I just read your brief. Aside from what appears to be somebody getting a touch carried away with commas, I like it. It's clear, succinct, and doesn't suffer from the customary affliction of being utterly unreadable. It's always nice to read briefs written by attorneys who didn't lose their ability to convey information via text upon passing the bar exam.;)
I've had my own difficulties with Cisco TAC (like them giving me configuration lines that just plain don't work; you'd think that after taking a week to get back to you they'd at least make sure the syntax was right), but yours seem to take the cake. Just a quick question--how did you get a job setting up this Cisco kit without having any knowledge of their products?
BTW, it's probably a good thing you never got that IOS upgrade. PIXen run on PIX OS. Cisco's routers and switches are the ones that use IOS.;)
One of the realities of life is that there is no immutable link between fault and responsibility.
Whether I slip on the ice and break my leg or my home is destroyed by an Act of God, I still have to deal with the fallout. It's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. I've chosen to mitigate some of that risk by purchasing health and homeowner's insurance, but if I haven't and something happens, the only person responsible for the consequences is me.
If you're 12, you have little responsibility. When you become an adult you'll bear full responsibility for your actions, as well as any number of actions that can impact your life. The idea that you can protect people against all possible bad things that may happen to them is frightening, both because it's not possible, and because in doing so you deny them the opportunity to take full responsibility for themselves and grow into strong, healthy, confident adults. There are also serious implications for personal freedom that are conveniently swept under the rug in the interests of "greater safety and security".
As a 12 year old living in a situation you don't like, the best possible thing you can do is get very close to it. Look at it from all angles. See how the people around you got there, and why it is they can't seem to get out. Do they not want to get out? Is it a lack of opportunity? Are there third parties keeping them there?
Look at it from each of those angles, and decide that you NEVER want to live like that again. When you become an adult, see to it that you do not. The lessons you'll have learned by being poor are priceless, and while you're working your way up, you'll have an advantage over the people who are your new socio-economic peers.
While they're unable to manage without having steak 3 nights a week, you'll be having steak 1 night a week, a slice of Cabot 2 others (a step up from your current Velveeta), and will be able to put the extra money into your savings or investment accounts.
You'll never get rich if you try to live the way some rich people do. You simply can't afford to wear $2,000 suits and eat $100 meals every night. If you want to get to the point where you can, you need to start saving now. The skills you've learned while poor in how to get by with less will hold you in good stead for the rest of your life.
Take advantage of this opportunity while you've got it. You may not always be poor.;)
You're joking. There are plenty of reasons to dislike any political party, but the ones postulated therein are largely hogwash.
Really, criticizing the President for holding lots of T-Bills? It's practically the only investment he can hold which is completely free from any potential conflict of interest. Any domestic decision he makes can be seen as favouring some group, and holding stock makes it politically dangerous to make any decisions that may help a company whose stock he holds, regardless of merit. The left has been on Cheney's case for his connections to Halliburton with all kinds of righteous fury. Do you think it would be different if Bush was holding stock in American Airlines, Ford, or Microsoft?
Hell, at least he's buying stock in our government. The contension that he's making a mess of the deficit (and he IS:) because he stands to personally profit from his T-Bills is ludicrous. Much of the rest of that page is about as well thought-through.
Come on, people. There are good reasons for holding any number of various (and conflicting) political beliefs, but at least take the time to find them so you don't look like a moron in public.
Why do you assume that handouts and redistributionist policies are in the interests of poor and uneducated people?
There's tons of propaganda coming from the left that says such policies help poor people. The right's answer to this seems to be "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We won't give you a handout, but we also won't drag you down.".
If these people are used to working hard and living close to the land, they may prefer less government interference in their lives, even if that interference comes by way of a handout. I'm not about to fault them for that. Why are you?
I agree. I think it's important for us to be aware of what we're doing to ourselves.
I'd be in favour of some sort of "amnesty" programme as well, but worded more like a statute of limitations. If somebody's been in this country a decade and we haven't given a damn until now, I think it's a bit sketchy to suddenly throw him out.
What I would probably suggest is to lock down the borders. If you've been in for 7 years (you'd have to prove it), go to your local Federal building and apply for permanent residency status (which would be rubber-stamped). I'd give people say, 6 months from the date the bill became law to do this. From that point forward, if you're caught and found to be illegal, you get deported.
