I think you are right for everything except file serving, especially music files. I just set up an ssh tunnel to slimserver on my home OS X box and I think I'm really going to enjoy having remote access to ALL my music. I have over 100 gigs of music so no it won't fit on my ipod. OTH running my own web or mail server is way too much hassle for the benefit derived
Its easy to paste in the string of hex to make a statement and it feels good to stick to the man and I'm glad people in cyberspace are revolting and saying enough i.p. b.s. That is good really.
OTH hand you are totally right that we have far bigger problems to worry about. Why haven't we the people caused the Bush administration to melt down like digg for the far bigger crime of lying us into a war that has cost tens of thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and has shamed the U.S. before the world? Something to think about.. And yes I walk the talk peace marcher and former tree sitter here.
Yep laws against physical bullying are necessary OTH biting speech online is a good way to fight back against physical bullying by humiliating the sort of tards who engage in acts of physical bullying.
If we can't tell the difference between the real physical harm like broken bones caused by physical bullying v.s. reactions in the mind caused by speech then we are in real trouble as a society. The recognition of this difference is why the founding athers made free speech an absolute right while of course allowing for laws limiting peoples right to engage in physical violence. Finally if we blur the distinction between speech and acts it gives more ammo to those who would try to ban violent video games and rap music. Lets not go that way OK?
This is a cut and paste of what I said at digg.com:
Here are Oreilly's 7 rules:
"We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to basic civility standards.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we strive to post high quality, acceptable content, and we will delete unacceptable comments.
We define unacceptable comments as anything included or linked to that:
* is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others * is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person, * Infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party. (If you quote or excerpt someone's content, it is your responsibility to provide proper attribution to the original author. For a clear definition of proper attribution and fair use, please see The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers.) * violates an obligation of confidentiality * violates the privacy of others
We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.] [edit] 2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
Unless we are trying to protect a confidential source, in which case, we may omit certain private details or otherwise obfuscate the soure of the information. [edit] 3. If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue. Bloggers are encouraged to engage in online mediation of unresolved disputes. Mediate.com will provide mediators. [edit] 4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat. [edit] 5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name. [edit] 6. We ignore the trolls.
We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them-- "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. (George Bernard Shaw)" Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them. [edit] 7. We encourage blog hosts to enforce more vigorously their terms of service.
When bloggers engage in such flagrantly abusive behavior as creating impersonating sites to harass other bloggers they should take responsibility for their clients' behavior. "
And here are the ways the founding violated these rules
1. Certainly with the declaration of independence the founding fathers "threatened others." You didn't think the British were dgoing to leave in a peaceful fashion did you? Further this line from the declaration might be considered an ad hominem attack" "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States"
Could have, would have, should have doesn't help get videos out the door. For high end video it's Avid or Final Cut Pro. FCP is 90% of Avids capability for 30% the price esp with new 8 core Mac Pros.
Bullshit. There could be this exact sort of high speed rail between Boston and New York, Chicago and Detroit, and L.A. to Seattle with say 120 MPH connector trains in the flatlands for literally 1/10th the cost of Bush disastrous pointless war in Iraq. Follow the Benjamins it's all about the O I L companies in the U.S:
You don't think small arms can defeat the U.S. government ask the Iraqi insurgents, hint they are winning and "we" (U.S. neo-con belligerents) are losing. Same thing with the 2nd amendment I think the heavily armed U.S. populace is very capable of defeating our cumbersome top heavy bureaucratic U.S. military in a 4th generation asymmetric guerrilla war.
That's why as a decentralist anti-authoritarian leftist I think the right wing gun nuts (who I disagree with on about everything else) are right about the 2nd amendment as a check on government power.
It depends on what desktop market you are talking about. If you are doing serious digital video production your choices are Mac with Final Cut Pro, or Avid. The Mac offers 90% of Avids capability at less than a 1/3rd the price. That sort of lead isn't going away anytime soon.
Yes everyone should get a background check right from gas station clerk to CIO, and everyone should have to pee in a bottle, and submit to intrusive personal "psychological profile" questions, because the health of the collective is more important than individual rights, right? This is EXACTLY thee mindset of communism, and don't even try to tell me that you have a choice to work for a firm or not, if they all require background checks, peeing in a bottle, intrusive psychological tests, etc, then we have defacto collectivism.
Nice try but the corporations doing the exploiting are based here, and thus here is where the problem is, you know the responsibility for the consequences of your actions thing? Or is that responsibility thing only for the little people? If there were a country that hypothetically allowed rape and murder it would still be wrong for me to go to that country and rape and murder even though it would be legal. Morality transcends laws and I believe Nike, Bechtel, Haliburton etc exploiting people falls under the category of highly immoral acts regardless of whether they are legal in the countries where they undertake them.
