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The federal Do-Not-Call system has worked very well for me.

The Oregon state government was charging for Do-Not-Call. Now the state system has been terminated.

Nice, so when you're wrong about some of the points you just ignore them like you were never wrong in the first place.

About the power situation, I acknowledged that mistakes were made, but the companies were at fault also.

Funny thing about illegal immigration, the voters passed prop 209, which was very anti-illegal immigrant, but the courts struck it down. The Border Patrol is the Federal government's job. I blame them. Liberals tend to be compassionate, but even many of them realize one state can't afford to provide benefits to wave after wave of illegals coming from all over Central America.

As for immigration into Oregon, I have some interesting statistics. First of all, have you looked at the net migration numbers lately? Immigration into Oregon slowed from 53,700 in 1993 to 18,833 in 2002. It's also predicted to stay below 33,000 through 2011. Also, while in 1994 Californians accounted for 80% of the net migration, in 1995 they were 55% and just 45% in 1996. I'd certainly like to see more recent numbers in case lots of the migration is actually coming from states other than California.

Frankly I find it sad that you're so upset that someone else found a slice of paradise and wants in but you don't want to share. It's like ultimate NIMBY isn't it? Regardless of whether the migration is from CA, NY, or TX.

What's with hiding behind the patriot shield? Are you saying it's unpatriotic to migrate around the country? Did being a patriot make you ignorant and wrong about so many of the points?

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html

URL:http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited .h tml

This is the offical list by the state of Oregon, which lists acceptable schools at the top in one list, and scam schools on the larger list at the bottom. We have a scam school a couple of miles form here. Their credits are no good anywhere else.

That is correct. You can find more info on their legal status here with the Oregon Secretary of State.

LinuxFund was a state public benefit corporation. It's not a nonprofit under federal guidelines, which means they'll owe some back taxes.

Oregon link

The state dissolved the corporation because they didn't file renewal papers.

They will likely also owe some penalties and legal fees.

So there won't be hundreds of thousands to give away.

Off topic:

Use this as an example of stellar open-source programming:

Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been 3 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

Lots of eyeballs, but the problem still persists.

Desert solar flux is about 1.3kW/m^2 at noon.

Looks to me the reaction is energy limited.

the right mix of citizens, who are the riches of any city as b!x will tell you

As b!X will also tell you, that's actually a C.E.S. Wood quote.

Both of which have no actual statute attached to them and are merely rated as to how dumb they are. These are good examples of the ones that are ULs.

Or, perhaps they are not in statute because they are due to Oregon Administrative Rules, which have the force of law?

I'll admit that the "canned corn" rule no longer appears to be present, at least not in the form it used to. But, as an angler, I know I have been aware of it, and there was such a rule in the past (though it really didn't say "canned corn"). If I remember correctly, it was the fact that anything not specifically authorized as bait was not permitted. The reason it was associated with canned corn (even though it would apply to a lot more things) is that canned corn is a popular bait for kokanee, and people were annoyed with that.

As it stands now, it is illegal to use any bait in waters where an exception has not been specifically made.

For the "dishes must drip dry", I will point you to some Oregon restaurant regulations. The following comes from the Oregon Administrative Rules chapter on mobile restaurants, found via a quick Google search:

OAR 333-162-0530:

Drying

After sanitizing, all equipment and utensils shall be air dried. Utensils may not be rinsed after the sanitizing cycle.

Stat. Auth.: ORS 624.390
Stats. Implemented: ORS 624.390
Hist.: HD 10-1997, f. & cert. ef. 7-8-97

333-162-0550 (same link)

Storage ... (2) Utensils shall be air dried before being stored or shall be stored in a self-draining position. ...

(the unquoted paragraphs 1 and 3 are unimportant)

There's more than just statutes, when it comes to law.

• Non-competes have to be reasonable to be enforceable. Reasonableness is determined by the courts based on the specific facts in each case. Primary attention is given by the courts to:
• 
  the geographic scope of the non-compete,
  the duration of the non-compete, and
  the type of activity the ex-employee is precluded from engaging in.

Here's another example.

• In determining whether a non-competition agreement is valid, courts assess the following questions:
• 
  
  1. Does the agreement protect a legitimate interest of the employer?
  
  2. Is the agreement too restrictive in terms of its duration? Is the agreement limited to the amount of time necessary to reasonably protect the employer?
  
