The fact of the matter is because of my skillset I have not had one employeer since I got out check my record and now it is so far in the past I doubt anyone would care.
Another thing one has to consider:
Do you really want to work for a company that bases their hiring decisions on these methods?
If, during an interview, someone asked me to submit to an unwarranted background check (or any drug test) I'd simply thank them for their time and leave.
It's an employee's market, you can afford to shop around, and don't let anyone tell you differently.
Why, oh why, can't the credit reporting agencies be sued for slander?
I don't know what the law is in the US, but in Canada, you seem get a lot of wheels greased if you mention the words "libel" and "lawyer" in the same sentence when an entity makes a false allegation based on the information they have on file...
I tried to get off their spam list by unsubscribing. After three "this user is not on this mailing list" replies, a note to their upstream provider got the job done quickly...
So with this "new" "anti-piracy" code, instead of just borrowing a friend's CD and putting the OS into your machine, you'll have to find a friend who has a copy of the OEM image, or hit the warez sites, or fire up Hotline...etc.
Or, if some types are really industrious, they may be able to go to a cracker-run "clearinghouse" to get the copy activated.
Like most "anti-piracy" initiatives (in software and in music) this one is probably designed to keep up appearances and keep the lamers from copying at will. Anyone with half a brain will be able to defeat it...
Then again, anyone with half a brain will probably not be using Whistler.
Re:The war on drugs has always been a joke.
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 1
The best book on the absurdity of consensual crime is Peter McWilliam's "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do."
"Freely traverse" the border?
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 1
(The movie points out that once NAFTA takes full effect, Mexican trucks will be able to enter the U.S. as freely as they traverse their own country, and any pretense of halting drugs at the border will be gone).
I highly doubt this, unless "as freely as they traverse their own contry" means that the Federales can inspect them at any time.
Anyway, aside from that I plan on seeing this movie soon. Maybe someday people will wake up and realize that this stupid policy needs to go.
Until then, I'll probably stay in Canada, where you can actually walk down the street minding your own business and smoking a (technically illegal) joint without having the SWAT team appear...well, most urban places anyway.:)
Here's what I propose: EVERYONE gets a cable into their home. Zero monthly fee. Nada, zip. Don't turn the TV on and you never pay a penny. What happens instead? The cable provider instead acts like a library, but with user fees.
As much as I don't like this copy protection proposal, I can see where a system like this would work.
Of course, it would probably ensure that I would never own a TV, and that I really wanted to see something -- like a hockey game -- I would just head out to a bar...like I usually end up doing anyway when the playoffs are on.
Of coruse there would be hacks, but I probably wouldn't get one for the same reason that I never bought the hacked cable box or DSS dish that some acquaintances always offered to get me: it's only going to work for so long, and most of the pay-tv channels that are on (including PPV) show the same shit over and over and over...
And hey, maybe limited access to TV and/or cheapness would make people more social, which might be a good thing. I can remember as a kid my parents' "All in the Family" parties because they could get CBS on their cable system, and their friends across town couldn't. (This was in Montreal.)
What I'd really like to see is a version of the talking fish that was controlled by a remote microphone, and with software that controlled the head and mouth automatically whenever a person was speaking into the microphone.
New from Ronco! It's the Mr. Fish-a-Phone!
"Hey, good lookin' -- we'll swim back to pick you up later!"
Do you really think that a 6 year old child know what a pledge of allegiance is? It's just something that they memorize and repeat.
My mom grew up in Detroit, and had to rattle that one off every morning at school too. She tells me she didn't know what it meant, but then again, she also didn't speak Latin, and at the time Catholic Mass was conducted mostly in that language...
I guess since religion is outlawed in public schools, they have to have some kind of replacement meaningless ritualistic behaviour...
Since many people rent (including a large percentage of the posters here), reduction in sales tax revenue *must* result in large and disproportionate increases in property taxes, while renters end up paying less and less of the total burden to provide those services.
Is that fair?
ROTFL...
Do you know what you're talking about? You seem to think that renters don't pay property tax.
FYI, A good portion of rent paid IS property tax.
What, do you think landlords pay it out their pockets, out of the goodness of their hearts?