I hope you sleep well at night justifying labor conditions such as workers locked in factories for 12 hours shifts with few bathroom breaks. It's people like you that make the world an uglier more brutal place to live. Fortunately people in Central America are waking up to this and saying no more and I sincerely hope the U.S. is next. Bush's extreme fuckups hopefully make this more likely as people are starting to see the exploiter class is vacant of real ideas of how to actually run things. Pure libertarianism sounds great on paper and then a hurricane Katrina hits and the response infrastructure is hollowed out. That is what your vaunted corporate capitalism has led us to and oh yes thousands of angry people who want to kill us such that the powers that be use it as an excuse for an increasing police state as exemplified by police head cams. Nice...
If you aren't stickler for using GPLd software I'd second recommending Lightroom. It's a free beta right now and has a lot of useful features like excellent camera raw tools, and excellent cropping to standard print sizes. It also has comprehensive tone and color controls as well as the tagging features you are looking for. Of course being propitiatory software you'll have to buy it for probably 200+ dollars when it comes out of beta, or head to your local torrent. Oops did I say that? Silly me, never do anything illegal or that your mommy wouldn't' approve, of EVER.
I would say it's a sign of high self esteem to be disdainful of a job that doesn't allow us to utilize our whole human potential. Just because there are immigrants who are desperate for jobs because U.S. and European colonialism followed by globalization stripped mined their countries of resources does NOT mean this is a good thing. The more the ownership class pays a sub living wage the more worker sabotage, sick days, and slacking off there will be, count on this as a fact. Your underpaid employees hate you, repeat this as a mantra before you go to sleep.
And how many billions of dollars worth of labor has Nike exploited from workers in places like Vietnam by paying people pennies an hour for 12 hour work days bringing back labor conditions out of Charles Dickens? When you try to justify extreme exploitation don't be surprised when people get angry. You capitalist exploiters are actually extremely lucky (and the exploited of the U.S. unlucky) that we haven't had a Chavez style Bolivaran revolution in the U.S. If you keep exploiting working people and trying to justify the unfreedom of continuous surveillance it may happen yet. It's called killed the goose that laid the golden egg by overplaying your hand through excessive control and excessive greed. And yes I'm quite certain you know what I'm talking about, people will only take "let them eat cake" for so long.
A Nakamichi, Tandberg, or Revox tape deck IMO sounds better than any CD. There is still an active subculture maintaining these cassette decks because they sound so good and they are so simple and reliable to record with. See for example:
Yes lets keep everyone remotely suspicious under surveillance, you never know when an un-person might commit a thougtcrime. Meanwhile your chance of actually dying driving to the store for milk is thousands of times higher than being blown up by a terrorist. But never mind reality, lets all cower in fear and give the government unlimited power to spy on people and arrest them for the contents of their hard drives, that sounds much more rational than paying attention to the real dangers dontch'a think?
Whether it's intentional or not isn't even the point, the point is that the more laws and the more heavily armed police we have to enforce them we have the more police murders and thuggery we will have for that is the nature of peoples behavior when given nearly unlimited unaccountable power as the police have. Time to go back to the roots of the American idea a society dedicated to freedom, not one dedicated to "safety" at all costs. Time to say NO to more police powers whether it's a Republican like Bush giving himself unlimited power to declare martial law or a Dem like Clinton putting more cops on the streets and more people in prison for non violent victimless crimes like pot smoking.
According to Human Rights Watch an internationally respected human rights organization these conditions obtain in American prisons:
"In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars--not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.
Both men and women prisoners--but especially women--face staff rape and sexual abuse. Correctional officers will bribe, coerce, or violently force inmates into granting sexual favors, including oral sex or intercourse. Prison staff have laughed at and ignored the pleas of male prisoners seeking protection from rape by other inmates."
And the use of restraint chairs as torture devices in U.S. jails and prisons:
" restraint chairs have been used for punishment of nonthreatening behavior;
children have been strapped into the chairs for nonviolent behaviors;
nude inmates and detainees have been strapped into restraint chairs;
prisoners have been left in restraint chairs for as long as eight days. In some cases, the jail staff failed to manipulate the prisoners' limbs to protect against blood clots;
prisoners have been required to testify while in restraint chairs;
prisoners have been interrogated while in restraint chairs;
prisoners have been injured while in restraint chairs;
prisoners have been tortured by being hooded, pepper-gassed, beaten, or threatened with electrocution while in the chairs;
at least eleven people have died under questionable circumstances after being strapped into a restraint chair.
