Slashdot Mirror
Using R44 And A PowerBook To Bust Illegal Seawalls
Sylvestre writes "Ken Adelman, founder of TGV and Network Alchemy, is using a digital camera, helicopter, and a Power Book to take a high resolution photograph every 500 feet down the California coast. The goal? Busting people putting up illegal sea walls. The catch so far? One golf course covered the beach with boulders. Also of note: the website has 44 gigs of photos so far, runs on solar power, and is Microsoft Free. Best use of technology I've seen all month!"
They shouldn't be developping right along the coast anyways. It would be nice to have a large buffer zone.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Question... why would making a "sea wall" be illegal?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
It's great that the site runs on solar, but when you're flying a helicopter up and down the coast you're hardly looking to improve the environment.
"at least he's not using a 747!"
Maybe he should look into an ultralight.
I'm assuming any golf course that has "field of boulders" as a hazard is pretty damn hardcore.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Why not use the Terraserver? should be high enough resolution, I can even find my apartment on the thing. It is MS though, if that happens to not be you thing.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Just buy all the property from those that currently own it.
But what the heck are they doing using Microsoft FrontPage 4.0 as the HTML editor ???
If you talk the talk, please walk the walk
"Also of note: the website has 44 gigs of photos so far, runs on solar power, and is Microsoft Free."
Err. Why does that sound like one of the Cosby kids trying to conince their dad that he should buy them a computer? I mean, who cares if it has 44 gigs of photos? None of us are going to download that many. Who cares if it runs on solar power? We're not paying for it. And who cares if it's MS free? We wouldn't know the difference if they were using MS for anything.
I wouldn't normally make a point of it, but the way they presented those last bits of detail suggests to me they were trying really really hard to make sure Slashdot posts this story.
I dunno, maybe I missed the point and each of those details was uber-important to understanding what this guy is doing. Sure.
"Derp de derp."
TGV was really goddamned cool. They were purchased by Cisco a few years ago and it all went to hell. They used to have catered lunches every Friday (I attended several of them) and every time I went it was from somewhere else that was good.
Anyway I didn't know the place myself well enough to actually know who was responsible for any of the cool shit, but TGV used to make network software for VAXen. I logged into a pub ftp that used their ftpd once, it was a joy because it made it look like Unix.
In any case TGV made the fastest TCP stack for Windows 3.1. It didn't make much of a difference when it came to doing PPP or SLIP over a modem because modems were max 28.8k in those days and they were real modems with buffered FIFOs and whatnot. But if you were using 10mbps ethernet or better then the TGV stack was dramatically faster than trumpet's. They also made a fast TCP stack for Windows 95 etc, but Cisco didn't do anything with it and by the time they were ready to do anything with TGV they had crushed the place's spirit, failed to open reqs for needed personnel, etc. Some of the engineers went to Cisco, and some of them went elsewhere. I'm not sure if the Santa Cruz office is still there or not. The person who was the director of the site at the time I quit from that office (As a Cisco employee) was a plant from Cisco, and not technical at all at that point. (She supposedly wrote some code at some point, IIRC.)
TGV is the birthplace of the Mainframe Mouse. It was made of ~0.75" acrylic, and contained a normal-scale mouse attached to a bowling ball. You sat on it and gripped the handlebars... well you get the idea.
TGV used to be the groovy kind of place that needed a soldering iron even though they were a software developer. Hold your hat over your heart when you remember the last time you saw a shop like that last.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, it is great. You can't own part of the ocean, I don't care what the hell you think you bought. If people can't obey the laws, then leave the damn country, don't whine and snivel about "property rights"; they didn't have the right to do what they did, and they know it.
Although it is only a week old, the site already has received more than 5,000 hits.
