One of the main advantages to using money as the means of determining who gets what (ie a market) is that the act of bidding up the cost of a product increases its availability.[1]
Let's say a new technique is developed for treating, say, rheumatoid arthritis. This technique is very new, and the company that invents it can only pay for partial time at a plant, so there's only enough for 10 people to get treatment. If you have the 10 who are willing to pay the most purchase the treatment in a bidding war, the profit margin will be the highest, thus allowing increased production/research/etc.
If you use need as the test, then you're paid whatever the set rate is. This may be very high for experimental drugs (assuming a third party pays it), but it will almost definitely not be the most profitable. This constrains the growth of your supply, so the costs will remain high for longer, with less availability.
Now, speaking of fairness, and the NSF: we do not agree on what is fair. None of us do. If you sit any two people down and give them a list of situations and ask them if they're fair or unfair, you will get a difference in opinion. This is partially because we each define "fair" very differently.
The point of this is that if you have any subset of the population decide what is fair and what is not (even if the subset is the majority of the population), their choices will be seen as unfair by some.
Whenever you have a situation like this, the question becomes: who is in power? If your side is in power, the decisions will be fair - as you see it.
If you see the decisions of the NSF as being fair, you might want to consider whether that is because your group is in power.
Libertarianism is the idea that a few people making decisions about what is fair is not as good as everyone being allowed to make their own decisions within the constraints of their means.
[1] - Another advantage of using money as the test is that a corrupt decision results in less money for the provider. Under any other system, a corrupt system results in gain. We are more likely to be understanding of someone making a corrupt decision in the former case: consider a doctor performing an operation at lower cost for his nephew. He can only perform so many operations in a day, so he does that at the expense of a higher-paying customer. It is (technically) a corrupt decision, but he takes the monetary hit himself. If the doctor performed the operation on his nephew at the expense of a *more deserving* person (under the doctrine of fairness), then many would say that was wrong.
I think part of the gap between the execs and the consumer is that we see it as exposure + content, and they just see it as content. For execs, exposure is a good review, a press gala, some dumb schtick with a radio station, etc. Not, you know, *content*.
Anyways. On the blackout front: I don't watch sports, but the people I know who do tend to be fans of non-local teams. I think this is mostly because they can always get the game, so they develop a fondness for a team.
NYC has the problem of onerous regulation, and cronyism. Only group that would be allowed to run the fiber would be a major political power in NYC. IIRC, the Tokyo fiber movement was part of their "modernisation of communication" (or whatever they called it) plan, thus there was a limit on the price that could be charged.
In NYC, the fiber would be viewed as "for the rich." I mean, this is the same city that has serious housing problems at least partly caused by rent control.
Sigh...but if any city had the right layout for fiber-to-home, it would be NYC.
Infrastructure costs, length of runs, costs of right-of-way, etc.
In Tokyo, how many feet of fiber do you pay for? ie take all the fiber all the way to the NOC, divide each run by the number of customers on it - all the way out to you. I'll bet you pay for around 10 feet. Maybe 30. Actual number doesn't matter, really, just be assured that it's several orders of magnitude higher in Kellar, TX.
Most authentication header solutions are server-to-server, not concerned with what person is sending the message, only what service. Given that domain spoofing is a server issue, not a client issue, that's reasonable.
In addition there are also issues with most email authentication systems involving relays.
(explanation for public benefit) In email situations you have:
Your Side -- Their Side
Where Your Side or Their Side consists of many or few email servers. It's very rare these days to have this situation:
Your Side -- External Relays -- Their Side
Where the external relays are not controlled by either you or the other side. These relays can do things such as the MIME re-encoding, ZIP removal, etc that was mentioned above. This is bad, as there really is no way to distinguish between a properly modified and an improperly modified email once it passes through those relays.
But they're rare. As long as the both Your Side and Their Side both have authenticators set up somewhere in the chain before things are mangled, everything is fine.
So, for instance, if you want to remove ZIP files, defang HTML or MIME, virus scan, and markup for spam purposes, you can do that. Just make sure that it's done *after* authentication.
