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For more information, see: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/static/industry/telco/index .htm

Would this be the same CPUC that allowed the taxpayers to be royally raped by Enron and associates? Or that "demanded" that Northpoint continue to provide service for 30 days after they decided to unplug their network? The same CPUC that can't be bothered to negotiate with our neighboring states for water rights?

I'm sure they'll be just as effective in this as they were at all of those. Perhaps for their next act, they'll pretend they're King Canute, and order the tide not to come in?

CPUC is a joke. They're among the worst and least-effective agencies in this state, which is known for its bloated and useless government agencies.

Hey, if anyone wants a cushy government job, they're looking for a new executive director.

The current big issue in California telecom regulation is the "Telecommuncations User's Bill of Rights", a very mild set of consumer protection rules the industry is fighting.

The CPUC has announced its intent to regulate some DSL-related issues, mainly in the service quality area.

The current big issue in California telecom regulation is the "Telecommuncations User's Bill of Rights", a very mild set of consumer protection rules the industry is fighting.

The CPUC has announced its intent to regulate some DSL-related issues, mainly in the service quality area.

Oops, I meant to give a link to the statute, but it got lost in the ether.

Granted, I didn't look too hard.

It does not matter if you are under 18 or within 3 years of age, although it is only a misdemeanor (meaning up to one year in county jail) if you are within three years. Read the penal code

It's an interesting read.

There are actually a few laws that can fit this one, depending on the officer and the judge. There are probably more, but this is all I bothered to dig up.

And yes they all relate to "the normal speed of traffic" so all bets are off in rush hour.

Yielding for Passing
Slow-Moving Vehicles
Turning Out of Slow-Moving Vehicles

There are actually a few laws that can fit this one, depending on the officer and the judge. There are probably more, but this is all I bothered to dig up.

And yes they all relate to "the normal speed of traffic" so all bets are off in rush hour.

Yielding for Passing
Slow-Moving Vehicles
Turning Out of Slow-Moving Vehicles

There are actually a few laws that can fit this one, depending on the officer and the judge. There are probably more, but this is all I bothered to dig up.

And yes they all relate to "the normal speed of traffic" so all bets are off in rush hour.

Yielding for Passing
Slow-Moving Vehicles
Turning Out of Slow-Moving Vehicles

That's because the emissions are tied into the quality of the diesel you put in the car.

That, and CARB (California Air Resource Board) causes more greenhouse gases through debate than any other group method CA, with the sole exception being Arnie's personal fleet of HUMMERs. Smog testing is a joke, as the calculation method does not take into account total emissions, but rather percent emissions, so a 1.0L Geo Metro could flunk the test for a worn piston ring, yet still output fewer total hydrocarbons than a brand-new SUV.

There are loopholes to get that car here, but they're not easy, and most involve having an out-of-state address for the period that you're buying your new car (I'd suggest a PO Box in Nevada). A much easier way involves an "inconvenienced out-of-state roadtrip" with a $100 POS car that gets lost/stolen/burned/unrepairable whilst on the road.

Read the document here:
NonCAVeh.pdf

Wheps, misinformation. Sorry. The link, that was the Florida dept of energy, not the US. Still, the Per capita number is representative, since the US average is apparently 461.12 gallons/person.

That's still half of your number there.

Many people here have listed city, county, state and federal data sources, but I didn't read mention of GIS Data or "Geodata" Collaboratives.

Throughout the country, regional councils of government (known by names such as Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Association of Governments (AGs) and Council of Governments (COGs)) are forming, or have formed GIS Councils that administrate "GIS Collaboratives" in concert with, or at the direction of State GIS Councils/Commissions and the Federal Geographic Data Committee

These collaboratives contain GIS data from their member city, county and special district governments.

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REGIONAL COUNCILS maintains a directory of these regional councils of government. Here are a few examples from my neck of the woods:

• (SANDAG)San Diego Association of Governments
• (ABAG) Association of Bay Area Governments
• (SACOG) Sacramento Area Council of Governments

1) Unless you encrypt them, your emails are not private. No encryption == no privacy. It's that simple. The ignorance of the masses regarding this fact does not make it any less true.

