Your father was probably denied surgery because it was a waste of time.
And quite possibly in vain, certainly. But, what one does with one's earnings should be one's own business. Certainly spending them in an attempt to save one's live, even if futile, should not be forbidden. When the state intervenes to purportedly provide health care in the place of one's own resources, it should at least provide as much care as those resources could otherwise have provided.
your dad came to canada because he was too weak to make a go of it in his former country
Agreed. It would take a hell of a person to put Hitler in his place. As I recall, it took a heck of a lot of people who died to get the job done.
However, whatever weakness this may imply is surely erased by the courage demonstrated by virtue of the countless Jews he hid for four years during WWII. I'd consider the balance even as far as moral traits are concerned, but then, I am biased. How many lives have you saved?
He made a good life, enough to put you through school apparently. Or do you think that you paid for that schooling all on your own, you self rightous freeloader
Ah! I was waiting for this retort. It is typical of the Communist. The argument goes something like this: You owe the state your life and your servitude because without the state's help, you would not have schooling, health care, etc. The fallacy lies in that the general reason one can not obtain these without the state's intervention, even if available on an open market, is that the state has taxed one so greatly, as to prevent them for caring for themselves. As for my post-secondary schooling, I paid for it myself. Whatever services I may have had no choice but to receive from the government were most certainly repaid many times over via the hundreds of thousands of dollars I paid in income taxes over the years I lived in Canada.
But, no matter. The Comminist believes that accepting a "benefit" from the state that was originally stolen from one in the first place, indentures one in tax servitude until death.
Sorry, I don't buy that argument.
IT is because of punks and whiners like you that they do WAY to much ofthat.
Another Communist tactic: arguing that objecting to the taking of one's earnings is "whining", with all those negative connotations.
Gotta love all the cowards spouting off anon. Afraid to risk a bit of karma?
If your dad had a 70% survival chance with the surgery, but the same money could give two people, or even one, an 80% survival chance, then yes, it does boil down to cost effectiveness because this is money, as you point out, taken from all of us.
And that is my point, the money was taken from him and he died as a result. I do not believe such takings are justified in a free society, regardless of how many lives it might save. That is the state playing at God.
That you do not see that it is immoral to kill by stealing the fruits of one's labour, is very telling of the prevelant Canadian attitude.
If the state takes $X from one, ostensibly for health care, then it is obliged to spend at least $X for such care as is necessary for that indivudual. Amounts more than that are charity and can be disbursed on the basis of greatest effectiveness.
The difference between a state insurer and a private one (which may result in a similar outcome -- clearly not everyone gets the value of their premiums returned) is that one voluntarily choses to share risk with a private insurer, but one has no choice when the state imposes a health care tax burden.
Now, do you have examples of these Canadians you speak of that have been denied life-saving surgery?
I would not make the charge if I did not have evidence, though it comes from an admitedly biased source: my father was denied abdominal aortic aneurism repair surgery dispite paying into the Canadian health care system for decades (and carrying private insurance before its inception). If he had instead invested that portion of his taxes earmarked for health care in a fund, even at savings account rates, he could have paid for the US$30,000 to US$100,000 cost of that surgery many times over.
Such surgery is not done in Canada for lack of qualified surgeons, AFAIK -- even then the survival rate is about 70%. The government refused to pay for it to be performed in the U.S., citing expense and arguing that the money could save more lives if spent elsewhere.
Hogwash! That's the state playing at God. It is one thing to allocate charity where it might do the most good, but to forcibly impoverish one to death based on the argument that many lives warrant the taking of one is heinous. Might as well have a lottery to kill people for their organs to satisfy the demand -- after all, one can likely harvest sufficient organs from a person to save more lives than the one taken.
It could be argued that it would be "unfair" for the "rich" to "get ahead" of the "poor" when it comes to medical treatment. As offensive as I find the idea that one does not deserve to spend one's legitimate earnings to save one's live, I will note that my father was not rich: He came to Canada as a WWII refugee, and took advantage of ecomonic opportunities to eventually work as an electronic engineer, contributing to many successful Canadian communications satellites (starting with the first), as well as the Shuttle Remote Manipulation System. Starting from nothing, capitalism enabled him to live a middle-class lifestyle.
Today, he'd likely be accepted as a refugee, and have no change to escape the socialist welfare trap.
Take heed: if one has a state-run health insurance program, it should never deliver less justifiable benefits at world market rates than paid for in premiums. To do otherwise is literally taxing one to death.
Not to draw an exact comparison, merely to lampoon the sense of that particular statement, but I'm reasonably sure that was also why Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia did what they did too.
Well, yes. I am not offering it as a justification, but rather an explanation. I meet many Canadians who ask me "Why does the U.S. do this or that?". And the best answer is "Because they can.".
Granted, the policy or practice in question might be morally bankrupt and corrupt, but that should not surprise: power corrupts, anywhere. Is it so surprising that a powerful nation is afflicted with that particular social disease? I think not.
What is fascinating is the socio-economic engine that give rise to such power in the first place: Capitalism (admitedly currently corrupted to the point where money is buying law). Socialism, as practiced heavily in Canada since the Trudeau era (c. 1970) has been stifling, by comparison. Of course, Canada is not berefit of its own political scandals -- but their scale has been naturally smaller. Again, power corrupts.
The founding fathers recognized the dangers and attempted to (a) divide power between legislative, administrative, and executive branches of government, and (b) empower ordinary citizens to revolt in extremis. Of course, any practice, policy, rule, or constitution can be "hacked" and we see that in the U.S.
But, I see a far greater backlash against government power in the U.S. than I ever saw in Canada, so I have greater hope that Americans can grab their government tiger by the tail.
The bottom line is that I buy into "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" much more than "Peace, order, and good government."
Fair enough. Let's trade: your citizenship for mine.
I have no objection to people who voluntarily chose to participate in a communal wealth-redistribution system.
However, I greatly object to people forcing such participation on the non-willing, at the effective point of a gun, to the degree that hard-working Canadians can not save enough money to purchase surgery to save their lives and are abandoned by the Canadian health care system. When one pays more in taxes earmarked for "health care" over a working life than it would cost to fund private insurance that would cover life-saving surgery, and the government denies that surgery, I can only conclude the government is guilty of murder, literally taxing people to death. Those who support the system are, at the very least, accessories to the crime.