A convincing case could be made that rather than the 7 year thing I threw out, it should be "If you're in the country effective the date the border lockdown happens" or somesuch. The details would have to be worked out, but I think the general idea is solid. This would answer most of the complaints of people saying that the illegals have been productive members of society for a decade and shouldn't be thrown out over paperwork, as well as set a precedent that you need to respect our legal process if you want to come to our country.
It's not exactly unheard of for cops to pull over out-of-staters and write ridiculous tickets, knowing that if you live 8 states away it's considerably less expensive to pay whatever bogus ticket he wrote you than to take the days off work and pay for the travel to contest the ticket in their local court.
Why _SHOULDN'T_ we? Are illegal immigrants somehow less human than you? Should they sit in the back of the bus too?
Being human doesn't give someone the right to enter any country he pleases. Regardless of whether you like the immigration system this country uses or not, people who come here illegally show a flagrant disregard for our laws. I agree that the appropriate response to this is to deport them.
If you think the immigration laws should be changed, fine. There's a good chance I might even agree with you upon further inspection of the current system. Sanctioning people who break the law on their very entrance to our country because it's "easier" is absurd.
That last bit describes me to a T. Depending on my mood I'll turn up slight preferences ranging from ENFP to INTJ. I'd pretty much written off the Meyers-Briggs test after seeing such varied results, but perhaps you're right and I'm just a nutcase.
Your comment about having both the strengths -and- weaknesses of both hit me pretty hard, though. I'll have to think on that more. Thank you.:)
If you're spending lots on new hardware, see if you can wring more life out of the old stuff. If you're spending lots on software upgrades, see if you can hold off on a cycle. If you're spending lots on bandwidth, shop for a new provider that may get you a better rate. If you're spending a bunch on outside consultants, put together some numbers showing how much cheaper it would be to do that work yourself.
Maybe you've got excess server horsepower and could get more use out of what you have by switching to thin clients (and get off the PC upgrade treadmill). Maybe your management will be more receptive to Free solutions now that money's tight. Maybe I'm rambling on without enough information to go on.
Without knowing where the bulk of your costs are, it's damned-near impossible to give you any decent advice on cost-cutting.
You're right about a primary use of a firearm being to kill things (If I was in a pedantic mood today I might point out that the true purpose is to hurl a gob of metal really fast;). Even in the examples I listed of firearms used as tools, they were still used for killing things. The part that I think is missing is that sometimes you -need- to kill things. The examples I gave of regular firearms use as necessary are prime examples of this. Many people today view killing as a horrid and detestable thing, without stopping to think about where the meat and poultry they bought at the local grocery store came from. I view the increasing disconnect between "civilised" people and the natural world as a very scary thing. Killing is part of nature. Pretending to be above nature strikes me as hubris of the worst kind. [/soapbox];)
In the case of a government confiscation of firearms, the first action of some of gun owners would be to stuff them in watertight containers and bury them in locations which would be difficult to find. There are many large national parks which would prove ideal for this, and the government has been so kind as to publish the manuals that teach our armed forces how to do this exact thing.:)
The question of whether a violent uprising would stand a chance against a modern military, while interesting, is immaterial. What do you think the public reaction would be the first time a US city was carpet-bombed, or a town attacked by cruise missiles? Historically, when uprisings or civil wars have taken place, the military has divided based on soldiers' and officers' individual beliefs. It would not be easy to throw the full weight of the US military against US citizens on US soil. The folks who enlist do so with the understanding and oath of protecting the United States and her citizens. If the military were to be directed on the citizenry, morale would shatter and desertions would reach record highs. What would concern me more is the arming up of SWAT and various elite police forces. They're trained to shoot american civilians and got their jobs knowing full-well that it may be required. Their numbers are much smaller and their armaments less powerful, though, which is a pretty substantial mitigating factor.
I don't own any firearms either, by the way, but I do support the right to do so. It's always a pleasure to have a rational discussion with someone that doesn't devolve to namecalling. Cheers:)
Gun registration has historically been a precursor to outright bans and confiscation in many countries. If the government doesn't know you've got firearms, they can't take them away. Sure, they can knock on your door and demand you turn your firearms over, but it's easy enough to tell them you don't have any--and they can't prove otherwise.