Was the article accepted to be put on slashdot just to up those number of hits a bit more??
which would take up about 99 CD-ROMS' worth of computer memory
Hmm, I hope they don't send the archives using 99 CD's worth... we all know what an environmentally friendly company AOL is with their set of coasters. ;)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
It would be way cool to have a panoramic photo of the entire California coastline (or at least a significant chunk of it) from stitching all those photos together. Set it up as a movie, perhaps, offering a sort of virtual fly-by of the coastline.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
If I have photos proving you did something illegal, then the burden of proof is still on me as the accuser. Its just I already have proof.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
holy crap, you can see my house!
Meanwhile, in an attempt to one-up Ken's website californiacoastline.org, photographer J. Smiley has published a new web site: jennascoastline.org in which he promises to photograph every 500mm of Jenna Jameson's body. Environmentalists hope they can use this new data to finally settle the "are those real" debate.
The step for advocacy againsg illegal acts is:
1: Identify act
2: Confirm act is illegal
3: Publicice act as illegal.
One does not skip step 2, unless one wants to get slapped with a nasty slander / libel suit. (IANAL,BIWIWO)
Well if what you do on the property you own, happens to have drastic effects on property you don't own, are you implying that you can still do whatever you want?
Maybe one day you'll get a neighbor who dumps his sewer waste into his backyward. No problem its his, he can do whatever he wants with it. But its too bad when that run off gets into your basement, eh?
tough shit I guess...
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
44 gigs of images has nothing on some socially impared guys I know.
If my neighbor wants to keep sewer waste in his backyard, fine with me.
But if the runoff gets into my basement, he's putting sewer waste in my backyard, which I would have a problem with.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
After thinking about my post above... Seems like it would be much easier to just take a decent digital camcorder and fly down the coast at a moderate rate of speed. Better continuous coverage, much much faster, and if the real purpose IS to look for breakwaters or illegal rockpiles, certainly a digital camcorder image would work for that.
I wonder if there isn't some other motive here, requiring high-res images.
(Like getting free publicity on Slashdot for using exclusively non-MS technology for a cool task, perhaps.....? Naaaaahhhh....)
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Slayer help us, there must be something vampiric going one. Watch it, you'll be the next to be sacrified !!!
[Pruneau
This isn't vigilanteism. Is he breaking the law? Is he walking in with a jackhjammer and breaking the seawalls? He's simply taking pictures. It's the equivalent of a citizen's watch group.
Doh! I get it! It's okay to be a vigilante for lefty causes! For instance, Eco-terrorism is okay!
This terrorizes you? You feel terror while visiting this website? Timid little guy, aren't you.
It's the coastline after all. The guy isn't breaking into buildings or anything. What he is doing is similar to a very successful group called the Riverkeepers. This group patrols the Hudson river and watches for people dumping illegally. They are the major reason that the Hudson is no longer the utter cesspool it used to be. The government has neither the resources nor the inclination to enforce its environmental laws and so it is up to citizens to do so.
He is leaning out the side of a helicopter taking these photos? How about mounting this on the bottom of the copter in a rattle-free housing and having the photos taken automatically at specfic time intervals.
This is like a Barney Rubble story of aerial photography.
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Uh, no.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I have to agree with the attorney in the article? I think this is going a little to far. What good does this really do? Who are they actually protecting? And whose rights are they violating? Whats next the Sierra Club lowering cameras into my back yard to make sure I am not using too much fertilizer or pesticide on my lawn? Or PETA to make sure I am not doing anything they disagree with (which includes pretty much EVERYTHING, including owning any pet). Where do we draw the line? Can I use sonar or radar to make sure people aren't storing excess paint or motor oil in their garages?
These people shouldn't be hailed as heros, they haven't really done anything other then invade the privacy of land owners.
I can't think of bigger waste of land and resources than a golf cource. Drive through Palm Springs CA and you'll see what I mean. Imagine how much water is wasted just so people can play a GAME. Not a sport. I'm not much for development but houses would be better than empty land set aside for golfers. Anybody who stops the golfing industry is on the side of Good and Light in my book.
