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I spelled my name wrong on the application (but close enough that it was still delivered to my desk- I gave them my work address) and made up an SSN... So I get to stick it to the man! I get my Diet Pepsi 24 packs at 2 for $10 (non card holders pay 6.99 a piece!!!) and they still aint got my SSN

Or you could have just used someone elses.

A site like these? Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet or The Ultimate Shopper (Safeway)

. . .like Rob Carlson's, gaming the "saver cards" right back. Me, I have 5-6 cards from each store. . .registered to one of our cats, our dog, or one of our ferrets. All at an old address, which no longer exists. And we choose a card at random. Unlike the average user and spam, it's EASY to game the cards. . . .

And another.

Your wish has been granted

The Ultimate Shopper for Safeway, and Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet for Giant.

On a related hote, I just found a website for CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), which has much useful information.

You have no clue what you are talking about. The lawyer invests signifigant time into filing and preparing for a lawsuit. If the lawyer didn't honestly think that the client had a valid claim, that time could be spent working for a client that did. And the lawyer IS held accountable. It's called "Rule 11" and it's there to sanction lawyers that file frivilous law suits.

They should not be necessary at all, but the law is not the law! Precedent is the law

The fact that you challenge this shows you know nothing about how the law works. The law is made up of statutes AND precedent. Precedent is used to guide the law so the similar cases are not decided differently. The way it works now: X gets hit by a car driven by Y. Y is found guilty of, say, manslughter for whatever reason. Four years later K gets hit by a car driven by L with a very similar fact pattern. The courts can look at the previous case and say "Yes the original court made the right decision and we apply it to this one". If they didn't, everytime this accident happened, the court would have to go through a lengthy process of looking at the statute, making assumptions because the statutes never cover every case, and in the end, two similar cases could be decided completely differently becuase the judges were different. Removing precedent would make deterrment impossible because you'd never be able to predict what the court will decide e.g. "If I kill this person, what will happen?" as opposed to "If I kill this person, I'll probably go to prison for life". On top of that, precedent helps determine how the law should work when dealing with facts that were never envisioned at the time the statute was created. Example: A sign says "no vehicles in the park". A person gets fined for riding a segway in the park. Should they be fined? Segways weren't around when the statute was made. Well, what has the court decided in the past? Cars were not allowed in one case but bikes were in another. Motorized scooters were in a third. Therefore, the segway is ok and the person shouldn't have been fined. Precedent is what makes the courts semi-predictable. Not as predictable as people bashing lawyers on slashdot, but semi-predictable.

I'm not saying lawyers are angels, and that more of these cases shouldn't be turned away, but don't challenge something you obviously don't understand.

psxndc

On August 7, 2001 I moved from my apartment to a new place and new service provider. During this time, my previous provider (CapuNet) had been closing off their residental service and sending its customer base to Earthlink. I had called in late July 2001 and received a cancellation number from CapuNet technical support that my line would be shut down on August 7, 2001 and billing would stop.

On September 13, 2001 I receved a credit card statement from WWW*EARTHLINK.NET posted to my card (that I never directly provided to Earthlink) for $62.27 from 8/29/01. Despite numerous calls every month to contest the charges and assurances from Earthlink billing department that my account had been disabled (every time!) these charges continued until December 11, 2001!

You can read the full story here: Earthlink Billing Practices.

The Honorable Felix J. Grucci, Jr.
1505 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

May 16, 2001

Representative Grucci,

On May 16, 2001, the Newsbytes section of the Washington Post quoted you as saying that militant environmental groups "use privacy sites on the Internet to anonymously contact one another and recruit our children. Then, using the environment or other worthwhile causes, they manipulate juveniles into committing crimes to further their own cause."

I'm concerned about the nature of such accusations, and by your characterization of these privacy sites as having no fundamental purpose beyond the commission of crimes. I hope you haven't forgotten that the right to anonymous and private speech is fundamental to the preservation of liberty and safety against persecution, both from government and from other citizens.

Perhaps privacy makes you feel uncomfortable. Are you concerned that these privacy sites are enabling countless whistle-blowers in both government and industry to bring corruption and other untoward activities to light? Would you rather have everyone's opinions forced out in the open so we can single out groups like radical environmentalists and persecute them "for the children?"

You should not be concerned about your citizens having their right to privacy and anonymity, unless perhaps you have something to hide.

I am fundamentally opposed to your bill, H.R. 1846. As a substitute for parental supervision, it falls horribly short. As a step back towards an era of terrified McCarthyism, however, it does a wonderful job. Consider the implications your bill would have on the American people before continuing with this effort. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Rob Carlson

I'd like to send a copy of this letter to local newspapers in his district. If you know them please e-mail me.

A copy of this message is available on my web page.

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Is this better or worse than having more specific information about a particular school being made available on demand through the Freedom of Information Act, as we've seen before?

Since these are largely public-funded organizations that own and pay for these filters, can the filtering company be hit with a FOIA request to disclose that information for a specific school or user? After all, taxpayer dollars made that data collection possible! We should have access to it.