It's like putting a letter in an envelope: envelope's only good if you check the seal before opening it.
I think part of why people get worked up about it is because there is a noticeable trend for all governments (often with the best of intentions) to want identification systems, and there is a noticeable trend for those systems, once in place, to be abused.
Americans, in particular, hear "your papers please" and immediately get pissed off. Well, we used to. Now only a good portion of us do[1]. There is a strong cultural memory in some immigrant populations of the things they left. One "good"[2] thing about this fear is that you never get into the slippery slope situations, as you're never allowed even near the slope.
Europeans in general have long shown greater tolerance of a need for papers and identification, and many reap the rewards of such systems. While in Sweden I was surprised what was doable with just a state id.
Amenability to more intrusive identification systems is a coproduct of socialism[3], and America is not as far along that path as Europe. Take that as you will.
[1] - Now the talk is all about "necessity." Which further pisses some of us off, but hey.
[2] - good from the point of view of satisfying the population's fears.
[3] - this works as follows: during a stage of socialism, the people become concerned about widespread fraud in the benefits system. Laws are enacted requiring greater levels of identity proof, which the state is involved in regulating. The regulation will be a continuous expense, so in an effort to control costs (and further reduce fraud), more information will be centralized, more things will be linked to the ID, and laws will become harsher. And the people will want it this way, because it secures their privileges.
Wow, seriously uncool. Sounds like this is definitely what you need, then.
At my work, one of our projects peripherally involves liver transplant patients (we're looking for why the anti-rejection drugs don't seem to work with some patients, and if there's any way to fix that). I'll keep what you said in mind.
The largest impiedment to a true Database Society that we have is the lack of a way to get a unique fingerprint on each person in a crowd without their active consent in each instance. Pictures aren't good enough, and cross-database compatibility is very difficult as well.
I'm cool with the hospital using this, but this "paper bracelet with your name on it [that you] won't lose" is a unique identifier that is mass scanable.
Yes, your medical records at the hospital will be secure. But that chip in you is a unique (or near-unique) identifier that a lot can get attached to.
And that's cause for concern. Not fear, but concern.
Besides, I think there are better (and perhaps cheaper) solutions for the identity problem in a hospital. Want a unique ID number? Temporary tattoo of a barcode. Maybe there are other ideas out there.
What's wrong with one of those temporary tattoos? We've got some fabulous technology with those (take a look at the female olympic vollyball teams...two or three, if you need them), what's keeping us from printing a 1-week barcode on your shoulder, or other good location (ankle, etc).
The distinction made at first was between speech which violated another's rights, and speech which did not.
Just as you do have the right to own books, you do not have the right to beat someone over the head with that book.
The distinction of when speech violated another's rights was usually made based upon whether an action was indicated by the words ("I'm going to shoot you"). Once you have declared an intent, it's not prior restraint to prevent you from doing it.
Keep in mind that the standards of proof for speech are quite high: you have to have strong evidence that someone said something, and the meaning implied. What is written is prized over what is spoken, as it's relayed in the format delivered (speech remembered is not spoken in the same way or by the same person, letters are read as they were written).
As for libel and slander, those are civil actions between private citizens, not criminal prosecution by the government. You can't go to jail for libel and slander, and someone has to prove that you said/wrote what they claim, and that what you claim is both harmful and not true. It's actually quite difficult to win a slander or libel case in the US.
Now, consider, with political speech: the government fines you within an administrative court, the fine is for speaking about something in some way - whether or not it is true. This is an entirely different class of "wrongdoing" than the others.
When I first saw the headline, my first thought was: you know, in this country full of busybodies, I'm certain if such a thing were enacted we'd see quite a bit shut down. I've seen too damned many people too damned interested in other people's lives and bedrooms.
You know, if the sodomy laws were re-instated and the police paid $200 per "tip leading to the arrest of," the phones would be ringing off the hook from the fuckers.
Here in the US we have stopped believing in the same types of societal engineering that we used to believe in. Look back a few years ago, and we had social hygene programs, and great plans involving legislation and government funding for eliminating the ills of society and shaping our future.
Decency, literacy, sobriety.