As a libertarian forced to chose between the rise of the Christian right in the U.S. and the stench of the Socialist left in Canada (both admittedly odious), I find I can tolerate the right better: at least I can accumulate the funds necessary to escape if necessary, or seek "morally unacceptable" social and care situations outside the country.
I'd been considering Vonage vs. Broadvoice for the longest time. My preference was toward Broadvoice because it was open and would mesh with an Asterisk PBX, but seeing a cheap Moto VT1005 at Fry's one day caused me to give Vonage a go. That was in July, 2004, and I have had their service since. (I still plan to do the Broadvoice/Asterisk thing at some point, and might even keep both providers so as to have a backup). I've been pretty happy with Vonage, though calls to Canada have sometimes been spotty at the Canadian receiving end.
I did not drop my Verizon POTS line, and even kept the international plan I had: calls to Canada were 5 cents a minute instead of 75 cents (ouch!) and the four dollars a month wasn't that much of a big deal. The idea was to keep the POTS like as backup (mostly for 911). I figured I'd save about $60-$80 a month in LD charges and that would easily pay for the VoIP service. I live in (360) and work in (425). Washington intra-state rates are around 11 cents a minute, with a penny discount (whoop-de-freakin'-do) when subscribing to Verizon's international plan. I got a Vonage (425) number to (a) increase my local access area for friends and (b) so as to make calls from work home local to work (not that they care much as long as personal calls aren't excessive).
My setup is a bit unusual. I wanted DSL with a static IP, and no nonsense TOS: I like to sink my own email (thus open port 25 inbound) rather than poll for it (though I have a backup MX pointing to a server provided by my web space hosting company, and fetchmail from there). I pay about $45 a month for Verizon's "Advanced Data Services" ATM VPI/VCI to my ISP, Blarg!, which charges about another $35 a month. It isn't cheap, but I wasn't interested in the "Intarweb", and ISP droids bitchin' if I'd SSH into my own box to admin it remotely. Also, considering the LD savings less the VoIP service costs, about $35 of that $80 is recouperated, so, in effect, I'm paying $45 for 1.5Mx384k DSL and a static IP (I think I can get up to 4 or 5 if I can justify them for the same price) with no TOS headaches. No, I do not run an open SMTP relay.
A plug for Blarg!: they accomodate savvy end users who know what they are doing -- with power comes responsibility.
Hardware-wise, I have an odd setup too: I didn't have a router that would do QoS, so I rolled my own: a cheap Fry's $200 special running Fedora Core 2 derivative with three ethernet ports: one upstream to Blarg, one downstream into the home net, and another downstream into the DMZ, where my VoIP ATA sits. IPTables handle all the firewalling and traffic shaping for me (though trying to shape downstream traffic is always dicey). The box sinks my email and serves public and private (though not sensitive) data. While I have faith in IPtables, and SSL, I have a bit less in Apache. If it ever gets overloaded to the point of not being able to do QoS for VoIP traffic properly, I plan to offload some services. The really secure stuff, of course, is on the home LAN side of things. The uber-secure stuff is not accessible in any way from the public internet, of course (private keys, etc.)
Yes, an SSL or Apache root exploit would be bad (but Apache does not currently run as root, Duh!). So far, this has worked well. Even with all the cruft in the VoIP path, I still get good service.
Eventually, I'd like to run Asterisk on the box, perhaps with a Broadvoice connection, and likely serve private data elsewhere. I have been thinking of retaining the VT1005 (locked to Vonage), and trying to get Asterisk to work with Vonage by sitting "in the middle" of the ISP to ATA path, and spoofing one to the other.
I'd been considering Vonage vs. Broadvoice for the longest time. My preference was toward Broadvoice because it was open and would mesh with an Asterisk PBX, but seeing a cheap Moto VT1005 at Fry's one day caused me to give Vonage a go. That was in July, 2004, and I have had their service since. (I still plan to do the Broadvoice/Asterisk thing at some point, and might even keep both providers so as to have a backup). I've been pretty happy with Vonage, though calls to Canada have sometimes been spotty at the Canadian receiving end.
I did not drop my Verizon POTS line, and even kept the international plan I had: calls to Canada were 5 cents a minute instead of 75 cents (ouch!) and the four dollars a month wasn't that much of a big deal. The idea was to keep the POTS like as backup (mostly for 911). I figured I'd save about $60-$80 a month in LD charges and that would easily pay for the VoIP service.
I live in (360) and work in (425). Washington intra-state rates are around 11 cents a minute, with a penny discount (whoop-de-freakin'-do) when subscribing to Verizon's international plan. I got a Vonage (425) number to (a) increase my local access area for friends and (b) so as to make calls from work home local to work (not that they care much as long as personal calls aren't excessive).
My setup is a bit unusual. I wanted DSL with a static IP, and no nonsense TOS: I like to sink my own email (thus open port 25 inbound) rather than poll for it (though I have a backup MX pointing to a server provided by my web space hosting company, and fetchmail from there). I pay about $45 a month for Verizon's "Advanced Data Services" ATM VPI/VCI to my ISP, Blarg!, which charges about another $35 a month. It isn't cheap, but I wasn't interested in the "Intarweb", and ISP droids bitchin' if I'd SSH into my own box to admin it remotely. Also, considering the LD savings less the VoIP service costs, about $35 of that $80 is recouperated, so, in effect, I'm paying $45 for 1.5Mx384k DSL and a static IP (I think I can get up to 4 or 5 if I can justify them for the same price) with no TOS headaches. No, I do not run an open SMTP relay. A plug for Blarg!: they accomodate savvy end users who know what they are doing -- with power comes responsibility.
Hardware-wise, I have an odd setup too: I didn't have a router that would do QoS, so I rolled my own: a cheap Fry's $200 special running Fedora Core 2 derivative with three ethernet ports: one upstream to Blarg, one downstream into the home net, and another downstream into the DMZ, where my VoIP ATA sits. IPTables handle all the firewalling and traffic shaping for me (though trying to shape downstream traffic is always dicey).
