{"id":332,"date":"2003-05-20T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2003-05-20T11:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jmatt.net\/?p=332"},"modified":"2013-11-28T02:42:20","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T02:42:20","slug":"homeland-insecurity-vs-wally-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"Homeland Insecurity vs. Wally World?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I made a quick stop at Walmart<\/a> yesterday (no comments, Mel!) to pick up some pictures of friends<\/a> and neighbors<\/a> that I took at Rolex<\/a>. It was the first time I had experimented with the process of having prints made from my Nikon 5700<\/a> and I was curious to see what kind of quality I could get. I also wanted to pick up a couple of 250 MB Zip disks to replace the aging 100MB ones I use to transport large files between work and home, in the absence of broadband availability in Tatertown.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I was pleased with the print quality. I got some real sharp pictures, even with ones that were cropped from a partial frame because I’d been shooting from a distance too far to get a full frame, even with the 280mm equivalent optical zoom. And the process is slick. Upload the pictures via their website (from work, after bringing them from home on a Zip disk), and pick up the prints at the store (or have them mailed for a small extra charge). The quality is better, and the cost is lower, than I could get from a “photo quality” inkjet printer at home that burns up an expensive ink cartridge for 5-6 pictures.<\/p>\n

\nAnd eventually I’ll get to the point of this story. As I was leaving, I heard the loud chime of the anti-theft system. In these days of heightened security and guilty until proven innocent, these machines are just the least of the indignities and inconveniences we have come to accept in the name of security. The anti-theft systems seem to have a high false-positive rate (and maybe it just seems high because I don’t think about all the times it doesn’t sound), but I’d never been stopped by one before. (In this case, I’m not sure whether it was system or human error. I was distracted at the checkout, and didn’t notice whether the cashier deactivated the tags on the disks)<\/p>\n

\nActually, the encounter was not unpleasant. I was not assaulted by rent-a-cops shouting “Stop Thief!”. I was politely approached by a gentleman in the familiar WalMart blue vest, who asked if I had purchased “anything electronic”. I fished one of the disks out of the bag and handed it to him, and he didn’t even ask to see what else I had. He just stepped back through the scanner with it, and when it bonged again, he nodded and took the disk back to the cash register to deactivate the tag. He then checked my receipt to verify that I had indeed paid for it, apologized again, and pointed to a rack of 2-liter Coca-Cola products by the door and told me to take my choice to make up for the inconvenience. Not being a big soft-drink consumer, a choice of beer would have been nicer, but it was still a nice touch.<\/p>\n

\nAt no point did I ever feel like I was being treated like a suspect. The attitude of the Walmart associate, throughout the incident, always seemed to be “This thing screws up occasionally, and we gotta do this”. Whatever faults Walmart might have, they didn’t get that big by abusing their customers. They’re smart enough to realize that customers will seek alternative vendors if not treated decently. Security, even when it’s overdone and erroneous, doesn’t have to be painful.<\/p>\n

\nAnd that’s what our government could learn from Wally World. Instead of treating citizens politely and decently, they’re bursting into homes and businesses, with guns drawn, frequently by mistake, terrorizing innocent citizens in the name of anti-terror. When a doctor recently disappeared from a New York airport, his family and police searched for him for a week before the FBI even admitted that they had him, and it was another 2 weeks before he was released with no charges, no explanation, and no apology. Unlike Walmart, the government can get away with this, because their “customers” don’t have a choice.<\/p>\n

\nIt’s fairly common for retired law-enforcement personnel to go to work in corporate security after retirement. Maybe this trend needs to be reversed. Maybe we need more former Walmart greeters in law-enforcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made a quick stop at Walmart yesterday (no comments, Mel!) to pick up some pictures of friends and neighbors that I took at Rolex. It was the first time I had experimented with the process of having prints made from my Nikon 5700 and I was curious to see what kind of quality I… Continue reading Homeland Insecurity vs. Wally World?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-5m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}