So every kid who gets caught with pot should get thrown in the slammer? Likewise, do you think everyone who smokes dope or even shoots up is a threat to you? Let's reform the insane drug laws in this country and then you can tell me that the criminal justice system is too lax.
Bummer =/. Here's the first page of it, I'm sure Slash will cut off the rest. You'll get the jist though.
Time magazine dubbed 2002 "The Year of the Whistleblower," honoring inside do-gooders who risked their careers by exposing, among other things, how the FBI let a key terrorism suspect slip through its fingers before the 9/11 attacks and by blowing the lid off Enron's outrageous financial crimes. Since the terror attacks, the critical importance of revealing governmental failures has become obvious: A breakdown in homeland security could mean catastrophe. Indeed, precisely that scenario is laid out in the current issue of Vanity Fair, which features an expose about federal whistle-blowers who lay bare the shocking vulnerability of America's nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos to terrorist attack, as well as the ongoing failures of airline and airport security. Several of those same whistle-blowers will soon tell their tale on "60 Minutes."
In recent years, aided in part by movies like "The Insider," whistle-blowers have attained the status of folk heroes. "It's become popular to protect whistle-blowers -- that's never happened before," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit public interest group dedicated to exposing governmental corruption and mismanagement that works closely with whistle-blowers and that advocates for them.
As a result, most people probably assume that federal whistle-blowers now enjoy strong legal protection against retaliation.
They're wrong. Many federal whistle-blowers -- including the one who exposed the security flaws at U.S. nuclear plants -- have had their careers destroyed because of a glaring loophole in the law designed to protect them: If their security clearances are revoked, as frequently happens to whistle-blowers, the special federal agency that investigates their cases has no power to restore it -- and the federal appeals court that is their last recourse is a kangaroo court that almost never rules in their favor. Even if a whistle-blower is vindicated, the crucial security status is often not restored -- in effect ending a career.
Since the Whistleblower Protection Act, or WPA, was unanimously passed in 1989 (and then strengthened in 1994) to protect whistle-blowers against on-the-job retaliation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the unique court that handles government-contract disputes, has continuously narrowed the rights of whistle-blowers and ruled against them in nearly every case, according to the Government Accountability Project, a public advocacy group.
Experts variously describe what happens to whistle-blowers when they enter the bureaucratic and judicial process as "a Twilight Zone," "Kafka-esque," and "Chinese water torture."
"It's a big loophole in the law," says Elaine Kaplan, the former head of the Office of Special Counsel, or OSC, the independent federal agency that investigates whistle-blower cases. "It's not the most satisfying system."
New legislation, with bipartisan support in the House and Senate, will attempt to close the loopholes.
"The Whistleblower Protection Act was passed to ensure employees who come forward will be free from harassment for doing the right thing," says Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., who introduced the new bill in the House of Representatives. "But the court has changed the intent of Congress in such dramatic fashion, to the point where there is significant disincentive for coming forward with information."
The Department of Justice opposes the bill, calling it unconstitutional. Defending the right of various federal agencies to decide who does and does not get security clearance, the DOJ frames the issue as one of executive-branch power -- the president, as head of the government, trumps a personnel arbitration court like the OSC. In the DOJ's view, security clearance is a privilege, not a right that can be won back in court
The DOJ and other critics of the pending legislation
Kidding? I spent 3 days there for a work a couple years back. It was 30 degrees and rainy the entire time, and I swear I never saw the sun. I'm from Florida dammit! Climbing above the clouds in the jet as I left that place was one of the greatest feelings ever =D.
The lax part is a GOOD thing, IMHO, considering most people end up in the justice system due to our inane drug laws.
As far as being on probation being "time out", most people in jail (at least locally, I don't know the stats) are there because of violation of probation. Probation itself is no cakewalk, and is rather intrusive in one's life.
I don't want this to devolve into some lame political rant, though I have to wonder if you'd rather give people a chance with alternatives to jail before we lock them up at the taxpayer's expense.
But man, all this talk about "homeland security" goes right out the window when it interferes with turning a profit, right? This isn't an anti-Bush rant, moreso a gripe with business ethics in general. John Ashcroft et. al. have seen fit to rape the Bill of Rights to "protect" us from terrorism, then turns around and screws a whistleblower for pointing out our nuke plants are vulnerable.
Back when I was in elementary school there was a big push - PSAs, educational materials, etc. - to recycle. I imagine most schoolchildren past a certain point were educated about recycling and such. The problem was that these programs were too successful! The rates at which consumers started recycling goods grew at a much faster rate than the facilities to process them, and we got stuck in the situation were in now. My local municipality has a ton of recycleables in storage while they process what they can - Yes, I DO know where my beer bottles are going.