The US is a very young country, and a large part of the founding of our country was for freedoms of speech and religion. In our not-so-distant past we fought a revolution to overthrow a rule we felt was unjust. This would not have been possible without the broad ownership of firearms (or the help of the French, for that matter;).
Up until a hundred years ago or so, firearms were still commonly used for self defence in the less settled parts of our nation. Even today, they're used by plenty of people as tools. Ranchers have to protect their herds from coyotes; folks who live in the country may have to protect themselves from bears or wolves; farmers have to protect their fields from all manner of wildlife that will happily eat their entire crop. To folks who use firearms as tools, it seems foolish and unnecessary regulation to have to register them. You don't have to register a screwdriver or welding torch, and you could easily kill someone with either of those, so why would you have to register firearms?
Then there's another group of people which doesn't think the government has any business regulating what they can and can't have in their homes. It's mine, I paid for it, and it's none of your damned business. There are many people here who are very particular about their privacy.
Lastly, the anti-gun lobby in the US is pretty open about professing slippery slope tactics. The people behind the contentious Brady Bill and the recently-expired Assault Weapons Ban (the name doesn't remotely fit the contents of the bill, btw) are quite clear that they first intend to outlaw scary-looking guns, then high-powered guns, then get 'em all registered, and then work on each subgroup one at a time until they get all guns outlawed. Would you give any concessions to a group which has openly stated such goals and methodology?:)
There are even more reasons that I'm sure I've overlooked, but I think this is a decent overview. Anything related to firearms in the US is highly-charged politically for a good many reasons, the least of which being that our politicians have a zillion other things they should be worrying about first.;)
If your 2nd ammendment rights instead said you had the right to mount a Hibachi on the dashboard of your car, would you mock the world for their stupid but safe Hibachi-less dashboards.
Well, when public agencies use neat tricks like hiring an attorney to examine documents so they can claim attorney-client privilege on files they don't want to reveal (or for various and sundry other reasons not salutary to public interest) can you really complain about the informed public's paranoia?
We hire outside counsel as needed because it's cheaper than keeping our own host of specialised counsel on staff. I'm not aware of any instance where attorney/client privilege has been used to withhold files. We simply pass along whatever it costs us to get the documents you requested.
I appreciate the paranoia. In order to be paranoid you have to care what's going on, which is a far sight better than the general apathy that seems to permeate society these days.
I don't remember being asked if I wanted to pay extra for obtaining my information.
Your elected representatives were. They probably considered a host of reasons for opting to charge extra for FOI requests, including the following:
1) Somebody's got to pay for it, and raising taxes isn't generally a popular idea.
2) Many people and businesses use material obtained through FOI requests for financial gain. These folks have financial incentive to request everything they can get, and paying for these requests from the general fund makes such businesses insanely profitable on the backs of taxpayers.
3) Paying for them makes sure that requesters really want the information, and aren't sending agencies on wild goose chases for truckloads of data just because they can.
Now, if you'd like to posit that government largesse should be reduced and the funds formerly directed at it should be used to pay for every document you could possibly want, that's a separate argument. Personally, I'm in favour of reduced government size and you -still- having to pay for your own documents. I don't have any particular desire to pay the photocopy charges on every truckload of documents you think you might find interesting.
Nobody's making you pay for information. They're making you pay for paper, toner, and somebody's time to make you your own personal copy of it.
People don't understand how the FOIA works. I work for a quasi-public agency which occasionally receives FOI requests. We respond to FOI requests as fast as we possibly can (we generally turn them around on the order of days, not weeks, from what I hear).
The issue is that people think that because they pay taxes, they should be able to get any document they want without paying anything extra. They'll call asking for "All documents related to X, Y, and Z.". Ignoring for the moment that FOI requests have to be in writing, that could amount to stacks of boxes worth of documents. They look at a potential bill of hundreds or thousands of dollars, and wonder how it could possibly cost so much.
There are a few things that cost money here:
1) Copying fees Somebody's got to copy all those documents. Whether we have them onsite and one of our folks has to do it or we have to pay for outside counsel to do it (We pay attorneys' rates to our counsel, and you will reimburse us for that:), somebody's going to spend a bunch of time at the photocopier in order to fulfil your request.
2) Transport fees If the documents you want are offsite, you're going to have to pay for a truck to fetch them. If we've got a truck coming from offsite storage anyhow, your documents can generally ride for no extra charge.