  3. Is the agreement too restrictive in terms of the geographic boundaries specified? Is the agreement limited to the geographic areas necessary to reasonably protect the employer?
  
  4. Is the agreement supported by good consideration? In other words, was the agreement entered into upon the initial employment of the employee or upon advancement of the employee with the employer?

Catch the term "Reasonably"? It's there on purpose.

Instead of the opinions of third parties, let's see what the courts have said about it.

Earthweb Inc. v. Schlack

The courts held that...

• [T]he one-year duration of EarthWeb's restrictive covenant is too long given the dynamic nature of this industry, its lack of geographic borders, and Schlack's former cutting-edge position with EarthWeb where his success depended on keeping abreast of daily changes in content on the Internet.

In Keener v. Convergys(Google for it, I'm tired of linking pages that you probably won't read anyway)
the court threw out a non-compete for being too restrictive.

A non-compete must be REASONABLE for a court to enforce it. The definition of that word may be subject to the interpretatio

This pending bill places some crippling roadblocks in the way of municipal broadband for Oregon. It would require municipalities to have a majority vote in a referendum before providing any such service and would subject the proposed municipal communications providers to open records and open meetings requirements that do not apply to private-sector providers.

Requirements like those are just the Oregon way. I've lived in many places, and Oregon by far has the most politically active citizenry. While on the surface such requirements may seem appealing in order to protect Oregonians, they might just be the sugar coating a poison pill for municipal wifi.

The bill also calls for a cost-benefit analysis to be done at the end of three years. Three years is a very short time to see a return on investment. And the process detailed by HB 2445 would need to be repeated for each municipality as the network expands. This sounds like a long and tedious process. By the time anything can be done, the technology to disseminate network connectivity will have changed multiple times.

Mike.
http://injoke.org

Like this.

Oregon CNIC info.

DHS is Oregon's largest branch of government (or second maybe), and they use very little open source. Here are their "standards".

Other state agencies probably have theirs posted as well...

Republicans are not conservatives, and Kerry is not a liberal.

I never said I voted as a party-line Republican. Quite often there is a Libertarian mark on my ballot, and even a Democrat or two.

I'm going to assume you voted for Bush... why?

John Kerry's entire campaign message was essentially "I'm going to do everything Bush is doing, except I am going to raise taxes on those making $200,000 or more and try to force you to get health insurance. Things will be different because I'm John Kerry."

Essentially, there wasn't much of a choice on policy. My vote was specifically to the benefit of the Republican Party. I dislike virtually every local politician who is a Democrat.

You're also only a conservative when it's convenient to you - you don't want to help people, unless it's your father-in-law and grandfather-in-law, in which case you think they're entitled to keep the same job despite changing business conditions.

Business conditions that were changed by outside entities and out-of-state special interest groups' influence. I don't like stupid laws that put people out of work. (That link is a .pdf, just so you know). But, you're wrong about me:

I give to private charities all the time. When I was in the Army, I contributed large sums of money to CFC organizations. Community problems are community problems, not Federal problems. Do you think that the Federal government can end homelessness? I don't. I think a local community is in a much better position to deal with its problems. One of the best organizations in my area for feeding people who cannot afford to eat is a private charity... and the director is a Republican, I might add.

Ah, but the election is over, I want to go back to arguing the KDE/GNOME and vi/emacs debates.

I like KDE and vi.

Like it or not, felons who have not received clemancy are not allowed to vote in Florida. You cannot fault Florida election officials for trying to enforce a law that has been on the books for decades.

Actually, yes. Yes I can. Let's replace "Florida election officials" with "the RIAA and MPAA", "felons who have not received clemency" with "consumers without a distribution license" and "vote in Florida" with "share copyrighted songs on the Internet".

Say to yourself "the ends do not justify the means". Now say it again. Try it a few more times until it sinks in. If I toss out 19 legitimate voters for every 1 felon, that's not even close to making a halfway decent effort. I can fault them for being wrong 95% of the time. If you're wrong in school 95% of the time, you don't even come close to passing. You fail. And I can fault them for foisting a failure of a list onto county officials.

Florida Election Laws clearly place the responsibility of maintaining county voter registration rolls on the county election officials. There was no legal way for Jeb Bush or Catherine Harris to remove registered voters from the rolls.