As for the cost, I could care less. It takes a cup of oil to process the aluminium in one soda can. I'm sure plastic materials take even more oil. Anything to reduce our consumption of oil, and the corresponding dependence on the Middle East, is a Good Thing (environmental concerns aside).
LOL =) I dragged a V6 Mustang (last model, not the new ones) in a friend's V6 Town & Country, and I kicked his ass! 3 stoplights in a row! His girlfriend was laughing it up, but he sure wasn't =D
I know a guy who ran a 75 shot on a bone stock Integra Type R for over a year. Went through like 10 tanks, and after tearing it down, there was no observable wear on the cylinder walls, pistons, etc. Nitrous is cheap, simple horses. Properly done it is reliable and will give you as much horsepower as your motor can handle. Hardly pointless.
The wings on the other hand...
And next time I have a few spare years worth of evenings after work I'll look into the kit =D
Gus was a big name in the turbo Mopar scene, and was well known by just about everyone with a turbo car and a computer. He passed away recently, but his legacy will live on! =D
I just got my newly EFIed Volvo 242 Turbo (now there is an oxymoron! =P) started a couple weeks back, running on a Megasquirt. I've been a member of a couple of Volvo related mailing lists for years now, and that has been helpful in so many ways. Many of the members were longtime mechanics, and had worked on Volvos for years, so help was always an email away for the most part.
Now that I've moved into a more exotic area I've subbed to a couple of EFI lists, mostly related to the EFI I use. While discussions on the primary list are mainly troubleshooting/feature requests, noone minds talking about new technology on cars or off-the-wall ideas.
Additionally, many projects have forked off the main Megasquirt (which is itself a fork of EFI332). One of which I'm following is the MegasquirtAVR, which is a port to the Atmel AVR architecture. This has given us a ton more power to work with, allows us to use C instead of assembly (like on the Moto-based Megasquirt), and there are some terribly bright people on the list discussing new features. We're finishing up work on a daughterboard to the main EFI board which will drive a Bosch LSU wideband oxygen sensor that also has an onboard knock sensor processor, ignition drivers, high-res ADCs, etc. Next up is a full ion-sensing ignition (!).
As for my project car (more like my science project), now that shes running, next up is a T3/T04 hybrid and bigger injectors! I just HAVE to be able to spank those damn WRXs at the dragstrip!
Well no, I have a PocketPC, just don't know how else to describe the writing method. I've had to tweak the ways I write certain letters to get it to recognize them, and I find myself printing letters that way too =D. And yea, if I had paid for this thing (iPaq 3870) I'd have gotten my money back!
If she ain't puttin out, she damn sure better be paying for your lunch! Doing OTHERWISE would be batting for the other team, or more likely, is just being a chump!
Werd. Worked with Tek in Orlando and it was a miserable experience. I was glad to be working so young, but they actually LOST me jobs because of their reputation. That, and yea, I had a hard time getting any more money. Although I think that may be a symptom of companies using contractors to replace fulltime employees.
That's the thing that really got me, that the company I was working for through Tek was paying them twice what I was worth, but wouldnt bring me on as a real employee even after a year (was a 2 month contract at first). I ended up walking out on the job, and never looked back =). Talk about an uplifting experience: Tek: "you know, this means we can't place you again" me: "uh, no shit, why do you think i walked?"
I don't know about you, but my health insurance premiums went WAY up this year, and we had to switch providers for the second time since I've joined this company. Tell me again about the wonders of the free market?
You really seem to miss the point completely when it comes to the single payer health care system Dean proposes. And as he mentioned in an interview I saw once, they implemented a similar program in Vermont and it was CHEAPER than comparable coverage from a private provider.
I wouldn't typically wish ill against someone, but I hope you end up broke and destitute someday so you get to see how the "other half" lives.
Slashdot Mirror
Multicast. Someday?
What were we even debating? Meh.
So every kid who gets caught with pot should get thrown in the slammer? Likewise, do you think everyone who smokes dope or even shoots up is a threat to you? Let's reform the insane drug laws in this country and then you can tell me that the criminal justice system is too lax.
Bummer =/. Here's the first page of it, I'm sure Slash will cut off the rest. You'll get the jist though.