Use of the restraint chair is widespread: Jails, state and federal prisons, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, state mental hospitals, juvenile detention centers, and foreign governments are all equipped with the chair.
Amnesty International has called for a federal investigation into use of the restraint chair. The device "is an issue of great concern to us," says Angela Wright, a researcher at Amnesty's headquarters in London. "It appears to be used in some jurisdictions as a front-line or even routine form of control, including as a punishment for disruptive or annoying behavior."
And swat teams are being militarized and given ex-military hardware:
"It's unlikely that the officer who shot Culosi did so intentionally. But it's also unlikely that the investigation into this shooting will address why police sent a military-style unit to arrest an optometrist under investigation for a nonviolent crime and why the officers had their guns drawn when approaching a man with no history of violence.
It's people like you who write off half a million innocent civilians dead in Iraq with a shrug and justify the extreme levels of police brutality and incarceration here that make America a more shitty place to live, thanks asshole. BTW per capita half a million dead in Iraq would be equivalent to 5 million dead here. Imagine what the reaction would be if a foreign country invaded us, overthrew the government, and killed 5 million Americans. I can't even imagine, hell people are still whining about the 3000 dead from 911 which is.1% of 5 million dead. So America has a lot to answer for and to be VERY ashamed of and again we (as in the government) are closer to Hitler than Ghandi.
Slashdot Mirror
Coordinated state data bases ARE a national base the grandparent post FUD must be refuted!
NT
The ticket says Anderton, oh shit... If you don't get google "minority report" and "P K Dick."
I think you are right for everything except file serving, especially music files. I just set up an ssh tunnel to slimserver on my home OS X box and I think I'm really going to enjoy having remote access to ALL my music. I have over 100 gigs of music so no it won't fit on my ipod. OTH running my own web or mail server is way too much hassle for the benefit derived
The tickets says Anderton? Uh-oh.
Its easy to paste in the string of hex to make a statement and it feels good to stick to the man and I'm glad people in cyberspace are revolting and saying enough i.p. b.s. That is good really.
OTH hand you are totally right that we have far bigger problems to worry about. Why haven't we the people caused the Bush administration to melt down like digg for the far bigger crime of lying us into a war that has cost tens of thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and has shamed the U.S. before the world? Something to think about.. And yes I walk the talk peace marcher and former tree sitter here.
Yep laws against physical bullying are necessary OTH biting speech online is a good way to fight back against physical bullying by humiliating the sort of tards who engage in acts of physical bullying.
If we can't tell the difference between the real physical harm like broken bones caused by physical bullying v.s. reactions in the mind caused by speech then we are in real trouble as a society. The recognition of this difference is why the founding athers made free speech an absolute right while of course allowing for laws limiting peoples right to engage in physical violence. Finally if we blur the distinction between speech and acts it gives more ammo to those who would try to ban violent video games and rap music. Lets not go that way OK?
This is a cut and paste of what I said at digg.com:
Here are Oreilly's 7 rules:
"We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to basic civility standards.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we strive to post high quality, acceptable content, and we will delete unacceptable comments.
We define unacceptable comments as anything included or linked to that:
* is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
* is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
* Infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party. (If you quote or excerpt someone's content, it is your responsibility to provide proper attribution to the original author. For a clear definition of proper attribution and fair use, please see The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers.)
* violates an obligation of confidentiality
* violates the privacy of others
We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
[edit] 2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
Unless we are trying to protect a confidential source, in which case, we may omit certain private details or otherwise obfuscate the soure of the information.
[edit] 3. If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue. Bloggers are encouraged to engage in online mediation of unresolved disputes. Mediate.com will provide mediators.
[edit] 4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
[edit] 5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
[edit] 6. We ignore the trolls.
We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them-- "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. (George Bernard Shaw)" Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.
[edit] 7. We encourage blog hosts to enforce more vigorously their terms of service.
When bloggers engage in such flagrantly abusive behavior as creating impersonating sites to harass other bloggers they should take responsibility for their clients' behavior. "
And here are the ways the founding violated these rules
1. Certainly with the declaration of independence the founding fathers "threatened others." You didn't think the British were dgoing to leave in a peaceful fashion did you? Further this line from the declaration might be considered an ad hominem attack" "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States"
http://usmilitaryhistory.com/declrind.htm
2. The founding fathers said neither the Declaration nor the Federalist papers in person to the British for the
Not if it doesn't run the software needed, no. 500 fps on WOW does zero when you need to get proffesional video out the door.