OK, if it's not the responsibility of the state to maintain voter rolls, what the hell were they doing spending $2.3 million of taxpayer money to make a list of people that shouldn't have been on the county rolls? The sure sounds like the state trying to have its say in maintaining the voter lists. And even if that was the case in 2000, it's no longer true. The Help America Vote Act requires states to centralize their voter database as of 01/2004.

The only "references" you provided were from Greg Palast, whose assertions were thoroughly debunked by the US Civil Commission on Civil Rights.

What, these findings? Ones that say things like

• During Florida's 2000 presidential election, restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors, and inadequate resources in the Florida election process denied countless Floridians of their right to vote.
• The state of Florida's use of this purge list, combined with the state law that places the burden on voters to remove themselves from the list, resulted in denying countless African Americans the right to vote.
• There were no clear guidelines from the governor, the secretary of state, or the director of the Division of Elections to subordinates to employ list maintenance strategies that would protect eligible voters, particularly historically disenfranchised populations, from being wrongfully removed from the voter registration rolls.
• An official of the Division of Elections dictated to representatives of the private firm to employ a strategy that resulted in a disproportionate number of eligible African American voters being removed from the voter registration rolls in error.
• Supervisors of elections had no uniform method to verify the information on the exclusion lists.
• There is no evidence that in preparation for the 2000 presidential election, the director of the Division of Elections took proper steps to ensure that supervisors of elections were informed about the errors in the exclusion lists.

Recommendations include

• The U.S. Department of Justice should immediately initiate the litigation process against the governor, secretary of state, director of the Division of Elections, specific supervisors of elections, and other state and local officials responsible for the execution of election laws, practices, and procedures[...]
• The U.S. Department of Justice should immediately initiate the litigation process against Florida state officials whose list maintenance activities during the 2000 presidential election discriminated against people of color in violation of federal law or resulted in the denial of people of color to have equal access to the

Get a bunch of plantiff's attorneys involved, and a chase for money will ensue. Though SCO may have opened the doors here, IT really isn't very special when it comes to this sort of thing. Business has been dealing with this for years. There's a scam right now concerning ADA lawsuits, where law firms literally go out and hunt small and medium business that may have ADA infractions, even if they're relativly small and the owners tackle the problem right away. Settle up, or we sue.

If lawyers think they've got a loophole to pull cash out of you, they'll attack it. Hope your firm's attorneys are good.

Right, but even if you're a net-$0 customer, that power they buy from you is power they are selling to someone else (or not having to pay to produce). As long as they're able to sell it to others for more than they pay you (plus costs), then you're still profitable.

The economics change, of course, if a majority of the people employ systems like this. At that point, though the energy you sell back is worth less because so many more people are producing it as well.

I realize this article is about Portland, but its state, Oregon, offers tax incentives for certain energy efficiency improvements:
Oregon Residential Energy Tax Credit Program

Tax credits are available for the following categories:
appliances
fuel cells
HVAC
Solar
Water Heaters
Wind
Vehicles

"The maximum amount of tax credits a resident may receive per year is $1,000 for appliances including heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment. The maximum amount of tax credits a resident may receive per year is $1,500 for renewable energy equipment such as solar and wind systems. "

If you're smart, you can probably plan part of yoru purchases in December of one year and the rest in Jan of the next. Or possibly spread your project over a few years to maximize the tax break.

Plus, these improvements amount to capital investments in your property which should reduce any taxes incurred from selling a house (though, I think the capital gains tax was eliminated for the owner's residence).

And, such investments done on rental properties will count as costs and will, while reducing your profit, will also reduce the tax on your profit, which could be as high as 40%.

Most of the wastes sites I know about are from uranium mining and weapons manufacturing like Rocky Flats in Colorado and Hanford in Washington. Most of the waste from commercial reactors, spent fuel rods mostly, are sitting in pools of water to cool and shield them, usually at the reactor site, waiting for the feds to transport it all to Yucca Mountain. Something they've been trying to do for decades.

During the 40's and 50's in particular the U.S. was in an extreme hurry to develop the bomb before Hitler did and to build more bombs than Stalin so they were more than a little messy while they were in a hurry. They also processed small mountains of Uranium and hefty quantities of plutonium. Rocky Flats and Hanford were a plutonium reprocessing facilities which are especially messy. If I recall Hanford has a plume of radioactive waste working its way towards the Columbia river which is a water source for major cities in the Northwest. It is a study in A. how hard it is to store radioactive waste safely and B. the danger of letting it just get dumped in the ground as some here have proposed.

