"Unfortunately the Windows programs I want to use are the games like Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Battlefield 2, etc."
[...]
"Linux should focus more on becoming user-friendly so it gets a bigger customer base"
Talk to your game vendor, this is not a Linux problem.
When software you have from a vendor does not work with Linux, talk to your software vendor, this is not a Linux problem.
When hardware you have does not work with Linux, talk to your hardware vendor. This is not a Linux problem.
Also, Linux has no "customer base", nor does it want or need one. Talk to your Linux vendor of choice to determine their goals, and try to choose the vendor that best fits your needs.
I would recommend trying WINE (Crossover Office is a spinoff of WINE) first since it is free.
Correction, Crossover Office is Wine with paid support. It is not a "fork", spinoff or other derivitive.
Think of it like Fedora vs. Red Hat if the analogy makes better sense. You can get one free, with all the free community support you need, or you can get one by paying, with a license, entitlement and a human being on the other end of a telephone waiting to help you with your problems.
Dispute the BSA's data if you want (I'm sure it's suspect), but I would hardly call Microsoft paranoid for thinking that a large number of people pirate Windows and that they are likely losing a lot of money to it.
Depending on whose estimates and "research" you go by, I've heard that anywhere from 1/3 (Microsoft's estimate) to 2/3 of Microsoft Windows versions running on machines today, are pirated. That doesn't count the billion copies running somewhere in Asia for $2.00/copy, but actual production Windows installations.
So 1/3 to 2/3 of their "market share" was due to piracy. Now how does it suit their best interests to prevent that? If Linux is currently at ~11% to 15% market share and Apple OSX is around 5% to 7%, having Microsoft sitting in at 30% doesn't seem to spectacular now, does it?
In fact, its been shown that people who pirate Microsoft Windows tend to use it, stick with it, develop for it, and install other applications onto it.. many of them legally licensed. So stopping piracy will deprive Microsoft and other application vendors of billions of dollars of revenue.
Whether or not it is more than the billions they claim from "piracy" has yet to be proven, but I'll bet its close.
I see no better way that they could have done to push people away from their platform than by doing exactly what they're doing here.
It's $300 per year and comes with 10 copies of XP *PRO*, 10 copies of Office *PRO* Visio. 2k3 Server, Exchange Server, SQL server, Virtual PC, Microsoft's Mapping software and all updates.
*By copies, I mean serial numbers. They give you 5 numbers that can be activated twice w/o talking to anybody.
So in other words, you still have to spend $20,000 on buying the original applications themselves. What your $300.00 gets you is the legal right to install that $20,000 of software you just purchased on multiple machines at the same time.
Genuine Windows validation is not required to use the Automatic Updates feature.
So... whats the point?
The point is to get people to enable Automatic Updates so they forget their system is auto-patching itself, so they CAN start sending data back to their servers without you knowing it.
Monday you turn on Automatic Updates.
Wednesday, an update is sent across that audits your machine and sends all of the application registration information and credentials back to Microsoft.
Thursday morning at 4:00am, another update is sent that covers the tracks of the Wednesday update.
Friday at 8:00am you get to work on your machine, none the wiser.
In fact, I think MS should prevent pirates from getting security updates.
I'm sure most people reading your reply missed the sarcasm and humor buried in the words. I certainly didn't, great laugh!
All kidding aside, if Microsoft stopped allowing the update of pirated copies of Windows updates, the malicious people would need to do is break your machine forcing you to reinstall. Oops! You lost your serial number? No problem, just go out on the web and get one, and now you can get your machine back up again.
Oops, you can't patch your machine with Windows Update, and now that hole that the malicious folks used to hack your machine the first time is wide open again.
Welcome to the Zombie Network of machines being misappropriated to send illegal child pr0n, spam, trade copyrighted works, propagate malware and dozens of other things.
Stopping the ability to patch operating systems, including those from pirated copies of Microsoft Windows, will just cause a sharp rise in the number of machines being taken over, broken into, repurposed as spam/malware/p2p distribution nodes.
Years ago, cable companies would use a similar tactic to bust people who were actively stealing cable services.
Basically on the "pirated" boxes (blackboxes) or those who were "piggybacking" cable on their neighbor's connection junction, they would broadcast a "contest" for the next 100 people to call in. People who were letitimate customers and subscribers would never even see the "contest" broadcast.
If you called in to win the "t-shirt" or "trip to Jamaica", or whatever, they collected your address and other details. When you went into the cable company location to claim your prize, they gave you a nice shiny pair of bracelets and a trip to the local police department.
Don't fall for the "discount" on any Windows product. Use this as a means to get a "discount" on the whole thing, switch to Mac OSX or Linux.