This guy is way out there
Give me a good reason. Tell me why this golf course mentioned in the article shouldn't be able to dump a big fugly pile of boulders on their beach.
e .c gi?image=6133&mode=sequential&flags=0
Here's a better picture, and if you click on it you will get this HUGE picture that I won't link to directly for fear of slashdotting.
http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/imag
Seems to me they wanted to put some boulders there to keep their golf course from washing away into the sea, maybe. But it doesn't look nice, so let's get all liberal and tell them they can't keep their golf course above water.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I like the idea of converting to solar power especially in Ontario.
The size of solar array that I would need is only about four times larger than my property in downtown Toronto.
However, if I stack the panels four high I believe I can fit them all in.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I don't know but when i read
No Microsoft products were used in creating this web site.
My first thought when I read this was the disclaimer
No animals were harmed in the making of this film that always appears at the bottom of movie credits.
I stole this Sig
http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/image.c gi?image=6133&mode=sequential&flags=0
Sorry I forgot to put A tags in the first one.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Um
Perhaps you ought to look into fuel consumption for a R44 before you go spouting off.
If you were to look at the R44 Spec Sheet you'll see that the standard fuel capacity is 30.6 US gal. with a max range of 400 miles.
A little simple math shows us that 400/30.6 is equal to what kids? That's right, 13.07 mpg. Now, let's take a look at the gas economy on your SUV..... hmm... Comparible, is it?
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
and I quote:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
Tell me why this golf course mentioned in the article shouldn't be able to dump a big fugly pile of boulders on their beach.
Because the beach is public property. You can't go into a city park and dump a big fugly pile of boulders there, either.
MORTAR COMBAT!
add to that:
"...and is SLASHDOTTED to hell and back."
For the past few months, I've been trying to figure out where I was when I took this picture.
It's been bugging me since I got back from vacation this summer.
Using this site, I was able to match it in a few minutes!
Now I just need to figure out the name of that park...
They should have used an effective and inexpensive method, like building a tunnel for the frogs...
(I have GOT to get back to California to get a picture of an advertisement billboard they've got out there, before they wake up and take it down. In keeping with the "frog" theme, they have a giant fluorescent frog posing on a series of billboards with the text of the advertisement. One of them says Davis is "Green and Safe and Nuclear Free"....with a GIANT GLOWING FROG standing next to the words. Too funny...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
The beaches-- or to be precise, land that is submerged at high tide, belongs to the people. Not to any private entity. This legal tradition dates from the time of Justinian. If people want to congregate on beaches, ajoining private property, that's their business.
Now here's a golf course acting in a manner that happens to deny public usage of that beach.
As for "protecting the golf course from erosion", I'd say that building a golf course in that location, in such a manner that "erosion control" necessitated the ruination of a beach, was a pretty dumb business decision.
Go visit some place where industrial development has existed without enviromental concerns. Like China, the ex-U.S.S.R, or East Germany. Is that what you want to live in? I don't think so.
If you want to piss in your bathtub, go ahead, but if I catch you pissing in _our_ bathtub.....
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
This is wrong twice over:
If you're enough of a fuckwit to build a golf course where it's unsustainable, you deserve what you get.
Especially when the golf course owner's cure is to cause massive destruction to public property and the private property of others.
Perhaps you should learn something about the topic you're speaking to. Then you'd look like less of a complete moron.
You are the only one who seems to have a valid point so far. Do you have any legal reference for the land submerged at high tide belonging to the people? I'd be interested in reading about this. Would they be out of trouble if they removed all the rocks that were not submerged at high tide?
As for having a problem with dumping the rocks on what is considered public land and denying public usage, I would bet that, practically, no one in the public even wants to use that beach. They may not even be able to get to it without swimming in from a ship or trespassing on private land. So morally I still see little problem with dumping rocks on the beach, but you do seem to have a legal argument that is sensible.
Whether or not it was smart to build a course there seems irrelevant.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
You have entirely too much respect for the law. Saying "It's illegal" with no justification for the existence of that law is basically "Why?" "BECAUSE I SAID SO!" which is what parents use to justify the existence of rules to three year old children who are incapable of understanding the reasons for rules.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Give me a good reason. Tell me why this golf course mentioned in the article shouldn't be able to dump a big fugly pile of boulders on their beach.
