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Jon, Jon, Jon...

Every example you give is GOVERNMENT imposing too much power, not corporations.

If you folks in the media would frame this issue properly, then perhaps the general public would take away government power (especially take away those federal powers NOT enumerated in the US Constitution that they seem to think they have) and corporations would no longer have that tool at their disposal.

Granted, the corporations, owned by the general public (stockholders) in most cases try to influence that overbearing power to their interest when they can, but the bottom line is that the government holds the power and consistantly demonstrates that they do not deserve it. You list perfect examples of this above, but hide the actual offender (government).

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My basic solution to all of this court misconduct by both judges and prosecutors is actually have them accountable. Plus, get rid of about 90% of the courts and 99% of the laws that go with them.

End all judicial and prosicutorial immunity and have them subject to an automatic, maximum penalty that the accused was threatened with when the misconduct occurred.

Perhaps that would set a general mood that courts are not the playground of leagal BS mumbo-jumbo and that the court workers are not above the law.

Now, for the 2600 case in particular, maybe if the bench verdict was appealed to a jury some sensable verdict might be reached. However, even though I ain't no lawyer, I do not think that a jury is an option.

<rant>
BTW, you do NOT have a right to a jury trial, you have a right to "due process", does not have to include a jury (or in the case of the IRS, a real court or judge). Unfortuantely, the government, entertainment industry and news media, have given the general public plenty of misinformation about the court process and what "due process" really is.

Maybe holding the courts to that fantasy that they wis perpetuated outside of their big oak doors would work? Where everybody gets read their rights (no longer required almost anyplace), court appointed lawyers actually win cases, warrants must be filled out and signed to be admissable, nobody is coerced, rights to various hearings are never signed away to be moved to a better part of the jail, etc. (review the actions of the state in the Mitnick case).

Might that knock a dent in that 98% fed "conviction" rate and maybe the USA would not be the home to 25% (or is it 50%) of the whole world's prisoners?
</rant>

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Setting up special 'techno-courts' has the glossy sheen of futurism and hipness, but if the proposed high-tech courts are specialized by the content of their trials, what's to stop them from becoming self-perpetuating, invasive, and self-aggrandizing bodies within their particular fields of purported expertise, and using that expertise as a means of blocking criticism? Would such special courts be an improvement over better educating the existing judiciary?

We already have a perfect example of how specilized courts work (actually, they don't work very well) and that is called Tax Court.

What happens in any of these ivory tower systems is that the common folks (including those of us on /.) get bamboozeled by the "self-aggrandizing bodies within their particular fields of purported expertise". This is certainly not justice.

The 2600 case was one of pure bias, no decision in that case was backed up by any fact, and it would have probably been worse in a specialized court. It happens in "tax court" every day: state brings charges, state inflicts punishment, you have to prove yourself not-guilty.

I wish that I had the refrence for a glairing case of this from just a couple of years ago. An individual had paid his tax bill. The IRS cashed his check. Taxpayer had the cancelled check and bank records that the money left his bank and went to the IRS bank. The bank that the IRS used to clear the check lost the money. The IRS went after the tax payer. No matter how many times he produced the cancelled check the IRS said "we still do not have payment". The tax court ordered the guy to pay again! Now, if a group of "regular folks" had gotten to hear this case, it would have ruled for the tax payer, since the poor guy does not run the bank and all, but an "expert court" ruled the other way.

The above is the quality that you get when beurocrats are given any power over your life.

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The first thing I thought was "Why would I have it tying up my phone line when it is not in my pocket?"

I think you can already do something like this with your home computer, the place that would have most of my information and would be dumping palm info into IT.

As someone else on this thread noted, Nokia has already integrated most of the Palm functionality into a phone.

PalmPilots are GREAT, but this is just toooooo wacky!

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OKAY, DeCSS is not a full player, it is just a critical piece that you need to make a functional player.

Here is the full HOWTO for Linux:
http://helo.org/dvd/howto/DVD-Playing-HOWTO

and for FreeBSD:
http://www.opendvd.org/fbsddvd.php3

Thank you all for correcting my memory loss during my fit of babbling.

