Slashdot Mirror

He lives on the coast of Lake Washington, which this project doesn't cover.

Deception Pass

US-Canada Border at Point Roberts (try viewing the image to the right)

Deception Pass

US-Canada Border at Point Roberts (try viewing the image to the right)

Deception Pass

US-Canada Border at Point Roberts (try viewing the image to the right)

Deception Pass

US-Canada Border at Point Roberts (try viewing the image to the right)

So great... mine is right here ;-). From the window in the tower I read and post /.

Me too! Mine's in this picture , which I posted in my cubicle a couple of years ago. It's a nice conversation starter for those who wonder why I live on an island.

Destruction Island Lighthouse! Whidbey Naval Air Station!

Destruction Island Lighthouse! Whidbey Naval Air Station!

Bangor Naval Submarine Base with ACTUAL SUBMARINES!

Bangor Naval Submarine Base with ACTUAL SUBMARINES!

Here's the beach where we used to have barbecues in high school during the summer. Ocean breezes, train tracks, view of the prison...what could be nicer?

If you pan over two to the right, you can even see the store where the Asian guy would get pissed at us for buying charcoal.

So many memories.

Pre-demolition KingDome!

Pre-demolition KingDome!

Obstruction Island!

Obstruction Island!

Reading the replies here, it's obvious that many people are posting without actually reading the decision. I know nobody likes to read convoluted legal documents, but this one is relatively short. The bit that pertains to the legality of upskirt photography took me five minutes to read. The link in the story will take you to the Washington Judiciary page, or you can click here and go straight to the ruling. It makes much more sense when you read it.

The law in washington is not designed to protect domain spoofing, sorry.

Actually, the law protects against forged headers. Check it out here. I find it really annoying because some junkmail service is sending out spam making it look like it's coming from my site. I want it to stop, but the $500 dollars isn't worth the time I would have to spend doing it.

I live in Washington state, and run several domains with my own mailserver. It seems to me that because the WHOIS information clearly identifies the registrant as being at a Washington address, anyone who sends email to those domains has reason to know its location. So, I should be able to sue them under Washington's anti-spam law, RCW 19.190.020. But is it worth it?

Sure, the $500 per offense will help offset the cost of my home computer lab. But I'm not sure I want to go down that road. Will I just become a bigger target? Will the time spent gradually spiral out of control, until I become known as the "guy who has no life, so he spends his time suing spammers"? You know, like the guys who sue places that offer free admission to women on Happy Hours nights?

Washington State's K-20 network is also connected to I2. Run a traceroute to the border router at my workplace (colville-k12.wa-k20.net) and if you're on I2, your packets will go through Abilene before they get routed to K-20 at the Westin Building in Seattle.

It is nice to be able to download a ISO of the latest distro in 10 minutes (we only have 2 T-1's at work).

Requiring assignment of employee's rights to inventions -- Conditions.
(1) A provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign or offer to assign any of the employee's rights in an invention to the employer does not apply to an invention for which no equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information of the employer was used and which was developed entirely on the employee's own time, unless (a) the invention relates (i) directly to the business of the employer, or (ii) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development, or (b) the invention results from any work performed by the employee for the employer. Any provision which purports to apply to such an invention is to that extent against the public policy of this state and is to that extent void and unenforceable.

Check out Point Roberts, WA to see an example of an outcome of treaty-making without good surveying. The outcome of the war of 1812 caused the Americans and British to firm up borders. Finally, in 1846 the border between the US and what is now British Columbia was established at 49 degrees North. Apparently they didn't realize Point Roberts would be an isolated outpost of the US!

Apparently the border markers along this part of the world were done with 1800's technology, and the generally accepted border in the area is about 300m too far north. So there is some strip of "Canadian" territory being "occupied" by Americans just south of Vancouver. This is an academic joke because both countries have since agreed that the border stands where the markers are. However, the State of Washington, until fairly recently, had officially defined the border as 49 degrees North, and a number of court cases for crimes committed in this 300m strip, notably illegal fishing just off-shore, were thrown out due to lack of jurisdiction!

