Having worked for an e-commerce company that's been on the receiving end of this sort of thing, I have to tell you that if you wanted a notification every time your data "might" be compromised, your inbox would be overflowing on a daily basis. Far more extortion attempts are made than successful cracks. Any moron can (and does) drop you a line saying "I aM 34337, y0u aR3 0wn3d, 53nD m3 $$$!" without any proof at all that they actually have your database. Some subscribe for a few accounts opened with previously stolen numbers and send you those as their proof. You aren't always sure if they're bluffing or not.
So a lot of companies won't notify you because they're not sure, and people make these threats all the time. When someone calls their bluff, you get fried. But at the same time, if they sent e-mail to their customer base every time someone made the threat, they wouldn't have any customer base left pretty soon. It's like bomb-threats. I don't know what the answer is, myself, but the motivations are pretty understandable.
As it happens, I'm staring out my office window at both the Needle and EMP as I'm reading this, and you've got me thinking about it. It looks to me like if it were to come down, it probably wouldn't hit EMP. One of the three support legs is aimed almost right at the monstrosity. It looks to me like if it just tipped over without the support legs buckling, it would be likely to either drop aimed straight up Queen Anne, or toward Elliot Bay, or right on top of the KOMO building. On the plus side, that means it probably won't come down on top of me, either. Bonus!
Re:But the net IS creating a new geography
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The New Geography
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What, we don't already have these two groups? I think tech-literate countries already have very similar cultures and lifestyles, compared to the third world (can anyone say McDonald's?) And as far as rulers, WTO? UN? They may not have the rule of law, but as far as the first world is concerned, they exercise a great deal of practical control.
Whether or not the third-world will remain that way is anyone's guess. They're certainly not in good shape at the moment, of course. But there's a school of thought which suggests that they have a certain advantage over the first world when it comes to technological advance. They may not have the money or the education just yet, but if they were to acquire it, their advance would not be a matter of "catching up" with current first world technologies--it would be a matter of leap-frogging them. The third world is not burdened by our aging technological infrastructure, and consequently could much more easily impliment the Next Big Thing, whatever it happens to be. There's also a cultural advantage--the first world builds huge megalithic corporate entities around its technologies, which amass tremendous cultural power and hugely vested interests in maintaining the status quo. We're seeing some of the effects of this now with the whole messy RIAA vs. Napster debate. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about the technology involved can agree that on-line, digital distribution is the coming thing. But it won't come here as quickly as it might, because too many people mired in the old machinery will fight the change. If someone fed Somalia and then gave them a few mil in spending money to engage in leisure time activities and set up commerce, who would object to something like Napster? Any incoming system or technology will be new--might as well pick the best. And whatever it is, it won't have to fight the old for possession.
I'm not going to suggest that the third world is going to stomp all over the first any time soon. But I would suggest that it could, given the resources; and that talking about it 'catching up' to the first world misses the point--why not go past, instead?
It's not just that, it's having moving parts at all. Any time you have a component that spins, jerks, or slides, you're going to get failures. Friction is a bitch. I don't know the statistics, but anecdotally speaking, I replace more crapped out hard drives and power supplies than any other kind of component on my boxes.
I can't speak to tickets vs. warnings... it's completely at the officer's discretion, but the possibility certainly exists that they want to justify the stop. They call it in for two reasons, both for officer safety. First, where they are at and who they are with a regularly logged anytime they get out of the vehicle, so if they trigger an alarm or have time only to yell out their callsign people at least know where to start looking. Second, your plate is usually run by the dispatcher through NCIC (National Crime Information Center database) before or during the stop to see if the vehicle is reported as stolen or has any wants or warrants attached. That's why the officer may seem to follow you around for a while after you've gotten busted before actually pulling you over.