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DeCSS is a LEGAL DVD player for Linux and UNIX. Why bother with a commercial version?

DeCSS has been out for months, it works, it does not use any origonal code so it is not a copyright violation. No insider contributed to it's development so there is no trade secret issue.

The judge and MPAA can say a dog has 5 legs all they want, but the dog still has only 4, DeCSS is not a violation of any law.

If you buy into the "license" making it legal then perhaps automobile companies can start licensing maps for use with their vehicles. If someone is caught in an Explorer with an "unlicensed" instruction device (the origonal work map) then Ford can bring criminal charges against the map maker. Sound pretty? Not to me and that is EXACTLY what the MPAA was arguing in federal court.

If that is the world you want, then by all means, wait for these bozo's to finish their vaporware. However, NOBODY is going to dictate to me what instructions to send to my own property.

It is amazing that a cursor functionality is holding them up for months, sounds like BS to me.

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Thank you for seeing the real issue, Eric.

It still boggles my mind that writing one's own instructions for a device (DVD player) and sharing them with the world can be called "illegal" in the first place.

There was no instance of "trade secrets" being compromised, if there were and insider of one of the licensed vendors or the consortium would have been on trial instead of Eric aka Emmanuel and 2600 magazine.

There was no instance of copyright infringement, DeCSS is origonal work not a copy.

Calling DeCSS "illegal" is nonsense, just as saying that a "licensed" program is "legal".

If the MPAA can find a pirated and cracked copy of it's own software then they have a point, but until then they are just blowing crap (along with that Amish* judge that they rented).

*no offense to any Amish folk reading or hearing about this post ;-)

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Then there's Metricom's "Ricochet" system. That's more aimed at mobile users. Uses little, shoe-box-sized repeaters mounted on utility poles all over the place.

I live in the DC metro area and actually contacting Metricom here is quite a chore.

The last time I looked at their website (several weeks ago) there were no prices for service listed. When I called, I sat on VM hold for AGES and was never able to speak with a human to find out how much they want per month (their system told me to call back later and hung up).

They are still at 28.8 kbps in this area and have been promising 128 "soon" for about 3 years, still not here.

I was going to use 2 or 3 channels for a vehicle project, but TDB now, they will not get my business nor will they be a sponsor.

Yet another example of a great theory that did not survive contact with reality.

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Maybe
this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."

Well, maybe yes and maybe no. We have to wait until next year for the 2001: A Space Oddessy prediction to come true, then in 2010 Jupiter explodes and becomes a star.

But wait, don't get too confused, at the end of 2033(isn't that the last of the trilogy?) we discover that DeBeers has been keeping all of the diamond matter a big secret.

Anyway, we have to wait until we have enough diamond to build all the stuff Clark wrote about first and then Stephenson piled on.

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Perhaps you need to investigate the premises of your various theories a little more.

1. Check this thread http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/09/12/12422 13&cid=19 first. There is a link to a Security Geeks story that has info on hacking an AirPort (now, I am told, useable on Linux and Mac) base station to 128bit encryption.

2. The HAM radio encryption limit is not anything like what you say. It is a legeslated restriction. You are not "allowed" to encrypt on amature frequencies by law, not by physics.

You can easily use any encryption method you like across a TNC (terminal node controller) packet connection. As long as you do not mind breaking the law. If you use public key encryption it will work just fine (well, as fine as TNC gets anyway). The radio can care less if the bursts are gibberish or human readable.

However, you can signal hop and use any method you like for that, so long as the data is not encrypted. Check some of the Off the Hook archives for this info, bernieS gave a nice brief outline of this method on a show from last year or so.

3. Several news stories recently have covered breakthroughs in laser networking. However, moving your house to a line-of sight path to the hub may not be practical.

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If dirt world communities behaved like online communities, or even if the HAM "spirit" would spread a bit, we could have wireless networks all across the countryside.

This securitygeeks story covers how to setup a very basic AirPort wireless network that can communicate at great distances as well as 128 bit encryption.