When you go out in public, you're out there for all to see and hear. Yet Slashdotters routinely rail against facial recognition software used in airports, stadia, and other public places for security, and they fear and disdain use of such software with data mining systems such as the thankfully defunct TIA. Furthermore, although we know we might be photographed or otherwise recorded when we appear in public, we also require that those recordings must not be used for most commercial purposes unless we sign a release.

So like I said, there's a gray area between total privacy and a complete openness.

) Laws like this have a way of coming back to bite us in the ass. Suppose you want your emails scanned and routinely data-mined, for example. In such a case, there is no victim, so what good is the law?

You should read the bill. And let's be clear here, this is currently a bill and is not yet a law. The bill mostly just prohibits e-mail providers from scanning mail for the purposes of compiling information about you and selling it to third parties. Scanning your mail in order to enable "...address book, calendar, and other user-initiated
functions..." is okay, as is scanning your e-mail to filter out spam and viruses. As I read the bill, building an index of messages is probably okay, so long as they don't give or sell the index info to third parties.

Basically, the bill seems pretty reasonable and wouldn't seem to interfere with a company that's trying to legitimately provide a service to users. It would seem prevent unscrupulous providers from doing (some) unscrupulous things.

There are even a few amusing tidbits in the bill. For one thing, it talks about preventing employees and other "natural persons" from reading a user's e-mail under most circumstances. I can only assume that computers are therefore "artificial persons," which means that we're making some serious progress toward living in the world of Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad."

Now they are trying to ban cell phones in cars, starting with children. They have already passed legislation to make your computer more expensive by adding a fee for your monitor or LCD screen. They have banned the use of notebook computers and other technology in the front seat. They are charging and enforcing a huge use tax on all internet purchases. And this is just a start.

Now Figueroa (D-Fremont) and the Senate are targeting Google personally with SB 1822. All of Silicon Valley voted for this bill except for one abstain, Sher (D-Stanford).

Those in Silicon Valley are going to either buy back they Democrats from the Unions (and they have tons of money to fight back) or vote for Republicans.

Read more than the intro paragraph (it is BS), the detailed analysis is quite interesting. The big argument is that even though the Gmail account holder agreed to have their email profiled, the other party(ies) did not.

" Google could in just a few years be sitting on the richest direct marketing database in the world. It is impossible to imagine, outside of the world of science fiction, a more intimate source of direct marketing information.

"[...]With respect to Google's current expressions of good intent, what history teaches is, if there is personal information available, someone will want to use it for marketing. "

Now one has to think! If MS tried this, we would cry foul. But Google is one of the good guys...but guess what, they are going public! In a few years, they might be owned by Bill Gates, The Home Shopping Network, or the Direct Marketing Association.

link

Doctors use e-mail to respond to medical inquiries from their patients. Lawyers use it to communicate confidential strategy to clients. Businesses use it to discuss trade secrets and confidential product development. Troops far away from home use it to communicate their hopes and fears to loved ones. E-businesses use e-mail to deliver confidential usernames, passwords and financial interaction information.

For e-commerce to grow, and for California's high-tech economy to grow with it, consumers need to be confident that their Internet-based shopping and communication is private and secure.

Yet, Internet giant Google has recently placed all of this at risk. [...]

Here is the text from the actual bill SB 1801:

BILL NUMBER: SB 1822 AMENDED
BILL TEXT

AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 20, 2004

INTRODUCED BY Senator Figueroa

FEBRUARY 20, 2004

An act to add Section 1798.87 to Title
1.81.15 (commencing with Section 1798.88) to Part 4 of Division 3 of
the Civil Code, relating to privacy.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

SB 1822, as amended, Figueroa. Privacy: social security
numbers: sales online communications .
Existing law protects the privacy of personal information,
including customer records and social security numbers. Existing law
prohibits a person or entity located in California from initiating
or advertising in unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisements, as
defined, and prohibits a person or entity not located in California
from initiating or advertising in unsolicited commercial e-mail
advertisements sent to a California e-mail address.
This bill would prohibit a provider of e-mail or instant messaging
services, as defined, that serves California customers, from
reviewing or evaluating the content of a customer's e-mail or instant
messages, except as specified. The bill would permit a provider of
e-mail or instant messaging services to review and evaluate the
content of a customer's outgoing e-mail or instant messages with the
customer's consent, and would permit a provider to review and
evaluate the content of incoming e-mail or instant messages only from
another subscriber to the same service and only when that subscriber
has consented to the procedure.
Existing law prohibits a person or entity, except as specified,
from publicly posting or displaying an individual's social security
number, and from printing that social security number on a card
required for the individual to access products or services.
This bill would provide that a person or entity that sells a
social security number is strictly liable to the person to whom the
social security number applies for any and all damages that directly
or indirectly result from the sale. The bill would except specified
transactions from its provisions.
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: no.
State-mandated local program: no.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. Section 1798.87 is added to the Civil Code, to