There are horror stories about Rocky Flats where they apparently mixed low level waste with water and pumped it into sprinklers to water the grass in out of the way parts of the facility.

I think Rocky Flats is being turned in to a wildlife park as we speak. It is in close proximity to the cities of Denver and Boulder.

Most states have some kind of text saying that drivers should drive at a speed safe for the conditions. Here in Oregon we have a "Basic Rule" instead of a speed limit, which means that the speed limit varies according to condition. A few people tried to prove that having no speed limit meant you could go whatever speed you deemed safe but they didn't get very far with that. Still, to this day, if you speed in Oregon it's written as a violation of the Basic Rule and our speed limit signs say "Speed nn" instead of "Speed Limit nn"

http://www.odot.state.or.us/traffic/speed.htm

"...a very small minority of people actually into this stuff..."

Is that why: "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of sixteen" here and here.

25% of all children had a sexual encounter with an adult, either PeeWee Herman has been really busy or there are *a lot* of people very sexually attracted to children, not a 'small minority'.

Where are the studies and discussions on this issue? Oh I forgot they are being condemned by the United States Congress and state leglislatures for NOT toeing the line. Does it have a chilling effect on study of this issue, I'd say so big time.

If you live in a state with a high state income tax rate , you might be able to itemize even if you don't own a house. It's worth checking.

What, and you think that those "controlling interests" wouldn't love to be the ground-breakers in a massive changeover to alternative fuels and have a (temporary) monopoly?

The problem with your theory is that the newer technologies in renewable energy tend to work rather efficiently on a micro producer scale, and thus would serve to reduce the amount of control that any one company or small group of companies can have over the energy market.

Electricity from solar energy can be that are on the market today.

Biodiesel takes very little equipment to produce in your garage from waste vegatable oil (big plastic drum, litmus paper and/or phenolthalene solution, hydrometer, measuring devices, etc) for pennies. No new technology need be implemented for the use of biodiesel

Natural gas can be efficiently produced on farms and by municipalities using biological processes.

Wind can be harnessed for electric production by windmills ranging in size from small ones that will power the lights in your garage (can be home-made without too much difficulty) to giant towers that can power several city blocks.

The truth is that petrochemical and energy corps are interested in maintaining the status quo, and will shun any technological advances that threaten to decentralize the energy markets. OTOH, the same corporations are showing considerable interest in implementing large scale renewable energy projects that allow market control to remain in their hands, such as large scale wind farms and hydrocarbon fuels produced from poultry processing wastes. The problem is that many people think that these companies are somehow attached to the idea of fossil fuels, when the truth is that they do not care where the money and power come from, as long as it remains in thier own hands.

(btw, the "hydrogen energy economy" is a red herring. It takes more energy to seperate the hydrogen from water than can be gained by burning or through fuel cells. The companies know this, and stand to profit from subsidies for building hydrogen plants, and from producing the electricity that will be used to seperate the hydrogen from water.)

"When did that happen?, I used to live there and know about the assisted suicide and gay marriage, but I have never heard about LEGALIZED marijuana in Portland."

I think he/she/it is talking about the state medical marijuana law.

I know exactly what you mean. Chuck Palahniuk describes it as a town of fugitives and refugees. It's the kind of place where pedestrians and bicyclists have the right of way, regardless of what the street lights might read, and you don't turn into a street until after everyone has crossed (the opposite of Dallas, at least). It's also the kind of place where an office lunch is just as likely to be held in a bar as in the local sandwich shop. Speaking of bars, the area's known for its microbreweries as well. And there's Powell's Books, of course, the largest bookstore in the world, in case you get bored with walking around...

The city itself's only a couple hundred thousand people. You can see a couple mountains from downtown, depending on where you are and how hazy/misty the weather is. There's great scenery just minutes away in every direction. The west stretch of Highway 26 is also called Sunset Highway, for good reason - it runs out to the coast, which has some excellent beaches (look up Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock on Google images for pretty pictures). The weather is generally milder than Dallas; I didn't have air conditioning in my apartment, and only felt I needed it about 3 weeks out of the year, and I kept a kitchen window partly open almost all winter long. As for rain, when I moved up there the average rainfall was 31 inches, and Dallas' was 33 - it's just that Dallas has a few gully-washers yearly, whereas Portland enjoys mist or drizzle a couple times a week much of the year.