As far as I know you still have to use a Mac to use the AirPort base station, but it does not look like it would be impossible to hack for UNIX use (perhaps it already has been and I just missed the news).

Anyway, the point is that the hardware and the software is already here, all we need to do is band together and use it.

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Actually, I do know how messed up it is.

Part of my relief is that they are leaving the dorms connected at all, instead of forcing the students to use only connections from the library when they feel like having the labs manned.

At least erring on the side of doing almost nothing is better than the overreaction other schools have been doing.

My motto for government is "don't just do something, stand there".

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Well, it just sounds great. I had a bunch of goofy questions at the onset but a little thinking through eliminated them (won't sharing them choke bandwidth, most monitors will not show a difference, etc.).

The bandwidth for sharing would not be a problem in web applications because the cluefull site builder will serve the version that fits the bandwidth for quick loading, i.e., measure the connection speed and send a lower resolution version to the client.

So with monitor resolution, people that have lower res monitors or printers will still get the same image quality that they are used to having, but they can see images in much better quality when they upgrade their equipment (assuming that they have the maximum quality file to begin with).

However, it seems that the number of pix that can be stored on whatever media is contained in the camera (portables) would have to decrease. Maybe this will be an excellent excuse for Sony to add larger CD-R disks to their cameras?

Idunno, I just think anything in this area is way cool and wish I had the spare bucks to snatch a few more items like this up when they are brand new!

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Well, that is what I meant to say, but you said it a lot better. Thank you.

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I certainly agree with you on your point. Perhaps they will be doing something like that in the future.

When I worked there in '93/'94, UT was trying to get itself fully fiber connected. The entire infrastructure is now fiber within the university (well, not all the way to the machines, but everyplace else pretty much).

Anyway, I hope that they work a bandwidth limit solution (limit bandwidth, not content) so that the students doing real work may have access to the resources that they are paying for.

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While on a recent vacation, I stopped in and spoke with some of my old network and computer lab bosses and they filled me in on the UT practice and plans for the future.

Note, I have not seen the written policy, this is what several very knowledgable people told me that they do and are planning on doing.

First, neither Napster, nor anything else, is blocked. Free speech is king, so no filtering is done by the school.

They have had a problem with the dorms eating up so much of the total bandwidth, slowing down staff and administration along with the dorms themselves. So, the plan is to put the dorms on a seperate network and seperate gateway from the rest of the school. Quoting a friend "if the students want to gring their network to a hault trading music and videos, let them, it's fine with us."

I am not sure if Metallica has heard of this yet, but if they decide to force censorship on that university (with 20,000+ students) they will probably have a fight on their hands.

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This is just stupid. Politicians have no sense pf economics.

I think that CA has both an income tax and a retirement tax. They get a chunk of every paycheck cut for a worker living in CA for the life of the worker.

Now they want to drive all of the employers of those taxable paychecks away to Reston/Herndon VA. UGH! more screwballs that ask "what kind of mixed drinks do you have" at Paolo's in the Towne Center, oh joy.

Anyway, CA makes a fortune off of the backs of it's workers, even after the worker has moved and retired. Piling this on top is just beurocratic greed.

If the businesses affected had a financial brain (and they do) they will just pull up stakes and move to SeaLand.



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Prior art and first use are excellent items for disputing patent claims.

The "antipatent" system seems a bit cumbersome, since registering something obvious is counterintuitive to most of us, but patenting something obvious seems to be what the patent office thrives on.

It just seems unworkable on a basic level. That being that the patent office does not seem to do much checking on prior art anyway and neither do these courts that keep handing out insane rulings.

I wish I could be more optomistic, but having a differently worded older patent or even documentation of inventing something before a current patent awardee was born does not seem to matter much these days.

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As long as they are not stealing content, you really do not have a complaint in my eyes.

I always thought these "look and feel" cases heald about as much water as a sieve patent. Yhey might, but they shouldn't.

Hell, even complaining that another site has the same "look" as yours (yes, even if it is a clone with different content) is about as genuine as an Apple vs. whomever lawsuit. Yes, I *think* Apple won something along those lines, but did you support that decision then?