I don't know of any instances where the dashcam tape has been trashed after a shooting. Usually, the criminal just wants to get clear of the scene (and rightly so--time taken trying to find the recorder is time wasted getting away from a point that every other cop in the city is bearing down on at full speed). I would guess the reason you aren't typically informed that your plate was called in are twofold. One, for the officer, it's a matter of routine--I'm sure they don't give it a second thought. And two, it would probably seem a little intimidating to most people--'Yeah, pal, I've got your number, better not piss me off.'
Sure; I like getting decent threads going. Love seeing how other people think. Enjoy the rest of your day.
I think you under-estimate the calming (read: frightening) effect of having a gun pointed at you, and over-estimate the calming effects of a camera (when wielded by someone you don't respect--ie, the cops as new-age paparazzi). People can get seriously pissed when someone is taking their picture without permission, and there's hardly any deterrent effect--how many tapes have you seen of stars popping photographers? They've got more to lose from the exposure than most of us would.
Furthermore, as I recall from my CJ coursework years ago, most police firearm fatalities do not result of a situation with guns getting out of control, but rather from ambush scenarios. I don't see how your argument would apply in such cases. Generally, police training favors officers over criminals in situations where escalation is occurring. And you might note that the increasing prevalence of dashboard cameras in patrol cars has not seemed to decrease the tendency to try to shoot it out with the officer who just pulled a criminal over, either. Plus, I think that most criminals realize that their tag number has already been recorded by the dispatcher before a stop is even initiated. Again, it doesn't seem to stop them from running or shooting it out.
In general, I think the problem with your argument is that it assumes too much in the way of rational thought from a criminal in the heat of the moment. The adrenaline that comes from almost being caught will be there whether an armed officer is involved or not. The difference is that a weapon can have an immediate effect on the outcome, whereas a camera's effect will be delayed... perhaps fatally.
Personally, I'd rather have armed cops than a government that can track me down anytime later from a surveillance photo.
Also, I don't understand your reasoning behind "Knowing a cop poses no lethal threat would drastically reduce the amount of violence directed toward them." Huh? Surely the other way around--more people are going to think twice about taking a swing at someone with a sidearm than someone with a camera.
Just to deal with one question... someone can vote for a candidate in one state but not in another because voting for president is a state process. Candidates have to work to get on the ballot in each of the fifty states (unless their party has previously garnered a certain percentage of the popular vote). Believe it or not, this is a good thing. You have to be a pretty damn serious candidate to get enough signatures in all fifty states; the process weeds out the various loonies you'd normally see on your ballot, the ones that usually run for city council seats or county dogcatcher. It's good to have choices for president, but not too many choices.
Related to this is the reason that people dreaming up a federal system of vote tabulation are just beating off: the people of the US do not vote for the presidency... the states vote for the presidency. The races are run in each of the states, not across the entire nation. This is inked into the Constitution, and for various theoretical reasons that won't be gone into here, an amendment changing it has a whelk's chance in a supernova of passing.
I'm sure it sounds good to clueless management, but whether they say you can stop tracking your time or not, under most state laws they are still required to pay you for any overtime worked.
Exempt employees are, of course, exempt, but if they were having to pay you OT before, they'll still have to pay you OT in the future--or you can refuse to work it. It will be in your own interest to keep track of time worked whether they require it or not.
Yeah, I ran into that too. No ID at all. But I'd have to do a hell of a lot of walking before I could inflict as much damage in the current system as a single person as I could (theoretically) if it was a unified system.
Katz is apparently weak on his constitutional law. You can't install a 'national' system because there is no such thing as a 'national' vote. The president is elected by the states--not by the populace. There's a huge misconception out there that the presidential election, and the electoral college, is intended to reflect the will of the people. Nope; the chief executive is supposed to be chosen by the states. Senators and representatives are supposed to be the people's representative to the federal government. The presidency, however, is not supposed to be the popularity contest we've turned it into. I think the fact that people don't understand this intention is why there is such a huge backlash against the Electoral College, which IMHO is not such a horrible thing. Frankly, the presidency is not supposed to have as much power as Congress anyway. As long as you're happy with your other federal elected officials, you shouldn't be bitching too much about who is president.