This means that Linux can be installed without breaking the existing installations or screwing with the boot loader at all. The DRM is a problem but there is not too much information about if there is going to be a lot of DRM in this new bios replacement.
Lets not forget that Intel's Project LaGrande (review here) is all about DRM, and its one of the reasons Apple is moving that direction. They want to work with the media companies as they begin to control the entire media space (except media created by their users, of course).
Trust me, Linux might work on it, but copying other software created or installed on those other operating systems will NOT be easy. This time, the DRM is in the silicon.
This player is intrguing, and has some nice features: Small, light, portable, and has OLED and an actual display (which devices like the iPod Shuffle do not).
However, I do not see the one thing that makes it a blocker for me: How long does the battery life last... in lifetime? 10 hours per-charge if you drain it fully, but does it only last 100 charges? 1000? More? Less?
I don't like buying $130.00 "disposable" products, but it seems that is what our society is breeding now. "Its only $300.00, just throw it away and buy a new one!" (speaking of a certain printer that had some issues, and was cheaper to buy a new one than than keep fixing the existing one. The same can be said for quite a few products these days; PDAs, mp3 players, DVD players, headphones, etc.)
It seems like these vendors are continuing to churn out "degrading" products in the hopes that we will keep replacing them with new ones, hopefully from the same vendor. We are not CONSUMERS, we do not "consume" technology like our cars "consume" gas. We are customers, and we expect quality products for our hard-earned dollars, not trash that "expires" in 6 months and gets tossed in a drawer.
So does this thing last 3+ years while charging every day? Does it have a decent LiIon battery to take that number of recharge cycles?
Actually, I stand corrected... the landline providers here in CT do NOT ALLOW a phone to be set up with just incoming or just outgoing calls. I just contacted SBC (they own the poles) and asked them what it would cost to have a line that does not allow incoming or outgoing calls at all, no services except the ability to dial 911 in an emergency, and "Mary" said they don't allow this.
I then asked what it would cost to get a line that does not allow outgoing calls, and she said they also do not offer this either. She said their lines absolutely must allow incoming and outgoing calls at a minimum, which then allows me to dial 911.
I asked "Mary" if she knew of any other landline service providers in CT that would allow this, and she said she wasn't aware of any that did.
Since they own the poles here, our landline services have to be provided by them (or they get the costs anyway, and can enforce anyone leasing space on their poles to use the same policies). So I guess I'm out of luck anyway... but I know the cost of 911 is a surcharge on our regular monthly bill. Here's how it breaks down in our case:
Other fees Connecticut E9-1-1 Surcharge - 1 line: 0.74 Connecticut Service Fund: 0.05 Universal Service Fund - Local(1@$.58): 0.58 1 Federal Subscriber Line Charge: 5.73
Total Other Fees: 6.73
The "tax" portion of our bill last month was $19.88, which was just under 50% of the total bill amount of $39.91.
Trust me, we're getting raped. If they did allow a line with just 9-1-1 on it, it would probably be about $15.00/month, if I made zero calls on it and never received any calls on it.
Get the landline, for 911 only. It is federally mandated to be free.
What country is this? Certainly not the US.. we pay something like $4.00-$5.00 per-month just to have the "right" to call 911 when there is an emergency. Even the payphones require you to put in $0.50 to call 911 now (and several towns here are moving to all rotary payphones again, because of the issue with touch-tone and drug dealers, or so they say).
911 is most-definitely NOT a "free" service in the US.
Its happened with state and local officers, as well as across Lebanon, Willimantic, Windham and Norwich CT where I lived, as well as towns that neighbor those towns where I was travelling through them to work.
I admit that Officer Buckner in Willimantic had a vendetta against me (he even pulled over a friend of mine just to question me, when I was in the passenger seat), but he was pretty extreme, and everybody knew it. I even went to the Willimantic Police Department with my handful of tickets issued by Officer Buckner to ask them why he was pulling me over and ticketing me so much (17 times in 1 month). They had no idea, but agreed to investigate (which I'm sure was just lip-service, nothing ever happened to him).
But that's just 17 out of the total number of tickets I've received. I've been pulled over for having the car dealer's license plate frame around my license plate (anything around a license plate is illegal in CT, including the dealer's license plate frame). I've been pulled over for having a "loose registration sticker" on my rear license plate (CT law requires plates front and rear, the front plate's sticker was firmly attached. I even offered to swap the plates right there on the side of the road, but he still ticketed me). I've been pulled over for a LOT of "questionable" things.
