[continued from previous message]

An American football analogy: so-called 'broken field running',
when all the planning and practice for a particular play goes
out the window, and the field is completely chaotic. The best
broken field runners don't think -- they utilize their *gut feel* to
know which way to run.

Entrepreneurs see the world differently from the rest of us.
Where the politicians, regulators and 'experts' decry the sad
state of the world, the entrepreneur sees *opportunity* and
*grabs it*.

For every single new idea there are a million naysayers and
censors.

It takes an extremely strong ego to withstand this withering
criticism. The vast majority of the population doesn't have the
constitution to go up against colleagues, friends, and family.

Exhibit #2 is Christopher Columbus. More important than how
may people died is how many people survived and subsequently
took advantage of his innovation. Look back at the famous
explorers -- Magellan, etc. -- quite a number of them and their
crew lived to tell the tale, and the rest is history.

I'm with Galileo: 'And yet it moves' !

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2023 10:57:50 +0100
From: Martyn Thomas <martyn@mctar.uk (http://mctar.uk)>
Subject: Re: Myth about innovation ... (RISKS-33.75)

We should challenge the myth that regulation stifles innovation.

Some of the most innovative industries are highly regulated.

Pharmaceuticals and children's toys, for example (in the EU and UK).

------------------------------

Date: 16 Jul 2023 22:36:31 -0400
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
Subject: Re: Myth about innovation and regulation ... (RISKS-33.75) NOTSP
(Thomas, RISKS-33.76)

We should challenge the myth that regulation stifles innovation. Some of
the most innovative industries are highly regulated. Pharmaceuticals and children's toys, for example (in the EU and UK).

One could write entire books about the purposes, costs, and benefits
of regulation. (Someone probably has.)

The normal motivation is to protect the public from some direct harm, e.g., drugs that don't work or are harmful. But there is plenty of regulation intended more to maintain the providers' business model. That isn't necessarily a bad idea. When you have an 80,000 lb truck barreling down the road, I would prefer that the operator have sufficient revenue to maintain
the truck, and to pay the driver enough that she doesn't feel forced to pop pills and drive 16 hrs a day.

There is a reason that Uber et al. started in San Francisco -- its taxi regulation was uniquely bad due to a local law that limited taxis to owner-drivers, with a cap way too small to handle the demand. That was swell for the drivers, awful for everyone else. So there was a lot of sympathy for
a service, even an illegal one, that fixed the fact that there just weren't taxis when you needed them.

Some of the innovation was plausibly a good idea, e.g., using an app to
match up drivers and passengers. Some was bad, e.g., Lyft's "sharing"
insurance fraud model taking paying passengers in personal cars with no insurance in case of an accident. (Uber quickly copied it.) Some was accidental, Uber's super cheap below-cost service subsidized by lots of
venture capital silly money.

The app also happened to be a regulatory innovation since it completely
blurred the distinction between taxis you could hail on the street and car services you book ahead. In New York, those are different services with different licenses. NYC had enough sense to force Uber to become a car
service, which meant among other things that Uber drivers in NYC are covered
by workers comp if they're injured on the job, other places not so much.

Picking apart the beneficial parts of innovation from the harmful or
parasitic parts can be hard, but it is necessary. As we saw with Ocean
Gate, what is always wrong is to insist that innovation for its own sake is
by definition good.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:50:37 -0600
From: "Eugene H. Spafford" <spaf@acm.org>
Subject: Internet censorship

You might be interested in this Ph.D. dissertation by my most recent
student, Major Alexander Master.

Title: Modeling and Characterization of Internet Censorship Technologies

Abstract:

The proliferation of Internet access has enabled the rapid and widespread exchange of information globally. The world wide web has become the primary communications platform for many people and has surpassed other traditional media outlets in terms of reach and influence. However, many nation-states impose various levels of censorship on their citizens' Internet
communications. There is little consensus about what constitutes *objectionable* online content deserving of censorship. Some people consider the censor activities occurring in many nations to be violations of international human rights (e.g., the rights to freedom of expression and assembly). This multi-study dissertation explores Internet censorship
methods and systems. By using combinations of quantitative, qualitative, and systematic literature review methods, this thesis provides an
interdisciplinary view of the domain of Internet censorship. The author presents a reference model for Internet censorship technologies: an
abstraction to facilitate a conceptual understanding of the ways in which Internet censorship occurs from a system design perspective. The author then characterizes the technical threats to Internet communications, producing a comprehensive taxonomy of Internet censorship methods as a result. Finally, this work provides a novel research framework for revealing how nation-state censors operate based on a globally representative sample. Of the 70 nations analyzed, 62 used at least one Internet censorship method against their citizens. The results reveal worldwide trends in Internet censorship based
on historical evidence and Internet measurement data.

https://www.doi.org/10.25394/PGS.23666784

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2023 11:11:11 -0800
From: RISKS-request@csl.sri.com
Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

The ACM RISKS Forum is a MODERATED digest. Its Usenet manifestation is
comp.risks, the feed for which is donated by panix.com as of June 2011.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: The mailman Web interface can be used directly to

subscribe and unsubscribe:
http://mls.csl.sri.com/mailman/listinfo/risks

SUBMISSIONS: to risks@CSL.sri.com with meaningful SUBJECT: line that

includes the string `notsp'. Otherwise your message may not be read.
*** This attention-string has never changed, but might if spammers use it.

SPAM challenge-responses will not be honored. Instead, use an alternative

address from which you never send mail where the address becomes public!

The complete INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites,

copyright policy, etc.) has moved to the ftp.sri.com site:
<risksinfo.html>.
*** Contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines!

OFFICIAL ARCHIVES: http://www.risks.org takes you to Lindsay Marshall's

searchable html archive at newcastle:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS --> VoLume, ISsue.
Also, ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks for the current volume/previous directories
or ftp://ftp.sri.com/VL/risks-VL.IS for previous VoLume
If none of those work for you, the most recent issue is always at
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt, and index at /risks-33.00
ALTERNATIVE ARCHIVES: http://seclists.org/risks/ (only since mid-2001)
*** NOTE: If a cited URL fails, we do not try to update them. Try
browsing on the keywords in the subject line or cited article leads.
Apologies for what Office365 and SafeLinks may have done to URLs.

Special Offer to Join ACM for readers of the ACM RISKS Forum:

<http://www.acm.org/joinacm1>

------------------------------

End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 33.77
************************

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)