After a while, we lost the desire for it, at least on the same scale as we used to. We still keep some of it going (war on drugs, onerous regulation and taxation on "sins" such as alcohol and tobacco, and decency laws), but our attention has mostly turned to financial matters: engineering a society that has no impoverished.
The average citizen in the US believes that poverty and its ills can be reduced through group action expressed through legislation.
China as a whole still believes in societal engineering, so we'll keep seeing things like this. The reason these programs are not voluntary is because, well, what's the point in enforcing morality if you can opt out of it?
I'm sure they really do think they can clean up the country. There are quite a few true believers in China.
Scares the hell out of me, and makes me glad I don't live there, and pray that our movements in that direction are halted here.
The original quote (wish I could remember who said it, but I'm bad with names) concerned the fact that just because you make a law that says its so, doesn't mean people will think it's wrong.
I believe it was said in regards to civil rights laws, prohibiting people from certain forms of descrimination. The speaker was right, in regards to the fact that it still went on.
Morality can't be changed by a stroke of the pen, not even with the imprimatur of executive power.
In the case of murder, it doesn't matter whether or not it's seen as wrong by the perpetrator, we have decided that it's necessary in society to not allow murderers to go free.
As for pornography...as long as people don't feel it's wrong, the law won't matter. Heck, even if the people do feel it's wrong, it will probably continue. Prohibition in the US had very widespread support...but within a few years everyone was back to it again.
I think people need to realize that scale matters in moral decisions. We really do see little things as different from big things. Consumption to excess: bad. Minor consumption: fine.
So why do we have the MLAT? If our police can take actions on the orders of a foreign power (and if they are "obligated to act on a request" they are ordered), and not require US standards of evidence and US standards of wrongdoing, what worth are the protections of the constitution?
I believe the FBI should be held accountable: it was their power which was used, hence their responsibility for vetting the request. If the information given the FBI was bad, then the foreign government is to blame. Otherwise....
Another thing to consider is that R&D tends to go in cycles. For a long time there will be just incremental small improvements in things, surrounded by increased applicability - which is a good thing. Notice how many more things are becoming computer-controlled, to good results?
Somewhere along that period there will be a buildup in knowledge and in ability (often due to the cycle's small improvements and increased applicability), and a breakthrough will happen. Notice that many of the big breakthroughs have occured in multiple places near-simultaneously.
Big projects often have aftershocks of innovation, as materials, machines, and techniques founded during the production are capitalized upon.
As a libertarian, I feel compelled to mention that it's best to have the big project be done by a private group, so that the innovations are indeed capitalized upon, and so that you do not "rob from the people to pay the rich" as so many large projects done by the government turn into.
The problem is that this private corporation receives public funds for the purpose of putting on a presidential candidate debate.
The LP attempted to serve CPD, inc. with a Motion to Show Cause several times over the past few days, and were continuously rebuffed. So, the candidates made a demonstration.
CPD, inc. has been served, now, and a hearing will happen at 9am on Tuesday.
If you get public funds, there are strings attached.
Having recently watched two people switch (helping one because she's family, helping the other because she's my responsibility as her IT admin), one thing that I have noticed about their Mac usage is that they have no problem playing with it.
Most midrange users (and power users, when other things are going on in their life) do not mess with their computer if they can avoid it. These two avoided other programs like the plague, worried that it would interrupt their day.
Two weeks after using the Mac, they're listening to music, on AIM, and one of them is taking about 3 times as many digital photos as she used to.
And they're more interested in why certain things are the way they are. Regardless of truth, their impression was that Windows had no logic to it. It did what it wanted to, and they did their best to keep up.
Oddly enough, it's made both users more gadget-friendly. Maybe it's the fact that they're using their computers far more than they were (voluntarily, even). I don't know. But one of them just bought a DVD player (she'd been shying away from them because they looked more technical than the VCR), and the other got a TiVO. And they're eye-ing some other things as well.
And I get far, far fewer calls from these two regarding the computer: they're mostly willing to troubleshoot it themselves.
In other words, I'm getting more sleep.
Parent: I wonder what effect moving to a Mac will make on your wife's computer use. Good luck with it.