If it were their beach and theirs alone, you might have a point. It's a public beach.
Moreover, even if it were private, their creation of a seawall changes erosion patterns in the area, harming the property of other people. Your right to do as you please on your property ends when it harms your neighbors.
He is donating the photos -- which would take up about 99 CD-ROMS' worth of computer memory -- to environmental groups.
Time to use DVD-R blanks.
[1] Yes, all editors are taco.
Except Nachman, he's a double-beef burrito supreme.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
actually...he wasn't doing anything specific about the golf course.
The Sierra Club was already filing a court case about the golf course, and they used this guy's database of imagery as irrefutable proof as to what the golf course was doing so that they wouldn't have to fly their own helicopter out there
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
for folks to live on?
Better habitat for wildlife, more places for people to live, less erosion of the actual coast, etc.
Of course, it won't be so good for the surfers and the folks who paid lots of money to live right on the edge, but for the rest of us (animals & plants included) it would be very nice to have lots of places to live on the coastal shelf.
It's not just my crazy idea: Dutch planners eye a new frontier: the raging North Sea
"A square yard of land reclaimed from the North Sea costs about 260 guilders, or about $130. The same size patch of mainland can cost more than triple that."
The article talks about seawalls, more then likely built to protect the property owners land from erosion, not building brick walls in the middle of a sand box. Sure the public owns the beaches, but don't the property owners have some rights too? They have paid millions of dollars for thar land next to the beach, don't they deserve to keep it for a while before the ocean reclaims it? Also these are the same people putting millions if not billions into the local economy. Sure it might suck to not have a little bit of beach access or that spot with the killer waves, but I think it would suck worse if they didn't build and your county didn't have enough money to by books for kids or repair the roads. Envionmentalism has its place, but without large buissnesses tax dollars things would suck.
Also read the article closely about the land developer ho put bolders on the beach, it says he just needed a permit, he may or may not get one, but more then likely he will and the bolders will stay, just more tax dollars I guess. Go envionmentalist, help the goverment collect more tax dollars.
If your house was next to a park, and the lake in the park flooded every year wouldn't you want some protection? Or what if you lived on the beach and your land was washing into the sea? Shouldn't you be allowed to put up some sort of seawall?
What gets me about this is how old (and obvious) this advice really is.
Whatever one's religious beliefs, it's generally agreed that Jesus know how to make a point. In Matthew 7:24-27, he tells a story about a foolish builder who builds his house on sand. His audience would have laughed about that.
Two thousand years later, people with degrees in architecture and engineering build houses (and even gigantic hotels) out on the beach, and then try to get the government to spend tax money on beach replenishment when the ocean comes to take away their buildings.
People who put up seawalls should have to pay to remove them, and people who build on sand shouldn't get one penny of my tax money for beach replenishment. Building on sand is so obviously stupid that anyone who does it doesn't deserve any help from anybody.
Check out the California Costal Commission, including their page on Legal and Legislative Information and the list of their permanent responsibilities
You feel terror while visiting this website? Timid little guy, aren't you.
You must be talking about his ad hominem reply. Or possibly your ad hominem reply. Or maybe both.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
"Although it is only a week old, the site already has received more than 5,000 hits. Photographs featured on it recently became evidence in one dispute in Half Moon Bay." More than 5,000 hits? Boy these news sites are sure out of date. =)
..everyone knows that these guys will just start using tranparent aluminum, after all, Scotty did give us the plans for it.
They actually have a cadre of people who ensure that animals are not harmed in the making of those motion pictures. I think almost all US pictures carry that disclaimer, but I don't pay enough attention to the indies to know for sure. It began after several horses died in the making of some old westerns. Following that one of the big animal organizations, not PETA, but more like the kennel club, began a movement to greatly reduce animal risks in movies. Hollywood is pretty careful in bee scenes because there are pretty well defined rules about what endangerment can take place before you don't get to use the tag line.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
There ought to be a law against people who say, "there ought to be a law!"