One small exception: Oregon has no state sales tax. In Washington, at least, if you show a valid ID that proves you live in Oregon (or a few other places), you don't have to pay the sales tax. Link

Sign me up for the war, want revenge for this, feel free to advise.

This doesn't sound particularly difficult. Ingredients:

• One or more lines with caller ID (one per info service)
• Device to monitor line's' caller ID
• Computer that checks caller ID, does lookup of incoming number (checks for carrier, perhaps also checks for "subscription" to service and maximum message length), gets data and processes it, and sends it out.
• Internet connection for computer, of course.

If the PBX at my office supported caller ID, I'd be sorely tempted to implement this as a free public service.

This really is on topic, in the sense that because of the bulk of spam coming in, there should be some consideration for it in how mail is stored. Maybe even by creating a special bit of meta-data for handling things just like this (so spamassassin wouldn't have to modify the actual message body) - or anything else for that matter. Personally, I'd try to stay away from any mail storage format that doesn't let me get at the ORIGINAL email source so I can report the spam to spamcop and/or the WA State Attorney General (being that some suggestions mentioned splitting off the attachments/etc - this is something that the CLIENT should do, not the MDA/server). Personally, I really like Maildir. It works great for IMAP, and with the file system improvements mentioned before (and maybe some db-type improvements like indexing, caching, etc) it does its job well.. but NEVER take away my email source. Heck, with drive space so cheap lately, you could easily store both the source AND (a cache of) the extracted pieces..

at a school district in Washington State to end the P2P problem. Well first of all, there's higher ups who understand the legal implications of running a P2P program, so we got those type of programs banned by the administration. Then we gave the teachers a week to remove the programs from the machines in their classrooms. After the week was up, we made it clear that if the programs were found running on the network without permission first, they'll get in some serious trouble.

Problem solved and our bandwidth usage dropped by half.

My suggestion is to get some news articals online about Microsoft smacking down school districts and show them to the administration and point out if your teachers download an XP program that "calls home" and trys to register it and Microsoft traces it to your district's IP, the school had better hope they have some serious bucks to pony up to Microsoft.

I'm not sure what it is like over on your area, but here in Washington State, according to the K-20 AUP (the state-wide telecommunication network), one may not use the K-20 network for illegal activites, and I would assume trading warez and MP3s would consitute illegal activites. So I would contact whomever provides your bandwith and see if there are any AUPs that ban those kind of activites.

Now I just hope that I don't slashdot the sight.

Apparently the state of Washington is already going after this Walker guy, as of last October. So the feds are a little slower, at least they've jumped on the bandwagon...

I think you are right, but I don't see how this has much to do with the Seattle Law. Thanks to the wonders of globalization, any company can do that (and it can be a very bad thing). Thing is, if a company is making larger profits, they can be taxed for those profits. Assuming there is a business income tax for the state or city.

Washington State uses a gross receipts method of calculating taxes:
Dept. of Revenue

Also, Seattle != Redmond as they are different cities.

Also, Seattle != Redmond as they are different cities.

Also, Seattle != Redmond as they are different cities.

Just don't try to ride one of those segways away from Amazon. The Washington State Police may pull you over for riding an illegal vehicle... Washington State Patrol press release

• The legislature finds that the teaching of the theory of evolution in the common schools of the state of Washington is repugnant to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and thereby unconstitutional and unlawful."
• All textbooks and curriculum that teach the theory of evolution shall be removed from the public schools forthwith and replaced with textbooks and curriculum that teach the self-evident truth of creation."

You can send an E-mail to Senator Hochstatter from a form at: Senator Hochstatter

I just moved to CA from WA State, and from what I understand...WA State has a similar law

If you are in states with so-called "anti-spam" laws, you can start taking legal action against spammers. Check out:

• SpamLaws.com
• SueSpammers.org
• WA-State-Resident.com/
• Washington AG's spam page
• Spam Free Washington
• My small claims page :)

Sorry for the Washington-heavy links; it's my home state.