3) Time to find what you want We don't have every document magically indexed so a minimum wage intern can find anything you can possibly want. Your request will have to go to our human SQL engines. These people are amazing, know a ton, and cost money. They've been working for us for a long time, and are very busy. If they can fit your request into their normal workflow, great, but if not, you're going to have to pay extra for their time.
We don't price-gouge folks on these things. It's important for people to realise that FOI requests cost agencies money, and we will pass on whatever charges we incur to the requester. Many people decide that they really don't want as many documents as they thought--or any at all--once they realise it'll cost them money.
I'm not trying to discourage people from making FOI requests. I think it's important for people to know what their government is doing on their behalf. What I'm trying to say is that if you ask for all documents related to X, Y, and Z, and that comes to a few million pages, be prepared to get precisely what you asked for--and to pay for it.:)
Also, as much as we'd like for our human SQL engines to be infallible and be able to recall every document related to anything you could possibly want, it is possible we'll miss something. We don't intentionally withhold stuff you've requested. In fact, we will give you -precisely- what you've requested, so it's a very good idea to phrase your request carefully, so as to avoid a huge bill and a mountain of paper you don't want. We generally warn you if you request a mountain of data and sound like you're expecting 20 pages, but if you insist you want everything, you will get it. I don't know whether the FBI or the DOJ withholds data, but I'm pretty sure it's against policy and anybody caught doing so will be suitably reamed.
It's easy to get pissed off at a huge faceless agency and assume they're holding out on you because they're The Man and you're onto them. It may just be that the person who was tasked with your FOI request really truly couldn't find anything. Government agencies are staffed by humans, too.
They're absurdly good. I've used them since 2000 or so, and have continued to use them instead of taking up offers from friends to host me for free.
Yes, they're that good. See my posting history for a longer review. I'd link you myself, but Slashdot seems to enjoy giving me 503 Service Unavailable messages today.
Yup, these guys rock. Here's a paste from my rave about them from earlier today:
I've been using them since 2000 or so, and they've been approximately perfect. About the only thing they could've done better was include cash with the Happy Holidays card they sent me.;)
Their bandwidth rocks, the systems aren't over-crowded, and the people rock. I had billing issues when changing bank accounts (I forgot to update the credit card number on file to my new one), and I got a pleasant phone call letting me know that my card wasn't going through anymore. I gave them the new card number, and it was cleared up in no time at all--never any downtime.
At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.
They run an IPv6 endpoint you can use for free (tunnelbroker.net) and a very stable EFNet server. The free bittorrent tracker/seed thing I got an email about this morning is pure icing on the cake.
I've had folks offer to host me for free, and I've stayed with my paid account at HE. They're that good.
I've been using them since 2000 or so, and they've been approximately perfect. About the only thing they could've done better was include cash with the Happy Holidays card they sent me.;)
Their bandwidth rocks, the systems aren't over-crowded, and the people rock. I had billing issues when changing bank accounts (I forgot to update the credit card number on file to my new one), and I got a pleasant phone call letting me know that my card wasn't going through anymore. I gave them the new card number, and it was cleared up in no time at all--never any downtime.
At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.
They run an IPv6 endpoint you can use for free (tunnelbroker.net) and a very stable EFNet server. The free bittorrent tracker/seed thing I got an email about this morning is pure icing on the cake.
I've had folks offer to host me for free, and I've stayed with my paid account at HE. They're that good.
I go through the usual routine of a dedicated firewall and running reasonably secure operating systems (BSD), but I don't have that much stuff I consider super-private on my computers. I've been meaning to set up Kerberos one of these days for fun, but I don't really need all that much security.
The private stuff stays on paper, and is hand-written.
FreeBSD switched to X.org in -current in July of 2004. See Eric Anholt's post to freebsd-current here, or the Slashdot writeup here. You can still use XFree86 if you like, but X.org is the default.
Slashdot Mirror
Photos are here, minus the lame extra click through parent's blog.
a lkman/2009-1041_3-5594417.html?tag=st.num
http://news.com.com/Photos+Cell+phone+meets+the+W
I just read your brief. Aside from what appears to be somebody getting a touch carried away with commas, I like it. It's clear, succinct, and doesn't suffer from the customary affliction of being utterly unreadable. It's always nice to read briefs written by attorneys who didn't lose their ability to convey information via text upon passing the bar exam. ;)
Thank you.