I do have to warn you though, it does (or did) have the highest suicide rate in the U.S, probably due in part to the fact that the sky is often overcast, there's less peak light (unless you mean on mountain peaks) at that lattitude, and so forth. However, I actually prefer those conditions to the ones down here, so I was happy during the winter months.

reply 2:

Nice travel-guide-related website: Lonely Planet

events calendar

Powell's history page [comment regarding my relationship with them through my excellent former employer deleted]
If that's not bookish enough, try Reed. "Reedy" is a fitting name for most of the students.

public gardens If you're at all interested in nice gardens to walk through, the International Rose Test Garden is a great place to walk around.
If you have more time, the Japanese Garden is pretty must the only garden outside Japan considered to be "real" (the Mt. Fuji-stand-in doesn't hurt, either)

At some point, if you drink alcohol, or even just eat, you might end up visiting one of these. They've converted a lot of old schools, etc. into pubs along with the usual locations.

You probably won't want to go out there if you don't have much time on your trip, but see if you can recognize this hotel from the picture. [It's this one, Slashdotters]

The Columbia River Highway runs east of Portland, and includes some nice scenery of Multnomah Falls and the Gorge area.

Out west is Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock.

Oh, tying almost everything in town is the MAX, the light rail service. Gues

Check with your state's highway department to see if they have any maps available. Here in Oregon ODOT has a variety of maps available as PDF files or in Microstation format.

The Fremont bridge in Portland is not a suspension bridge, but rather "the longest tied-arch bridge in the world"

I don't think you know what taxation without representation means... here are some facts, as you requested: American view of taxation without representation, A related court case and definition. Consult google for more.

Here's a really cool example of how we often learn something after it's already too late.

Take it from someone who's walked through the Oregon backwoods:

98% of the forests in Oregon have been clearcut at least once. Only the more mountainous parts of Oregon have returned to forest, which has caused the near extinction of the lowland rainforest.

Most of the clearcuts happened with the advent of the chainsaw (they're less than 50 years old). This makes it actually more likely to see a clearcut than not when you're on top of a hill.

Even old clearcuts still look like clearcuts and will for as long as I'm alive.

Here's a really cool example of how we often learn something after it's already too late.

Locate the plant where the waste is being treated, like they do already in Lithuania Germany and Oregon.

You are already moving the sewage around as it is, so that expense is already there. The waste output of the biogas fermener is much safer than the sludge that existing sewage plants produce, and it can be further composted to produce safe, high quality, organic fertilizer.

There are also existing farm waste facilities (as was previously discussed here on /.) and existing technology to tap land fills in the same manner. It's energy that can be easily converted to a usable, transportable form (electricity) that wopuld otherwise go to waste. The gasses that are being converted are greenhouse gasses (mostly methane) that are not readily sinkable, and the waste products from the fuel cell are only (easily sinkable) CO2 and water.

The other implication of this technology that is less spoken about is that it decentralizes the source of energy away from the fossil fuel companies and spreads the profits closer to the community where the energy is being produced, either through lower costs for waste treatment, or through direct profit from the sale of the electricity if the facility is privately owned. This means lower costs for energy and lower trade deficit.

It's a winning situation for those who live in communities that take advantage of this, and the only people who lose out are the energy companies.

Something similar here in the states is an Anaerobic Digester. This is what I first thought of when I saw this article, although I believe the technologies employed are different.

Boy, you've got your priorities straight... Save the children and the seniors. Balance the books. But don't cut my pet projects (NASA). Why can't we cut education? There is so much waste there, it's not even funny. And social security... I bet you think there is actually a lock box (or "trust fund".) Bzzt. No such thing. All social security taxes collected go straight into the general fund. Thanks LBJ and the congress of the time for screwing social security.

We have states (OR) that do not have enough money to pay teachers.

According to this, the Oregon State Department of Education budget is $5,782,266,211. That does not include money from counties and municipalities. And they somehow can't afford to pay teachers? I somehow don't think that lack of money is the issue but rather how it is (mis)spent.

We've lost millions of manufacturing jobs.

Our labor costs (thanks to increased national wealth) have priced us out of the manufacturing market. So life goes. If you are intent on having domestic manufacturing, prepare to pay a lot more for everything...

We have a HUGE deficit.