This is the same thing.

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This:
So the cost of segmentation, a users guide/manual, QA, and everything else that go into a DII COE segment are free? Unfortunately, we have to go through this far too often. A well supported segment takes three months (full time) to get it in. If someone has a problem or you don't have someone to push the segment through for you? Now you're looking at more like six months or longer.
is not the real point. The real point is that he can probably do what he needs to do with Linux or anything else that is not on the "certified" list.

Now, if you wan to get something else onto the list you CAN do it yourself and there are about a zillion ways to get a charge number for this and work it into the existing appropriation and/or contract.

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Looks like we have another case of the stupids on our hands.

I can't wait until Burger King starts handing out free toys and then sends cease and decist letters to anybody using it for propping a wobbly table leg.

For crying out loud, this stupid instance will probably make it into court soon just like the stupid DeCSS case.

Why on earth do courts (yes, I know it is not in court yet, I am just proving that I am psychic;-) even bother to hear cases based on this crap?

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Secondly, if you think that an undertaking like Linux (or any OS for that matter) would only cost a few hundred dollars, then you are only looking at the cost of procuring the OS itself. While Linux may be freely distributed, coding the Military's very specific pieces of hardware would require a huge undertaking employing numerous engineers many man hours.

Incorrect. He has a specific project, the information on how to make a secure install of Linux is out there, the spec he wants to follow (however, he probably does not have to follow it like he thinks he does, if you read my whole post) is out there.

I don't know what DoD related job you ever heald, but in the 21+ years of military service plus years with contractors I have not been on any platform listed. As you will see by scrolling through the other posts of folks that are actually familiar with the DoD drumbeat, from experience, this guy has a much smaller problem than he thinks he has as far as getting his system up.

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I am a program manager for a very small program in the US Air Force and
would like to be able to use Linux as a possible platform for my standard systems.
However, I cannot because regulations require me to use only operating systems that are
DII/COE compliant.

I see nothing at all preventing YOU from submitting the platform/krenel combination that you want to use.

I hope it is not something pesky like "government money is too precious to be wasted on this", since it should not cost over a couple hundred bucks and that is for a system that you are going to end up using anyway.

BTW, I hope that you are using ONLY the 2 platforms on that compliance list in your shop. If you have anything legally running Win95 then this is just a bunch of nonsense that you may ignore just as everybody else does.

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Yes, the fusion is cool. But the energy produced isn't, right? So how do we contain the energy and use it, other than using a turbine system.

Hummm... I don't know. AIGGGHHHHHHH (bridge troll throws me into the valley of eternal doom or whatever it was in Monty Python)

Would be interested in knowing that too.

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I thought this method worked at 3 Kelvin. Isn't that cold enough?

Anyway, you are restating my point. Massive amounts of energy from "classic" uncontrolled fusion are lost as heat and light.

Example: Thermonuclear bomb is used to dig a hole where a city sits now. However, so much energy "leaks" out that the hole is much smaller than if all of the energy was used for hole blasting (even if the bomb is buried really deep).

Theoretical example: old-school plasma type thermonuclear furnace is created for production of electricity and hi temp. product fabrication. However, heat is lost that is not used to spin a terbine or melt exotic materials and must be carried away to the cooling towers.

So, my question is more along the lines of: are we going to see more energy per reaction going into the intended purpose of the facility, or is it going to be just as lossy as plants are now?

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Persuasion and trickery is usually preferred over force (by me anyway).

Would this method also be less "lossy" as far as being able to channel a higer percentage of the resulting energy into work, instead of loosing it as heat or (pick an energy type)?

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Very kewell! Let us know if the MPAA starts bugging you. Hope you get some good karma, your post is very interesting and "informative".

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If I distributed an HTML document which had references to images or other objects on some website, every user opening that HTML document would cause an access to that web site.

And if you read *any* document with a ref to an outside object (like a one pixel .jpg) with *anything* that is web aware the exact same thing will happen.