I've had my own difficulties with Cisco TAC (like them giving me configuration lines that just plain don't work; you'd think that after taking a week to get back to you they'd at least make sure the syntax was right), but yours seem to take the cake. Just a quick question--how did you get a job setting up this Cisco kit without having any knowledge of their products?
;)
BTW, it's probably a good thing you never got that IOS upgrade. PIXen run on PIX OS. Cisco's routers and switches are the ones that use IOS.
One of the realities of life is that there is no immutable link between fault and responsibility.
;)
Whether I slip on the ice and break my leg or my home is destroyed by an Act of God, I still have to deal with the fallout. It's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. I've chosen to mitigate some of that risk by purchasing health and homeowner's insurance, but if I haven't and something happens, the only person responsible for the consequences is me.
If you're 12, you have little responsibility. When you become an adult you'll bear full responsibility for your actions, as well as any number of actions that can impact your life. The idea that you can protect people against all possible bad things that may happen to them is frightening, both because it's not possible, and because in doing so you deny them the opportunity to take full responsibility for themselves and grow into strong, healthy, confident adults. There are also serious implications for personal freedom that are conveniently swept under the rug in the interests of "greater safety and security".
As a 12 year old living in a situation you don't like, the best possible thing you can do is get very close to it. Look at it from all angles. See how the people around you got there, and why it is they can't seem to get out. Do they not want to get out? Is it a lack of opportunity? Are there third parties keeping them there?
Look at it from each of those angles, and decide that you NEVER want to live like that again. When you become an adult, see to it that you do not. The lessons you'll have learned by being poor are priceless, and while you're working your way up, you'll have an advantage over the people who are your new socio-economic peers.
While they're unable to manage without having steak 3 nights a week, you'll be having steak 1 night a week, a slice of Cabot 2 others (a step up from your current Velveeta), and will be able to put the extra money into your savings or investment accounts.
You'll never get rich if you try to live the way some rich people do. You simply can't afford to wear $2,000 suits and eat $100 meals every night. If you want to get to the point where you can, you need to start saving now. The skills you've learned while poor in how to get by with less will hold you in good stead for the rest of your life.
Take advantage of this opportunity while you've got it. You may not always be poor.
You're joking. There are plenty of reasons to dislike any political party, but the ones postulated therein are largely hogwash.
:) because he stands to personally profit from his T-Bills is ludicrous. Much of the rest of that page is about as well thought-through.
Really, criticizing the President for holding lots of T-Bills? It's practically the only investment he can hold which is completely free from any potential conflict of interest. Any domestic decision he makes can be seen as favouring some group, and holding stock makes it politically dangerous to make any decisions that may help a company whose stock he holds, regardless of merit. The left has been on Cheney's case for his connections to Halliburton with all kinds of righteous fury. Do you think it would be different if Bush was holding stock in American Airlines, Ford, or Microsoft?
Hell, at least he's buying stock in our government. The contension that he's making a mess of the deficit (and he IS
Come on, people. There are good reasons for holding any number of various (and conflicting) political beliefs, but at least take the time to find them so you don't look like a moron in public.
Why do you assume that handouts and redistributionist policies are in the interests of poor and uneducated people?
There's tons of propaganda coming from the left that says such policies help poor people. The right's answer to this seems to be "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We won't give you a handout, but we also won't drag you down.".
If these people are used to working hard and living close to the land, they may prefer less government interference in their lives, even if that interference comes by way of a handout. I'm not about to fault them for that. Why are you?
I agree. I think it's important for us to be aware of what we're doing to ourselves.
I'd be in favour of some sort of "amnesty" programme as well, but worded more like a statute of limitations. If somebody's been in this country a decade and we haven't given a damn until now, I think it's a bit sketchy to suddenly throw him out.
What I would probably suggest is to lock down the borders. If you've been in for 7 years (you'd have to prove it), go to your local Federal building and apply for permanent residency status (which would be rubber-stamped). I'd give people say, 6 months from the date the bill became law to do this. From that point forward, if you're caught and found to be illegal, you get deported.