While it's a large dollar amount that I'd love to see lowered, relative to GDP, it's not so bad. During the Carter administration, IIRC, the deficit/GDP ratio was over 6%.

Meanwhile, we still have things like the financial mess that is taking BILLIONS of dollars out of people's retirement funds.

First off, nobody has ever been guaranteed a profit investing in the stock market. The fact of the matter is, Ray Charles could have made money in the late 90's by simply pointing at the business page of the paper to pick his stocks. The market was way overvalued and investors were all too happy to pour money into it. It's no suprise that many companies fudged their books to get better valuations which turned into more investor activity. On a personal note, my 401K is kicking ass and has been for the last year, thank you...

C'mon, be honest, you hate Bush because all the other "cool" liberals do.

The Gore/Bush Florida hanging chad fiasco was another problem with determining voter intent. Agreed, in Florida where the old people go to die, a technology based system might not work. Can you imagine, all the retirees standing there waiting for cash to come out of the voting machines?

Its dangerous and irresponsible to force a web based system on people, but I think it would vastly improve voter turnout among... say college students, military personnel, and mobile professionals that have trouble finding time to vote. Either because they're attending a school that is far removed from their registered county, traveling on business, or stationed out of the country. Of course they can vote absentee ballot, but consider races are declared and candidates concede on election night, those absentee ballots aren't counted for days/weeks after. Those votes, in some sense, don't count.

I think Oregon might have the plan for the future. Offering a more flexible and convenient way of voting.... I wanna say in 2002 when this was implemented they shattered records for voter turn out.

I'm not one to drop links into stuff, please take a look at the Oregon link, as the act details it's system for audit, correction and remediation that I think you might find interesting in relation to this discussion.

There are plenty of existing laws already on the books to deal with misuse of these devices. As one example, in my own home area, RCW 46.37.190, Section 4, clearly states (among other things) that "Optical strobe light devices shall not be installed or used on any vehicle other than an emergency vehicle authorized by the state patrol, a publicly owned law enforcement or emergency vehicle, a department of transportation, city, or county maintenance vehicle, or a public transit vehicle."

The section goes on to define, in very specific detail, what the state of Washington considers to be an "Optical strobe light," and it explicitly includes devices to control traffic signals.

As another example, the California Vehicle Code, Section 25258(a), explicitly authorizes traffic control strobes only for emergency vehicles.

Final example: Oregon Revised Statutes, Chapter 816, Section 12, prohibits any kind of flashing light, other than the normal turn signals or hazard lights, on any vehicle other than an emergency or school bus type.

Now, you might be thinking "Hey, these things emit in the infrared region, so they're not visible to the unaided human eye. No problem!"

Well, there is a problem. First, 'unaided' is the keyword here. Normal video cameras see into the infrared region very well indeed (I know -- I've experimented along those lines), and many intersections now have these cameras installed in the interests of catching red light jumpers, speeders, etc.

That same camera will, if you're using one of these devices, pick up your strobe flash, IR or no IR, with no problems at all.

As if that's not enough, lots of cities have remote telemetry and monitoring of their traffic signals, and that monitoring includes an indicator that the pre-emption device has been tripped. Couple that trip indication with an image from the intersection camera, showing a nice bright white light from your dashboard where there's not supposed to be one, and you could be in big trouble really quick.

The thing that'll really kill the sales of these things is digital encoding of the strobe flash. King County (WA state again) has already done this. I've noticed that the Opticom emitters on our local fire and PD vehicles are all flashing in a very distinctive pattern, compared with six or so years ago where they were simply flashing at a certain frequency.

I guess the short way to say it is that there's going to be an awful lot of ticked-off people when they discover that their $300 time-saver either gets them at least the same amount in a traffic ticket, or when said device suddenly ceases to have any effect.

In Oregon, you are not required to pull off the road and/or stop for an emergency vehicle when you are on a multilane (2 or more lanes in both directions) highway

When you see or hear an emergency vehicle warning, drive as close as is safely practical to the right-hand edge or curb of the road, clear of any intersection, and stop. Stay stopped until the emergency vehicle has passed or until a police officer tells you to move.

Wouldn't it be great if state governments ... Did you read about Oregon's open source bill? It didn't make it through the legislature but it came pretty close. One great thing about the bill is that the actual wording mentioned not only cost savings, but the issues of local control, of keeping public information resources accessible, of preventing spyware or adware being installed and others. More info here

It's just you.