Once hardware is seized like this, it and everything on it will never be returned. Whether you are guilty or not.
In the past ten years we've seen the courts get savvy to (some) electronic equipment. Search and seizure of documents involves taking the documents, because you need the physical documents to read them. Search and seizure of data on a computer involves copying the information off the hard drive, then leaving with that copy.
The more technically-literate courts will no longer allow the police to get a warrant for your computer itself, only the data on the computer. Unless, that is, they need serial numbers or fingerprints, not just "this is the data that was on your computer on date x/x/x."
This is why, if you're ever served with a search warrant, it's important to read it. The police are infamous for taking more than was involved in the warrant, and you will have a very, VERY difficult time getting it back.
So, the question becomes: how did the FBI get a warrant for seizure of equipment (not just data)?
I believe that if the warrant turns out to have been for the data and Rackspace provided the hardware, then there might be civil liability involved.
Of course, the whole damn question is moot if it's PATRIOT: you'll never get to see the warrant.
Makes me wonder: if you can only see a warrant after 5 years, and the statute of limitations for unlawful execution of a warrant is 3 years.... Made up numbers, of course.
This is another reason why you want judicial review of warrants: what the police are allowed to take or search changes over time. When it's the police deciding what to search or take, they take what's easiest for them.
Side note: this is true even if you have review inside the organization. One thing that a judge will do that an internal board will almost never do is say: "Fuck the cost, and fuck the extra time it'll take you. This is the way you're going to do it, or you won't do it at all."
The internal board is always mindful of the budget.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. The current health market is far from free.
I think the right thing would be to move towards more freedom, however, instead of less.
One of the main advantages to using money as the means of determining who gets what (ie a market) is that the act of bidding up the cost of a product increases its availability.[1]
Let's say a new technique is developed for treating, say, rheumatoid arthritis. This technique is very new, and the company that invents it can only pay for partial time at a plant, so there's only enough for 10 people to get treatment. If you have the 10 who are willing to pay the most purchase the treatment in a bidding war, the profit margin will be the highest, thus allowing increased production/research/etc.
If you use need as the test, then you're paid whatever the set rate is. This may be very high for experimental drugs (assuming a third party pays it), but it will almost definitely not be the most profitable. This constrains the growth of your supply, so the costs will remain high for longer, with less availability.
Now, speaking of fairness, and the NSF: we do not agree on what is fair. None of us do. If you sit any two people down and give them a list of situations and ask them if they're fair or unfair, you will get a difference in opinion. This is partially because we each define "fair" very differently.
The point of this is that if you have any subset of the population decide what is fair and what is not (even if the subset is the majority of the population), their choices will be seen as unfair by some.
Whenever you have a situation like this, the question becomes: who is in power? If your side is in power, the decisions will be fair - as you see it.
If you see the decisions of the NSF as being fair, you might want to consider whether that is because your group is in power.
Libertarianism is the idea that a few people making decisions about what is fair is not as good as everyone being allowed to make their own decisions within the constraints of their means.
[1] - Another advantage of using money as the test is that a corrupt decision results in less money for the provider. Under any other system, a corrupt system results in gain. We are more likely to be understanding of someone making a corrupt decision in the former case: consider a doctor performing an operation at lower cost for his nephew. He can only perform so many operations in a day, so he does that at the expense of a higher-paying customer. It is (technically) a corrupt decision, but he takes the monetary hit himself. If the doctor performed the operation on his nephew at the expense of a *more deserving* person (under the doctrine of fairness), then many would say that was wrong.
I think part of the gap between the execs and the consumer is that we see it as exposure + content, and they just see it as content. For execs, exposure is a good review, a press gala, some dumb schtick with a radio station, etc. Not, you know, *content*.
Anyways. On the blackout front: I don't watch sports, but the people I know who do tend to be fans of non-local teams. I think this is mostly because they can always get the game, so they develop a fondness for a team.
But they can make station-to-station calls to the President much cheaper now.
Sigh...next time, I'll resist the urge. Next time.
