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DoJ - Making Data Public Would 'Crash System'
orthogonal writes "The Justice Department today denied Freedom of Information Act requests to make public data on foreign lobbyists, claiming that '[i]mplementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating'. The requestor responded that '[t]his was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them,' Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said Tuesday. Maybe we should tell John Ashcroft about open source database and copying solutions?"
Don't pay taxes - simply donate to a non-profit that you support and take the tax credit.
It's all about give and take - take your refund, and give the IRS the finger.
Charitable donations result in a tax *deduction*, not a tax *credit*, at least here in the U.S.
That's like a request being denied because the clerk was too tired to go down in the basement to find the files.
If fulfilling the request somehow breaks something, then the response should be to fix the damn thing and then fulfill the request.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Tax credit? Correct me if I'm wrong, but donations to non-profits result in taxable income deductions, not tax credits, don't they? If they are tax credits then if you have a $1000 tax bill you can pay zero by donating $1000 to a non-profit. If it's a deduction then if you have a $1000 tax bill on $10,000 taxable income, a $1000 deduction makes your taxable income $9000 on which you still have to pay $900.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can get out of paying taxes by giving it to a non-profit instead. If you could I think most of us would opt out of paying taxes and just give it all to some local charity we approve of.
refund? Do you mean take your money that you over paid to the government durring the tax season? Or the gift they give lower income people that don't have good jobs and too many kids?
Either way, the term refund is more or less just a ploy to make you feel good when they force you to use the government treasurie as a bank acount interest free. It makes you forget the money they are giving you is actually your in the first place.
But they're asking for RECENT data. Storing it on old tapes sounds like something much worse than negligence would be going on.
Oh, do you have IBM Mainframe experience? Do you have the mainframe experience to predict the difficulty and dangers of exporting such a database?
I do. Let me tell you - it's trivial to take a dump of an IBM database. DB2, IMS/DB, FOCUS... or any other DBMS that'll run under MVS, VM/CMS, or AS/400. It's all rather trivial, and, in fact, standard operating procedures in IBM mainframe shops mean that there is already a tape that can be grabbed right of a shelf.
That's the maximum that you can have when you create a new file. However, you can keep adding more. I have about 600 some tabs in one workbook. The only real limit with Excel is that you can only have appx. 65,000 rows in a single tab.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I think you are over simplifying the system a bit. I can't speak of that particular systems design, but I have dealt with others government (federal, state, and local) systems and they are rarely setup for bulk exports without impacting operations (internal and external agency usage).
well if the system is so on the edge of breaking why doesnt someone just break it then use a 40$ disc recovery program to recall all the data in its previous form or even from days prior.
Have you dealt with systems in a professional environment? Have you ever dealt with the procurement process for a government entity? You can't just break the system and expect that it will be replaced in a few days. Likely the data is highly normalized and spread across multiple repositories on multiple systems. Migrating to a new system requires extensive research into existing requirements plus understanding future plans for the system.
obviously this db worked at some point so just get the data from there and re-add the stuff that you lost
Likely the data is entered from automated systems rather than a manual entry process. These external systems must be accounted for before taking the system offline for maintenance/upgrade/replacement.
cause it makes bush look like an sell out to forgein biz and leaders
Show me a president who hasn't had questionable relationships with foreign connections. Officials (both foreign and national) can be quite corrupt and dealing with them sometimes requires playing by their rules. The US government has policies on dealing with these situations (see the Locheed Martin and Titan Corporation merger cancellation for an example. Can't find a good document on proper procedures when approached by a foreign official for a bribe to continue business, but it does exist and you need to follow the proper process or you get in trouble, like Titan).
If you had read the whole article, you would have seen that paper records are 12 months out of date. So yes, you can go to Washington a year from now to see the records through June 28th, 2004.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
In March the Solicitor General argued in front of the Supreme Court that US troops would never humiliate or torture foreign inmates because they were well disciplined and well supervised. This was 6 months after the Red Cross had told the Pentagon about Abu Ghraib abuses and 4 months after the Army had investigated it. Administration officials have misled Congress repeatedly.
-B
Oooooh, a flame war on a powder keg, I want some. I've been maxed Karma for years, I could use a -1 mod.
Ex 21:22-25
"When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other misfortune ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman's husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning, But if other misfortune ensues, the penalty shall be life for a life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foor, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
The fetus is the property of the husband is merely worth a fine if destroyed. If the woman is killed, the person who killed her is to be killed.
I'm pro-life, not a Christian, Muslim or Jew. The Christian Bible is silent on abortion and it can be inferred that at least one source writer of the Tanak saw a difference between the life of a fetus and the mother. Get your religion straight, it's embarassing.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Oh, c'mon. If our government can build cruise missiles that can reliably fly through the goalposts of a football field after being launched from hundreds of miles away, I don't think they'd be using Bronze age technology for storing our vital public records.
Really? Then how about the IRS's ancient setup? (It's a local cache of a Dec '03 NYT article about the IRS's upgrading woes)
Here's an excerpt:
The I.R.S. says it can still process returns and send out refunds on time, but its dependence on the 1960's-era Assembler and Cobol computer languages makes it difficult to investigate and resolve taxpayers' problems. Finding a record using the existing system can take a week; the new system is supposed to do the job in seconds.
From your post ...
...
Please equate Ashcroft to being a "Nazi,"
From the FA
The Center for Public Integrity sought information about lobbying activities available under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, a 1938 law passed in response to German propaganda before World War II.
At the time (1938), for those of you too young to know, Germany was run by the Nazis.
I know there's a conspiracy in there somewhere, but I'd probably have to file a FOI request to find it.
Infuriate left and right
I would see nothing wrong with a $.01/page fee for FOIA request. Pay up if it amounts to more than $10.