Could have, would have, should have doesn't help get videos out the door. For high end video it's Avid or Final Cut Pro. FCP is 90% of Avids capability for 30% the price esp with new 8 core Mac Pros.
Nothing on the p.c. beats final cut pro/shake/dvd studio pro.
M$ is like a rich old senile uncle tottering along telling stories of the past.
Bullshit. There could be this exact sort of high speed rail between Boston and New York, Chicago and Detroit, and L.A. to Seattle with say 120 MPH connector trains in the flatlands for literally 1/10th the cost of Bush disastrous pointless war in Iraq. Follow the Benjamins it's all about the O I L companies in the U.S:
d _railh -Speed_Rail_Corridor_Designations_53kb.png
See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_high-spee
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Hig
Upgrading U.S. train track is 8 times cheaper than building new freeways:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/201
Get some fact before just regurgitating what you hear on Rush (brought to you by the Hummer H5 now including it's own entrance ladder).
You don't think small arms can defeat the U.S. government ask the Iraqi insurgents, hint they are winning and "we" (U.S. neo-con belligerents) are losing. Same thing with the 2nd amendment I think the heavily armed U.S. populace is very capable of defeating our cumbersome top heavy bureaucratic U.S. military in a 4th generation asymmetric guerrilla war.
http://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702
That's why as a decentralist anti-authoritarian leftist I think the right wing gun nuts (who I disagree with on about everything else) are right about the 2nd amendment as a check on government power.
It depends on what desktop market you are talking about. If you are doing serious digital video production your choices are Mac with Final Cut Pro, or Avid. The Mac offers 90% of Avids capability at less than a 1/3rd the price. That sort of lead isn't going away anytime soon.
Yes everyone should get a background check right from gas station clerk to CIO, and everyone should have to pee in a bottle, and submit to intrusive personal "psychological profile" questions, because the health of the collective is more important than individual rights, right? This is EXACTLY thee mindset of communism, and don't even try to tell me that you have a choice to work for a firm or not, if they all require background checks, peeing in a bottle, intrusive psychological tests, etc, then we have defacto collectivism.
R.I.P. freedom I miss you already.
Nice try but the corporations doing the exploiting are based here, and thus here is where the problem is, you know the responsibility for the consequences of your actions thing? Or is that responsibility thing only for the little people? If there were a country that hypothetically allowed rape and murder it would still be wrong for me to go to that country and rape and murder even though it would be legal. Morality transcends laws and I believe Nike, Bechtel, Haliburton etc exploiting people falls under the category of highly immoral acts regardless of whether they are legal in the countries where they undertake them.
I hope you sleep well at night justifying labor conditions such as workers locked in factories for 12 hours shifts with few bathroom breaks. It's people like you that make the world an uglier more brutal place to live. Fortunately people in Central America are waking up to this and saying no more and I sincerely hope the U.S. is next. Bush's extreme fuckups hopefully make this more likely as people are starting to see the exploiter class is vacant of real ideas of how to actually run things. Pure libertarianism sounds great on paper and then a hurricane Katrina hits and the response infrastructure is hollowed out. That is what your vaunted corporate capitalism has led us to and oh yes thousands of angry people who want to kill us such that the powers that be use it as an excuse for an increasing police state as exemplified by police head cams. Nice...
If you aren't stickler for using GPLd software I'd second recommending Lightroom. It's a free beta right now and has a lot of useful features like excellent camera raw tools, and excellent cropping to standard print sizes. It also has comprehensive tone and color controls as well as the tagging features you are looking for. Of course being propitiatory software you'll have to buy it for probably 200+ dollars when it comes out of beta, or head to your local torrent. Oops did I say that? Silly me, never do anything illegal or that your mommy wouldn't' approve, of EVER.
Mac or Windows.
I would say it's a sign of high self esteem to be disdainful of a job that doesn't allow us to utilize our whole human potential. Just because there are immigrants who are desperate for jobs because U.S. and European colonialism followed by globalization stripped mined their countries of resources does NOT mean this is a good thing. The more the ownership class pays a sub living wage the more worker sabotage, sick days, and slacking off there will be, count on this as a fact. Your underpaid employees hate you, repeat this as a mantra before you go to sleep.