1. Nehalem, OR
2. Nehalem Bay Area Chamber of Commerce
3. Nehalem Bay State Park
4. Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes
5. Everclear Lyrics - Sparkle and Fade - Nehalem
6. Nehalem River

Ah, another day of karma whoring. Will I be successful? Only time will tell :)

The Question: Can those managers be charged with manslaughter now?

Says Bladernr:

"Probably not. If you could prove their behavoir was malicious, instead of merely stupid or calous, then maybe. People performing in their legal line of work are generally protected"

I'm not to sure about that. I know it doesn't apply, but the law in Oregon is:

163.145 Criminally negligent homicide. (1) A person commits the crime of criminally negligent homicide when, with criminal negligence, the person causes the death of another person. (2) Criminally negligent homicide is a Class C felony. [1971 c.743 91]

To me, if it is as simple as the managers telling the engineers who should know to go away, then it is criminal negligence. The guy I called at the county law library said that, in court, "criminal negligence" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it does on the street.

Futher, (10) "Criminal negligence" or "criminally negligent," when used with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense, means that a person fails to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that the failure to be aware of it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. [1971 c.743 7; 1973 c.139 .] This foaming mass comes from Chapter 161 of the ORS, so I don't know if it applies to the laws in Chapter 163, the chapter that defines criminally negligent homicide.

According to Lawinfo, "Negligence is always assessed having regards to the circumstances and to the standard of care which would reasonably be expected of a person in similar circumstances. " Futher from Lawinfo, "Gross negligence is 'Any action or an omission in reckless disregard of the consequences to the safety or property of another.

In view of this, I'd say that being a calous moron could get you in trouble.

Making something perfectly safe or as safe as it can be made is not always sensible. People take unnecessary risks all the time for money and thrills, including astronauts. Insisting on perfect safety would be insanely expensive and boring.

But, speaking personally, If someone didn't do something that they could have, just to save a tiny fraction of the total project cost or to save face, I would want heads to roll. I mean that literally.

Whatever else happens, we must be careful not to make managing inherantly risky endeavors like space travel so risky that good people will back off. I really don't know where that line should be drawn.

I'm guessing that these turkeys won't be charged with anything. Even if they do get fired they will probably be able to get another management job.

I do know one thing for sure. If I don't get on with my day I will miss the laundry-mat and then I'll be charged with criminally negligent stinkiness for sure. Besides, all this law stuff making my head hurt.

First of all, hydrogen gas is not an energy source as it must be separated from water using electrolosis, which is not very efficient and must be powered by another source of energy.

While hydrogen may burn cleanly the large oil and power corporations are expecting to use thier existing carbon monoxide (and sulfer dioxide) producing natural gas, fuel oil, and coal burning power plants to provide the electricity needed to separate the hydrogen, which will allow energy to be stored for late usage but not cut into thier profits earned from America's dependance on fossil fuels. Hydrogen energy storage is only clean if clean sources of energy are used to power the separation of hydrogen from water(such as solar, which IMHO is a good idea).

Natural gas fuel cells are a much better solution for distributed power generation. The infrastructure for providing natural gas is already existant in most urban areas and in many rural areas (such as in OH, western NY, and western PA) it is not unusual for homes to have thier own natural gas wells on the property. Natural gas can be produced from sewage and animal waste, and can also be tapped off of landfills. Fuel cells do not produce the carbon monoxide that is emitted with the incomplete burning of hydrocarbons, and are much more efficient at converting the contained energy into electricity.

As for the explosiveness of hydrogen, this is not much of a problem as hydrogen is lighter than air which allows hydrogen leaks to disperse quickly as long as they are in ventilated areas. Long chain hydrocarbon gasses (such as gasoline vapors, propane, and natural gas) are heavier than air, which allows them to pool in depressions (such as basements) and remain in one place ontil they mix sufficiently with the air to become explosive.

and they shit alot.

The same techniques can be applied to sewage treatment, and the energy produced can reduce or eliminate the cost of sewage treatment, and may possibly produce enough to create a revenue stream for whatever municipalities go this route.

Sewage is not the only source of biogas produced by New York, there is also the 2100 acre Fresh Kills Landfill. Landfill to electric programs are being implemented, as seen by this report on renewable energy sources in Pennsylvania.