However, if you read the document in Wordpad or some other text only program you can avoid the effect. Makes for some pesky reading around markup and junk, but you will see the refrences to the web too.

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I have heard of the DeCSS.pl file, but that is a little different than what I was thinking.

Just an empty file or even better, an empty directory, nothing else.

If I lived in a convenient location to Judge Kaplan's courtroom, I would even post my address on the site so the MPAA can have me answer to the Judge.

"Your Honor, it is just an empty directory, not even a program. It does absoutely nothing except take up space on my drive. Tried to tell these guys that several times, but they keep threatening and harassing me. Is there any way that you can get them to leave me alone?"

You know, something like that ;-)

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I have been thinking about this one for a while, guess it is time to try it.

Step 1. Post a web page named DeCSS, with DeCSS in the URL and some general information on the page that explains in great detail that the DeCSS code does not exist on that page. Also, no links to the DeCSS program on the page either.

Step 2. Sit back an wait to see how long the MPAA clueless train takes to fire off a letter.

Modified hack, have a link on the page to an empty file. Explain that it is an empty file. Goto Step 2.

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try http://www.2600.net
some filters miss that one

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2 different issues actually. I like my job, I just do not like the tools that I am reqired to use right now, i.e., I do not have a "windows" job I am a Logistician. As stated, I am planning to change that.

An issue related to your statement, is that using and running Linux at home does not carry much weight in job world. Several places have called me for Linux jobs, because it is on resume, but insist on candidates having used it at their "regular job".

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1. MS Word
2. MS Excel
3. MS Access

I am stuck with a MSWin machine at work because everything that I do must comply with the above 3 programs.

I do not run them at home, no longer do any work related to the above stuff at home and am currently devising a plot to recreate all of my output on a FreeBSD (or Linux, if Oracle for Linux will not run on FBSD) and Oracle 8i machine.

Perhaps at that time I can actually complete a database app without running out of memory every hour.

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1. The "unwashed masses" do not know that .US exists because it has not been advertised. For some strange reason, beurocrats think they can issue a memo and then the whole world complies. Sorry Bubba, it don't work that way outside of DC (hell, it don't work that way IN DC either, but try convincing a fed of that).

2. Feds do not realize that to make something "unknown" popular amoungst buyers, you use a LOW price, not a HIGH price. They seem to think that massive taxes generate more revenue too. Go figure.

3. For some reason, the feds think that picking ip a .US domain is the same budget choice for joe sixpack as it is to joe IRS for picking up .gov, or for joe M1A1 to pickup a .mil address. They have no concept of what real "out of pocket" money is.

4. Redundant, but needs to be repeated, .US can NOT become *popular* if it is not widely known. (not meant to be a riddle, sorry)

Conclusion: the government needs to do the same thing that they did with cigarettes in WW I to make .US widespread and famous. Give them away to a broad base of employees (like soldiers) so that they can market it by word of mouth.

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Well, the money certianly was not thrown away on the "Loose Cannon" commercial. That one rocks! Had me completely fooled.

However, I can do without the "Power of the Dot" space movie ripoff commercial.

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Could such changes to cameras like these make them more secure?

Just from the standpoint of reducing sucessful sniffing between the camera itself and the network this would be a great security improvement. Both for us ultra-paranoid sorts, as well as for voyure sites that want flexibility of camera placement, but also wish to choke any point of revenue seepage.

Sounds like a GREAT idea!

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About 20 years ago, when I began college, through just a few years ago (when I finally went back and finished college) the University and the professors used radically different methods:

1. They would have "new editions" of textbooks quite frequently. The main difference seemed to be the wording or order of questions assigned for homework. Calc books were the most amazing. Did not know Business student calculus was so dynamic as to require a new adition of the same book every year or 2.

2. "Class packs" were common a few years back, until some lawsuit against Kinko's stalled wholsale copyright violations by professors. Somehow, a way was found around that and class packs were available again, for a pretty hefty price, given the "quality" of a pile of xeroxed paper. BTW, even though the pile of bad quality printed paper was a collection of other's work, don't dare make a copy for a friend or the prof. would have a fit.