The box sinks my email and serves public and private (though not sensitive) data. While I have faith in IPtables, and SSL, I have a bit less in Apache. If it ever gets overloaded to the point of not being able to do QoS for VoIP traffic properly, I plan to offload some services. The really secure stuff, of course, is on the home LAN side of things. The uber-secure stuff is not accessible in any way from the public internet, of course (private keys, etc.) Yes, an SSL or Apache root exploit would be bad (but Apache does not currently run as root, Duh!).
So far, this has worked well. Even with all the cruft in the VoIP path, I still get good service.
Eventually, I'd like to run Asterisk on the box, perhaps with a Broadvoice connection, and likely serve private data elsewhere. I have been thinking of retaining the VT1005 (locked to Vonage), and trying to get Asterisk to work with Vonage by sitting "in the middle" of the ISP to ATA path, and spoofing one to the other.
The flaw in this scheme, as designed, is simple: it rests on the strength of keeping the private key secret from the viewer of the decrypted content. If users can generate their own key pairs and submit the public key for encryption of content from a content distributer, they can then decrypt the content to plain text and redistribute it.
However, this is easily solved: require the public keys to be signed by an authority trusted to the content providers to ensure that the corresponding private key is secure. This could be the equipment manufacturer, for example.
I've suggested similar ideas on Slashdot before. The idea is to leverage public key cryptography in such a way that the consumer's playback equipment has the (or several) private keys that are only disclosed (over an encrypted communication link) to trusted devices (using a public key authentication mechanism so a small number of playback devices owned by the same person will playback the same context).
Content for that customer is encrypted with the corresponding public key. Customers could/would have their equipment's private keys held in escrow by organizations trusted by content providers in the event their only playback device breaks.
This solves all the fair use issues with DRM except the following:
1. Plain text extraction of small segments for review or critique is not possible, because one could reconstruct an unencrypted original out of many such extractions. (Though, widespread distribution of such plaintext on a scale large enough to be noticed might be enough to attract law enforcement).
2. New fair uses not envisioned when the equipment was designed would not necessarily be supported.
(1) can be addressed by excluding such extractions but allowing extraction of reference markers which can be aggregated and which would point to public libraries of content accessable to subscribers at modest rates and with restrictions on number of simultaneous accesses. Copyright would only be granted upon escrow of content with such libraries and a portion of library subscription revenues would be distributed among related copyright holders.
(2) Manufacturers of such DRM devices would be required to provide retrofit software to support new fair uses for a reasonable fee.
(2) is probably the more difficult hurdle, but, while I can see reasonable arguments for DRM, that doesn't mean it should be trivial to get away with DRM on content traditionally distributed with no technical restrictions to fair use exercise. There is probably a compromise position to be sought here.
Quail are eaten and therefore qualify as food (and yes, even eaten by people).
Re:A few contradictions in Christmas
on
Ho, Ho, Ho
·
· Score: 1
Best thing I did this Christmas was drop a Franklin into a Salvation Army bellringer's kettle.
I support a variety of charities throughout the year, but this simple act seams to outdo them all.
'Course I've been dropping 20s into Sally Ann kettles for most of the past week whenever I picked up something at the local supermarket -- using a debit card to pay as usual, and "add a 20 for the bellringer", to get cash back. A couple of times people behind me in line followed suit.
The sight of people with what must have been a couple hundred dollars of groceries in their carts, rushing to get to their cars, completely ignoring this Christmas hallmark, not even dropping a dollar in, was depressing. I guess their credit card debt is strangling them. Rather fitting, perhaps.
God rest ye farting gentlemen.
You smell real bad today!
Whatever did you eat
to make you reek
in a most disgusting way?
We went to lunch
and drank a bunch
of bottled Christmas cheer!
So the smell you smell
and the sound you hear,
are our fartings of sausage and beer!
Sausage and beer.
Oh, oh... Fartings of sausage and beer!
> I have no problems with DRM that
> would enforce existing rights...
That's a bit too thin a quote to establish proper context. I continued: "... I may have as a user of copyright material...". Most DRM systems are too rigid to do this.
So a DRM system should for instance make it impossible to modify GPL licensed software without extending the license and the DRM enforcing of its terms to the derivative work!
Well, yes, but not for the reasons in my quote taken a bit out of context: that's a licence holder's right, and not mine. But yes, if the DRM system distributes GPL software, it is perfectly reasonable that it ensures that the GPL applies to derivatives. I don't know how this might be possible, though I can imagine a few ways: you'd need a restricted build and execution environment that included source in binaries built and distributed, and you could only edit source via those binaries. The "reading source from the screen" hole would remain, and printing source would be impossible (except, perhaps, in a multitude of fonts on each page to thwart OCR devices).
Frankly, I think this shows that DRM systems are not practical for distribution and enforcement of GPL material, or anything that is based on unfettered widespread distribution. In fact, the only possible way to have electronic license enforcement would require management of secrets (keys) out of the hands of users and that goes against the spirit of the GPL, IMHO. The cure to GPL violations may well be worse than the dieease.
The problem is that those who do these things are stronger players in the courts. And they've already been using copyright as an excuse not to fix the products they sell you and at the same time to not make the info available that would enable you to fix it youself or hire someone to fix it for you.
The problem here is the uneducated consumer. The market will correct this over time: remember how it used to be that only hackers were even aware of things like viruses, worms, trojans, and spyware? They are starting to become mainstream terms. The same will happen with crippling DRM systems.
What is infuriating is that us geeks immediately see a problem, raise the alarm, and are dismissed as either paranoid, or advancing slippery slope arguments: both when it comes to technical (insecure software) and political (DMCA, P.A.T.R.I.O.T.) issues. Yet, down that slippery slope the masses eventually slide, and don't even notice!
But, eventually someone will notice that when us geeks sound an alarm, it invariably becomes a valid mass concern after a short while. Our alarms will get greater notice as predictive after that. (I hope).
The problem isn't so much DRM, but rather that the consumer is being utterly defrauded about what they are getting for their money.
I have no problems with DRM that would enforce existing rights I may have as a user of copyright material: time shifting, media shifting, lending out media, selling media, etc. - though such a system does not currently exist (it would require communicaton and refutation of keys to authorized playback devices - say 10 simultaneously).
However, such a system must also recognize new rights I may be deemed to have by the courts. If timeshifting, archiving, and media transfer are deemed to not violate copyright, then all existing equipment I have that enforces DRM must be retrofited, at the DRM users' expense, to recognise those rights. Same goes for all other people encumbred by a particular DRM system.