If I could have afforded an attorney at the time, I'm sure things would have stopped earlier, but as it is, I was just a 20-something with a series of junkers and very nice vehicles over time.
The other interesting thing that I've been bitten by several times, is that in CT when you receive a traffic ticket/infraction, your license is automatically suspended until the results of that case are determined. I've been ticketed, and while waiting for my court date, pulled over again.. and ticketed for driving with a suspended license. I'm not sure if they still do that, but I do know that they pull your license if you get more than 3 tickets in 3 years. CT has very strict driving laws.
It got so bad that I had a police scanner installed in my car as well as a voice recorder. I started driving back roads to get to my destination to avoid cops, which makes me seem even more guilty.
You might call bullshit, and you're entitled to that opinion, but I have copies of every infraction in my files here to back it up. I haven't been pulled over AT ALL since I moved to CA for 2 years and back to CT (knock on wood), and its been 6 years now without a single ticket or infraction. I lay pretty low though.
No, to this day some 10+ years later, I have not received my property back. I'm not sure what they were after (especially by taking some of my music), but perhaps they wanted the names/addresses of my friends from my Sharp Zaurus organizer (and some pocket cash to buy drugs to plant at future stops with).
Yes, I'm bitter... there are a few (in my experience, a minority) good cops out there, but there are a LOT more bad ones that I've personally met or crossed paths with. They're all on some sort of adrenalin high and when you question them or their decisions, you're automatically made to feel guilty or subordinate.
I had an officer ticket me once when I was CLEARLY in the right. He started explaining how to send the ticket in with my fine amount, and I interrupted him with "Can I see your pen?" and he said "What?" and I replied with "May I see your pen please...".
I flipped the ticket over, signed the back in the "Not Guilty" section and said "See you in court, asshole." (yes, this is a true story).
I abhor cops, and its probably the single most important thing that caused me to question authority from the age of 19 until present (I'm now 34, and that decision has barely wavered).
I've showed up to the courthouse in CT to defend my side of the case with armfuls of evidence, photographs, witness statements, etc.
In CT, your case isn't even put on the docket until you talk to the prosecutor. He's the one who puts your case folder from a big stack of files into the stack he brings into court for the day.
In at least 3 cases of my own, I've had my armfuls of evidence discounted BEFORE I was even in the courtroom in front of the judge. Basically the prosecutor said "Nice photographs, but we're not going to allow those. The same with your witness statements, those aren't going to be allowed in your case."
So you're telling me this is legal? What rights does the innocent have, if all of his evidence can be thrown out prior to the case being presented to the judge?
Doing this is known as impeaching a witness. Witnesses that are impeached have their testimony thrown out and ignored, since they've shown that they can be wrong but are willing to state false information as fact. It is not a loophole, but a critical aspect under which common law operates, one of the checks to make sure that a witness presents the truth, whole truth, and (especially) nothing but the truth.
Is THAT what they call it when you show up in court as the accused, with evidence to exonerate charges against you, and the evidence you would have used to prove your innocence isn't even allowed into the courtroom by the prosecutor?
I wonder how they determine that you're "willing to state false information", when you've never done so before? I've had several tickets issued to me where I've brought evidence with me to court to prove my case, only to have that evidence thrown out before I could even present it, by the prosecutor (here is one such example).
...it comes down to one question. would you rather let a guilty person go free, or lock up an innocent person. in the usa, we have a system where we don't want to lock up the innocent.
Or a third option, and one our system is heading towards anyway... lock everyone up, guilty or innocent, and you can be assured that you're capturing 100% of the guilty, instead of letting a few guilty slip away as you uphold "Freedom" or some such fantasy.
"So this leads to court dates. Now we are really !@#$% up here in Connecticut."
I feel your pain, and I've lived in CT my whole life. See my two previous posts on this, here and here.
I have a lot of really ugly stories about being pulled over that would floor most people.
My worst one was probably when I was pulled over at 4pm for not driving with my lights on. $285.00 ticket on the spot, and the officer forgot to give me my license back (and I forgot to ask).
I get back in my car, the officer gets back in his and speeds off down the highway. I get ONE EXIT further down the highway, and the same officer peels in behind me from the on-ramp and pulls me over again... for the same infraction (it was still very much daylight out, no need for headlights). He asks me for my license which I can't find, then I remember that he still has it. I tell him he still has it, and he yells at me for "backtalking him".
I should also note that I had a good friend in the car, a black friend, who was also pre-law... but we were both dressed casual and he sort of looks like a gangster. His name is also... no joke.. Charles Dickens.