I was a child "prodigy," though probably not to the level of this child. However, I started to rebel because I started to be told how much potential I had.
*shudder* I agree wholeheartedley.
I've been hearing that since kindergarten, and it's because of crap like the p-word that I actively fought school board bureaucracy to get removed from "gifted" classes later on.
What a lot of parents and others don't realize that is that when they say this to kids, they're usually thinking of potential from their perspective. (I liken it to telling an anarchist that they have the potential to make a great politician.)
Encourage the kid, give him/her your time, your support, make the resources to learn properly available, and perhaps most importantly, don't get all upset if, a few years from now, this 'prodigy' decides to turn away from technology and become a poet, or something.
Without Can-con there would be no Barenaked Ladies, No Celine Dion, No Bryan Adams, in fact there would be no uniquely Canadian bands out there as they would all go to the US to "Make it".
I'd be sad if there were no Ladies, but the last two bands I could do without.:)
But...the reality is, BNL didn't really achieve their present success because of cancon. They toured their asses off in the US for years and developed a word-of-mouth and online fanbase before they finally got American recognition (which, like it or not, is the benchmark of success). Up here, some of us were fans from the beginning (I'm from Scarborough...it's in the blood) but a lot of people (unfairly) looked down on them because they got their airplay through cancon quotas.
And before you say that I don't know what I'm talking about, I spent 4+ years in radio (college and commercial) and I'm intimately familiar with the kind of crap that happens when there is a government-imposed quota system put on artists. Campus and independent pre-edge alternative radio -- that play cancon for it's own sake -- have done a hell of a lot more for quality Canadian bands than any quota requirements ever did.
On the other hand, we're paying a CD-R tax to give to Canadian recording artists.
I hate the levy ("it's not a tax, it's a levy," as a friend who wrote Shelia Copps about this was told..ha) but as I pay cents per CD-R (yeah, it's for computer equipment, not audio, you know) it's not much of an issue.
However, in exchange for the tax, you can make legal private copies of copyrighted works, according to this site:
"Until Parliament enacted An Act to amend the Copyright Act (Bill C-32), individuals who made copies of sound recordings of musical works for private use were liable to be found to have infringed copyright. Studies showed that the private copying of sound recordings was a widespread practice resulting in losses to copyright holders (composers, authors, performers and producers) in terms of lost sales of such sound recordings. The private copying provisions of Bill C-32, adopted in April 1997, changed this.
The provisions, brought into force on March 19, 1998, essentially legalize the copying of sound recordings by individuals for private use, but in return establish a levy to compensate copyright holders."
So burn away, but remember that the levy applies to all CD-R media, and the money is doled out based on who makes the most in record sales (it is NOT split evenly amongst all artists). As as a friend of mine once pointed out, for every Linux distro that you burn, Celine Dion gets a penny.
I don't know where you went to school, but stuff like that certainly showed up on a couple friends transricpts when they applied for college.
A transcript, IIRC, is just that: a transcription of marks. An acedemic record, OTOH, has the juicy stuff.
My transcript was just course names and numbers, and while come places I applied to required "supplementary applications" (eg. 500 word essay on why you want to go to university), I've never heard of any place refusing entry to anyone, except on the basis of low standing.
It burns me that we were brought up all through school with the stick that is the infamous "permanent record" held over us, only to find out it was made of balsa wood.
It's just a tricolour. I've never seen a harp anywhere. Coat of arms, maybe...or have they changed the standard recently?
Now I know why ICraveTV was shut down...
on
No Streams for You!
·
· Score: 1
I've been reading some reports that, thanks to NBC's time delay scheme, a lot of border towns like Detroit and Buffalo will be tuning into CBC's live coverage instead.
Now, if IcraveTV was still operating, just think of the Olympics viewership NBC would lose to others who can't pick up the terrestrial signals...
Whenever I have to give personal information, I just fill in the form with bullshit -- I like to call myself "Pr. Nonnof YURBIZNESS" and my phone number comprises an astonishing number of "69".