Of course I realize that this is all just Constitutional theory and that the practice has worked out somewhat differently. The office of the president has gained more power that it was originally intended to have. But consider that regardless of who is elected, rarely does a president enact the entire agenda he seeks--and never without Congressional approval. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that we should try running the system as it was intended to be run before launching off on some quixotic expedition for something better. The Founders were really pretty bright guys, and I think that their designs, if followed, might work better than we give them credit for.
Obviously not a sysadmin... I log everything I can get my hands on and it's priceless for troubleshooting. I don't expect that whoever is running the school's network is any different, public entity or not.
I think that we're fighting the wrong fight here. If the technology exists to collect such information, it will be used, and it will be susceptible to abuse. That's pretty clear from the history of technology. The only question will be, who gets to abuse it? By fighting for less disclosure, we are essentially tying our own hands when we have need to root out abuses by those in power.
David Brin makes this issue his central argument in "The Transparent Society" which was published a couple of years ago. It's a must read for anyone interested in privacy issues, IMHO, just to get an out-of-the-box take on the problems. What he says, essentially, is that the more you attempt to lock down information, the more susceptible it is to undetected abuse by those who do control it. And with data collection technologies becoming less and less obtrusive, soon there will be no way to know that it's happening at all--unless we can create a meme that will call for _more_ disclosure, not less. The solution is not to try to lock away public (or in some cases even private) records, but to make them more accessible to everyone. In essence, what he says is that it's more valuable to open everything up to everyone (providing a sort of check and balance environment) than it is to restrict knowledge to a few who may abuse it with impunity, protected by those same privacy laws. He does not state, but I believe that it is implied, that we really only have a brief window of time to accomplish this, before we lock things down to such an extent that recovering such freedoms becomes problematic.
Not everyone will buy this--I'm not sure I do completely--but it's certainly worth considering the un-intended consequences of reactionary calls for secrecy.
I guess people see what they want to see; I read those results as ambivalent, given that the largest percentage was in "Somewhat Agree" and that the previous question indicates that a similar percentage gives corporations credit for the prosperity gained over the same period. Furthermore, I suspect that a differently phrased question ("What aspects of American life have corporations too much power over?" for instance) would have elicited substantially different results. If you ask anyone if they feel picked on, they're more likely to say yes than if you ask them to provide specific examples.
You're proving my point again by using the CDA and DMCA as examples of where the Dems have failed you. I repeat (for the last time) just because these things are important to you does not mean they are important to the mainstream. Whether they should be or not is another matter. Those issues affected a relatively small segment of the public and there was little popular opposition to them--outside of the geek community, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who can tell you what the acronyms mean. On the other hand, Clinton just vetoed HR4392, which more people came out against because they felt it affected them more. As for the Bush/Reagan years, Robert Bork (denied) and Clarence Thomas (raked over the coals) come to mind. The Senate can't just perpetually refuse to confirm any candidate offered up, you know. Even on that level, compromise is necessary.
I'll skip on an argument about overseas behavior of corporations; it's not really the purview of the US government.
I see what you are saying about civil rights vs voting Nader. I withdraw my criticism. I would say, however, that voting for Nader doesn't really run a risk--it produces a foreseeable outcome, one that we're running into right now. As long as you accept that outcome, more power to you. I think people should vote their conscience--again, it's about which values you hold more dear.
I don't think abortion will get hammered in one fell swoop, but I think a Republican administration and Congress will certainly accelerate the nickel and dime chiseling at it that we've been seeing already. Personally, that's more of a concern for me than corporate power; but everyone is entitled to their views.
If you expect personalized service on every issue you support, you're going to be disappointed--which gets back to my original point, that the left has problems compromising. You sound like you're aware of all these things and have made a solid decision based on your own values--but I think you're an exception in that. And even so, it's still a factor that will favor the right over the left and something I will continue to lament.