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
For the first person or group of people to make a sign big enough to appear on the photos. "HI MUM!"
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
People who build in flood zones will eventually have to pay "the stupid tax," unless they can try to get the their fellow citizens to pay the stupid tax for them, via FEMA or some other scam. Too often, the latter is the case.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Good on this guy. If the government won't pull their finger out it is the obligation of the citizens.
Seen a lot of comments here about why seawalls are bad and the only explanations given are legals ones. Not suprising given most people here are americans.
The reason is one of basic physics, the legal arguments have to take second place.Unless you think you can legislate against nature. Please ignore this if you think you have a right to destroy other people property and public property and the general environment to protect your own interests.
If there is a rock, a wall, a washed up spare tyre, anything that is a hard object on the beach, then when the water hits it during normal wave action, the wave will retreat back to sea at a higher speed because it's energy hasn't been absorbed. Normal beaches (with sand) absorb the wave impact. If the water is going faster, it removes sand as it returns to the ocean and thus erodes the beach, much faster than natural movements. Even a small hard object on a beach can show this, one season I saw the tire I mentioned above, a tractor tyre, chop a gully about 0.5m deep and about 6-7m wide, just from wave action on this one small object. A wall will destroy the beach.
Remember beaches ARE NOT FIXED in the earth, they rise, fall and move around on a seasonal basis. Beach nourishment is not to replace sand that is lost, but to re-build the natural shoke absorbing action of an already eroded one.
Sydney residents please visit http://www.realsurf.com/nowall/ and please think about supporting this cause, we know what private interests have f**ked up in the states through ignorance and greed, lets not let it happen at home.
phil
Sure, maybe they shouldn't build there, but if they didn't and the land just sat fallow the city/county would not get tax money (property, buissness whatever) and hence would not be able to do as much. Societies where everything if owned by the people (or government) are called socialist/communist states, and so far we have proven that it just doesn't work. So unless you really enjoy living under the rule of big brother maybe you should quite down and realize that capitalism works and most everything else doesn't. If you don't like big buissess move to a country without it (like Chad or Cambodia or how about China, I hear the "people" own everything there).
Actually, if your property is threatened, building a sea wall will not prevent it from being washed away. In fact, it may actually speed its demise. Even people who aren't card-carrying, tree-hugging Sierra Club douchebags can see that.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Helecopters, and especially planes are not nearly as inefficient as people seem to think. Someone posted here that the helecopter he is flying gets about 13 mpg. It isn't going to break any records, but not a terrible fuel hog. But more to the point, there aren't much in the way of better options for a helecopter, while electric and hybrid cars are much better than conventional cars, and biomass powered mass transit is better still.
If you are a sensible environmentalist (which many are not) the right thing to do is start with the cheapest things that give the biggest gain. Auto emissions are a much bigger problem than helecopter emissions, and one that it is a much better use of time and research funds to improve.
It is illlegal because it damages public property. The don't own the beach, and even if they did, they don't own the section of beach a mile down the line whose erosion will be increased by this.
Solar powered web site? No wonder I can't get any response ... it's night time.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
And CowboyNeal is a baja chicken chalupa. Yummy!
We should call him CmdrChalupa.
Oh, and I wanna be Steve.
Thanks.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
You won't necessarily win your case. I _think_ Cali has had a pretty decent track record of having their eco-laws upheld, even in Federal courts, against the "big three" auto makers.
Also, the point is, you don't build on property that you know is _constantly_ shifting. Sadly, beach front owners don't seem to understand that, and somehow they also expect the government to bail them out of the problems they dig themselves into.
Beach front building is just one example of people vainly frittering away natural resources.
If this project hadn't been approved by the voters thirty years ago, before the California Coastal Commission was created, it wouldn't have been allowed. It was built during the excesses of the dot-com boom; it might yet go bust.