In the past, one would build the device, and then defend that it offers fair use (MPAA v. Sony - Betamax decision). However, today that may be legally impossible (DMCA, and relatively uncrackable DRM). But, on balance, one should be able to petition the court for a preemptive decision on whether a particular use would be fair, and if the existing DRM mechanisms do not support it, they would have to be modified at the DRM users' expense. The idea is that the DRM mechanism is a proxy for the DRM user's rights and so must change as those rights do.
I am not suggesting that this would be an inexpensive undertaking for a DRM user faced with supporting a newly recognized fair use. But, it is a reasonable requirement, in the face of the control they exert.
I received a ticket that said that I was arrested and released under agreement to (a) pay a fine and processing fee and the charge would be dropped, (b) plead guilty before a judge and accept sentencing which would be the same as the fine, (c) plead innocent and answer the charge. If found innocent the record of my arrest would be expunged.
Council adviced me that, yes, technically I had been arrested, and yes, it could be made to "go away", legally, if I was found innocent, because of quirks of Illinois traffic law. It would be cheaper to admit guilt, but the record of my arrest would remain.
All that over a legal lane change that resulted in an accident.
I can only assume that I was, in fact, arrested for an alleged moving violation; and that quirks of law could make it as if I hadn't, if I was found innocent at trial.
If I were trying to hide anything, I would not disclose as much as I have. But, I do not wish to get into trouble because of a silly technicality and if a finding of innocence translates into a technical non-arrest for those who care about such things, then that's the hoop through which I will jump.
I would have thought that an alleged charge, or simple ticketing for a moving violation without conviction would have little effect. But, apparently it does.
Why is this a problem? You were involved in an accident. You were accused of violating a traffic law. You want to cover up these facts, for some reason? You want to lie about it? You want to deceive people who ask you if you've ever been accused of breaking a traffic law?
1. Records of arrests weigh unfavorably in naturalization hearings.
2. Yes.
3. No.
4. No.
5. No.
What I do want is to be able to answer "No", truthfully, if asked if I was ever arrested. Illinois law, at the time, provided for the expunging of arrest records (i.e. it was as if it never happened) in the case of a finding of not guilty of a traffic violation.
To date, I have no arrests, parking, traffic, or other violations on my criminal record, and certainly no convictions. I maintain an excellent credit rating, pay my taxes, obey all laws, and support a variety of charities.
Perhaps the wording on the ticket changed since 1999, or you do not live in Lake County, IL. But, I distinctly recall being struck by the wording that referred to my detainment by the police officer while the ticket was written as an "arrest", and to the police officer as an "arresting officer".
The court does not drop a charge (though it may dismiss a case). The prosecution can drop a charge. It was necessary to be found innocent so the record of my arrest would be expunged. The judge found my desire for a trial quite rational, though it did require the prosecution's agreement to proceed. I'd hardly consider 40 seconds or so to have greatly inconvenienced the court (the caseload was relatively light that day, anyway). While I represented myself, I had obtained the prior advice of legal council (it seamed simple enough that I saw no need to pay my lawyer $200 an hour to sit in court with me plus transportation time).
Given the property and income taxes I pay, I'd be very surprised that it was a net burden to taxpayers. If the arresting officer were concerned about costs, he could have ripped up the ticket the minute I indicated that I would appear to fight it. Besides, unlike the other driver in this case, I have appeared as a witness to support traffic cases against others, when asked by the local constabulary. So, on the whole, I was probably a far greater benefit to the local community than a burden.
Also, it was not a speeding ticket.
The problem, increasingly, are organizations that care if one was "ever charged with a crime of which they were not acquitted" or "ever arrested". Dropped charges do not count.
Er, I *was* mirandized: My miranda rights were on the ticket I received that informed me of my arrest. I had to sign a document that I understood the ticket I received.
Where it gets interesting is that I was questioned before I was ticketed. I had signalled a left lane change, verified that I had plenty of room, and started to enter the left-most lane of the highway to make a left hand turn at the next traffic light. The highway was divided, with a grassy median and ditch between the two directions of traffic. Idiot driver in the lane I was entering decided they did not want me in front of them, and tried to overtake me on the left shoulder and median, not realizing that there was no room. Before entering the ditch, the driver swerved back and struck my drivers' side rear quarter panel. At 55 mph, it took some skill to stop the car (the drivers's front wheel having been knocked onto the gravel left of the shoulder), wait for traffic to clear, and pull over to the right shoulder, and wait for the police to investigate the accident.
I took the time to verify that no one in either car was injured, and waited for the police. Witnesses reported the other driver's SUV had swerved all over the road mostly on two wheels and would up in the right ditch.
We were both questioned, and because I admitted making what I believed to be a safe and legal lane change, I was ticketed -- defacto practice is to ticket the driver making a lane change. I accepted the ticket, checked off that I would answer the charge in court, and surrendered my bond card to the officer. My license, proof of insurance, and registration were taken only after questioning, copied to the ticket being written out, and returned to me with the ticket informing me of my arrest, along with insurance information of the other driver. The license plate had already been noted and run.
When the court date arrived, the police officer's only witness (driver of the other car) did not show. I did not want the charge dropped, as the only way to clear the arrest on my record was to defend against it (Illinois had a policy of expunging arrest records of drivers who paid the fine and processing fee or who were found innocent). The judge permitted the trial to proceed but urged expediency. The police officer, myself, and my wife (a witness) were sworn in, the charge (illegal lane change), and my not guilty plea entered. The prosecuting attorney entered the accident report into evidence, asked if I had made a lane change (yes), if I struck another vehicle (no), and how then, do I explain the accident in the report?(The other vehicle struck me). She did not call the officer. My turn. I asked if the officer had seen the accident (no). The prosecuting attorney had no closing arguments. I recounted the events and argued that I had done nothing wrong. The judge found my explanation plausible, and in the
absense of evidence to the contrary, found me
innocent, ordered that the arrest be cleared from
my record, and returned my bond card. All this took about 40 seconds. He was curious why I wanted the trial -- records of arrest were nothing to worry about without convition. I explained that, as a foreigner, who eventually wished to become naturalized some day, it was important to maintain a clean criminal record. I think I heard him curse the INS under his breath, for bogging down his court).
The bummer was that my auto insurer paid the damage claim on both cars.