I'll take your word for it that you are not giving up on the more mainstream issues--if you happen to value the fringe issues more, that's certainly a valid choice. I don't believe that Nader's issues have as much mainstream support as you say, although I would be willing to look at any poll links you might provide.
I would like to combine two of your points and use them against you: One, that the supreme court is a final defense, not the only defense, and two, the functions of the Democrats over the last eight years. I would like to point out that the Dems have not been in control the last eight years--they've had the presidency, but not Congress, and I would say that they have been functioning as one of the defenses. Although things have gotten worse on the abortion rights front, imagine how much worse they might have been with a Republican president and Congress. That's what you're looking at now, with the added risk of more conservative Supremes (point taken regarding their unpredictability, though).
In general, though, I think you're making my point for me. Corporate powermongering does not compare to the civil rights movement--nobody is getting lynched by AT&T. Yet the far left insists on equating issues in that way and overemphasizing their importance to the mainstream, and that keeps them from compromising and winning.
Well, that's an excellent point. I guess the question is, are you willing to give up on the issues you have in common (I'm assuming environment, abortion rights, etc) just because your pet issues aren't up for discussion? The extreme right (religious fanatics, anti-abortion extremists, etc) are willing to table theirs for the moment and throw in behind Bush--and consequently win on the middle issues.
I think it would be great if everyone could have their needs addressed, but I'm afraid it's not too realistic in such a complex society. Everybody's got their pet peeves, but sometimes you have to realize that yours aren't necessarily as important to the rest of the country. I don't have anything against third parties or champions of not widely popular issues, but I tend to think more people will win in the long run if we could pool our resources on topics that everyone can get behind rather than concentrating on the things that everyone can't.
I agree that the system is broke, but I don't think you can completely absolve Nader, either, unless you happen to think he's an idiot. I don't: I think he is bright enough to realize that in the current system, broken or not, his candidacy pulled voters away from Gore. That he still chose to run means he bears some responsibility for the result. Maybe he doesn't care, and that's fine, but there are far larger differences between Gore and Bush than he's been telling you.
This is a recurring problem that the left has which the right successfully avoids--no one on the left knows how to compromise. Everyone is so stuck on their principles that they don't seem to realize that politics is the art of the compromise and that you can't always have everything your own way. In my view, it's the right's ability to compromise on marginal candidates that gives them a power far out of proportion to their actual numbers. They can organize themselves and get out the vote for a candidate who is close to what they want, even if he/she is not their ideal. The left gets splintered and fractionalized over relatively minor issues and has difficulty building mass behind a single candidate. They have to rely on masses of swing voters rather than solid blocks like the right can--this is why large turnouts tend to favor the Dems. People are generally more left than right in the US, but you wouldn't know it by looking at most elections.
Your reasoning is a little shaky, too. Your vote would count the same whether you voted third-party or not. If you're in a swing state, any way you vote makes a difference. It changes the outcome regardless of whether you go third-party or mainstream--because, effectively, your third-party vote effects the mainstream run-off the same as if you had voted for one of the Big 2 candidates.
I'm all for people voting for who they want, but voting for Nader just because he's not Bush or Gore is the same thing as voting for Gore because he's not Bush. A protest vote for a third-party candidate doesn't show anything except that you're disaffected and incapable of exercising responsible choices (this is in no way a knock at people who actually truly support Nader or Browne and their platforms--just the ones that think voting for them is a way to teach the system a lesson).
Amen. I guess they have to put something up on TV, but this one could take a few days to sort out, given the reliance on absentee ballots in Washington and Oregon. I live in Seattle, and can remember a House race a couple of years ago that took a week to call because of absentee votes.
Actually, the "intended voting process" you keep referring to does not even include voting directly for any candidate, best or otherwise. The intention of the drafters of the Constitution never included a popular election of the President. The selection of electors to the electoral college is a process left to the states--it is they, not the Constitution, that decides whether or not you get to vote at all. Your point is well taken, but your argument does not hold water--the founders never intended you to vote for the President at all.
