. Until they get the message.
chalst 14y ago
broken, unfit, insidiously malicious gear Ortiz comes across to me as a better than average human being who did something evil because she seems to have been morally confused about something. I don't think Ortiz is, say, as bad as Kissinger. Maybe the evil justifies the revenge of removing Ortiz. But this petition striking me as an exercise in nastiness. Wouldn't an official, public reprimand be better?

by shiven 14y ago

philwelch 14y ago

There are ten thousand gears coming out of law school every year. It won't make a difference.

rosser 14y ago
It won't make a difference. If engineers started getting sacked for breaking the build, you can be damned sure people would get very scrupulous about only committing working code, whether they're fresh out of school or greybeards. No, it's not a perfect analogy, but I don't think it needs to be.
- philwelch 14y ago
  If you did it every time, sure. That's called changing the system. Sacking one engineer for breaking one build and then going back to encouraging all the other engineers for making as many commits as possible, and giving raises and promotions to engineers who make the most commits, while sweeping all the other broken builds under the rug, would just be scapegoating. Just like this is, actually.
  - shiven 14y ago
    Just like this is, actually. No, so not like this, actually. How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build? No, really? When a person in position of authority is maliciously responsible for driving people to the brink of suicide and then some, they need to be held to a higher standard because of the very position they hold. This episode is not an excuse for a witch-hunt of those in power, but the people who precipitated this episode need to be excised from their position precisely because of the irresponsible witch-hunt they carried out.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      > How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build? It wasn't my shitty analogy to begin with. You're missing the point: getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything, because everyone above and below that prosecutor will continue operating the exact same way.
      - shiven 14y ago
        getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But de-throning that one prosecutor will, in her own words, serve as a message [0] to others of her kind that reckless, power-drunk actions have real-world repercussions. [0] http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/December/EremianVerdictPR.html http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/December/EremianVer...
        philwelch 14y ago
        The federal government is more or less designed to function by sacrificing pawns over these kinds of controversies without ever addressing the policies, cultures, or root causes that led to those controversies in the first place. And this goes all the way up to the cabinet level. Sacking one federal prosecutor will do nothing. Even sacking Eric Holder wouldn't change anything--I can't remember a single attorney general who was worth a damn and the first one I remember is Janet Reno.
        potatolicious 14y ago
        > "But de-throning that one prosecutor will, in her own words, serve as a message" No, it won't. People respond to risks and rewards, and we've shown amply over the years that the severity of punishment has little deterrent effect on future offenses if the odds of getting caught aren't high enough. In other words, by throwing one prosecutor to the wolves, we have no inspired any behavioral change in other prosecutors, because we've shown that once every few decades we will punish one person - and that's stacked against the systemic pressures they face to prosecute as many people as vigorously as possible, every day. This is the same reason why the death sentence, as severe as it is, has basically no effect on crime rates, because it's not handed out with enough regularity to be a deterrent (whether or not we should have the death sentence is another story altogether). To achieve the "message sending" you want, we will have to regularly investigate many prosecutors, such that the odds of escaping their reckless prosecutorial actions are low. This is what most other people call "changing the system" ;) Outlier one-offs is just compounding tragedy upon tragedy.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    Sacking one won't do it, no. But getting one sacked is a necessary step to getting them all sacked. You do it this time. Then you do it again. And again. Until they get the message.

chalst 14y ago

broken, unfit, insidiously malicious gear Ortiz comes across to me as a better than average human being who did something evil because she seems to have been morally confused about something. I don't think Ortiz is, say, as bad as Kissinger. Maybe the evil justifies the revenge of removing Ortiz. But this petition striking me as an exercise in nastiness. Wouldn't an official, public reprimand be better?