I am one of a handful of people actively pursuing spammers in Washington. I am vice-president of a Seattle ISP and when I get bored on the weekends, I scan the Qmail alias file, which is 99% double-bounced spam. Under RCW 19.190, almost every one of these is illegal as the spammer "misrepresented the point of origin" of the email.

I pick out the easy spams -- ones with phone numbers, fax numbers or physical addresses -- and I contact the spammer and say, "look, we got illegal email from you and we're willing to overlook it if it doesn't happen again." A fair number of spammers then remove all of our domains from their lists. The ones that don't get a few reminders, then a notice of small claim. Under Washington law, ISPs can sue for $1,000 per email.

Check out my lawsuit page for some info. For those non-Washingtonians, you can get in on some of the lawsuit fun by suing junk faxers and telemarketers under federal law, which I've tried just to see if it works. The good news: it does.

Us folks in Washington State have a great deal of cooperation going on via mailing lists. We're gearing up for some serious spammer suing. And it is hard to collect, but it's not impossible. Once you get a dozen cases going, the money from one case isn't a big deal so you just send it to collections to fuck with the spammer.

Essentially, this is just a real fun hobby that happens to pay a bit of money. Oh, you might find this interesting: Zen and the Art of Small Claims.

Wahington State went after spammers. The state was the first to pass anti-spamming legislation. More info here: http://www.wa.gov/ago/clearinghouse/consumer/junke mail/home.html

A few other cases have gone through various courts in the US with similar results. No case has ever found in favor of the spammer and no spam-specific[1] case has ever been heard at the appellate level.

Actually, one case did make it up a state appeals ladder. Washington state passed the first US anti-spamming law. Under that law the state's attorney general filed suit against a spammer (Jason "Natural Instincts" Heckel) and won.

The spammer appealed the case and had it overturned at the appellate level (spammers rejoiced worldwide). But luckily the state's Supreme Court was not composed of idiots and threw out the appellate decision in June of this year.

This made the law golden in that state and only a VERY extensive and expensive appeals process though the federal court system could change it.

One can still spam under the law, but must follow certain rules. The state Supreme Court stated the law only really required the spammers to do one thing: Be Truthful

Now we know why spammers hate the law so much.

[1]Link to COAngler's "Rowan v. US Postal Service" note

A few other cases have gone through various courts in the US with similar results. No case has ever found in favor of the spammer and no spam-specific[1] case has ever been heard at the appellate level.

Actually, one case did make it up a state appeals ladder. Washington state passed the first US anti-spamming law. Under that law the state's attorney general filed suit against a spammer (Jason "Natural Instincts" Heckel) and won.

The spammer appealed the case and had it overturned at the appellate level (spammers rejoiced worldwide). But luckily the state's Supreme Court was not composed of idiots and threw out the appellate decision in June of this year.

This made the law golden in that state and only a VERY extensive and expensive appeals process though the federal court system could change it.

One can still spam under the law, but must follow certain rules. The state Supreme Court stated the law only really required the spammers to do one thing: Be Truthful

Now we know why spammers hate the law so much.

[1]Link to COAngler's "Rowan v. US Postal Service" note

A few other cases have gone through various courts in the US with similar results. No case has ever found in favor of the spammer and no spam-specific[1] case has ever been heard at the appellate level.

Actually, one case did make it up a state appeals ladder. Washington state passed the first US anti-spamming law. Under that law the state's attorney general filed suit against a spammer (Jason "Natural Instincts" Heckel) and won.

The spammer appealed the case and had it overturned at the appellate level (spammers rejoiced worldwide). But luckily the state's Supreme Court was not composed of idiots and threw out the appellate decision in June of this year.

This made the law golden in that state and only a VERY extensive and expensive appeals process though the federal court system could change it.