My choice MungeData is the main mail address of the state broadcaster which has been hammered into my head since birth (Box 500, Station "A" Toronto ON M5W 1E6) and the phone number of the local pizza conglomerate (416-967-1111). For American sites, it's the number you write to for tickets to my favourite game show (7800 Beverley Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90036) and the number for the White House (202-456-1414)
Now, what I wonder is if Bill ever got a call from a telemarketer asking for Bob Barker...
>Clinton now has first presidential post! I bet >this pisses off Al Gore immensely >him "inventing" the internet and all).
You should have seen the IRC transcript:
*** Connecting to irc.whitehouse.gov (6667) - PING? PONG! - Welcome to the Internet Relay Network mediahack Your host is irc.whitehouse.gov, running version u2.10.06.0 This server was created Sat Sep 11 1999 at 19:29:04 EDT irc.whitehouse.gov u2.10.06.0 dioswkg biklmnopstv - There are 281 users and 89 spooks on 10 servers 3 operator(s) online 156 channels formed I have 15 clients and 2 servers - -irc.whitehouse.gov- Highest connection count: 151 (148 clients) - Message of the Day, irc.whitehouse.gov - -THE WHITE HOUSE -Office of the Press Secretary -(Santa Monica, California) - -Don't miss it! June 24, 2000 - -REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT -IN FIRST INTERNET ADDRESS - -in #pressconference - - PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE - - * Bots are absolutely not permitted on this server under any - circumstances; failure to follow this rule will result in a - visit to your house by the Secret Service. - End of/MOTD command. - -irc.whitehouse.gov- on 1 ca 1(2) ft 10(10) -
/join #pressconference
*** Now talking in #pressconference *** Topic is *** Set by presssecretary on Mon Jun 24 12:16:16
***PrEzIdEnT has joined #pressconference
/whois PrEzIdEnT
PrEzIdEnT is president@whitehouse.gov * Bill Clinton PrEzIdEnT on #pressconference #internsexpics #ms-warez #!!!monica PrEzIdEnT using irc.whitehouse.gov The White House PrEzIdEnT has been idle 10 secs, signed on Sat Jun 24 15:00:06
Good morning, D()()DZ. Here in America, a revolution in technology is underway.
It is more than a time of innovation, it's a time of fundamental...oh, BTW anyone here have a crack for Win2K? DCC me if you do..sorry, yeah, transformation, the kind that happens, at most, every hundred years.
Today, in my first Saturday IRC chat, I'd like to speak to you about how we can seize the potential of this information revolution to widen the circle of our democracy and make our government much more responsive to the needs of our citizens, like responding to their needs for a government warez site. (I wish. Damn lawyers.)
Early in our history, people often had only one option when they needed the help of the national government. They had to visit a government office and stand in line. Indeed, as Vice President Gore has pointed out, after the Civil War the only way our veterans could collect their pensions was by traveling all the way to Washington. D.C. and waiting for a clerk to dig out their war records. Those war records were actually bound in red tape. That gave rise to the universal symbol of bureaucratic delay that has existed down to the present day. Now, disgruntled government employees, like postal workers, just shoot government bureaucrats. But folks, that's another chat...
Thankfully, things have gotten a lot easier for citizens over the years. In recent years, advances in computing and information technology have led to remarkable gains. Now, the government comes to you: after all, where else are we going to get our money? Taxes? Naw, we'll just accuse you of a drug crime and whether you're guilty or not, well get your property through forfeiture "laws."
Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have greatly expanded the spread of information technology throughout the government, cutting reams of red tape, putting vast resources at the fingertips of all of our citizens, and making privacy a thing of the past.
Citizens now are using government websites to file their taxes, compare their Medicare options, apply for student loans, and find good jobs. They're tapping into the latest health research, and browsing vast collections in the Library of Congress, and following along with NASA's missions in outer space. This is just the beginning. What they don't know is that my team at the NSA has been keeping track of everything they do, legal and illegal.
Today I'm pleased to announce several major steps in our efforts to go forward in creating a high-speed, high-tech, user-friendly government, just like Microsoft Windows, and about as reliable too. First, we're going to give our citizens a single, customer-focused website where they can find every on-line resource offered by the federal government. (Never mind that Canada did this five years ago...the dogsleds don't run all that often, you know, and we're only getting around to stealing their idea now.)