And how many billions of dollars worth of labor has Nike exploited from workers in places like Vietnam by paying people pennies an hour for 12 hour work days bringing back labor conditions out of Charles Dickens? When you try to justify extreme exploitation don't be surprised when people get angry. You capitalist exploiters are actually extremely lucky (and the exploited of the U.S. unlucky) that we haven't had a Chavez style Bolivaran revolution in the U.S. If you keep exploiting working people and trying to justify the unfreedom of continuous surveillance it may happen yet. It's called killed the goose that laid the golden egg by overplaying your hand through excessive control and excessive greed. And yes I'm quite certain you know what I'm talking about, people will only take "let them eat cake" for so long.
A Nakamichi, Tandberg, or Revox tape deck IMO sounds better than any CD. There is still an active subculture maintaining these cassette decks because they sound so good and they are so simple and reliable to record with. See for example:
http://naks.com/
I imagine the use of video and cassette tapes is still very active outside the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
Yes lets keep everyone remotely suspicious under surveillance, you never know when an un-person might commit a thougtcrime. Meanwhile your chance of actually dying driving to the store for milk is thousands of times higher than being blown up by a terrorist. But never mind reality, lets all cower in fear and give the government unlimited power to spy on people and arrest them for the contents of their hard drives, that sounds much more rational than paying attention to the real dangers dontch'a think?
Whether it's intentional or not isn't even the point, the point is that the more laws and the more heavily armed police we have to enforce them we have the more police murders and thuggery we will have for that is the nature of peoples behavior when given nearly unlimited unaccountable power as the police have. Time to go back to the roots of the American idea a society dedicated to freedom, not one dedicated to "safety" at all costs. Time to say NO to more police powers whether it's a Republican like Bush giving himself unlimited power to declare martial law or a Dem like Clinton putting more cops on the streets and more people in prison for non violent victimless crimes like pot smoking.
For extensively documented long list of police brutality in the U.S. circa 1999 see:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR5114719 99?open&of=ENG-USA
Police killed almost 10,000 people in a 20 year period between 1976 and 1998:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0428-04.ht m
Police have tasered 167 people to death in just the last 7 years, clearly when a taser is deployed death ought not to result.
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special43/articl es/1224taserlist24-ON.html
According to Human Rights Watch an internationally respected human rights organization these conditions obtain in American prisons:
"In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars--not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.
Both men and women prisoners--but especially women--face staff rape and sexual abuse. Correctional officers will bribe, coerce, or violently force inmates into granting sexual favors, including oral sex or intercourse. Prison staff have laughed at and ignored the pleas of male prisoners seeking protection from rape by other inmates."
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/14/usdom8583.h tm
And the use of restraint chairs as torture devices in U.S. jails and prisons:
" restraint chairs have been used for punishment of nonthreatening behavior;
children have been strapped into the chairs for nonviolent behaviors;
nude inmates and detainees have been strapped into restraint chairs;
prisoners have been left in restraint chairs for as long as eight days. In some cases, the jail staff failed to manipulate the prisoners' limbs to protect against blood clots;
prisoners have been required to testify while in restraint chairs;
prisoners have been interrogated while in restraint chairs;
prisoners have been injured while in restraint chairs;
prisoners have been tortured by being hooded, pepper-gassed, beaten, or threatened with electrocution while in the chairs;
at least eleven people have died under questionable circumstances after being strapped into a restraint chair.
Use of the restraint chair is widespread: Jails, state and federal prisons, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, state mental hospitals, juvenile detention centers, and foreign governments are all equipped with the chair.
Amnesty International has called for a federal investigation into use of the restraint chair. The device "is an issue of great concern to us," says Angela Wright, a researcher at Amnesty's headquarters in London. "It appears to be used in some jurisdictions as a front-line or even routine form of control, including as a punishment for disruptive or annoying behavior."
http://www.progressive.org/mag_cusacchair
And swat teams are being militarized and given ex-military hardware:
"It's unlikely that the officer who shot Culosi did so intentionally. But it's also unlikely that the investigation into this shooting will address why police sent a military-style unit to arrest an optometrist under investigation for a nonviolent crime and why the officers had their guns drawn when approaching a man with no history of violence.
It's people like you who write off half a million innocent civilians dead in Iraq with a shrug and justify the extreme levels of police brutality and incarceration here that make America a more shitty place to live, thanks asshole. BTW per capita half a million dead in Iraq would be equivalent to 5 million dead here. Imagine what the reaction would be if a foreign country invaded us, overthrew the government, and killed 5 million Americans. I can't even imagine, hell people are still whining about the 3000 dead from 911 which is .1% of 5 million dead. So America has a lot to answer for and to be VERY ashamed of and again we (as in the government) are closer to Hitler than Ghandi.