As for the proximity of farms to large cities, you'd be surprised, there are large agricultural areas in New York (State), New Jersey, and Connecticut that are much closer to New York than where most of the city's power now comes from.

Renewable resources are never going to eliminate the energy conglomerates, but they may take away a little of thier business, reduce the cost of energy, and possibly help municipalities to balance thier budgets (ie: reduce taxes).

As long as the power industry is dominated by the large investors who currently dominate the industry, there will never be a "natural" economy with a supply/demand that will adjust naturally. Despite deregulation, we are moving in a direction where consolidation of power suppliers and overly powerful electric resellers will be able to create a false scarcity of electrical power like we saw a few years ago in California

Micro suppliers could aleviate the conditions that led to the massive blackouts that we observed to day by placing cleaner, smaller, and more efficient power sources closer to where the electricity is being used. This would also make our national electric grid more resistant to terrorist attacks by distributing power generation, make localities less dependant on the owners of long distance transmission lines, allow homeowners the option of choosing power from the grid or from thier natural gas feul cells (in the basement) depending on which comodity has a more reasonable price, allow municipalities to reduce the cost of sewage treatment by turning sewage into natural gas or electric, and allow family owned farms to reduce costs and supplement thier agricultural incomes by selling electricity generated either by windmills or from natural gas from thier animal waste

Fuel cells are more efficient (85% of the energy contained in the natural gas converted to electric as opposed to 35% to 45%) and cleaner (natural gas fuel cells give off only water and CO2, no CO) than burning natural gas or oil for power generation.

A micro supplier market will decentralize the electrical generation market making power delivery more reliable and less vulnerable to outages, and will place natural, market based controls on energy costs by reducing the ability of large power companies and resellers (remember Enron?) to create a "false scarcity" in the market.

There's a difference between LJ, the codebase, and LJ.com, the site. LJ.com is owned by a for-profit business called Danga Interactive, Inc.. LJ also has a community to discuss how to make money from LJ.

(I have no connection with LJ other than keeping a journal there-- the above is mostly just stuff I found with Google.)

If I were a sysadmin in Oregon, I'd be too scared to use copyrighted software, since the Oregon Legislative Assembly recently redefined "terrorism" to include just about every crime you can think of.

For example, the hideous crimes of "unlawful labeling of a sound recording", "cheating", "possession of a gray machine", or "computer crime", will now get you between a minimum of 25 years and life in a "forest or work camp".

And the state only has to come up with two "witnesses".

You can also apply for refunds when you buy gasoline you aren't planning to drive with.

ODOT's website plainly states that there will be NO RETRO FITTING on cars. [pdf format]

The correct document (I linked the wrong one in the first post).

If you want the best story, go to ODOT's website.

The GPS plan in pdf

If you want the best story, go to ODOT's website.

The GPS plan in pdf

As soon as I read the Legislative Assistant's e-mail, I sent a message to Senator Charles Starr thanking him for supporting citizen's rights over corporate interests. I also encouraged him to maintain that stance and to urge his colleagues to do likewise in the future.

Fellow Oregonians can follow my lead at the state legislature's home page. I've realized that I should have had that link bookmarked for years.

It's not that I am against mental health care in Oregon. I am against this particular method of funding it.

For those folks not in Oregon or not familiar with the history there was a state-wide measure last January that would have raised taxes state-wide to cover the costs of among other things mental health. This measure failed. Upon looking at how the vote went county by county, it was discovered that the measure passed in Multonomah county. The current measure asks only the people in Multnomah county if they want to support only the people in Multnomah county via a similar tax.

This is a state-wide problem and needs to be viewed and addressed state-wide.

Oregon is in crisis. Schools are falling apart. We are shortening school years and laying off teachers. We don't have enough police and other public services. There is a need for mental health care.

The economy here is horrible. Individual citizens are having to make due with less money and be personally more efficient with their spending. There is an attitude that government needs to do the same. We hear stories about how there is not enough money right along with stories about how money is wasted.

While the truth may be that Oregon is not wasting any money and desperately needs more cash to fund the services that people need, the public perception is that Oregon would have enough money if it spent it properly.

While the amount of money that will be dedicated to Klingon will probably be in proportion to the actual cost of the Klingon problem (minimal), the whole concept fuels the fire and the belief the Oregon collects enough money in the form of taxes and just needs to spend it better.