Wouldn't it be sweet if they mailed them on CD-RWs? I could always use some extra CD-RWs, even if they all said "AOL IS MY ASS-MASTER" on them. They get advertising, I get free media. Everyone wins!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Two thousand years later, people with degrees in architecture and engineering build houses (and even gigantic hotels) out on the beach, and then try to get the government to spend tax money on beach replenishment when the ocean comes to take away their buildings.
Technically speaking, they don't build the houses on the beach, they build them on piers which are supposed to be sunk to bedrock, so it's effectively building on bedrock, stability-wise. Of course if Ma Nature wants to leave that house standing on piers, I agree with your governmental policy issues.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In the dispute with the hotel, couldn't (shouldn't?) the government simply take photos of the boulders on the beach themselves for evidence? I could see if the photos were taken over time, and showed the differences, but this sounds like just one current point in time the photos were taken. Sounds like it's just slightly more convenient to use his photo taken from the water. Hardly as sensational as it sounds.
Secondly, this guy owns four electric cars, but also flies a helicopter? I would guess that the amount of helicopter fuel burned, and air and sound pollution produced in a short outing would *far* outweigh most people's gas usage for a month. Just seems a little out of kilter. (Of course, I'm assuming it's not an *electric* helicopter :-)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Building on the beach is like building on a freshly cooled lava flow. Only build as close to a volcanoe as you're willing to accept the risks.
If the coast is erroding at 2 feet per year and you'd kinda like your house to still be around in 50 years then you'd better add a minimum of 100 feet to all your figures.
As for buildings, homes, and roads that are threatened, it's not like it is exactly a sudden or unexpected event. Everyone involved has YEARS to to make other arrangements.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Whips out a used envelope for "back-of-the-envelope" calculations
Lessee... He takes a picture every 500 feet. Thats 10.5 pictures per mile. A movie plays at about 30 frames/sec. If each picture is a frame in the flyby, you're looking at a speed of 3 miles/second, or about Mach 14.57 (it is at sea level).
Conclusion: the flyby will pretty much be a blur.
You know, there is nothing special about transparent aluminum. It has been known to mankind for thousands of years. Its optical properties make it desirable for many applications from lasers to astronomy. Its hardness makes it desirable for many more. It is one of the most chemically inert materials known, which makes it popular in medical and chemical fields. With some impurities, its beauty and color makes it popular in jewelry.
What the hell am I talking about? Sapphire. Sapphire is nothing more than crystals of aluminum oxide, a.k.a. Corundum (with Chromium impurities, it turns red and is called Ruby). It is a material that occurs naturally, and it has also has been synthetically manufactured by 21st century humans for decades.
You've all been completely fooled by a stupid Star Trek writer. Nowhere in the film did they mention that the "transparent aluminum" was in metallic form. Psych!
Edith Keeler Must Die
The sad thing is that I think the mods of troll and flamebait are not probably accurate. I find it far more likely that you actually believe the garbage you're spewing. So let's dissect this pablum one point at a time.
Sure the public owns the beaches, but don't the property owners have some rights too? They have paid millions of dollars for thar land next to the beach, don't they deserve to keep it for a while before the ocean reclaims it?
Basically what you're saying is that incredibly wealthy people have a right to destroy public property because they paid a lot for their houses. You're an idiot. Nobody has a right to break the law. I don't have a right to drive 150 on the interstate just because I'm rich enough to buy an Italian sports car. If they want the law changed, being filthy rich they have much, much more access to the political system than most people do. If they can't change it through process then, like the rest of us, they have to obey the law or pay the consequences.
Also these are the same people putting millions if not billions into the local economy... Envionmentalism has its place, but without large buissnesses tax dollars things would suck.
God, no matter how many times I hear it it still makes me laugh. Thank God for the wealthy, they're saving America. Are YOU rich, man, or are you just a dumb little brain-washed pawn?