To followup: the ticket notes that I am being arrested but released under certain conditions. One of those is that I must post bond to guarantee my appearance or cover the fine to the police officer. This is why many auto clubs provide "bond cards" to guarantee payment of the bond if I fail to pay the fine or appear before the court (they also stiffle corrup arresting officers who seek a bribe). In some jurisdictions you can be physically detained (i.e. taken to the jailhouse) if you are incapable of posting bond.
Oh, and if you are removed, you'll get another ticket for illegal parking of your car (unless someone is available to take it away and it isn't siezed as evidence).
I've seen job applications that ask if one has ever been arrested.
In Lake County, Illinois (and a lot of other places, I suppose), when you are ticketed by a police officer, it constitutes an arrest. You are released on your agreement to either (1) admit guilt and accept the court's sentence, (2) pay a fine which results in the criminal charge being expunged (but not you driving record being cleared, obviously), or (3) appear before the court to answer the charge.
Even if you appear before the court and are found not guilty of the traffic violation, you have still been arrested.
Slashdot Mirror
Your father was probably denied surgery because it was a waste of time.
And quite possibly in vain, certainly. But, what one does with one's earnings should be one's own business. Certainly spending them in an attempt to save one's live, even if futile, should not be forbidden. When the state intervenes to purportedly provide health care in the place of one's own resources, it should at least provide as much care as those resources could otherwise have provided.
your dad came to canada because he was too weak to make a go of it in his former country
Agreed. It would take a hell of a person to put Hitler in his place. As I recall, it took a heck of a lot of people who died to get the job done.
However, whatever weakness this may imply is surely erased by the courage demonstrated by virtue of the countless Jews he hid for four years during WWII. I'd consider the balance even as far as moral traits are concerned, but then, I am biased. How many lives have you saved?
He made a good life, enough to put you through school apparently. Or do you think that you paid for that schooling all on your own, you self rightous freeloader
Ah! I was waiting for this retort. It is typical of the Communist. The argument goes something like this: You owe the state your life and your servitude because without the state's help, you would not have schooling, health care, etc. The fallacy lies in that the general reason one can not obtain these without the state's intervention, even if available on an open market, is that the state has taxed one so greatly, as to prevent them for caring for themselves. As for my post-secondary schooling, I paid for it myself. Whatever services I may have had no choice but to receive from the government were most certainly repaid many times over via the hundreds of thousands of dollars I paid in income taxes over the years I lived in Canada.
But, no matter. The Comminist believes that accepting a "benefit" from the state that was originally stolen from one in the first place, indentures one in tax servitude until death.
Sorry, I don't buy that argument.
IT is because of punks and whiners like you that they do WAY to much ofthat.
Another Communist tactic: arguing that objecting to the taking of one's earnings is "whining", with all those negative connotations.
Gotta love all the cowards spouting off anon. Afraid to risk a bit of karma?
And that is my point, the money was taken from him and he died as a result. I do not believe such takings are justified in a free society, regardless of how many lives it might save. That is the state playing at God.
That you do not see that it is immoral to kill by stealing the fruits of one's labour, is very telling of the prevelant Canadian attitude.
If the state takes $X from one, ostensibly for health care, then it is obliged to spend at least $X for such care as is necessary for that indivudual. Amounts more than that are charity and can be disbursed on the basis of greatest effectiveness.
The difference between a state insurer and a private one (which may result in a similar outcome -- clearly not everyone gets the value of their premiums returned) is that one voluntarily choses to share risk with a private insurer, but one has no choice when the state imposes a health care tax burden.
I would not make the charge if I did not have evidence, though it comes from an admitedly biased source: my father was denied abdominal aortic aneurism repair surgery dispite paying into the Canadian health care system for decades (and carrying private insurance before its inception). If he had instead invested that portion of his taxes earmarked for health care in a fund, even at savings account rates, he could have paid for the US$30,000 to US$100,000 cost of that surgery many times over.
Such surgery is not done in Canada for lack of qualified surgeons, AFAIK -- even then the survival rate is about 70%. The government refused to pay for it to be performed in the U.S., citing expense and arguing that the money could save more lives if spent elsewhere.
Hogwash! That's the state playing at God. It is one thing to allocate charity where it might do the most good, but to forcibly impoverish one to death based on the argument that many lives warrant the taking of one is heinous. Might as well have a lottery to kill people for their organs to satisfy the demand -- after all, one can likely harvest sufficient organs from a person to save more lives than the one taken.
It could be argued that it would be "unfair" for the "rich" to "get ahead" of the "poor" when it comes to medical treatment. As offensive as I find the idea that one does not deserve to spend one's legitimate earnings to save one's live, I will note that my father was not rich: He came to Canada as a WWII refugee, and took advantage of ecomonic opportunities to eventually work as an electronic engineer, contributing to many successful Canadian communications satellites (starting with the first), as well as the Shuttle Remote Manipulation System. Starting from nothing, capitalism enabled him to live a middle-class lifestyle.
Today, he'd likely be accepted as a refugee, and have no change to escape the socialist welfare trap.
Take heed: if one has a state-run health insurance program, it should never deliver less justifiable benefits at world market rates than paid for in premiums. To do otherwise is literally taxing one to death.
Well, yes. I am not offering it as a justification, but rather an explanation. I meet many Canadians who ask me "Why does the U.S. do this or that?". And the best answer is "Because they can.".
Granted, the policy or practice in question might be morally bankrupt and corrupt, but that should not surprise: power corrupts, anywhere. Is it so surprising that a powerful nation is afflicted with that particular social disease? I think not.
What is fascinating is the socio-economic engine that give rise to such power in the first place: Capitalism (admitedly currently corrupted to the point where money is buying law). Socialism, as practiced heavily in Canada since the Trudeau era (c. 1970) has been stifling, by comparison. Of course, Canada is not berefit of its own political scandals -- but their scale has been naturally smaller. Again, power corrupts.
The founding fathers recognized the dangers and attempted to (a) divide power between legislative, administrative, and executive branches of government, and (b) empower ordinary citizens to revolt in extremis. Of course, any practice, policy, rule, or constitution can be "hacked" and we see that in the U.S.
But, I see a far greater backlash against government power in the U.S. than I ever saw in Canada, so I have greater hope that Americans can grab their government tiger by the tail.