The officer writes me another $285.00 ticket for the lack of headlights, and I lost my cool. I begin telling him that its perfectly light outside, and that even HIS vehicle is driving without headlights. I asked him if I could write HIM a ticket for not driving with headlights. $516.00 in infractions in less than 1/2 mile of roadway. It was utter bullshit, and I said exactly that to his face.
His partner decides to go to my passenger side of the vehicle and ask Charles (I called him "Chuck D") for his ID. Charles said he doesn't have to produce any ID, since he's not the one driving. The officer insists to see his ID, and Charles says that he wasn't carrying any. The officer opens the car door on the passenger side and asks Charles to step out of the vehicle (Meanwhile, I'm arguing with the officer telling him what I think he can do with his pen and pad and certain parts of my anatomy. Yes, this is all perfectly legal, as long as you don't directly threaten the officer).
Charles refuses to get out of the car, and the officer grabs his jacket and arm and tries to force him out of the vehicle saying "Get outta the car, nigger!". Charles yanks the officer's hand off of his arm and says something like "What did you just say? What did you just call me? You can't just grab people out of their cars. What's your job officer, 'Serve and Protect and Break a Nigger's Neck'?", and steps out of the vehicle. Charles is 6'4" tall, big, black, smart, and was (at the time) studying law. The officer was about 5'6" tall and didn't expect what he got.
Needless to say, after all this arguing between all of us (Charles still not producing any ID), the officer calls for a tow truck for my vehicle and demands my keys. I told him the only way he's getting my keys is if he shoots me here on the roadside. He doesn't even have a right to my keys if he arrests me, since they immediately would go into evidence, and since they are my property and I won't waive my rights to my property, he can't even touch them.
After demanding my keys for 10 minutes, the tow truck arrives, and I tell the officer that I'll allow the tow truck driver to use my keys to get the car into the truck bed, and then I'm locking it again.
The car gets towed and I give the keys to the tow truck operator (who I happened to know personally from my dart league). He tows the car to the yard and we find a ride home.
At 3:30am, I get a call from the night watchman at the auto yard where my car was towed. He tells me that he got a note from my friend (the tow truck driver) to keep an eye on the car in the yard. Apparently at 3:00am, these two cops went back to the yard, sli
Ask to see the radar (or whatever device they claim to have caught you with.) More often than not, they see you going faster than traffic, can't radar you quick enough, decide to pull you over, and tell you that you were going "pretty fast there, son." Asking to see the radar will get you out of a lot of tickets (if you were in heavy traffic.)
Not in Connecticut.
In CT, you can ask to see the radar, and they'll say "No." (I've asked). You can ask to know the details of the reason they're stopping you, and they can say "No." (I've also asked).
You can mail the station asking for a copy of the officer's log for that stop, and they can refuse.
You can take pictures of the location of the stop and bring them to court, and the prosecutor can refuse to admit them into evidence (before you even get into the courtroom).
See, I've been pulled over 57 times in about 5 years, and been in court fighting tickets about 65 times (after postponements and continuances supposedly engineered to discourage me from returning to fight more). I've fought every ticket and won/nollied most of them, except the few where the prosecutor refused to admit the evidence that proved without a doubt, that I was in the right.
I've even had cops pull in behind me at a red light in a light snow, and when the light turned green I took an immediate left into a Dunkin Donuts parking lot, where the cop threw on his flashing lights and said I ran the red light at 20mph over the limit... the same red light he stopped behind me at. Yes, cops are crooked in CT, but they're backed up by the even-more-crooked court system they allow here (see my previous post in this thread on the matter).
I filed a 'writ of discovery' to find out what they had against me before I went to court. I found this info in a book about speed traps. I represented myself and I am not trained in law. I even gave them some lead time with the write so they had more than enough time to answer my writ.
I have been pulled over no less than 57 times in 5 years for various things (only 4 were for speeding, however, the rest were pure harrassment and profiling, and yes, I'm white. I've changed my hair, appearance, car, and the towns I live in; it doesn't help. I was pulled over 17 times in one town in 1 MONTH by the same officer in one series of cases in Willimantic.). I've fought every single ticket or infraction I've been issued and won, except the speeding ones.
See, I live in Connecticut, and there's the nice little loophole on the books that directly helps the court win every single speeding case: No matter what evidence you bring to court, they can simply tell you that it is inadmissible, and you can't bring it into court. No matter what the evidence is, if the prosecutor decides that it isn't relevant, for ANY reason, you can't bring it into the courtroom.
I was pulled over by a rookie female officer on my way home from work. The same route I took every day for 5+ years. The facility I work at has about 3,000 employees and the 2-lane town road we travel to get to the highway is QUITE busy at 5pm.