This new website, fistglove.gov -- oops, nope, that's one of Hillary's fetish sites, er, I mean FIRSTGOV.GOV, will be created at no cost to the government by a team led by Eric Brewer, who developed one of the most successful Internet search technologies with the help of government grants. In the spirit of cutting through red tape, this new website will be created in 90 days or less. And boy, it will show. It will uphold the highest standards for protecting the privacy of its users, ie. none.
When it's complete, firstgov will serve as a single point of entry to one of the largest, perhaps the most useful collection of web pages in the entire world, rivalled only by microsoft.com. Whether you want crucial information in starting a small business, or you want to track your Social Security benefits, you can do it all in one place, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And hackers, since we're using secure servers, don't you even think about breaking in and finding out stuff you shouldn't, like Chelsea's Napster listings or her ICQ number.
Second, now that we're poised to create one-stop shopping for government services, we'll also greatly expand the scope of those services. Increasingly, we'll give our citizens not only the ability to send and receive information, but also to conduct sophisticated transactions on-line. We're also working with the FBI and the NSF to develop a 1,000,000 volt charge sent through IP packets to make law enforcement's job easier, through a "virtual online (cardiac) arrest", something our boys in blue like to call a "sting" operation. LOL!
For example, this year the federal government will award about $300 billion in grants, and buy $200 billion in goods and services, and piss away the rest on stuff like defence spending and settling my lawsuits. Over the coming year, we will make it possible for people to go on-line and compete for these grants and contracts through a simplified electronic process. Moving this enormous volume of business on-line will save a great deal of money and time for our taxpayers. It will also expand opportunities for community groups, small businesses, and citizens who never before have had a chance to show what they can do. Trust me, we'll be watching you too.
Third, in conjunction with the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government (ROTFL..."excellence in government!" What an oxymoron...), we're launching a major competition to spur new innovative ideas for how government can serve and connect with our citizens electronically. The Council will award up to $50,000 to those students, researchers, private sector workers or government employees who present the most creative ideas, and line the right pockets.
In the early years of our republic, Thomas Jefferson said, "America's institutions must move forward hand in hand with the progress of the human mind." Well, today, the progress of the human mind is certainly racing forward at break-neck speed.
If he was alive today, he would probably want to see me hang by the neck until it breaks, heh heh...but he isn't, so fuck him, and fuck liberty.
If we work together, we can ensure that our democratic institutions keep pace. With your help, we can build a more perfect, more responsive democracy for the Information Age, where the government isn't just looking in your window, but is right in your computer room, watching you jerk off to online porn.
Slashdot Mirror
And then:
All times are Eastern Standard Time in the United States,
Um....I always thought ISO format implied UTC.
(BTW, lameness filters suck.)
Heh. I read that article about SF ISPs being gobbled up. I got thinking, "hey, that sounds familiar, only it happened here five years ago!"
A really good article about the demise of io.org can be found here.And another version of the story is available here.
Another thing one has to consider:
Do you really want to work for a company that bases their hiring decisions on these methods?
If, during an interview, someone asked me to submit to an unwarranted background check (or any drug test) I'd simply thank them for their time and leave.
It's an employee's market, you can afford to shop around, and don't let anyone tell you differently.
I don't know what the law is in the US, but in Canada, you seem get a lot of wheels greased if you mention the words "libel" and "lawyer" in the same sentence when an entity makes a false allegation based on the information they have on file...
Or, if some types are really industrious, they may be able to go to a cracker-run "clearinghouse" to get the copy activated.
Like most "anti-piracy" initiatives (in software and in music) this one is probably designed to keep up appearances and keep the lamers from copying at will. Anyone with half a brain will be able to defeat it...
Then again, anyone with half a brain will probably not be using Whistler.
And what's more absurd is how the government ended up killing him by denying him medicine.
I'm still quite pissed off about that.
I highly doubt this, unless "as freely as they traverse their own contry" means that the Federales can inspect them at any time.
Anyway, aside from that I plan on seeing this movie soon. Maybe someday people will wake up and realize that this stupid policy needs to go.