SECTION 1. Title 1.81.15 (commencing with Section 1798.88) is
added to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code, to read:

TITLE 1.81.15 PRIVACY OF ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS

1798.88. For the purpose of this title:
(a) "Electronic mail" or "e-mail" means an electronic message that
is sent to an e-mail address and transmitted between two or more
telecommunications devices, computers, or electronic devices capable
of receiving electronic messages, whether or not the message is
converted to hard copy format after receipt or is viewed upon
transmission or stored for later retrieval. "Electronic mail" or
"e-mail" includes electronic messages that are transmitted through a
local, regional, or global computer network.
(b) "Instant messaging service" means a service that alerts a
person when another person is online and allows them to communicate
with each other in current time in private, online areas.
(c) "Provider of electronic mail or instant messaging service"
means any person, including an Internet service provider, that is an
intermediary in sending or receiving electronic mail or instant
messages or that provides to users of the electronic mail or instant
messaging service the ability to send or receive electronic mail or
instant messages.
(d) "Spam" means an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement

However, this apparently describes an earlier draft, because this somewhat better article says the bill is about amassing personal information (ie, keeping email that's been deleted) and sharing it with third parties. Which are much more legitimate concerns, but have nothing to do with the targeted ad and search features of Gmail.

So what's the real story? It almost sounds like the revised bill is just a cover for Senator Figueroa's embarrassing early draft.

The text of the bill is here. The tracking information for the bill is here.

For everyone wondering, the bill explicitly allows reading email for filtering spam and viruses.

The text of the bill is here. The tracking information for the bill is here.

For everyone wondering, the bill explicitly allows reading email for filtering spam and viruses.

As many have mentioned, nobody is forcing anyone (including Californians) to use GMail.

If you live in California, I advise you to write the bill's sponsor, Liz Figueroa and ask her to find something better to do with her time and your tax dollars. In case her page is Slashdotted you can always send her an email.

As many have mentioned, nobody is forcing anyone (including Californians) to use GMail.

If you live in California, I advise you to write the bill's sponsor, Liz Figueroa and ask her to find something better to do with her time and your tax dollars. In case her page is Slashdotted you can always send her an email.

Yes, this all sounds great but personally I would prefer not to have a bunch of kids who have no clue about the real world and no concept of responsibility be selecting who will run this country.

The problem with 14-17 year olds is not in their lack of intelligence, but in their lack of common sense.

Based on your reasoning, the state of California should be banned from participating in Presidential elections.

How much of your 4$/gallon is EU or local taxes? From my quick search it looks like the UK and France have gas price + 300% tax. That suggests $1gas plus $3taxes. These are 1997 numbers too. It's likely taxes have increased since then. (details)

The US has what we consider high taxes on gas. Hawaii is 53.5c (as of July 2002), California is 50.4c, and Texas is 38.4c/gallon. (details)

Here in the UK you can't put a pump on automatic fill. You need to hold the trigger whilst all the time.

Interestingly, the situation in California is just the opposite. California's Health and Safety Code Sec 41960.6 requires that all gasoline nozzles be equipped with a hold-open latch. The law was added 12 years ago so that motorists wouldn't have to stand there and breathe all the fumes while refueling.

Which option do you think people would rather take -- a) turn off the cell phone, stand there squeezing the nozzle for minutes, turn cell phone back on, OR b) start the pump, walk away (far enough so that the cell phone is not a danger), and come back to a filled tank?