There are quite a few slight curves on this road and Jersey barriers separating two lanes going one way from two going the other. She pulled me over saying that I was going something like 20mph over the limit. Of course I vehemently objected, because I would have rammed the 40 cars in front of me had I been going that fast. Not to mention, with the cars all bunched up at quitting time, there's no way she picked MY truck out in the far lane, through the closer lane of traffic going the same speed.
But I got the ticket anyway, so I decided to do some research. I went to the exact spot where she was parked, and pointed my camera to the exact spot she said she clocked me. There was an arbor of trees right in the way (thick trees), as well as two road signs and a mobile home parked in a neighbor's driveway. There's no way she could see through that, clock me, and properly recognize the vehicle she clocked.
I brought all of my pictures to court, in full-color, as well as my questions about the nature of her stop, whether her device was recently calibrated, whether she could produce the documentation to verify that, etc.
In CT, you are required to talk to the prosecutor before your case, to present your questions and evidence. Now I know why, so they can go over it before you go into court. No surprises from defendants.
The prosecutor basically said "Well these are nice pictures, but you're not going into court with them." and I said "But these are my proof that your officer is wrong!", and he said "Well, they're not going into court. And you won't have access to the officer's logbook either, we don't do that here in CT, even if you asked in writing." (which I did).
Needless to say, even when I grilled the officer on the stand, making her feel like she was in the wrong, I still lost and had to pay the fine.
The court system in CT is VERY crooked. If you're ever here, just pass on through, don't consider staying.
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Talk to your game vendor, this is not a Linux problem.
When software you have from a vendor does not work with Linux, talk to your software vendor, this is not a Linux problem.
When hardware you have does not work with Linux, talk to your hardware vendor. This is not a Linux problem.
Also, Linux has no "customer base", nor does it want or need one. Talk to your Linux vendor of choice to determine their goals, and try to choose the vendor that best fits your needs.
Just four words:
I told you so! (and these posts were almost 2 months ago)
But now he's on at least one "List(tm)", and we all know what happens to people who end up on "lists" that the US government happens to be compiling.
Correction, Crossover Office is Wine with paid support. It is not a "fork", spinoff or other derivitive.
Think of it like Fedora vs. Red Hat if the analogy makes better sense. You can get one free, with all the free community support you need, or you can get one by paying, with a license, entitlement and a human being on the other end of a telephone waiting to help you with your problems.
Depending on whose estimates and "research" you go by, I've heard that anywhere from 1/3 (Microsoft's estimate) to 2/3 of Microsoft Windows versions running on machines today, are pirated. That doesn't count the billion copies running somewhere in Asia for $2.00/copy, but actual production Windows installations.
So 1/3 to 2/3 of their "market share" was due to piracy. Now how does it suit their best interests to prevent that? If Linux is currently at ~11% to 15% market share and Apple OSX is around 5% to 7%, having Microsoft sitting in at 30% doesn't seem to spectacular now, does it?
In fact, its been shown that people who pirate Microsoft Windows tend to use it, stick with it, develop for it, and install other applications onto it.. many of them legally licensed. So stopping piracy will deprive Microsoft and other application vendors of billions of dollars of revenue.
Whether or not it is more than the billions they claim from "piracy" has yet to be proven, but I'll bet its close.
I see no better way that they could have done to push people away from their platform than by doing exactly what they're doing here.
So in other words, you still have to spend $20,000 on buying the original applications themselves. What your $300.00 gets you is the legal right to install that $20,000 of software you just purchased on multiple machines at the same time.
No thank you.
The point is to get people to enable Automatic Updates so they forget their system is auto-patching itself, so they CAN start sending data back to their servers without you knowing it.
No thank you.
When did Linus turn into an OS?
Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!
I'm sure most people reading your reply missed the sarcasm and humor buried in the words. I certainly didn't, great laugh!
All kidding aside, if Microsoft stopped allowing the update of pirated copies of Windows updates, the malicious people would need to do is break your machine forcing you to reinstall. Oops! You lost your serial number? No problem, just go out on the web and get one, and now you can get your machine back up again.
Oops, you can't patch your machine with Windows Update, and now that hole that the malicious folks used to hack your machine the first time is wide open again.
Welcome to the Zombie Network of machines being misappropriated to send illegal child pr0n, spam, trade copyrighted works, propagate malware and dozens of other things.
Stopping the ability to patch operating systems, including those from pirated copies of Microsoft Windows, will just cause a sharp rise in the number of machines being taken over, broken into, repurposed as spam/malware/p2p distribution nodes.
Good going, Microsoft.
Years ago, cable companies would use a similar tactic to bust people who were actively stealing cable services.