Time magazine dubbed 2002 "The Year of the Whistleblower," honoring inside do-gooders who risked their careers by exposing, among other things, how the FBI let a key terrorism suspect slip through its fingers before the 9/11 attacks and by blowing the lid off Enron's outrageous financial crimes. Since the terror attacks, the critical importance of revealing governmental failures has become obvious: A breakdown in homeland security could mean catastrophe. Indeed, precisely that scenario is laid out in the current issue of Vanity Fair, which features an expose about federal whistle-blowers who lay bare the shocking vulnerability of America's nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos to terrorist attack, as well as the ongoing failures of airline and airport security. Several of those same whistle-blowers will soon tell their tale on "60 Minutes."
In recent years, aided in part by movies like "The Insider," whistle-blowers have attained the status of folk heroes. "It's become popular to protect whistle-blowers -- that's never happened before," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit public interest group dedicated to exposing governmental corruption and mismanagement that works closely with whistle-blowers and that advocates for them.
As a result, most people probably assume that federal whistle-blowers now enjoy strong legal protection against retaliation.
They're wrong. Many federal whistle-blowers -- including the one who exposed the security flaws at U.S. nuclear plants -- have had their careers destroyed because of a glaring loophole in the law designed to protect them: If their security clearances are revoked, as frequently happens to whistle-blowers, the special federal agency that investigates their cases has no power to restore it -- and the federal appeals court that is their last recourse is a kangaroo court that almost never rules in their favor. Even if a whistle-blower is vindicated, the crucial security status is often not restored -- in effect ending a career.
Since the Whistleblower Protection Act, or WPA, was unanimously passed in 1989 (and then strengthened in 1994) to protect whistle-blowers against on-the-job retaliation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the unique court that handles government-contract disputes, has continuously narrowed the rights of whistle-blowers and ruled against them in nearly every case, according to the Government Accountability Project, a public advocacy group.
Experts variously describe what happens to whistle-blowers when they enter the bureaucratic and judicial process as "a Twilight Zone," "Kafka-esque," and "Chinese water torture."
"It's a big loophole in the law," says Elaine Kaplan, the former head of the Office of Special Counsel, or OSC, the independent federal agency that investigates whistle-blower cases. "It's not the most satisfying system."
New legislation, with bipartisan support in the House and Senate, will attempt to close the loopholes.
"The Whistleblower Protection Act was passed to ensure employees who come forward will be free from harassment for doing the right thing," says Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., who introduced the new bill in the House of Representatives. "But the court has changed the intent of Congress in such dramatic fashion, to the point where there is significant disincentive for coming forward with information."
The Department of Justice opposes the bill, calling it unconstitutional. Defending the right of various federal agencies to decide who does and does not get security clearance, the DOJ frames the issue as one of executive-branch power -- the president, as head of the government, trumps a personnel arbitration court like the OSC. In the DOJ's view, security clearance is a privilege, not a right that can be won back in court
The DOJ and other critics of the pending legislation
Kidding? I spent 3 days there for a work a couple years back. It was 30 degrees and rainy the entire time, and I swear I never saw the sun. I'm from Florida dammit! Climbing above the clouds in the jet as I left that place was one of the greatest feelings ever =D.
The lax part is a GOOD thing, IMHO, considering most people end up in the justice system due to our inane drug laws.
As far as being on probation being "time out", most people in jail (at least locally, I don't know the stats) are there because of violation of probation. Probation itself is no cakewalk, and is rather intrusive in one's life.
I don't want this to devolve into some lame political rant, though I have to wonder if you'd rather give people a chance with alternatives to jail before we lock them up at the taxpayer's expense.
Using the Russian mafia to bust up those annoying elf unions, eh?
But man, all this talk about "homeland security" goes right out the window when it interferes with turning a profit, right? This isn't an anti-Bush rant, moreso a gripe with business ethics in general. John Ashcroft et. al. have seen fit to rape the Bill of Rights to "protect" us from terrorism, then turns around and screws a whistleblower for pointing out our nuke plants are vulnerable.
Way to have your priorities straight guys.
Back when I was in elementary school there was a big push - PSAs, educational materials, etc. - to recycle. I imagine most schoolchildren past a certain point were educated about recycling and such. The problem was that these programs were too successful! The rates at which consumers started recycling goods grew at a much faster rate than the facilities to process them, and we got stuck in the situation were in now. My local municipality has a ton of recycleables in storage while they process what they can - Yes, I DO know where my beer bottles are going.
As for the cost, I could care less. It takes a cup of oil to process the aluminium in one soda can. I'm sure plastic materials take even more oil. Anything to reduce our consumption of oil, and the corresponding dependence on the Middle East, is a Good Thing (environmental concerns aside).