It seems that this latest twist has the same effect as the tactics used before, except the professors/textbook writers do not have to move the questions around every couple of terms.

However, in the past there were not any criminal hammers hovering over the students for these violations.

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Salty? Impurities? Magnitism? Dang near any impurity in water lets it conduct electricity! Since it would be close to impossible for any body to have pure, non-conductive water, what is the big suprise?



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The 2 big points that I would make are:

1. Bugs can be found and fixed by a large base of people, however, the company does need to make a serious effort to find the bugs first.

This will result in a large number of knowledgable people that will be referring your product to others as something good/safe to use. You should still be able to sell plenty of product, if you want to, because most folks that a re "just users" prefer a package and some sort of company backing, as well as easier install, etc.

2. Gratuituotous (hell, I can't spell stuff like that) reason: Open Source is a hot buzzword now, but show them that even if the source is open, joe-schmoe user is not interested in compiling for his own machine, so that takes you back to #1 above, you will still sell plenty of product even if it is OS.

Conclusion should be something to the effect of getting lots of community support and assistance that you would not normally have, as well as being able to sell plenty of product.

Give examples of hardware/software that is commercially packaged even though it is available free: Cobolt machines, Linud distros, *BSD, etc.

Sorry if it was not more in depth, I recently picked up a similar dilemma at work and this is all I have come up with sofar.

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I really hate getting this deep into an OT discussion, BUT...

The things you bring up are nice, cute and whatnot. However, the University of Tennessee began in 1794. When was that college in Austin formed? If it was before UT then it would be UMexico, wouldn't it?

Why must UM insist on using orange and white? Those are the UT Knoxville colors, that were around ages before Texas was emancipated from Mexico, with the strong assistance from some prominant Tennesseans.

There is no denying that the University of Mexico, Austin has had some stellar academic achievements, but the initials UT were in use about a century before your 2nd largest state in the union was even thought of.

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I am the first to agree that those with oft heard voices (the press and those with access to mass media) are often overly self important, a trait that I do not like in the least.

However, as self-important as the press may be, the government has no right to treat them this way. Telling people about *something*, anything (in this case, DeCSS) should not result in legal bills and censorship of ANYBODY.

The government already thinks that they can take away our self-defense, free travel and free thought. Free press does not need to go down freedoms have. This Klintonista judge deserves a good fight.

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making a news writer liable for what s/he writes, the content that is, seems to be a little bit like moving towards a F451 future.

Yes it is, I should know.

Guy Montag

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It is nice to see a reporter like Declan, that actually knows something about what he writes.

This case is NOT about the legality of DeCSS, it is about muzzling the press.

First it is 2600 Magazine, next it will be any news organization. All the oppressor has to do is point to this case as a precident.

This ruling MUST be overturned if we are to retain what little freedom we *think* that we have left.

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From the log on the website:
"That fantastically efficient propulsion system uses only about 100 grams of xenon propellant each day (or about one pound every 4 days)."

Also:
"Today, the ion propulsion system has logged 195 days of operation."

So, 195 days * .25 pounds == 48.75 pounds consumed thusfar.

But, they also have this:
"To reach the correct point in space and time to greet the comet as it streaks around the Sun, DS1 will need to thrust with its advanced ion propulsion system for about 8 months. It has now completed over a month of that thrusting, since resuming powered flight at the end of June."

So, we might assume that it has actually been thrusting for 195 days with the most recent consecutive days being the last 30 days.

8 months == ~ 240 days total

So, 240 * .25 Lbs. == 60 Lbs. of gas (with 48.75 pounds consumed thusfar).

How tightly that gas is packed per gallon is someone else's guess.

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How we went from transparent skin to the Alamo is beyond me...

This is Slashdot. You expected something different?

let me be the first Texan to publically thank the courageous Tennessee citizens (who i'm sure are all dead by now) for the work they did to make create Texas. We couldn't have done it without you.

Thank you very much, from a graduate of the real UT, Knoxville.