Basically on the "pirated" boxes (blackboxes) or those who were "piggybacking" cable on their neighbor's connection junction, they would broadcast a "contest" for the next 100 people to call in. People who were letitimate customers and subscribers would never even see the "contest" broadcast.
If you called in to win the "t-shirt" or "trip to Jamaica", or whatever, they collected your address and other details. When you went into the cable company location to claim your prize, they gave you a nice shiny pair of bracelets and a trip to the local police department.
Don't fall for the "discount" on any Windows product. Use this as a means to get a "discount" on the whole thing, switch to Mac OSX or Linux.
We won't treat you like a criminal.
True, it could be in L3 or L4 cache.
Trust me, Linux might work on it, but copying other software created or installed on those other operating systems will NOT be easy. This time, the DRM is in the silicon.
This player is intrguing, and has some nice features: Small, light, portable, and has OLED and an actual display (which devices like the iPod Shuffle do not).
However, I do not see the one thing that makes it a blocker for me: How long does the battery life last... in lifetime? 10 hours per-charge if you drain it fully, but does it only last 100 charges? 1000? More? Less?
I don't like buying $130.00 "disposable" products, but it seems that is what our society is breeding now. "Its only $300.00, just throw it away and buy a new one!" (speaking of a certain printer that had some issues, and was cheaper to buy a new one than than keep fixing the existing one. The same can be said for quite a few products these days; PDAs, mp3 players, DVD players, headphones, etc.)
It seems like these vendors are continuing to churn out "degrading" products in the hopes that we will keep replacing them with new ones, hopefully from the same vendor. We are not CONSUMERS, we do not "consume" technology like our cars "consume" gas. We are customers, and we expect quality products for our hard-earned dollars, not trash that "expires" in 6 months and gets tossed in a drawer.
So does this thing last 3+ years while charging every day? Does it have a decent LiIon battery to take that number of recharge cycles?
For those asking the obligatory question: "But does it run on Linux?", the answer is "No, but..".
Linux (and BSD) have gDeskLets which provides the exactly the same/similar functionality with arguably more applications available for it.
It is these two exact projects which spurned the creation of Apple's "Dashboard" product available in Tiger.
I then asked what it would cost to get a line that does not allow outgoing calls, and she said they also do not offer this either. She said their lines absolutely must allow incoming and outgoing calls at a minimum, which then allows me to dial 911.
I asked "Mary" if she knew of any other landline service providers in CT that would allow this, and she said she wasn't aware of any that did.
Since they own the poles here, our landline services have to be provided by them (or they get the costs anyway, and can enforce anyone leasing space on their poles to use the same policies). So I guess I'm out of luck anyway... but I know the cost of 911 is a surcharge on our regular monthly bill. Here's how it breaks down in our case:
The "tax" portion of our bill last month was $19.88, which was just under 50% of the total bill amount of $39.91.
Trust me, we're getting raped. If they did allow a line with just 9-1-1 on it, it would probably be about $15.00/month, if I made zero calls on it and never received any calls on it.
What country is this? Certainly not the US.. we pay something like $4.00-$5.00 per-month just to have the "right" to call 911 when there is an emergency. Even the payphones require you to put in $0.50 to call 911 now (and several towns here are moving to all rotary payphones again, because of the issue with touch-tone and drug dealers, or so they say).
911 is most-definitely NOT a "free" service in the US.
Its happened with state and local officers, as well as across Lebanon, Willimantic, Windham and Norwich CT where I lived, as well as towns that neighbor those towns where I was travelling through them to work.
I admit that Officer Buckner in Willimantic had a vendetta against me (he even pulled over a friend of mine just to question me, when I was in the passenger seat), but he was pretty extreme, and everybody knew it. I even went to the Willimantic Police Department with my handful of tickets issued by Officer Buckner to ask them why he was pulling me over and ticketing me so much (17 times in 1 month). They had no idea, but agreed to investigate (which I'm sure was just lip-service, nothing ever happened to him).
But that's just 17 out of the total number of tickets I've received. I've been pulled over for having the car dealer's license plate frame around my license plate (anything around a license plate is illegal in CT, including the dealer's license plate frame). I've been pulled over for having a "loose registration sticker" on my rear license plate (CT law requires plates front and rear, the front plate's sticker was firmly attached. I even offered to swap the plates right there on the side of the road, but he still ticketed me). I've been pulled over for a LOT of "questionable" things.
If I could have afforded an attorney at the time, I'm sure things would have stopped earlier, but as it is, I was just a 20-something with a series of junkers and very nice vehicles over time.