Sure we do, better trolls.
We don't even have intelligent traffic lights down here in America's wang. Intelligent navigation systems and road sensors are quite a ways off.
Fair enough. I guess I just assumed the cheep ricer kids just put a coffee can exhaust tip and a 3 foot high wing on and called it quits =)
Neat looking cars! These aren't street legal, are they?
LOL =) I dragged a V6 Mustang (last model, not the new ones) in a friend's V6 Town & Country, and I kicked his ass! 3 stoplights in a row! His girlfriend was laughing it up, but he sure wasn't =D
I know a guy who ran a 75 shot on a bone stock Integra Type R for over a year. Went through like 10 tanks, and after tearing it down, there was no observable wear on the cylinder walls, pistons, etc. Nitrous is cheap, simple horses. Properly done it is reliable and will give you as much horsepower as your motor can handle. Hardly pointless.
The wings on the other hand...
And next time I have a few spare years worth of evenings after work I'll look into the kit =D
-- the Volvo crowd (www.turbobricks.com)
C'mon, we're good sports about it. They do look like bricks after all! (though the S60 is sexy, mmmmm....)
Heh, you turn it into a MEAN MINI!
Gus was a big name in the turbo Mopar scene, and was well known by just about everyone with a turbo car and a computer. He passed away recently, but his legacy will live on! =D
I just got my newly EFIed Volvo 242 Turbo (now there is an oxymoron! =P) started a couple weeks back, running on a Megasquirt. I've been a member of a couple of Volvo related mailing lists for years now, and that has been helpful in so many ways. Many of the members were longtime mechanics, and had worked on Volvos for years, so help was always an email away for the most part.
Now that I've moved into a more exotic area I've subbed to a couple of EFI lists, mostly related to the EFI I use. While discussions on the primary list are mainly troubleshooting/feature requests, noone minds talking about new technology on cars or off-the-wall ideas.
Additionally, many projects have forked off the main Megasquirt (which is itself a fork of EFI332). One of which I'm following is the MegasquirtAVR, which is a port to the Atmel AVR architecture. This has given us a ton more power to work with, allows us to use C instead of assembly (like on the Moto-based Megasquirt), and there are some terribly bright people on the list discussing new features. We're finishing up work on a daughterboard to the main EFI board which will drive a Bosch LSU wideband oxygen sensor that also has an onboard knock sensor processor, ignition drivers, high-res ADCs, etc. Next up is a full ion-sensing ignition (!).
As for my project car (more like my science project), now that shes running, next up is a T3/T04 hybrid and bigger injectors! I just HAVE to be able to spank those damn WRXs at the dragstrip!
Uh, the PATRIOT Act did away with that oversight anyways, so what's the difference?
Uh, in BC. Move along, nothing to see here.
Vancouver is on the left coast of Canada, eh. Near BC.
Well no, I have a PocketPC, just don't know how else to describe the writing method. I've had to tweak the ways I write certain letters to get it to recognize them, and I find myself printing letters that way too =D. And yea, if I had paid for this thing (iPaq 3870) I'd have gotten my money back!
Hah, my PDA has made my handwriting worse! I find myself printing with Graffiti like letters =D
If she ain't puttin out, she damn sure better be paying for your lunch! Doing OTHERWISE would be batting for the other team, or more likely, is just being a chump!
Werd. Worked with Tek in Orlando and it was a miserable experience. I was glad to be working so young, but they actually LOST me jobs because of their reputation. That, and yea, I had a hard time getting any more money. Although I think that may be a symptom of companies using contractors to replace fulltime employees.
That's the thing that really got me, that the company I was working for through Tek was paying them twice what I was worth, but wouldnt bring me on as a real employee even after a year (was a 2 month contract at first). I ended up walking out on the job, and never looked back =). Talk about an uplifting experience: Tek: "you know, this means we can't place you again" me: "uh, no shit, why do you think i walked?"
I don't know about you, but my health insurance premiums went WAY up this year, and we had to switch providers for the second time since I've joined this company. Tell me again about the wonders of the free market?
You really seem to miss the point completely when it comes to the single payer health care system Dean proposes. And as he mentioned in an interview I saw once, they implemented a similar program in Vermont and it was CHEAPER than comparable coverage from a private provider.
I wouldn't typically wish ill against someone, but I hope you end up broke and destitute someday so you get to see how the "other half" lives.
Talk about a heartless motherfucker....