A convincing case could be made that rather than the 7 year thing I threw out, it should be "If you're in the country effective the date the border lockdown happens" or somesuch. The details would have to be worked out, but I think the general idea is solid. This would answer most of the complaints of people saying that the illegals have been productive members of society for a decade and shouldn't be thrown out over paperwork, as well as set a precedent that you need to respect our legal process if you want to come to our country.
You assume he caused damage in another state.
It's not exactly unheard of for cops to pull over out-of-staters and write ridiculous tickets, knowing that if you live 8 states away it's considerably less expensive to pay whatever bogus ticket he wrote you than to take the days off work and pay for the travel to contest the ticket in their local court.
Why _SHOULDN'T_ we? Are illegal immigrants somehow less human than you? Should they sit in the back of the bus too?
Being human doesn't give someone the right to enter any country he pleases. Regardless of whether you like the immigration system this country uses or not, people who come here illegally show a flagrant disregard for our laws. I agree that the appropriate response to this is to deport them.
If you think the immigration laws should be changed, fine. There's a good chance I might even agree with you upon further inspection of the current system. Sanctioning people who break the law on their very entrance to our country because it's "easier" is absurd.
That last bit describes me to a T. Depending on my mood I'll turn up slight preferences ranging from ENFP to INTJ. I'd pretty much written off the Meyers-Briggs test after seeing such varied results, but perhaps you're right and I'm just a nutcase.
:)
Your comment about having both the strengths -and- weaknesses of both hit me pretty hard, though. I'll have to think on that more. Thank you.
If you're spending lots on new hardware, see if you can wring more life out of the old stuff.
If you're spending lots on software upgrades, see if you can hold off on a cycle.
If you're spending lots on bandwidth, shop for a new provider that may get you a better rate.
If you're spending a bunch on outside consultants, put together some numbers showing how much cheaper it would be to do that work yourself.
Maybe you've got excess server horsepower and could get more use out of what you have by switching to thin clients (and get off the PC upgrade treadmill). Maybe your management will be more receptive to Free solutions now that money's tight. Maybe I'm rambling on without enough information to go on.
Without knowing where the bulk of your costs are, it's damned-near impossible to give you any decent advice on cost-cutting.
You're right about a primary use of a firearm being to kill things (If I was in a pedantic mood today I might point out that the true purpose is to hurl a gob of metal really fast ;). Even in the examples I listed of firearms used as tools, they were still used for killing things. The part that I think is missing is that sometimes you -need- to kill things. The examples I gave of regular firearms use as necessary are prime examples of this. Many people today view killing as a horrid and detestable thing, without stopping to think about where the meat and poultry they bought at the local grocery store came from. I view the increasing disconnect between "civilised" people and the natural world as a very scary thing. Killing is part of nature. Pretending to be above nature strikes me as hubris of the worst kind. [/soapbox] ;)
:)
:)
In the case of a government confiscation of firearms, the first action of some of gun owners would be to stuff them in watertight containers and bury them in locations which would be difficult to find. There are many large national parks which would prove ideal for this, and the government has been so kind as to publish the manuals that teach our armed forces how to do this exact thing.
The question of whether a violent uprising would stand a chance against a modern military, while interesting, is immaterial. What do you think the public reaction would be the first time a US city was carpet-bombed, or a town attacked by cruise missiles? Historically, when uprisings or civil wars have taken place, the military has divided based on soldiers' and officers' individual beliefs. It would not be easy to throw the full weight of the US military against US citizens on US soil. The folks who enlist do so with the understanding and oath of protecting the United States and her citizens. If the military were to be directed on the citizenry, morale would shatter and desertions would reach record highs. What would concern me more is the arming up of SWAT and various elite police forces. They're trained to shoot american civilians and got their jobs knowing full-well that it may be required. Their numbers are much smaller and their armaments less powerful, though, which is a pretty substantial mitigating factor.
I don't own any firearms either, by the way, but I do support the right to do so. It's always a pleasure to have a rational discussion with someone that doesn't devolve to namecalling. Cheers
Gun registration has historically been a precursor to outright bans and confiscation in many countries. If the government doesn't know you've got firearms, they can't take them away. Sure, they can knock on your door and demand you turn your firearms over, but it's easy enough to tell them you don't have any--and they can't prove otherwise.
;).