Until then, I'll probably stay in Canada, where you can actually walk down the street minding your own business and smoking a (technically illegal) joint without having the SWAT team appear...well, most urban places anyway. :)
Arrgh, fix your sig! Is this an accident, or are you just trying to distinguish yourself from WB8FOZ? :)
As much as I don't like this copy protection proposal, I can see where a system like this would work.
Of course, it would probably ensure that I would never own a TV, and that I really wanted to see something -- like a hockey game -- I would just head out to a bar...like I usually end up doing anyway when the playoffs are on.
Of coruse there would be hacks, but I probably wouldn't get one for the same reason that I never bought the hacked cable box or DSS dish that some acquaintances always offered to get me: it's only going to work for so long, and most of the pay-tv channels that are on (including PPV) show the same shit over and over and over...
And hey, maybe limited access to TV and/or cheapness would make people more social, which might be a good thing. I can remember as a kid my parents' "All in the Family" parties because they could get CBS on their cable system, and their friends across town couldn't. (This was in Montreal.)
New from Ronco! It's the Mr. Fish-a-Phone!
"Hey, good lookin' -- we'll swim back to pick you up later!"
My mom grew up in Detroit, and had to rattle that one off every morning at school too. She tells me she didn't know what it meant, but then again, she also didn't speak Latin, and at the time Catholic Mass was conducted mostly in that language...
I guess since religion is outlawed in public schools, they have to have some kind of replacement meaningless ritualistic behaviour...
Is that fair?
ROTFL...
Do you know what you're talking about? You seem to think that renters don't pay property tax.
FYI, A good portion of rent paid IS property tax.
What, do you think landlords pay it out their pockets, out of the goodness of their hearts?
*shudder* I agree wholeheartedley.
I've been hearing that since kindergarten, and it's because of crap like the p-word that I actively fought school board bureaucracy to get removed from "gifted" classes later on.
What a lot of parents and others don't realize that is that when they say this to kids, they're usually thinking of potential from their perspective. (I liken it to telling an anarchist that they have the potential to make a great politician.)
Encourage the kid, give him/her your time, your support, make the resources to learn properly available, and perhaps most importantly, don't get all upset if, a few years from now, this 'prodigy' decides to turn away from technology and become a poet, or something.
I'd be sad if there were no Ladies, but the last two bands I could do without. :)
But...the reality is, BNL didn't really achieve their present success because of cancon. They toured their asses off in the US for years and developed a word-of-mouth and online fanbase before they finally got American recognition (which, like it or not, is the benchmark of success). Up here, some of us were fans from the beginning (I'm from Scarborough...it's in the blood) but a lot of people (unfairly) looked down on them because they got their airplay through cancon quotas.
And before you say that I don't know what I'm talking about, I spent 4+ years in radio (college and commercial) and I'm intimately familiar with the kind of crap that happens when there is a government-imposed quota system put on artists. Campus and independent pre-edge alternative radio -- that play cancon for it's own sake -- have done a hell of a lot more for quality Canadian bands than any quota requirements ever did.
Don't you worry, I'm sure there's a room somewhere in Fort Meade with a tape of every post dating back to the very beginning...
I hate the levy ("it's not a tax, it's a levy," as a friend who wrote Shelia Copps about this was told..ha) but as I pay cents per CD-R (yeah, it's for computer equipment, not audio, you know) it's not much of an issue.
However, in exchange for the tax, you can make legal private copies of copyrighted works, according to this site:
"Until Parliament enacted An Act to amend the Copyright Act (Bill C-32), individuals who made copies of sound recordings of musical works for private use were liable to be found to have infringed copyright. Studies showed that the private copying of sound recordings was a widespread practice resulting in losses to copyright holders (composers, authors, performers and producers) in terms of lost sales of such sound recordings. The private copying provisions of Bill C-32, adopted in April 1997, changed this. The provisions, brought into force on March 19, 1998, essentially legalize the copying of sound recordings by individuals for private use, but in return establish a levy to compensate copyright holders."