"The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It's more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care). After World War II, the nation's tax bill was roughly split between corporations and individuals. But after years of changes in the federal tax code and international economy, the corporate share of taxes has declined to a fourth the amount individuals pay, according to the US Office of Management and Budget." --Boston Globe series on Corporate Welfare July 7-9 1996.
And don't get me started about the taxes wealthy individuals pay. Yeah, they pay a lot of taxes... because they are so insanely wealthy. Don't slap one of your canned conservative jives on me as to how the rich are propping up the tax system and paying such unfair income taxes I'll just nip you in the bud by pointing out the obvious realities tha anyone that isn't a stupid little shill for wealthy fucks knows, that these analyses are garbage because one, they don't consider payroll taxes - the top 1 percent of the population pays only 4.2 percent of the payroll taxes, whereas average Americans pay 7.65 percent on their earned income - and two, it is precisely the concentration of income at the top that leads to an increase in the percentage of income tax, which is what has occurred in recent years. The top 1 percent of the population has experienced extraordinary after-tax income gains that vastly exceed the gains in after-tax income of the rest of the population. These people are wealthier than ever.
This is to say nothing of Wealthy transnational tax evaders... military waste and fraud, Social Security tax inequities,
accelerated depreciation, lower taxes on capital gains, The S&L Bailout ($32 billion/year for 30 years!), homeowners' tax breaks, agribusiness subsidies, tax-free municipal bonds, media handouts, excessive government pensions, insurance loopholes, nuclear subsidies, aviation subsidies, business meals and entertainment, mining subsidies, oil and gas tax breaks, export subsidies, synfuel tax credits, timber subsidies, and ozone tax exemptions... by some estimates being taken by the rich for a total of almost $470 billion in wealthfare each year. The bottom line is that the tiny skim of people at the top have done better and better, gotten wealthier and wealthier - while the wealth of EVERYONE else has stagnated or worse decreased.
Go envionmentalist, help the goverment collect more tax dollars.
Weren't you just saying how things would "suck" if businesses didn't pay taxes? Why the fuck should some coastal golf course in California, a sinkhole of wealth if I ever saw one, be allowed to evade permit fees, even assuming that is all they need to keep their boulder pile, which the article does not say, just that applying for a permit is ONE of the legalities this fucking adjacent to the Ritz-Carlton Half-Moon Bay golf course failed to follow. Thank god the poor harrassed golf-course developers have pansies like you to defend them from the oddball dot-com millionaire with a helicopter and a digital camera.
If your house was next to a park, and the lake in the park flooded every year wouldn't you want some protection?
If you build your house next to a park that floods every year you're an idiot. These rich assholes know damn good and well that they are buying property that is eroding, and that the laws of their state prevent them from a cheap-ass ecology-destroying stop-gap, and they do it anyway, in plain sight from a public vantage point, and you're squeaking about how this guy is violating their privacy?!! Yeah, get that one on the refferendum, how dare we violate the rights of the exceptionally wealthy to privately break the law in view of public beaches? Please have yourself sterilized immediately.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
So Apple refused to licence out a product to other people in order to protect their bottom line, and then refused to modify their product so that it would work with a competitor's product. So where is the illegal move? Seriously, as much as it sucks to not be able to get a cheap mac clone anymore, Apple didn't do anything illegal. Unlike M$, every time Apple modifies and licences their software out to other platforms, they have one less sale on their books. The clone's were cutting Apple's bottom line. Therefore the clones had to go.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
characterizing any sense of environmental responsibility as radical leftism
I wouldn't, and do not, think of "environmental responsibility" as "radical leftism." I do, however, I characterize "environmentalism" as "radical leftism." It's mainly because "environmentalism" as a term has been hijacked, and now is more or less means "social statism" and "anti-capitalism" with "do it for the baby seals" as the excuse.
Environmental responsibility is a good thing, and as I mentioned in a previous post, it should be handled as a property-rights issue. I can't dump oil in your driveway or living room without getting sued -- same goes for dumping in a river that runs over my land.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Please leave immediately.
;-). Plus I'm hoping that there's another interpretation that I don't see...)