NYC has the problem of onerous regulation, and cronyism. Only group that would be allowed to run the fiber would be a major political power in NYC. IIRC, the Tokyo fiber movement was part of their "modernisation of communication" (or whatever they called it) plan, thus there was a limit on the price that could be charged.
In NYC, the fiber would be viewed as "for the rich." I mean, this is the same city that has serious housing problems at least partly caused by rent control.
Sigh...but if any city had the right layout for fiber-to-home, it would be NYC.
Infrastructure costs, length of runs, costs of right-of-way, etc.
In Tokyo, how many feet of fiber do you pay for? ie take all the fiber all the way to the NOC, divide each run by the number of customers on it - all the way out to you. I'll bet you pay for around 10 feet. Maybe 30. Actual number doesn't matter, really, just be assured that it's several orders of magnitude higher in Kellar, TX.
I think I just saw the head of a grammar nazi explode.
No, this kind of stuff on just turns us. Rrrowr.
Most authentication header solutions are server-to-server, not concerned with what person is sending the message, only what service. Given that domain spoofing is a server issue, not a client issue, that's reasonable.
In addition there are also issues with most email authentication systems involving relays.
(explanation for public benefit) In email situations you have:
Your Side -- Their Side
Where Your Side or Their Side consists of many or few email servers. It's very rare these days to have this situation:
Your Side -- External Relays -- Their Side
Where the external relays are not controlled by either you or the other side. These relays can do things such as the MIME re-encoding, ZIP removal, etc that was mentioned above. This is bad, as there really is no way to distinguish between a properly modified and an improperly modified email once it passes through those relays.
But they're rare. As long as the both Your Side and Their Side both have authenticators set up somewhere in the chain before things are mangled, everything is fine.
So, for instance, if you want to remove ZIP files, defang HTML or MIME, virus scan, and markup for spam purposes, you can do that. Just make sure that it's done *after* authentication.
It's like putting a letter in an envelope: envelope's only good if you check the seal before opening it.
I think part of why people get worked up about it is because there is a noticeable trend for all governments (often with the best of intentions) to want identification systems, and there is a noticeable trend for those systems, once in place, to be abused.
Americans, in particular, hear "your papers please" and immediately get pissed off. Well, we used to. Now only a good portion of us do[1]. There is a strong cultural memory in some immigrant populations of the things they left. One "good"[2] thing about this fear is that you never get into the slippery slope situations, as you're never allowed even near the slope.
Europeans in general have long shown greater tolerance of a need for papers and identification, and many reap the rewards of such systems. While in Sweden I was surprised what was doable with just a state id.
Amenability to more intrusive identification systems is a coproduct of socialism[3], and America is not as far along that path as Europe. Take that as you will.
[1] - Now the talk is all about "necessity." Which further pisses some of us off, but hey.
[2] - good from the point of view of satisfying the population's fears.
[3] - this works as follows: during a stage of socialism, the people become concerned about widespread fraud in the benefits system. Laws are enacted requiring greater levels of identity proof, which the state is involved in regulating. The regulation will be a continuous expense, so in an effort to control costs (and further reduce fraud), more information will be centralized, more things will be linked to the ID, and laws will become harsher. And the people will want it this way, because it secures their privileges.
Wow, seriously uncool. Sounds like this is definitely what you need, then.
At my work, one of our projects peripherally involves liver transplant patients (we're looking for why the anti-rejection drugs don't seem to work with some patients, and if there's any way to fix that). I'll keep what you said in mind.
Good luck.
The largest impiedment to a true Database Society that we have is the lack of a way to get a unique fingerprint on each person in a crowd without their active consent in each instance. Pictures aren't good enough, and cross-database compatibility is very difficult as well.
I'm cool with the hospital using this, but this "paper bracelet with your name on it [that you] won't lose" is a unique identifier that is mass scanable.
Yes, your medical records at the hospital will be secure. But that chip in you is a unique (or near-unique) identifier that a lot can get attached to.
And that's cause for concern. Not fear, but concern.
Besides, I think there are better (and perhaps cheaper) solutions for the identity problem in a hospital. Want a unique ID number? Temporary tattoo of a barcode. Maybe there are other ideas out there.