:)
;)
The US is a very young country, and a large part of the founding of our country was for freedoms of speech and religion. In our not-so-distant past we fought a revolution to overthrow a rule we felt was unjust. This would not have been possible without the broad ownership of firearms (or the help of the French, for that matter
Up until a hundred years ago or so, firearms were still commonly used for self defence in the less settled parts of our nation. Even today, they're used by plenty of people as tools. Ranchers have to protect their herds from coyotes; folks who live in the country may have to protect themselves from bears or wolves; farmers have to protect their fields from all manner of wildlife that will happily eat their entire crop. To folks who use firearms as tools, it seems foolish and unnecessary regulation to have to register them. You don't have to register a screwdriver or welding torch, and you could easily kill someone with either of those, so why would you have to register firearms?
Then there's another group of people which doesn't think the government has any business regulating what they can and can't have in their homes. It's mine, I paid for it, and it's none of your damned business. There are many people here who are very particular about their privacy.
Lastly, the anti-gun lobby in the US is pretty open about professing slippery slope tactics. The people behind the contentious Brady Bill and the recently-expired Assault Weapons Ban (the name doesn't remotely fit the contents of the bill, btw) are quite clear that they first intend to outlaw scary-looking guns, then high-powered guns, then get 'em all registered, and then work on each subgroup one at a time until they get all guns outlawed. Would you give any concessions to a group which has openly stated such goals and methodology?
There are even more reasons that I'm sure I've overlooked, but I think this is a decent overview. Anything related to firearms in the US is highly-charged politically for a good many reasons, the least of which being that our politicians have a zillion other things they should be worrying about first.
If your 2nd ammendment rights instead said you had the right to mount a Hibachi on the dashboard of your car, would you mock the world for their stupid but safe Hibachi-less dashboards.
Naturally. =)
Well, when public agencies use neat tricks like hiring an attorney to examine documents so they can claim attorney-client privilege on files they don't want to reveal (or for various and sundry other reasons not salutary to public interest) can you really complain about the informed public's paranoia?
We hire outside counsel as needed because it's cheaper than keeping our own host of specialised counsel on staff. I'm not aware of any instance where attorney/client privilege has been used to withhold files. We simply pass along whatever it costs us to get the documents you requested.
I appreciate the paranoia. In order to be paranoid you have to care what's going on, which is a far sight better than the general apathy that seems to permeate society these days.
I don't remember being asked if I wanted to pay extra for obtaining my information.
Your elected representatives were. They probably considered a host of reasons for opting to charge extra for FOI requests, including the following:
1) Somebody's got to pay for it, and raising taxes isn't generally a popular idea.
2) Many people and businesses use material obtained through FOI requests for financial gain. These folks have financial incentive to request everything they can get, and paying for these requests from the general fund makes such businesses insanely profitable on the backs of taxpayers.
3) Paying for them makes sure that requesters really want the information, and aren't sending agencies on wild goose chases for truckloads of data just because they can.
Now, if you'd like to posit that government largesse should be reduced and the funds formerly directed at it should be used to pay for every document you could possibly want, that's a separate argument. Personally, I'm in favour of reduced government size and you -still- having to pay for your own documents. I don't have any particular desire to pay the photocopy charges on every truckload of documents you think you might find interesting.
Nobody's making you pay for information. They're making you pay for paper, toner, and somebody's time to make you your own personal copy of it.
People don't understand how the FOIA works. I work for a quasi-public agency which occasionally receives FOI requests. We respond to FOI requests as fast as we possibly can (we generally turn them around on the order of days, not weeks, from what I hear).
:), somebody's going to spend a bunch of time at the photocopier in order to fulfil your request.
:)
The issue is that people think that because they pay taxes, they should be able to get any document they want without paying anything extra. They'll call asking for "All documents related to X, Y, and Z.". Ignoring for the moment that FOI requests have to be in writing, that could amount to stacks of boxes worth of documents. They look at a potential bill of hundreds or thousands of dollars, and wonder how it could possibly cost so much.
There are a few things that cost money here:
1) Copying fees
Somebody's got to copy all those documents. Whether we have them onsite and one of our folks has to do it or we have to pay for outside counsel to do it (We pay attorneys' rates to our counsel, and you will reimburse us for that
2) Transport fees
If the documents you want are offsite, you're going to have to pay for a truck to fetch them. If we've got a truck coming from offsite storage anyhow, your documents can generally ride for no extra charge.