The other interesting thing that I've been bitten by several times, is that in CT when you receive a traffic ticket/infraction, your license is automatically suspended until the results of that case are determined. I've been ticketed, and while waiting for my court date, pulled over again.. and ticketed for driving with a suspended license. I'm not sure if they still do that, but I do know that they pull your license if you get more than 3 tickets in 3 years. CT has very strict driving laws.
It got so bad that I had a police scanner installed in my car as well as a voice recorder. I started driving back roads to get to my destination to avoid cops, which makes me seem even more guilty.
You might call bullshit, and you're entitled to that opinion, but I have copies of every infraction in my files here to back it up. I haven't been pulled over AT ALL since I moved to CA for 2 years and back to CT (knock on wood), and its been 6 years now without a single ticket or infraction. I lay pretty low though.
Yes, I'm bitter... there are a few (in my experience, a minority) good cops out there, but there are a LOT more bad ones that I've personally met or crossed paths with. They're all on some sort of adrenalin high and when you question them or their decisions, you're automatically made to feel guilty or subordinate.
I had an officer ticket me once when I was CLEARLY in the right. He started explaining how to send the ticket in with my fine amount, and I interrupted him with "Can I see your pen?" and he said "What?" and I replied with "May I see your pen please...".
I flipped the ticket over, signed the back in the "Not Guilty" section and said "See you in court, asshole." (yes, this is a true story).
I abhor cops, and its probably the single most important thing that caused me to question authority from the age of 19 until present (I'm now 34, and that decision has barely wavered).
I've showed up to the courthouse in CT to defend my side of the case with armfuls of evidence, photographs, witness statements, etc.
In CT, your case isn't even put on the docket until you talk to the prosecutor. He's the one who puts your case folder from a big stack of files into the stack he brings into court for the day.
In at least 3 cases of my own, I've had my armfuls of evidence discounted BEFORE I was even in the courtroom in front of the judge. Basically the prosecutor said "Nice photographs, but we're not going to allow those. The same with your witness statements, those aren't going to be allowed in your case."
So you're telling me this is legal? What rights does the innocent have, if all of his evidence can be thrown out prior to the case being presented to the judge?
Is THAT what they call it when you show up in court as the accused, with evidence to exonerate charges against you, and the evidence you would have used to prove your innocence isn't even allowed into the courtroom by the prosecutor?
I wonder how they determine that you're "willing to state false information", when you've never done so before? I've had several tickets issued to me where I've brought evidence with me to court to prove my case, only to have that evidence thrown out before I could even present it, by the prosecutor (here is one such example).
Or a third option, and one our system is heading towards anyway... lock everyone up, guilty or innocent, and you can be assured that you're capturing 100% of the guilty, instead of letting a few guilty slip away as you uphold "Freedom" or some such fantasy.
I feel your pain, and I've lived in CT my whole life. See my two previous posts on this, here and here.
I have a lot of really ugly stories about being pulled over that would floor most people.
My worst one was probably when I was pulled over at 4pm for not driving with my lights on. $285.00 ticket on the spot, and the officer forgot to give me my license back (and I forgot to ask).
I get back in my car, the officer gets back in his and speeds off down the highway. I get ONE EXIT further down the highway, and the same officer peels in behind me from the on-ramp and pulls me over again... for the same infraction (it was still very much daylight out, no need for headlights). He asks me for my license which I can't find, then I remember that he still has it. I tell him he still has it, and he yells at me for "backtalking him".
I should also note that I had a good friend in the car, a black friend, who was also pre-law... but we were both dressed casual and he sort of looks like a gangster. His name is also... no joke.. Charles Dickens.
The officer writes me another $285.00 ticket for the lack of headlights, and I lost my cool. I begin telling him that its perfectly light outside, and that even HIS vehicle is driving without headlights. I asked him if I could write HIM a ticket for not driving with headlights. $516.00 in infractions in less than 1/2 mile of roadway. It was utter bullshit, and I said exactly that to his face.
His partner decides to go to my passenger side of the vehicle and ask Charles (I called him "Chuck D") for his ID. Charles said he doesn't have to produce any ID, since he's not the one driving. The officer insists to see his ID, and Charles says that he wasn't carrying any. The officer opens the car door on the passenger side and asks Charles to step out of the vehicle (Meanwhile, I'm arguing with the officer telling him what I think he can do with his pen and pad and certain parts of my anatomy. Yes, this is all perfectly legal, as long as you don't directly threaten the officer).