Your statement implies that FOIA requests are currently free (as in beer). They aren't.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
No, it's not. The job of the government is to attempt to make the best use of the tax money they take (laughable I know, but that's the goal at least.) I for one do not consider printing out a list that YOU want for no real reason other that because you want it to be a good use of my tax money. If the expense were negligable (say 50 cents or so) that would be different. Honestly though, I would rather use the money to feed a few hungry children.
Not that I am against feeding hungry children. But I think that we have to understand that democract requires transparency, and that transparency requires that the citizens can require any reasonable document from the government at any time for no other reason than idle curiosity.
Regarding the "job of government" you are correct, but it does not answer my point regarding transparency and democracy. Just as the fact that as a shareholder of IBM, I can request a wide variety of documents and only pay photocopy costs (unless it is stored electronically, in which case, they must pay printing costs). It is not IBM's job to make these available to me to satisfy my curiosity, but by law they must do that. Which means that, as far as shareholders are concerned, IBM is more democratic than the US Gov't.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Actually, that is not what it says. As another poster pointed out, it clearly says that the punishment for causing a miscarriage is a fine, but that if any other harm follows (presumably to the mother) it's life for life, etc.
The NRSV translation has it as:
"When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, ..."
*shrug* Its just what I see, not my opinion.
Pax -- Ob
Hard to say, over-rated IS an abused mod, I've seen it. Pretty shure I got hit once or twice myself.
The problem isn't really whether he is over/underrated (currently 1,insightfull). It's the fact that under/over-rated don't get meta-modded.
If a moderator honestly thinks a post deserves to be modded down, (s)he should have the guts to subject himself to meta-mod. Also over/under-rated should be fixed. There are, rare, valid reasons to use them, but with the no-metamod glitch they get abuse as political tools rather than honest moderating.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Therefore: I say ATM machine.
From experience: I do not say ATM machine.
A valid argument with contradictory statements. The premise is false.
It is NOT the case that everyone says ATM machines.
A streaming video is worth a thousand words. Thank you, Daily Show!
The examples you gave are also terrible for citing as problematic. Look, I don't want to train non-Christians on how to criticize the Bible, but what you really need to do is find factual errors that are not easy to write off as allegory or translation errors. Your Leviticus quote is never cited in Russian layman critiques of the Bible, because the translation to Russian never implied birds with 4 legs. Similarly, the Russian Bible has a whole host of "errors" that English speakers never stumbled upon, because our language didn't have the same issues.
If you want some real examples of factual errors in the Bible, look for internal conflicts, where instead of being in error with what we know now, it is in error with itself. Here is an example: the last words of Jesus are different, depending upon what page you're on. Luke 23 says "Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit." And John 19 says "It is finished." Matthew 27 has something too, but Matthew added that Jesus "cried out" again without specifying what Jesus said. So Matthew isn't really definitive about the last words of Christ. In any case, when you cite Luke and John, most Christians will tell you that it's just different accounts from different Biblical authors. The problem? Well if it's just people writin' stuff, it ain't the Word of God. The Bible is supposed to be divinely written, perfect in every way. So the conflicting declarations about the last words of Jesus sorta poke a hole in the whole inerrancy thing. Here's another one: Judas dies differently, depending upon the Biblical account you're reading. If the Bible is truth from God, then how can God get the death of his own betrayer wrong? OK? See where I'm going with this? There is no need to go after weak mis-translation errors when there are real problems that even Christians such as myself are struggling with.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Not Howard Dean; read John Dean's book. Former counsel to Richard Nixon. The book is Worse than Watergate.
>The pound sign '#' also stands for number.
If we're going to be pedantic, a pound sign indicates pound sterling, and looks like a stylized 'E'. Someone more pedantic than myself will likely tell us all the HTML code to display this character.
The sign you are discussing is, in fact, an octothorpe (occasionally spelled without the 'e'). ;-)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Cancer cells have the same DNA as the body they are a part of. Therefore, while they pass the "life" test, they fail the "unique DNA" test.
Sperm have half the DNA of the man who made them, and no other, so they fail the "unique DNA" test. They do not engage in cell division and growth, so they also fail the "continuing life" test.
Bacteria have DNA and they reproduce, but they most certainly fail the "human DNA" test.
By your definition, killing a newborn baby should be less of a crime than killing a 10-year-old, and killing a college graduate should be less of a crime than killing a high school dropout, since you define a person's worth by how many people and organizations have "contributed to the value" of that person. I just saw a news article about a teenage girl who was arrested on murder charges because she gave birth to an illegitimate baby, suffocated it, and threw it in the trash. By your logic, she was perfectly justified in killing that baby since nobody other than she herself had "contributed to the value" of that child. It's doubtful if she had any prenatal care (she hid the pregnancy), she gave birth alone, nobody else was involved, so that baby was just as much her property ten minutes after birth as it was ten minutes before, or ten weeks before.
Killing people is wrong, whether they're unborn children or newborn children or 10-year-olds or Slashdot posters. You don't have to be conservative or religious to believe that killing people is wrong.
I believe Juanita
Female Prison Rape in NY
No, you're the one who's mistaken. Social Security Numbers are not contiguous nor are the assigned round robin. The newest baby doesn't neccesarily receive last_number+1 and some SSNs just aren't assigned...therefore, to find 192-32-2304 not simply a matter of accessing SSN[192322304] as you are suggesting. That number and its associated data would be located somewhere else in the array, at an indeterminate position...and to find it, you'd need a marginally efficient search algorithm. Hope you kept that array sorted!
And come to think of it, the best way to handle SSNs would be with a tree based map.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
In this action, he was following the law. Releasing the data would be in violation of the legislation that created the NICS system.