What's wrong with one of those temporary tattoos? We've got some fabulous technology with those (take a look at the female olympic vollyball teams...two or three, if you need them), what's keeping us from printing a 1-week barcode on your shoulder, or other good location (ankle, etc).
Would seem to be a better idea than an implant.
The distinction made at first was between speech which violated another's rights, and speech which did not.
Just as you do have the right to own books, you do not have the right to beat someone over the head with that book.
The distinction of when speech violated another's rights was usually made based upon whether an action was indicated by the words ("I'm going to shoot you"). Once you have declared an intent, it's not prior restraint to prevent you from doing it.
Keep in mind that the standards of proof for speech are quite high: you have to have strong evidence that someone said something, and the meaning implied. What is written is prized over what is spoken, as it's relayed in the format delivered (speech remembered is not spoken in the same way or by the same person, letters are read as they were written).
As for libel and slander, those are civil actions between private citizens, not criminal prosecution by the government. You can't go to jail for libel and slander, and someone has to prove that you said/wrote what they claim, and that what you claim is both harmful and not true. It's actually quite difficult to win a slander or libel case in the US.
Now, consider, with political speech: the government fines you within an administrative court, the fine is for speaking about something in some way - whether or not it is true. This is an entirely different class of "wrongdoing" than the others.
As opposed to Windows, the OS for children designed by R. Goldberg.
Didn't see anything there on "Blue Shield" though I did read through it. I'm assuming you're not referring to the issues between WWI and II, right?
If you get the time, I'd appreciate a link with more info, you've whet my appetite.
When I first saw the headline, my first thought was: you know, in this country full of busybodies, I'm certain if such a thing were enacted we'd see quite a bit shut down. I've seen too damned many people too damned interested in other people's lives and bedrooms.
You know, if the sodomy laws were re-instated and the police paid $200 per "tip leading to the arrest of," the phones would be ringing off the hook from the fuckers.
Pisses me off just thinking about it.
China probably doesn't think it's fooling anyone.
Here in the US we have stopped believing in the same types of societal engineering that we used to believe in. Look back a few years ago, and we had social hygene programs, and great plans involving legislation and government funding for eliminating the ills of society and shaping our future.
Decency, literacy, sobriety.
After a while, we lost the desire for it, at least on the same scale as we used to. We still keep some of it going (war on drugs, onerous regulation and taxation on "sins" such as alcohol and tobacco, and decency laws), but our attention has mostly turned to financial matters: engineering a society that has no impoverished.
The average citizen in the US believes that poverty and its ills can be reduced through group action expressed through legislation.
China as a whole still believes in societal engineering, so we'll keep seeing things like this. The reason these programs are not voluntary is because, well, what's the point in enforcing morality if you can opt out of it?
I'm sure they really do think they can clean up the country. There are quite a few true believers in China.
Scares the hell out of me, and makes me glad I don't live there, and pray that our movements in that direction are halted here.
The original quote (wish I could remember who said it, but I'm bad with names) concerned the fact that just because you make a law that says its so, doesn't mean people will think it's wrong.
I believe it was said in regards to civil rights laws, prohibiting people from certain forms of descrimination. The speaker was right, in regards to the fact that it still went on.
Morality can't be changed by a stroke of the pen, not even with the imprimatur of executive power.
In the case of murder, it doesn't matter whether or not it's seen as wrong by the perpetrator, we have decided that it's necessary in society to not allow murderers to go free.
As for pornography...as long as people don't feel it's wrong, the law won't matter. Heck, even if the people do feel it's wrong, it will probably continue. Prohibition in the US had very widespread support...but within a few years everyone was back to it again.
I think people need to realize that scale matters in moral decisions. We really do see little things as different from big things. Consumption to excess: bad. Minor consumption: fine.
Great post. You have a link to the Blue Shield information? I tried google, but it kept coming up with insurance agencies....
So why do we have the MLAT? If our police can take actions on the orders of a foreign power (and if they are "obligated to act on a request" they are ordered), and not require US standards of evidence and US standards of wrongdoing, what worth are the protections of the constitution?