/., what a license means in a real "legal opinion."
(For the humor impaired,
No, that's it. I'm a secretary currently, so being a lawyer is better in just about every way possible.
Plus, I could do all sorts of neat things that I can't do now--like make money, or tell folks on
If I ever do happen to pass the bar, I promise not to become unconcionable scum.
Plus, I could do all sorts of neat things that I can't do now--like make money...
;-)
*chuckle* I like that one.
If I ever do happen to pass the bar, I promise not to become unconcionable scum.
OK, but we're going to hold you to that.
Actually, I wish you good luck. We need more good people being lawyers.
But the property rights crowd also tends to not believe anything they do on their land is destructive anywhere else. If you dump toxic waste in your backyard, and I get sick because of it, all you'll say is I "can't prove causality". Look at the global warming or DDT debate.
People didn't have the problem with M$ doing what Apple does because M$ didn't. The problems that were lodged against M$ involved bundling (and making it impossible to remove) applications from the system and bullying OEMs to prevent competitor distribution (read the BeOS lawsuit writeup [warning PDF]).
Also, people don't nessesarily have to be consistant. Things should be judged on a case by case basis. It slows down judgements sure, but not all cases that look similar are the same.
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World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Well, you do have to show damages. It does happen. Erin Brockovich did it. There's lots of examples. It's better to require demonstration of damages than to simply allow claims of "I think he hurt me" to result in claims.
I'm not sure what you're alluding to in terms of "the global warming or DDT debate."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I'm not sure what you're alluding to in terms of "the global warming or DDT debate."
"Human industry is causing global warming."
"You can't prove that."
"Here's a bunch of scientific evidence."
"But it doesn't prove it 100%."
"Look at all these scientists saying that human industry is causing global warming."
"They're biased."
"Look at all the strange weather patterns lately."
"Coincidence."
"The arctic ice cap is almost completely melted away."
"Coincidence."
And so on.
Well, there seems to be as many researchers saying "don't know," as there are saying, "shutter the factories." The whole global warming "debate" seems to be hysterical, and I do not trust the motives of many of the players in it.
I personally think that we should get away from burning oil (making plastics from it is fine), and use non-oil sources of energy. Coal, solar, others. Why coal and not oil? I think that oil will turn out to be a natural by-product of planet formation. There has never been any DNA found in oil, and wells seem to replinish themselves. Coal, however, is definitely carbon taken from the atmosphere by plants -- coal comes with DNA and fossilized (incompletly carbonized) plants in it. By burning coal, we're not adding _new_ CO2 to the air. By burning oil, I suspect that we are adding new carbon. I think it's okay to do things with oil other than burn it, such as making plastics from it, because it's not adding carbon to the atmosphere.
There's some evidence that global warming, regardless of causes, will actually trigger the next ice age, and we'll need _even more_ CO2 in the air to come back out of it. The Earth is currently somewhat low on CO2, historically speaking.
Besides, I have a hard time believing the "computer model predictions" of climate researchers who -- with wreck-the-economy certainty -- can say that global warming is real, the ocean will rise by 3.54 inches, etc., but with those same or similar computer models, still cannot predict either local or global weather accurately for more than a low number of hours into the future. Those "computer models" can do only one thing -- give the answer that was built into their assumptions. 42.
There is evidence that early European colonies died out because of extreme and persistant drought in North America, and that the average local temperatures were, in fact, higher be a degree or so back then. They apparently figured this out from studying cross-sections of trees alive at that time.
I'm not a "the hypothesis that human actions are causing global warming, and that's bad, cannot possibly be right" kind of guy. But I'm not convinced with the research to date, and I deeply distruct the motives of a lot of the "global warming activists." I'm not just a yahoo reading "Discover," either -- I hold degrees in Biochemistry and Chemistry. I know the scientific method when I see it.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Yeah, go back to reading your communist manifesto. You seem to think that every rich person is inherently evil. Gee, I bet you're in favor of putting up all those cameras in "public places" too huh?