In California, the risk of igniting vapors is mitigated by the fact that the pumps are also required to have vapor-recovery systems to reduce air pollution. Whenever you pump gasoline into the tank, an equal volume of air (containing fumes) has to be displaced. With vapor recovery systems, the gas station captures those fumes instead of letting them escape into the atmosphere. So, what is good for the environment is also good for safety.

The joke's on California though... After reading up on Calfornia SB 1152, which basically says they'll be forcing retailers to thumbprint ammo purchases and keep records for 2 years, ( based on Los Angeles city ordinance creeping its way across the entire republic... ) wondering if Texas will please invade the state, I'll lay down my arms, and should, my AR doesn't even have a detachable magazine, and sure thing the Texans would pack the real deal. CCW Permit in Cali? They don't even give those to COPS! Ohh but if you are the biggest anti-gun lobby ( Feinstien & Boxer ), you can and do have a CCW.

Hi-class gents club in California? No cigar(ette) smoking indoors, and in my hometown, you can't smoke OUTSIDE! Just around the corner in Santa Cruz, if you are a hairy armpit lumberjack female, you can walk around topless in public. But they give out drivers licenses to illegal aliens, and jam up the freeways with car pool lanes that nobody uses cutting utilization potential of the roads by %33, and let cats marry dogs in SF, a city that funds open pot fields.

CalTrans FAQ on Bott's Dots

'certified to cause cancer in the state of California'

Shouldn't that be "known to the State of California to cause cancer"? That's what all the gas pumps say about MTBE -- a chemical ironically once required to be put into gasoline by the all-knowing State of California and the environmentalist lobby.

irrationally rejected by the masses

I rejected saccharine because it has a really nasty aftertaste (not that the "foretaste" is all that great). Seems rational enough to me, if a merely personal preference.

Riverside's systems have been running for four years now nearly without a hitch.
How do you know there was no hitch? For instance, in this Spring's recall vote in Riverside, Larry Flynt beat Gary Coleman 540 to 593 - less than 50 votes. How do you know some pr0n loving programmer with an lingering childhood crush on Dana Plato didn't rig those results? No paper trail to prove it either way. And why so many candidates in the last election with 100%? How do you do write-ins on a touch screen? Do you really claim that there was not one single vote for Arhnold for prez?

No, but the article said "CA Secretary of State Bans Diebold Machines", even though the Diebold Accuvote-TS machines are still legal, if the counties follow the rules.

I challenge you to find a single state that discards valid absentee ballots without counting them.

Koalas are the only animal that doesn't drink water.

There are many animals, including a number of mammals, that do not drink water.

Here's a quick link from Google on one of the examples.

that ruled against California's open primaries, leaving several other states with open primaries struggling to come up with some variant that will pass constitional muster. Wahington state's open primary was subsequently also thrown out, but by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

It looks like the grandparent's information is coming from this article (or a related one) from December about the audit that uncovered the version problem. This document indicates that version 1.18.18 was certified in November, a month after the October elections in question in the article. Even your document dates to two months after the election.

This is just not true. Ethylene glycol is HO-CH_2-CH_2-OH, no double bonds involved. For toxicity info, see here or here.

Besides, the compund the article talks about is polyethylene glycol, which is the polymer of ethylene glycol (as the name says), chemical formula is HO-(CH_2-CH_2-O)_n-H (n usually >>100). See here.

(a) (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), a provider of e-mail or instant messaging services to California customers may not review, examine, or otherwise evaluate the content of a customer's outgoing or incoming e-mail or instant messages, unless that provider has a court order or is otherwise required by law to do so.

She is trying to outlaw gmail, though I think it also makes other things illegal. I don't know how google or others can index email unless they "review, examine, or otherwise evaluate the content". What other features does this make illegal? (spam is specifically exempted)

Actually the poster is generally correct with regards to California Labor Law, but the calculation for a "salaried" employees hourly rate was inaccurate. I spoke with the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) recently, and i was told the calculation is:

yearly salary / (52 weeks * 40 hrs/week)

So, it isnt the hours you worked but the hours in a 40 hr work week.

The current hourly rate (it changes yearly) corresponds to an annual salary of 88K and change i believe, but check the numbers out for yourself. Section 54.4 in the following dlse enforcement manual.

California DLSE Enforcement Manual

The deputy i spoke with at the DLSE told me that a lot of software employees have been misclassified as exempt in California.