The bottom line is that I buy into "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" much more than "Peace, order, and good government."
I have no objection to people who voluntarily chose to participate in a communal wealth-redistribution system.
However, I greatly object to people forcing such participation on the non-willing, at the effective point of a gun, to the degree that hard-working Canadians can not save enough money to purchase surgery to save their lives and are abandoned by the Canadian health care system. When one pays more in taxes earmarked for "health care" over a working life than it would cost to fund private insurance that would cover life-saving surgery, and the government denies that surgery, I can only conclude the government is guilty of murder, literally taxing people to death. Those who support the system are, at the very least, accessories to the crime.
As a libertarian forced to chose between the rise of the Christian right in the U.S. and the stench of the Socialist left in Canada (both admittedly odious), I find I can tolerate the right better: at least I can accumulate the funds necessary to escape if necessary, or seek "morally unacceptable" social and care situations outside the country.
Free trade has made it possible for this expat to escape the horrors of Canadian socialism and work legally in the U.S., at least for a while.
I would support any U.S. move to erradicate the socialist disease in Canada or otherwise slow its progression.
Yes, I am a traitor.
Get pissed off all you want. The U.S. does what it does because it can.
I'd been considering Vonage vs. Broadvoice for the longest time. My preference was toward Broadvoice because it was open and would mesh with an Asterisk PBX, but seeing a cheap Moto VT1005 at Fry's one day caused me to give Vonage a go. That was in July, 2004, and I have had their service since. (I still plan to do the Broadvoice/Asterisk thing at some point, and might even keep both providers so as to have a backup). I've been pretty happy with Vonage, though calls to Canada have sometimes been spotty at the Canadian receiving end.
I did not drop my Verizon POTS line, and even kept the international plan I had: calls to Canada were 5 cents a minute instead of 75 cents (ouch!) and the four dollars a month wasn't that much of a big deal. The idea was to keep the POTS like as backup (mostly for 911). I figured I'd save about $60-$80 a month in LD charges and that would easily pay for the VoIP service. I live in (360) and work in (425). Washington intra-state rates are around 11 cents a minute, with a penny discount (whoop-de-freakin'-do) when subscribing to Verizon's international plan. I got a Vonage (425) number to (a) increase my local access area for friends and (b) so as to make calls from work home local to work (not that they care much as long as personal calls aren't excessive).
My setup is a bit unusual. I wanted DSL with a static IP, and no nonsense TOS: I like to sink my own email (thus open port 25 inbound) rather than poll for it (though I have a backup MX pointing to a server provided by my web space hosting company, and fetchmail from there). I pay about $45 a month for Verizon's "Advanced Data Services" ATM VPI/VCI to my ISP, Blarg!, which charges about another $35 a month. It isn't cheap, but I wasn't interested in the "Intarweb", and ISP droids bitchin' if I'd SSH into my own box to admin it remotely. Also, considering the LD savings less the VoIP service costs, about $35 of that $80 is recouperated, so, in effect, I'm paying $45 for 1.5Mx384k DSL and a static IP (I think I can get up to 4 or 5 if I can justify them for the same price) with no TOS headaches. No, I do not run an open SMTP relay.
A plug for Blarg!: they accomodate savvy end users who know what they are doing -- with power comes responsibility.
Hardware-wise, I have an odd setup too: I didn't have a router that would do QoS, so I rolled my own: a cheap Fry's $200 special running Fedora Core 2 derivative with three ethernet ports: one upstream to Blarg, one downstream into the home net, and another downstream into the DMZ, where my VoIP ATA sits. IPTables handle all the firewalling and traffic shaping for me (though trying to shape downstream traffic is always dicey). The box sinks my email and serves public and private (though not sensitive) data. While I have faith in IPtables, and SSL, I have a bit less in Apache. If it ever gets overloaded to the point of not being able to do QoS for VoIP traffic properly, I plan to offload some services. The really secure stuff, of course, is on the home LAN side of things. The uber-secure stuff is not accessible in any way from the public internet, of course (private keys, etc.)
Yes, an SSL or Apache root exploit would be bad (but Apache does not currently run as root, Duh!). So far, this has worked well. Even with all the cruft in the VoIP path, I still get good service.
Eventually, I'd like to run Asterisk on the box, perhaps with a Broadvoice connection, and likely serve private data elsewhere. I have been thinking of retaining the VT1005 (locked to Vonage), and trying to get Asterisk to work with Vonage by sitting "in the middle" of the ISP to ATA path, and spoofing one to the other.
I'd been considering Vonage vs. Broadvoice for the longest time. My preference was toward Broadvoice because it was open and would mesh with an Asterisk PBX, but seeing a cheap Moto VT1005 at Fry's one day caused me to give Vonage a go. That was in July, 2004, and I have had their service since. (I still plan to do the Broadvoice/Asterisk thing at some point, and might even keep both providers so as to have a backup). I've been pretty happy with Vonage, though calls to Canada have sometimes been spotty at the Canadian receiving end. I did not drop my Verizon POTS line, and even kept the international plan I had: calls to Canada were 5 cents a minute instead of 75 cents (ouch!) and the four dollars a month wasn't that much of a big deal. The idea was to keep the POTS like as backup (mostly for 911). I figured I'd save about $60-$80 a month in LD charges and that would easily pay for the VoIP service. I live in (360) and work in (425). Washington intra-state rates are around 11 cents a minute, with a penny discount (whoop-de-freakin'-do) when subscribing to Verizon's international plan. I got a Vonage (425) number to (a) increase my local access area for friends and (b) so as to make calls from work home local to work (not that they care much as long as personal calls aren't excessive). My setup is a bit unusual. I wanted DSL with a static IP, and no nonsense TOS: I like to sink my own email (thus open port 25 inbound) rather than poll for it (though I have a backup MX pointing to a server provided by my web space hosting company, and fetchmail from there). I pay about $45 a month for Verizon's "Advanced Data Services" ATM VPI/VCI to my ISP, Blarg!, which charges about another $35 a month. It isn't cheap, but I wasn't interested in the "Intarweb", and ISP droids bitchin' if I'd SSH into my own box to admin it remotely. Also, considering the LD savings less the VoIP service costs, about $35 of that $80 is recouperated, so, in effect, I'm paying $45 for 1.5Mx384k DSL and a static IP (I think I can get up to 4 or 5 if I can justify them for the same price) with no TOS headaches. No, I do not run an open SMTP relay. A plug for Blarg!: they accomodate savvy end users who know what they are doing -- with power comes responsibility. Hardware-wise, I have an odd setup too: I didn't have a router that would do QoS, so I rolled my own: a cheap Fry's $200 special running Fedora Core 2 derivative with three ethernet ports: one upstream to Blarg, one downstream into the home net, and another downstream into the DMZ, where my VoIP ATA sits. IPTables handle all the firewalling and traffic shaping for me (though trying to shape downstream traffic is always dicey). The box sinks my email and serves public and private (though not sensitive) data. While I have faith in IPtables, and SSL, I have a bit less in Apache. If it ever gets overloaded to the point of not being able to do QoS for VoIP traffic properly, I plan to offload some services. The really secure stuff, of course, is on the home LAN side of things. The uber-secure stuff is not accessible in any way from the public internet, of course (private keys, etc.) Yes, an SSL or Apache root exploit would be bad (but Apache does not currently run as root, Duh!). So far, this has worked well. Even with all the cruft in the VoIP path, I still get good service. Eventually, I'd like to run Asterisk on the box, perhaps with a Broadvoice connection, and likely serve private data elsewhere. I have been thinking of retaining the VT1005 (locked to Vonage), and trying to get Asterisk to work with Vonage by sitting "in the middle" of the ISP to ATA path, and spoofing one to the other.