So burn away, but remember that the levy applies to all CD-R media, and the money is doled out based on who makes the most in record sales (it is NOT split evenly amongst all artists). As as a friend of mine once pointed out, for every Linux distro that you burn, Celine Dion gets a penny.
A transcript, IIRC, is just that: a transcription of marks. An acedemic record, OTOH, has the juicy stuff.
My transcript was just course names and numbers, and while come places I applied to required "supplementary applications" (eg. 500 word essay on why you want to go to university), I've never heard of any place refusing entry to anyone, except on the basis of low standing.
It burns me that we were brought up all through school with the stick that is the infamous "permanent record" held over us, only to find out it was made of balsa wood.
It's just a tricolour. I've never seen a harp anywhere. Coat of arms, maybe...or have they changed the standard recently?
I've been reading some reports that, thanks to NBC's time delay scheme, a lot of border towns like Detroit and Buffalo will be tuning into CBC's live coverage instead. Now, if IcraveTV was still operating, just think of the Olympics viewership NBC would lose to others who can't pick up the terrestrial signals...
My choice MungeData is the main mail address of the state broadcaster which has been hammered into my head since birth (Box 500, Station "A" Toronto ON M5W 1E6) and the phone number of the local pizza conglomerate (416-967-1111). For American sites, it's the number you write to for tickets to my favourite game show (7800 Beverley Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90036) and the number for the White House (202-456-1414)
Now, what I wonder is if Bill ever got a call from a telemarketer asking for Bob Barker...
Free?
Apparently you don't remember 1993, my friend.
I encounter a lot of people on a daily basis who are either grossly misinformed or genuinely ignornant of how cannabis became illegal in the US.
What's my canned response? "Go read the Whitebread Speech." It's opened a lot of eyes.
>Clinton now has first presidential post! I bet >this pisses off Al Gore immensely >him "inventing" the internet and all).
/MOTD command.
You should have seen the IRC transcript:
*** Connecting to irc.whitehouse.gov (6667)
-
PING? PONG!
-
Welcome to the Internet Relay Network mediahack
Your host is irc.whitehouse.gov, running version u2.10.06.0
This server was created Sat Sep 11 1999 at 19:29:04 EDT
irc.whitehouse.gov u2.10.06.0 dioswkg biklmnopstv
-
There are 281 users and 89 spooks on 10 servers
3 operator(s) online
156 channels formed
I have 15 clients and 2 servers
-
-irc.whitehouse.gov- Highest connection count: 151 (148 clients)
-
Message of the Day, irc.whitehouse.gov
-
-THE WHITE HOUSE
-Office of the Press Secretary
-(Santa Monica, California)
-
-Don't miss it! June 24, 2000
-
-REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
-IN FIRST INTERNET ADDRESS
-
-in #pressconference
-
- PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE PLEASE NOTE
-
- * Bots are absolutely not permitted on this server under any
- circumstances; failure to follow this rule will result in a
- visit to your house by the Secret Service.
-
End of
-
-irc.whitehouse.gov- on 1 ca 1(2) ft 10(10)
-
/join #pressconference
*** Now talking in #pressconference
*** Topic is
*** Set by presssecretary on Mon Jun 24 12:16:16
***PrEzIdEnT has joined #pressconference
/whois PrEzIdEnT
PrEzIdEnT is president@whitehouse.gov * Bill Clinton
PrEzIdEnT on #pressconference #internsexpics #ms-warez #!!!monica
PrEzIdEnT using irc.whitehouse.gov The White House
PrEzIdEnT has been idle 10 secs, signed on Sat Jun 24 15:00:06
Good morning, D()()DZ. Here in America, a revolution in technology is underway.
It is more than a time of innovation, it's a time of fundamental...oh, BTW anyone here have a
crack for Win2K? DCC me if you do..sorry, yeah, transformation, the kind that happens, at most, every hundred years.
Today, in my first Saturday IRC chat, I'd like to speak to you about how we can seize the potential
of this information revolution to widen the circle of our democracy and make our government much more
responsive to the needs of our citizens, like responding to their needs for a government warez site. (I wish. Damn lawyers.)