One can still spam under the law, but must follow certain rules. The state Supreme Court stated the law only really required the spammers to do one thing: Be Truthful

Now we know why spammers hate the law so much.

[1]Link to COAngler's "Rowan v. US Postal Service" note

A few other cases have gone through various courts in the US with similar results. No case has ever found in favor of the spammer and no spam-specific[1] case has ever been heard at the appellate level.

Actually, one case did make it up a state appeals ladder. Washington state passed the first US anti-spamming law. Under that law the state's attorney general filed suit against a spammer (Jason "Natural Instincts" Heckel) and won.

The spammer appealed the case and had it overturned at the appellate level (spammers rejoiced worldwide). But luckily the state's Supreme Court was not composed of idiots and threw out the appellate decision in June of this year.

This made the law golden in that state and only a VERY extensive and expensive appeals process though the federal court system could change it.

One can still spam under the law, but must follow certain rules. The state Supreme Court stated the law only really required the spammers to do one thing: Be Truthful

Now we know why spammers hate the law so much.

[1]Link to COAngler's "Rowan v. US Postal Service" note

Quote from the Washington State Penitentiary's homepage:

Various programs are offered including Adult Basic Education, English as a Second Language, and General Education Equivalency Preparation. Medium custody offenders have the option to participate in an Auto Body Vocational program and Office Technology course. The Main Institution offers offenders a Barbering program and Office Technology classes. The Minimum-Security Facility offers the Carpentry Program and community work crews that assist the community in maintenance and other jobs.

I personally have had several teachers in high school and college who teach or have taught classes at this facility on topics ranging from geology to psychology.

If you want to improve yourself in prison, you have options, it's just not compulsory.

Here it is for Washington state http://www.wa.gov/wtsc/stats/index.htm

If these numbers bother you, check out the related inuries that result from motor vehicle accidents. What a sickening industry...

Try here http://www.bts.gov/. Sorry I don't have the direct link. But some searching will find a PDF with annual accident rates for motor vehicles.

Or try some of these links http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/OtherTransportation.htm

Displaced
Redmond refugees have begun to migrate back to Redmond.

The article was funny, and a good reminiscence, but:

Shockley, Teller, and LeMay

what an unholy trinity that is!

Shockley, the Nobel Prize winner who determined to devote his life to eugenics;

Teller, the brilliant scientist who pushed the DoD further into the realm of "The Super", and beyond;

and, finally, LeMay (brilliantly portrayed by George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove"), the hawk's hawk who would stop at nothing to achieve global superiority for his country, even at the expense of the American people.

These men, while they performed great deeds in their lifetimes, are to me a good example of how excessive hubris in the scientific and technical arena can be a very dangerous thing, indeed. None of these men can be considered Great Men, in my opinion, because they wandered from the path of integrity and truth in their zealous pursuit of technology for technology's sake.

But the article makes for a great read, and I'm sure in their day these men were admired and respected. I have the advantage of hindsight, and hope that we can all learn from these men how, for some vicious mole of nature in them, even the greatest of men are prone to fall!

Due to new (fucking lame) Federal Laws regarding "deadbeat dads" who owe child support, all state DMV's are required to collect SSNs. They are not required to put them on the license or do anything with them besides turn them over to the feds.

Check out WA State law, especially the part where the legislature says "the use of social security numbers on licenses is inappropriate, intrusive, and offensive".

(note - please don't point out that this is only for commercial licenses. Read carefully - The federal deadline has passed so its now required for all licenses).

OK, got it off of their contest page (which by the way seems to be questionable legally as it has no way to enter without buying their product)

The address is:

Sponsor: The Sponsor of this contest is Empower Technologies Inc. whose address is 7981 - 168th Avenue NE, Redmond, WA, 98052, USA.

This puts it in old Redmond, not the Overlake area where the main MS campusi are located.

From page:

http://www.linuxda.com/store/contestrules.htm

PS If anyone wants to burn them for running a bogus contest you can report them to the Washington State Attorney General's consumer protection office at 800.551.4636