Charles refuses to get out of the car, and the officer grabs his jacket and arm and tries to force him out of the vehicle saying "Get outta the car, nigger!". Charles yanks the officer's hand off of his arm and says something like "What did you just say? What did you just call me? You can't just grab people out of their cars. What's your job officer, 'Serve and Protect and Break a Nigger's Neck'?", and steps out of the vehicle. Charles is 6'4" tall, big, black, smart, and was (at the time) studying law. The officer was about 5'6" tall and didn't expect what he got.
Needless to say, after all this arguing between all of us (Charles still not producing any ID), the officer calls for a tow truck for my vehicle and demands my keys. I told him the only way he's getting my keys is if he shoots me here on the roadside. He doesn't even have a right to my keys if he arrests me, since they immediately would go into evidence, and since they are my property and I won't waive my rights to my property, he can't even touch them.
After demanding my keys for 10 minutes, the tow truck arrives, and I tell the officer that I'll allow the tow truck driver to use my keys to get the car into the truck bed, and then I'm locking it again.
The car gets towed and I give the keys to the tow truck operator (who I happened to know personally from my dart league). He tows the car to the yard and we find a ride home.
At 3:30am, I get a call from the night watchman at the auto yard where my car was towed. He tells me that he got a note from my friend (the tow truck driver) to keep an eye on the car in the yard. Apparently at 3:00am, these two cops went back to the yard, sli
Not in Connecticut.
In CT, you can ask to see the radar, and they'll say "No." (I've asked). You can ask to know the details of the reason they're stopping you, and they can say "No." (I've also asked).
You can mail the station asking for a copy of the officer's log for that stop, and they can refuse.
You can take pictures of the location of the stop and bring them to court, and the prosecutor can refuse to admit them into evidence (before you even get into the courtroom).
See, I've been pulled over 57 times in about 5 years, and been in court fighting tickets about 65 times (after postponements and continuances supposedly engineered to discourage me from returning to fight more). I've fought every ticket and won/nollied most of them, except the few where the prosecutor refused to admit the evidence that proved without a doubt, that I was in the right.
I've even had cops pull in behind me at a red light in a light snow, and when the light turned green I took an immediate left into a Dunkin Donuts parking lot, where the cop threw on his flashing lights and said I ran the red light at 20mph over the limit... the same red light he stopped behind me at. Yes, cops are crooked in CT, but they're backed up by the even-more-crooked court system they allow here (see my previous post in this thread on the matter).
I have been pulled over no less than 57 times in 5 years for various things (only 4 were for speeding, however, the rest were pure harrassment and profiling, and yes, I'm white. I've changed my hair, appearance, car, and the towns I live in; it doesn't help. I was pulled over 17 times in one town in 1 MONTH by the same officer in one series of cases in Willimantic.). I've fought every single ticket or infraction I've been issued and won, except the speeding ones.
See, I live in Connecticut, and there's the nice little loophole on the books that directly helps the court win every single speeding case: No matter what evidence you bring to court, they can simply tell you that it is inadmissible, and you can't bring it into court. No matter what the evidence is, if the prosecutor decides that it isn't relevant, for ANY reason, you can't bring it into the courtroom.
I was pulled over by a rookie female officer on my way home from work. The same route I took every day for 5+ years. The facility I work at has about 3,000 employees and the 2-lane town road we travel to get to the highway is QUITE busy at 5pm.
There are quite a few slight curves on this road and Jersey barriers separating two lanes going one way from two going the other. She pulled me over saying that I was going something like 20mph over the limit. Of course I vehemently objected, because I would have rammed the 40 cars in front of me had I been going that fast. Not to mention, with the cars all bunched up at quitting time, there's no way she picked MY truck out in the far lane, through the closer lane of traffic going the same speed.
But I got the ticket anyway, so I decided to do some research. I went to the exact spot where she was parked, and pointed my camera to the exact spot she said she clocked me. There was an arbor of trees right in the way (thick trees), as well as two road signs and a mobile home parked in a neighbor's driveway. There's no way she could see through that, clock me, and properly recognize the vehicle she clocked.
I brought all of my pictures to court, in full-color, as well as my questions about the nature of her stop, whether her device was recently calibrated, whether she could produce the documentation to verify that, etc.
In CT, you are required to talk to the prosecutor before your case, to present your questions and evidence. Now I know why, so they can go over it before you go into court. No surprises from defendants.
The prosecutor basically said "Well these are nice pictures, but you're not going into court with them." and I said "But these are my proof that your officer is wrong!", and he said "Well, they're not going into court. And you won't have access to the officer's logbook either, we don't do that here in CT, even if you asked in writing." (which I did).
Needless to say, even when I grilled the officer on the stand, making her feel like she was in the wrong, I still lost and had to pay the fine.
The court system in CT is VERY crooked. If you're ever here, just pass on through, don't consider staying.