Early in our history, people often had only one option when they needed the help of the national
government. They had to visit a government office and stand in line. Indeed, as Vice President Gore has pointed out, after the Civil War the only way our veterans could collect their pensions was by traveling all the way to Washington. D.C. and waiting for a clerk to dig out their war records. Those war records were actually bound in red tape. That gave rise to the universal symbol of bureaucratic delay that has existed down to the present day. Now, disgruntled government employees, like postal workers, just shoot government bureaucrats. But folks, that's another chat...
Thankfully, things have gotten a lot easier for citizens over the years. In recent years, advances in computing and information technology have led to remarkable gains. Now, the government comes to you: after all, where else are we going to get our money? Taxes? Naw, we'll just accuse you of a drug crime and whether you're guilty or not, well get your property through forfeiture "laws."
Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have greatly expanded the spread of information technology throughout the government, cutting reams of red tape, putting vast resources at the fingertips of all of our citizens, and making privacy a thing of the past.
Citizens now are using government websites to file their taxes, compare their Medicare options, apply for student loans, and find good jobs. They're tapping into the latest health research, and browsing vast collections in the Library of Congress, and following along with NASA's missions in outer space. This is just the beginning. What they don't know is that my team at the NSA has been keeping track of everything they do, legal and illegal.
Today I'm pleased to announce several major steps in our efforts to go forward in creating a high-speed, high-tech, user-friendly government, just like Microsoft Windows, and about as reliable too. First, we're going to give our citizens a single, customer-focused website where they can find every on-line resource offered by the federal government.
(Never mind that Canada did this five years ago...the dogsleds don't run all that often, you know, and we're only getting around to stealing their idea now.)
This new website, fistglove.gov -- oops, nope, that's one of Hillary's fetish sites, er, I mean FIRSTGOV.GOV, will be created at no cost to the government by a team led by Eric Brewer, who developed one of the most successful Internet search technologies with the help of government grants. In the spirit of cutting through red tape, this new website will be created in 90 days or less. And boy, it will show. It will uphold the highest standards for protecting the privacy of its users, ie. none.
When it's complete, firstgov will serve as a single point of entry to one of the largest, perhaps the most useful collection of web pages in the entire world, rivalled only by microsoft.com. Whether you want crucial information in starting a small business, or you want to track your Social Security benefits, you can do it all in one place, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And hackers, since we're using secure servers, don't you even think about breaking in and finding out stuff you shouldn't, like Chelsea's Napster listings or her ICQ number.
Second, now that we're poised to create one-stop shopping for government services, we'll also greatly expand the scope of those services. Increasingly, we'll give our citizens not only the ability to send and receive information, but also to conduct sophisticated transactions on-line. We're also working with the FBI and the NSF to develop a 1,000,000 volt charge sent through IP packets to make law enforcement's job easier, through a "virtual online (cardiac) arrest", something our boys in blue like to call a "sting" operation. LOL!
For example, this year the federal government will award about $300 billion in grants, and buy $200 billion in goods and services, and piss away the rest on stuff like defence spending and settling my lawsuits. Over the coming year, we will make it possible for people to go on-line and compete for these grants and contracts through a simplified electronic process. Moving this enormous volume of business on-line will save a great deal of money and time for our taxpayers. It will also expand opportunities for community groups, small businesses, and citizens who never before have had a chance to show what they can do. Trust me, we'll be watching you too.
Third, in conjunction with the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government (ROTFL..."excellence in government!" What an oxymoron...), we're launching a major competition to spur new innovative ideas for how government can serve and connect with our citizens electronically. The Council will award up to $50,000 to those students, researchers, private sector workers or government employees who present the most creative ideas, and line the right pockets.
In the early years of our republic, Thomas Jefferson said, "America's institutions must move forward hand in hand with the progress of the human mind." Well, today, the progress of the human mind is certainly racing forward at break-neck speed.
If he was alive today, he would probably want to see me hang by the neck until it breaks, heh heh...but he isn't, so fuck him, and fuck liberty.
If we work together, we can ensure that our democratic institutions keep pace. With your help, we can build a more perfect, more responsive democracy for the Information Age, where the government isn't just looking in your window, but is right in your computer room, watching you jerk off to online porn.
Thanks for listening. TTYL.
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