If the answer is yes, then we have to consider the dangers of that information being collected in the first place,

If the answer is no, what would stop government organizations (like schools) from outsourcing all of their IT needs, so that they could protect that data against public inspection?

Tired of supermarkets following your every move? Check out my Giant BonusCard Swap Meet.

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A recent e-mail forward to me read:

"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."

My response? NPR is not an irreplacable resource.

Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus (my school) even established a radio station.

Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.

National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.

Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your universities by advocating for LPFM.

For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now

And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.

PS: In the interests of full disclosure, this is a revised version of something I posted earlier to my my own web page.

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A recent e-mail forward to me read:

"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."

My response? NPR is not an irreplacable resource.

Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus (my school) even established a radio station.

Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.

National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.

Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your universities by advocating for LPFM.

For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now

And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.

PS: In the interests of full disclosure, this is a revised version of something I posted earlier to my my own web page.

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A recent e-mail forward to me read:

"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."

My response? NPR is not an irreplacable resource.

Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus (my school) even established a radio station.

Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.

National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.

Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your universities by advocating for LPFM.

For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now

And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.

PS: In the interests of full disclosure, this is a revised version of something I posted earlier to my my own web page.

--

A recent e-mail forward to me read:

"Please sign this petition so we don't lose an irreplaceable resource....NPR On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it is in effect the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), NEA & the Public Broadcasting System(PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and stream line their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile."

My response? NPR is not an irreplacable resource.

Twenty one years ago, National Public Radio petitioned the FCC to stop accepting applications for the low-power Educational License class. WMUC in College Park was one of the last stations to get a ten watt FM radio license under this plan, but this was a year before the UMBC campus (my school) even established a radio station.

Because of these rules that NPR brought about, UMBC cannot get a license under 1000 watts, and due to the large amount of high-power corporate radio saturation in this area, no higher-powered licenses are available.

National Public Radio has only their own interests in mind, not the interests of smaller communities and people who still want localized, non-corporate free radio.

Forget about NPR. Support your local communities and your universities by advocating for LPFM.

For more information, see the following sites:
Pirate/Free Radio on About.Com
Prometheus Radio Project
Media Democracy Now

And my own letters to the Senators, here and here.

PS: In the interests of full disclosure, this is a revised version of something I posted earlier to my my own web page.

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I decided to kill two birds with one stone and ask my Congressman to oppose the Internet filtering rider and support MORLA in the same note. Here's what I wrote.

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Cheaper than a PlayStation: All tech heads love stacks of geeky books.

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If you're in the mood to get me a gift, how about this? Sure beats this monster, as reliable as it's been for the last year and a half.

Don't hesitate to get in touch with me or peruse my other lists. A lot of shiny tech stuff catches my eye on a regular basis, so I'm a self-proclaimed expert. Heh.

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Here's a little thing I tapped out over two months ago for people to make sure I am who I say I am.

My web page is the most public forum easily available to me, and advertised in my signature. Hopefully that'll be worth at least a little towards keeping my identity safe.

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Here's a little thing I tapped out over two months ago for people to make sure I am who I say I am.

My web page is the most public forum easily available to me, and advertised in my signature. Hopefully that'll be worth at least a little towards keeping my identity safe.

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When I got interviewed by Wired Magazine and others for an article or two about a little web thing I was doing, Leander and all the reporters were sure to get me on the phone to repeat my comments to them, even if what I was saying to them was exactly what I had written on the website. A bunch of the smaller outlets did what C|Net did this time around and just copied my more conversational comments from my website, put quotations around it and made an article from it. I thought that was a little sketchy even while this was going on, but I was still happy for the coverage.

I suppose there's two points of view here. You could consider a web page or mailing list like a press conference, roundtable or demonstration where anyone who attends can write about it, but also you could hope that the reporters would put a little more effort into their stories and actually try to get original quotes when people like the Mozilla planners are so easy to contact via e-mail and telephone.

Or maybe in the tech news obsession to scoop the next guy, they're losing what professionalism is left. I sure hope not.

Not to point fingers, but Slashdot hasn't been exactly innocent of this lately, either.

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When I got interviewed by Wired Magazine and others for an article or two about a little web thing I was doing, Leander and all the reporters were sure to get me on the phone to repeat my comments to them, even if what I was saying to them was exactly what I had written on the website. A bunch of the smaller outlets did what C|Net did this time around and just copied my more conversational comments from my website, put quotations around it and made an article from it. I thought that was a little sketchy even while this was going on, but I was still happy for the coverage.

I suppose there's two points of view here. You could consider a web page or mailing list like a press conference, roundtable or demonstration where anyone who attends can write about it, but also you could hope that the reporters would put a little more effort into their stories and actually try to get original quotes when people like the Mozilla planners are so easy to contact via e-mail and telephone.

Or maybe in the tech news obsession to scoop the next guy, they're losing what professionalism is left. I sure hope not.

Not to point fingers, but Slashdot hasn't been exactly innocent of this lately, either.

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