Greed Kills Kindness

Today I read about a lawsuit in California. You can read it here. The short version is a car impaled itself on a light pole at 45 mph. Lisa Torti was a witness to the accident and took it upon herself to take action and help. She ended up lifting the front passenger Alexandra Van Horn out of the car and to a safe location. Most people would find this a modern act of heroism. But not Van Horn, she is now a paraplegic and believes that it was not the head on collision at 45mph into a light pole that caused this, but instead being lifted and carried out of the car.

So now charges are being pressed against Torti. You would think she would be protected under California's "Good Samaritan" law, but the 2nd District Court ruled that the law only protects those administering "emergency care". So if for some reason the courts decide that the conditions Van Horn suffers from are related not to the car crash, but instead the helpful escape from the car, Torti is left with little to defend herself. Knowing how good the Justice system in California is I don't see anything good coming from this case. Its these kinds of unjust lawsuits to obtain money at someone else's expense that have slowly drained society of more and more of its good natured citizens. Why risk your own well being for someone else's in a society where these kinds of lawsuits are common and often successful?

Worst Company in America 2007

Today's post isn't so much of a rant as a "I told you so". Over at The Consumerist they have been polling to find out which company is the worst in America for 2007. This years winner despite not actually being a company most consumers have ever had direct dealings with, the RIAA. It beat out 15 other companies. Those included in that list are some of the biggest titans of their industry and included several oil companies, a few news companies, WalMart, Sony, and others. America hates the RIAA and its practices so much that they voted it to the top of the list despite the fact the RIAA isn't a company that consumers have ever purchased a product or service from.

If America as a whole was equivalent to Survivor, I'd say RIAA just got voted off the island. So what can be done to stop this behemoth hate inducing conglomerate of no good quacks? Well, your options with the Better Business Bureau are limited because they aren't a public business. And so far all of the attempts to get a bill through congress have been stopped before they started. This leaves us only a few options. Don't buy CD's ever again, hurting the artists much more than the recording industry. This would also bolstering the RIAA's claim of "illegal downloads cost us CD sales" gimmick of an argument. Or having to continue like we have been, and fight back one battle at a time. So lets start there and get fewer people giving in to the RIAA when they are wrongly accused. The more battles the RIAA loses, the more companies will begin to stand up to them, and then congress will see that they have the support they need to stop this nonsense. To help get the ball rolling be sure and send a letter to your congress men/women letting them know about your concerns. The road will be long and hard, but its one worth walking.

The Media, not the Goverment have taken away Privacy.

Many years before I was born, probably quite some time before my parents were even born the media was already doing what everyone claims government is doing today. Taking away the privacy of U.S. citizens. Not all citizens mind you, which is the reason they get away with it. They specifically prey on people with fame. They intend only to find the worst things out about anyone famous to publicize simply to tarnish that person's image and improve their own. All of this is done at the hand of "Freedom of the Press". "It's the people's right to know" is their motto, and it couldn't be more wrong.

On Google News today alone, I saw links to 235 articles about Vivica A. Fox being arrested on DUI suspicion. Not found guilty, but a suspicion. To top that, there were also 329 articles on Tony LaRussa being arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. Again, nothing confirmed, but the media vultures jumped on both stories anyway knowing that public opinion is much different than the law, and by no means are you innocent until proven guilty. Even if both are guilty, under no circumstances what so ever is it any of our damn business. People of all walks of life make mistakes, and there is no reason for us to care or know what other people's problems are. To be blunt to the press, mind your own business.

Backup Plan for your Backup Plan

As a company grows in size, it generally becomes responsible for larger and larger amounts of money, customers, and personal information in the form of both paper and data. Most companies that have managed to grow out of their garages are smart enough to implement a backup plan to recover this information in case of disasters. However, very few fully test those plans, and even fewer come up with a backup plan in case their first backup plan fails.

I bring this up because I saw this article today where a technician managed to not only delete the data for a $38 billion dollar account, but he also succeeded in formatting the backup drive and completely wiping all of its data. Bravo. Luckily this company DID have a backup backup plan. They used magnetic tape. Unfortunately, they hadn't actually tested that plan, and the tapes were unusable. Also attempts to recover the data from the hard drives by Microsoft and Dell failed. So because of this lack of follow through the company spent $200,000 having to rescan in all the data from paper.

So why is it that companies continually turn a blind eye when IT professionals bring these scenarios to management hoping to resolve the problem before it occurs? Time and time again companies lose more money than they save by not listening to their IT staff. If management can't trust the IT staff to make the right decision when it comes to making sure systems are robust enough and backup plans are tested to ensure data integrity, then why are they on the staff? Either management knows better regarding the data center infrastructure, or the IT professional administrators do, it can't be both ways. Wake up cooperate America, its time to quit with the plan for today because what happens tomorrow isn't our problem yet mentality.

Allergies have no Purpose

Rather you believe in a god or in evolution the fact remains, allergies have no beneficial traits. There are many types of allergies, but I'm going to concentrate on allergies to airborne particles that cause your head to swell up like watermelon and your sinuses to produce enough mucus to fill a sink 2-3 times a day. Since these symptoms are very similar to a "common cold" a lot of people incorrectly assume they've caught a bug. The truth is that many times these symptoms are not produced by a virus at all.

Instead when foreign particles enter as you breath in, the mucus that your sinus system creates traps them to prevent them from traveling to your lungs. That part functions as designed. It's not until the sinus system decides that the current level of mucus production is not enough to handle the intake of foreign particles that you experience the cold-like symptoms. Its then that your nose overflows with goo, you become unable to breath through your nose at all, and it feels like someone has managed to squeeze a cantaloupe up your nose to put enough pressure on your brain that your just sure your eyes are gonna pop out. So why do some peoples sinuses over react more to certain particles than others? Why are some people seemingly not affected at all? The short answer is that scientist aren't sure. So for now we will just have to live with them, and continue treating the symptoms like we always have. For allergy victims, well... we just have to hope someone finds a cure to save us from our seasonal suffering in the near future.