I believe the FBI should be held accountable: it was their power which was used, hence their responsibility for vetting the request. If the information given the FBI was bad, then the foreign government is to blame. Otherwise....
Well said.
Another thing to consider is that R&D tends to go in cycles. For a long time there will be just incremental small improvements in things, surrounded by increased applicability - which is a good thing. Notice how many more things are becoming computer-controlled, to good results?
Somewhere along that period there will be a buildup in knowledge and in ability (often due to the cycle's small improvements and increased applicability), and a breakthrough will happen. Notice that many of the big breakthroughs have occured in multiple places near-simultaneously.
Big projects often have aftershocks of innovation, as materials, machines, and techniques founded during the production are capitalized upon.
As a libertarian, I feel compelled to mention that it's best to have the big project be done by a private group, so that the innovations are indeed capitalized upon, and so that you do not "rob from the people to pay the rich" as so many large projects done by the government turn into.
The problem is that this private corporation receives public funds for the purpose of putting on a presidential candidate debate.
The LP attempted to serve CPD, inc. with a Motion to Show Cause several times over the past few days, and were continuously rebuffed. So, the candidates made a demonstration.
CPD, inc. has been served, now, and a hearing will happen at 9am on Tuesday.
If you get public funds, there are strings attached.
Having recently watched two people switch (helping one because she's family, helping the other because she's my responsibility as her IT admin), one thing that I have noticed about their Mac usage is that they have no problem playing with it.
Most midrange users (and power users, when other things are going on in their life) do not mess with their computer if they can avoid it. These two avoided other programs like the plague, worried that it would interrupt their day.
Two weeks after using the Mac, they're listening to music, on AIM, and one of them is taking about 3 times as many digital photos as she used to.
And they're more interested in why certain things are the way they are. Regardless of truth, their impression was that Windows had no logic to it. It did what it wanted to, and they did their best to keep up.
Oddly enough, it's made both users more gadget-friendly. Maybe it's the fact that they're using their computers far more than they were (voluntarily, even). I don't know. But one of them just bought a DVD player (she'd been shying away from them because they looked more technical than the VCR), and the other got a TiVO. And they're eye-ing some other things as well.
And I get far, far fewer calls from these two regarding the computer: they're mostly willing to troubleshoot it themselves.
In other words, I'm getting more sleep.
Parent: I wonder what effect moving to a Mac will make on your wife's computer use. Good luck with it.
The Many sings to us. Where is the love in your cold world of machines?
Quit your job. Join the many. Embrace the world of flesh.
...Ok, that was either an ad for porn or a sign that my job is in danger. Fucked either way.
Once hardware is seized like this, it and everything on it will never be returned. Whether you are guilty or not.
In the past ten years we've seen the courts get savvy to (some) electronic equipment. Search and seizure of documents involves taking the documents, because you need the physical documents to read them. Search and seizure of data on a computer involves copying the information off the hard drive, then leaving with that copy.
The more technically-literate courts will no longer allow the police to get a warrant for your computer itself, only the data on the computer. Unless, that is, they need serial numbers or fingerprints, not just "this is the data that was on your computer on date x/x/x."
This is why, if you're ever served with a search warrant, it's important to read it. The police are infamous for taking more than was involved in the warrant, and you will have a very, VERY difficult time getting it back.
So, the question becomes: how did the FBI get a warrant for seizure of equipment (not just data)?
I believe that if the warrant turns out to have been for the data and Rackspace provided the hardware, then there might be civil liability involved.
Of course, the whole damn question is moot if it's PATRIOT: you'll never get to see the warrant.
Makes me wonder: if you can only see a warrant after 5 years, and the statute of limitations for unlawful execution of a warrant is 3 years.... Made up numbers, of course.
This is another reason why you want judicial review of warrants: what the police are allowed to take or search changes over time. When it's the police deciding what to search or take, they take what's easiest for them.
Side note: this is true even if you have review inside the organization. One thing that a judge will do that an internal board will almost never do is say: "Fuck the cost, and fuck the extra time it'll take you. This is the way you're going to do it, or you won't do it at all."
The internal board is always mindful of the budget.