Which explicitly states that IT workers making less than $83,000 anually must be paid overtime?

This was signed into (California) law in 2000, I believe.

SB 88

From the bill:

This bill, except as specified, would exempt a professional employee in the computer software field from this overtime compensation requirement if the employee is primarily engaged in work that is intellectual or creative, the employee's hourly rate of pay is not less than $41.00, and the employee meets other requirements.

See this for a nice minimum that employers could/should be paying. By law, if CA employers do not pay engineers at least $41/hour ($85600/year), then those employees must be eligible for overtime pay. At most companies I know, working more than 8 hours a day (or more than 5 days a week) is standard practice, and you could well earn more than the $85k. That's why most companies that comply with the law one way or another just end up paying people the $85k flat salary.

If you get less, think about making your company pay you back pay overtime for all the hours you've worked, and for all future overtime. It might be as simple as notifying the CA state labor dept.

Well, Assuming you are not in CA or somewhere with similar smog laws, there are aftermarket fuel injection computers available: Electromotive, AEM, Wolf, Haltech, Simple Digital Systems and others make engine control computers ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars. It all depends on how bad you want to keep your car.

These are all fully programmable, which of course means you or someone else has to program them before they will work, which isnt particularly an easy task, and most of them wont control things like VTEC/VVTI, but They are an option none the less. And most of them will also require wire harness adaptation (they wont just plug right in) Not an easy solution, but again it all depends on how bad you want to keep your car.

WolfEMS http://www.wolfems.com.au/home

Haltech http://www.haltech.com/

AEM http://www.aempower.com/product_ems.asp

Electromotive http://www.electromotive-inc.com/

SimpleDigitalSystemshttp://www.sdsefi.com/

CA Smog law stuff Basically if its aftermarket it has to be approved, and none of these are, there are a bunch of approved ECU reburns but no full on programmale systems.

California Penal Code SECTION 484-502.9 (Theft/Larceny)
US Code Title 17, Chapter 5, Section 501 (Infringement of Copyright)
LEARN THE DIFFERENCE!

Take a cell picture of crappy movie your watching and spend a year in jail and $2500 fine. I don't have license to distribute a video recording of a baseball or football game, but I'm not going to go to jail for snapping a few pictures off, why should the MPAA get special rights? Same things goes with art galleries, its all copyrighted material and illegal to distribute.

Another thing is that what If I'm reviewing the movie, its not copyright infringement if I record some scences for my review. Its perfectly legal and falls under fair use.

A California state senator on Monday said she was drafting legislation to block Google Inc.'s free e-mail service "Gmail" because it would place advertising in personal messages after searching them for key words.

"We think it's an absolute invasion of privacy. It's like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home," Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, California, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"... like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home"

distillation consumes much less power than reverse osmosis

"Consequently, the total energy needs for distillation technologies are higher than for RO technologies."
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html

I am afraid you got to read the article as well, not just the charts... Latest distillation methods (MSF, MED) require less electricity, but after you add the extra heating requirement, the energy bill can still be higher than reverse osmosis (RO)...

An extract from Saltwater Desalination Chapter 1
For example, in addition to the 3,500 to 7,000 kWh/AF of energy required for electricity, the thermal energy needs for a MSF distillation plant is estimated at 270 million Btu/AF (about 26,000 kWh/AF);

c.f. the energy for 2 passes RO is 6500-12000 kWh/AF.

Many people seem to be completely unfamiliar with all the techniques of water desalination. Saltwater Desalination: Chapter 1 will educate them. There are many techniques including Distillation and reverse osmosis Hopefully the flaming back and forth will cease. Of particular interest is this chart which shows that distillation consumes much less power than reverse osmosis.

Many people seem to be completely unfamiliar with all the techniques of water desalination. Saltwater Desalination: Chapter 1 will educate them. There are many techniques including Distillation and reverse osmosis Hopefully the flaming back and forth will cease. Of particular interest is this chart which shows that distillation consumes much less power than reverse osmosis.

You seem to be completely unfamiliar with all the techniques of water desalination. Saltwater Desalination: Chapter 1 will educate you. Of particular interest is http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dc1tbl1.gif this chart which shows that distillation consumes much less power than reverse osmosis