However, this is easily solved: require the public keys to be signed by an authority trusted to the content providers to ensure that the corresponding private key is secure. This could be the equipment manufacturer, for example.
Content for that customer is encrypted with the corresponding public key. Customers could/would have their equipment's private keys held in escrow by organizations trusted by content providers in the event their only playback device breaks.
This solves all the fair use issues with DRM except the following:
1. Plain text extraction of small segments for review or critique is not possible, because one could reconstruct an unencrypted original out of many such extractions. (Though, widespread distribution of such plaintext on a scale large enough to be noticed might be enough to attract law enforcement).
2. New fair uses not envisioned when the equipment was designed would not necessarily be supported.
(1) can be addressed by excluding such extractions but allowing extraction of reference markers which can be aggregated and which would point to public libraries of content accessable to subscribers at modest rates and with restrictions on number of simultaneous accesses. Copyright would only be granted upon escrow of content with such libraries and a portion of library subscription revenues would be distributed among related copyright holders.
(2) Manufacturers of such DRM devices would be required to provide retrofit software to support new fair uses for a reasonable fee.
(2) is probably the more difficult hurdle, but, while I can see reasonable arguments for DRM, that doesn't mean it should be trivial to get away with DRM on content traditionally distributed with no technical restrictions to fair use exercise. There is probably a compromise position to be sought here.
Quail are eaten and therefore qualify as food (and yes, even eaten by people).
I support a variety of charities throughout the year, but this simple act seams to outdo them all.
'Course I've been dropping 20s into Sally Ann kettles for most of the past week whenever I picked up something at the local supermarket -- using a debit card to pay as usual, and "add a 20 for the bellringer", to get cash back. A couple of times people behind me in line followed suit.
The sight of people with what must have been a couple hundred dollars of groceries in their carts, rushing to get to their cars, completely ignoring this Christmas hallmark, not even dropping a dollar in, was depressing. I guess their credit card debt is strangling them. Rather fitting, perhaps.
Oh yeah, fuck you Target.
You smell real bad today!
Whatever did you eat
to make you reek
in a most disgusting way?
We went to lunch
and drank a bunch
of bottled Christmas cheer!
So the smell you smell
and the sound you hear,
are our fartings of sausage and beer!
Sausage and beer.
Oh, oh... Fartings of sausage and beer!
That's a bit too thin a quote to establish proper context. I continued: "... I may have as a user of copyright material...". Most DRM systems are too rigid to do this.
So a DRM system should for instance make it impossible to modify GPL licensed software without extending the license and the DRM enforcing of its terms to the derivative work!
Well, yes, but not for the reasons in my quote taken a bit out of context: that's a licence holder's right, and not mine. But yes, if the DRM system distributes GPL software, it is perfectly reasonable that it ensures that the GPL applies to derivatives. I don't know how this might be possible, though I can imagine a few ways: you'd need a restricted build and execution environment that included source in binaries built and distributed, and you could only edit source via those binaries. The "reading source from the screen" hole would remain, and printing source would be impossible (except, perhaps, in a multitude of fonts on each page to thwart OCR devices).
Frankly, I think this shows that DRM systems are not practical for distribution and enforcement of GPL material, or anything that is based on unfettered widespread distribution. In fact, the only possible way to have electronic license enforcement would require management of secrets (keys) out of the hands of users and that goes against the spirit of the GPL, IMHO. The cure to GPL violations may well be worse than the dieease.
The problem is that those who do these things are stronger players in the courts. And they've already been using copyright as an excuse not to fix the products they sell you and at the same time to not make the info available that would enable you to fix it youself or hire someone to fix it for you.
The problem here is the uneducated consumer. The market will correct this over time: remember how it used to be that only hackers were even aware of things like viruses, worms, trojans, and spyware? They are starting to become mainstream terms. The same will happen with crippling DRM systems.
What is infuriating is that us geeks immediately see a problem, raise the alarm, and are dismissed as either paranoid, or advancing slippery slope arguments: both when it comes to technical (insecure software) and political (DMCA, P.A.T.R.I.O.T.) issues. Yet, down that slippery slope the masses eventually slide, and don't even notice!
But, eventually someone will notice that when us geeks sound an alarm, it invariably becomes a valid mass concern after a short while. Our alarms will get greater notice as predictive after that. (I hope).
The problem isn't so much DRM, but rather that the consumer is being utterly defrauded about what they are getting for their money.
I have no problems with DRM that would enforce existing rights I may have as a user of copyright material: time shifting, media shifting, lending out media, selling media, etc. - though such a system does not currently exist (it would require communicaton and refutation of keys to authorized playback devices - say 10 simultaneously).
However, such a system must also recognize new rights I may be deemed to have by the courts. If timeshifting, archiving, and media transfer are deemed to not violate copyright, then all existing equipment I have that enforces DRM must be retrofited, at the DRM users' expense, to recognise those rights. Same goes for all other people encumbred by a particular DRM system.