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If your card catalogue is just sitting there on paper now, then ANY open source database system will work (yes, even mySQL). Just set it up and start typing in the info. Take your pick of anything out there. A pre-packaged product will not save you an appreciable amount of time in the long run if you have 5,000 volumes that need to be typed into the thing anyway.

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..but what about technology and democracy? can one be used to promote the other?

Yes, they certainly *could* be, but don't hold your breath.

First, we in the USA live in a republic. In a system like that, giving government any control over public communications is dangerous to say the least. Remember the bad-old-days of TV (sometimes called the "Golden Age")? Whenever the sitting president wanted to babble over the air every station had to cary it? Remember the breath of fresh air we got when that ended during the Bush (or was it Regan?) administration?

Well, thanks but no thanks. I will stick with a system where people become interested in technology (or not) on whatever level they like, without "guidance" from the government. Same with politics.

From the other direction, tech promoting democracy? Take a look around. There are endless discussions on any topic imaginable going on through: the 'net, the web, HAM radio, commercial talk radio via call-in, CB radio, student unions, town meetings, bars, etc.

Eventually, ALL of that discussion ends up in a voting booth, one way or another. No, I do not mean that everybody that discussed anything votes, but everybody that votes has had some exposure to the issues that THEY are interested in. Granted, it might not be what YOU or I are interested in, *gosh* might even be a view that we do not agree with!

So, just what the hell is *wrong* with people having the freedom to choose? Are you just not satisfied that it is not ending up the way you want it to end up?

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It is much easier to be involved in the US political process now than it has been in my almost 40 years of life.

The reason fewer people involved is because they DO NOT WANT TO BE INVOLVED!

Why this is such a burr under the saddle of those that are involved is beyond me. Sounds suspiciously like self centered arrogance on the part of the political hobbyests and pro's alike.

Just because *I* enjoy or view as important a particular activity does not make others lesser people because they are interested in different things.

When you get down to it, once you get past your local elected officials, the DC based wonks do not have much of a day-to-day impact on the average person. Looks like most people have realized that, since they now have a chice to watch something else *besides* a convention (in contrast to the 1960's) during this season. They are not forced to watch the president on every channel whenever he has the whim to call a press confrence, etc.

So, political hackers, just chill (including me), because other people have other things to do that THEY feel is more important. Anything less would be Stalinist, or at least Chilaian(sp?).

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From the Netpliance I-Opener hacking board: Great GPS implementation has both Win and Linux stuff in it.

This may be more to the point: GPS for Linux on the same board. Mentions Mayko, which is what I will be trying on my vehicle-mounted I-Opener, but on FreeBSD. Not exactly trip planning software, but covers the navigation portion of your question.

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Like I said in my other posts, what they CLAIM is irrelevant. Not sure why you are attaching that to my post. They can call themselves five legged dogs if they want and it does not make them a five legged dogs.

The people you seem to have in mind can call themselves conservatives all they want and YOU might buy that, but I don't consider them to be conservative in any sense of the word and believe that I brought that up in the several threads above.

I am glad that you brought up the more fitting term "strict constitutionalist", since it is obvious that the term "conservative" has been bastardized enough at to have fooled even someone such as yourself.

Everybody that IS a true conservative is a strict constitutionalist. What they label themself is irrelevant.

It kind of reminds me of some of the folks I was around during military service. Touting the label of "conservative" while, in various discussions, they wanted one government mandate and edict after another, like: forced use of english in all commerce; free airtime on all electronic media for "the administration side of the issue"; free military equipment from corporations; etc., etc. The list was endless.

Now, again I say, people that have these views can call themselves conservatives all they want, but they are really liberals, socialistic liberals in the same spirit as Stalin, Hitler and Kaplan. Judge Kaplan being a Clinton appointee.

If you actually BELIEVE that anybody that calls themself a conservative truly is, no matter what their actions or views, then I suggest that you have the perception problem, not I.

I hope you don't believe any screwball with a sword has supreme executive power just because he says some watery tart in a lake threw it at him!

Credits: 5 legged dog ref. Abraham Lincolin in one of his debates with Douglas; Watery Tart ref. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Both reengineered for this forum.

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