3) Time to find what you want
We don't have every document magically indexed so a minimum wage intern can find anything you can possibly want. Your request will have to go to our human SQL engines. These people are amazing, know a ton, and cost money. They've been working for us for a long time, and are very busy. If they can fit your request into their normal workflow, great, but if not, you're going to have to pay extra for their time.
We don't price-gouge folks on these things. It's important for people to realise that FOI requests cost agencies money, and we will pass on whatever charges we incur to the requester. Many people decide that they really don't want as many documents as they thought--or any at all--once they realise it'll cost them money.
I'm not trying to discourage people from making FOI requests. I think it's important for people to know what their government is doing on their behalf. What I'm trying to say is that if you ask for all documents related to X, Y, and Z, and that comes to a few million pages, be prepared to get precisely what you asked for--and to pay for it.
Also, as much as we'd like for our human SQL engines to be infallible and be able to recall every document related to anything you could possibly want, it is possible we'll miss something. We don't intentionally withhold stuff you've requested. In fact, we will give you -precisely- what you've requested, so it's a very good idea to phrase your request carefully, so as to avoid a huge bill and a mountain of paper you don't want. We generally warn you if you request a mountain of data and sound like you're expecting 20 pages, but if you insist you want everything, you will get it. I don't know whether the FBI or the DOJ withholds data, but I'm pretty sure it's against policy and anybody caught doing so will be suitably reamed.
It's easy to get pissed off at a huge faceless agency and assume they're holding out on you because they're The Man and you're onto them. It may just be that the person who was tasked with your FOI request really truly couldn't find anything. Government agencies are staffed by humans, too.
They're absurdly good. I've used them since 2000 or so, and have continued to use them instead of taking up offers from friends to host me for free.
Yes, they're that good. See my posting history for a longer review. I'd link you myself, but Slashdot seems to enjoy giving me 503 Service Unavailable messages today.
I think he's referring to MS Active Directory and their Kerberos support, not the .NET Passport boondoggle.
Apparently it's well-known at Microsoft that Linux doesn't support Kerberos.
Yes. Please don't remind me of it again.
Yup, these guys rock. Here's a paste from my rave about them from earlier today:
;)
I've been using them since 2000 or so, and they've been approximately perfect. About the only thing they could've done better was include cash with the Happy Holidays card they sent me.
Their bandwidth rocks, the systems aren't over-crowded, and the people rock. I had billing issues when changing bank accounts (I forgot to update the credit card number on file to my new one), and I got a pleasant phone call letting me know that my card wasn't going through anymore. I gave them the new card number, and it was cleared up in no time at all--never any downtime.
At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.
They run an IPv6 endpoint you can use for free (tunnelbroker.net) and a very stable EFNet server. The free bittorrent tracker/seed thing I got an email about this morning is pure icing on the cake.
I've had folks offer to host me for free, and I've stayed with my paid account at HE. They're that good.
I've been using them since 2000 or so, and they've been approximately perfect. About the only thing they could've done better was include cash with the Happy Holidays card they sent me. ;)
Their bandwidth rocks, the systems aren't over-crowded, and the people rock. I had billing issues when changing bank accounts (I forgot to update the credit card number on file to my new one), and I got a pleasant phone call letting me know that my card wasn't going through anymore. I gave them the new card number, and it was cleared up in no time at all--never any downtime.
At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.
They run an IPv6 endpoint you can use for free (tunnelbroker.net) and a very stable EFNet server. The free bittorrent tracker/seed thing I got an email about this morning is pure icing on the cake.
I've had folks offer to host me for free, and I've stayed with my paid account at HE. They're that good.
I go through the usual routine of a dedicated firewall and running reasonably secure operating systems (BSD), but I don't have that much stuff I consider super-private on my computers. I've been meaning to set up Kerberos one of these days for fun, but I don't really need all that much security.
The private stuff stays on paper, and is hand-written.
The -very- private stuff stays in my head.
FreeBSD appears agnostic in this matter.
FreeBSD switched to X.org in -current in July of 2004. See Eric Anholt's post to freebsd-current here, or the Slashdot writeup here. You can still use XFree86 if you like, but X.org is the default.
Parent sounds better-informed than any representative of either major party I've heard discussing the issue. ;)