In the past, one would build the device, and then defend that it offers fair use (MPAA v. Sony - Betamax decision). However, today that may be legally impossible (DMCA, and relatively uncrackable DRM). But, on balance, one should be able to petition the court for a preemptive decision on whether a particular use would be fair, and if the existing DRM mechanisms do not support it, they would have to be modified at the DRM users' expense. The idea is that the DRM mechanism is a proxy for the DRM user's rights and so must change as those rights do.
I am not suggesting that this would be an inexpensive undertaking for a DRM user faced with supporting a newly recognized fair use. But, it is a reasonable requirement, in the face of the control they exert.
And all this time I thought it was specific to one dude. Never saw it in any other chatrooms. I guess I don't stay in and chat enough.
The trout gives you away :-)
Oklahoma sucks too much.
Canada is one of them.
Council adviced me that, yes, technically I had been arrested, and yes, it could be made to "go away", legally, if I was found innocent, because of quirks of Illinois traffic law. It would be cheaper to admit guilt, but the record of my arrest would remain.
All that over a legal lane change that resulted in an accident.
I can only assume that I was, in fact, arrested for an alleged moving violation; and that quirks of law could make it as if I hadn't, if I was found innocent at trial.
If I were trying to hide anything, I would not disclose as much as I have. But, I do not wish to get into trouble because of a silly technicality and if a finding of innocence translates into a technical non-arrest for those who care about such things, then that's the hoop through which I will jump.
I would have thought that an alleged charge, or simple ticketing for a moving violation without conviction would have little effect. But, apparently it does.
1. Records of arrests weigh unfavorably in naturalization hearings.
2. Yes.
3. No.
4. No.
5. No.
What I do want is to be able to answer "No", truthfully, if asked if I was ever arrested. Illinois law, at the time, provided for the expunging of arrest records (i.e. it was as if it never happened) in the case of a finding of not guilty of a traffic violation.
To date, I have no arrests, parking, traffic, or other violations on my criminal record, and certainly no convictions. I maintain an excellent credit rating, pay my taxes, obey all laws, and support a variety of charities.
The court does not drop a charge (though it may dismiss a case). The prosecution can drop a charge. It was necessary to be found innocent so the record of my arrest would be expunged. The judge found my desire for a trial quite rational, though it did require the prosecution's agreement to proceed. I'd hardly consider 40 seconds or so to have greatly inconvenienced the court (the caseload was relatively light that day, anyway). While I represented myself, I had obtained the prior advice of legal council (it seamed simple enough that I saw no need to pay my lawyer $200 an hour to sit in court with me plus transportation time).
Given the property and income taxes I pay, I'd be very surprised that it was a net burden to taxpayers. If the arresting officer were concerned about costs, he could have ripped up the ticket the minute I indicated that I would appear to fight it. Besides, unlike the other driver in this case, I have appeared as a witness to support traffic cases against others, when asked by the local constabulary. So, on the whole, I was probably a far greater benefit to the local community than a burden.
Also, it was not a speeding ticket.
The problem, increasingly, are organizations that care if one was "ever charged with a crime of which they were not acquitted" or "ever arrested". Dropped charges do not count.
Where it gets interesting is that I was questioned before I was ticketed. I had signalled a left lane change, verified that I had plenty of room, and started to enter the left-most lane of the highway to make a left hand turn at the next traffic light. The highway was divided, with a grassy median and ditch between the two directions of traffic. Idiot driver in the lane I was entering decided they did not want me in front of them, and tried to overtake me on the left shoulder and median, not realizing that there was no room. Before entering the ditch, the driver swerved back and struck my drivers' side rear quarter panel. At 55 mph, it took some skill to stop the car (the drivers's front wheel having been knocked onto the gravel left of the shoulder), wait for traffic to clear, and pull over to the right shoulder, and wait for the police to investigate the accident.
I took the time to verify that no one in either car was injured, and waited for the police. Witnesses reported the other driver's SUV had swerved all over the road mostly on two wheels and would up in the right ditch.
We were both questioned, and because I admitted making what I believed to be a safe and legal lane change, I was ticketed -- defacto practice is to ticket the driver making a lane change. I accepted the ticket, checked off that I would answer the charge in court, and surrendered my bond card to the officer. My license, proof of insurance, and registration were taken only after questioning, copied to the ticket being written out, and returned to me with the ticket informing me of my arrest, along with insurance information of the other driver. The license plate had already been noted and run.
When the court date arrived, the police officer's only witness (driver of the other car) did not show. I did not want the charge dropped, as the only way to clear the arrest on my record was to defend against it (Illinois had a policy of expunging arrest records of drivers who paid the fine and processing fee or who were found innocent). The judge permitted the trial to proceed but urged expediency. The police officer, myself, and my wife (a witness) were sworn in, the charge (illegal lane change), and my not guilty plea entered. The prosecuting attorney entered the accident report into evidence, asked if I had made a lane change (yes), if I struck another vehicle (no), and how then, do I explain the accident in the report?(The other vehicle struck me). She did not call the officer. My turn. I asked if the officer had seen the accident (no). The prosecuting attorney had no closing arguments. I recounted the events and argued that I had done nothing wrong. The judge found my explanation plausible, and in the absense of evidence to the contrary, found me innocent, ordered that the arrest be cleared from my record, and returned my bond card. All this took about 40 seconds. He was curious why I wanted the trial -- records of arrest were nothing to worry about without convition. I explained that, as a foreigner, who eventually wished to become naturalized some day, it was important to maintain a clean criminal record. I think I heard him curse the INS under his breath, for bogging down his court).
The bummer was that my auto insurer paid the damage claim on both cars.
Oh, and if you are removed, you'll get another ticket for illegal parking of your car (unless someone is available to take it away and it isn't siezed as evidence).
In Lake County, Illinois (and a lot of other places, I suppose), when you are ticketed by a police officer, it constitutes an arrest. You are released on your agreement to either (1) admit guilt and accept the court's sentence, (2) pay a fine which results in the criminal charge being expunged (but not you driving record being cleared, obviously), or (3) appear before the court to answer the charge.
Even if you appear before the court and are found not guilty of the traffic violation, you have still been arrested.