Although I'm no fan of the two-party system, you might consider some of the less pleasant ramifications of the alternative. For one thing, it would make a hash of the ideal of an informed voter. Most people have difficulty keeping up with proposals for two candidates--can you imagine the apathy for the process if everyone had to compare thirty? For another, the vote would be extremely diluted in a broad race. That pesky ol' Constitution requires that the victor have a majority of electoral votes. More than two or three popular candidates make it extremely likely that no single candidate would achieve a majority at all, kicking the decision over to the House and rendering your vote completely useless. Even absent the Constitutional requirement, it would be difficult for a winner with a clear mandate from only a small percentage of the total population to lead effectively. Another thing you might consider is the possibility that not everyone is voting for the Big 2 just because they think they have to--could be that the Big 2 also happen to represent a more popular platform to the majority than the more extreme off-party planks.
I am not prepared to say that off-party candidacies are a bad thing; I think even now they play a valuable role, though it may be more minor than their fans would like. But I think you should take a little more time to consider how a strong multi-party might actually work, rather than just taking a reactionary position against the Big 2.
Beheading, or other forms of revolution, exist outside of the prevailing system of governance, not within it. In a functioning monarchy, the monarch governs by the grace of (insert deity of your choice) not the will of the people. If a revolution occurs, the system is no longer a monarchy. Just because a system can evolve/devolve into a different system doesn't invalidate the original.
I agree with the need to return to a more self-reliant sort of society and would like to add a point you did not mention--the more reliant you become on government, the more control it has over you.
I don't, however, agree with Bush's social security plan. It absolutely flies in the face of the self-reliance and individual control you are in such favor of. Since when does the government need to be involved _at all_ in my retirement investments? Privatizing Social Security is contradictory. It amazes me that so many people, and both major candidates, can overlook something so fundamental--Social Security is not a retirement plan! It is a safety net; it's what's there for your when your other retirement plans fall through. The stipend should never be enough for anyone to retire on, and we're doing a great disservice to people by suggesting it should. Those people that are counting on Social Security to retire on are absolutely the last people that should be allowed to manage it themselves--they blew their private savings, now let them blow the public's savings. I do believe in a Social Security system--I think it's a hallmark of a civilization to be able to take care of its unlucky and downtrodden--but I don't like that people are trying to turn it into something it was never intended to be.
When I was a lowly IT grunt, that's how I thought about it, too. But when I became responsible for budgeting labor and prioritizing issues in my department, I realized that as enjoyable as troubleshooting and tracking down the real problem may be, it's also not the point. The point is to get the box fixed and get the user back in business in the shortest amount of time. The more my tech dinks with something that could be solved with a ghost job, the less time he has to work on something that can't--and the longer the real user is unable to get his work done. All of this costing money that doesn't need to be spent.
If we have similar recurring problems, it's different, of course--then we'll dive into it. But if it looks to be a one-off (and these are usually user-caused in some respect, whether they admit it or not--I'm not running a concentration camp, I'm not going to spend an hour grilling them to force them to tell me what fool thing they've done this time just so I can tell them not to do it again) the best possible solution is to ghost it and move to the next one.
Yeah, and how about that shoddily built, expensive new baseball stadium we all voted against, too?
At least we're a swing state in the presidential election--my vote might actually count for something this time.
Problem is (and this is the reason you're seeing these initiatives all of a sudden) when you count on someone else to create your entertainment, you don't always get what you want. In this case, there's a dearth of commercial development of hardcore flight combat simulations. There are good economic reasons for this--the community isn't large enough to support the effort a company would have to put into a game--but a lot of people in the F4 community look around and don't see anyone working on the next generation of the sort of game they want to buy.
Think of it like independent film-making. Do you constantly want Hollywood formula slop, or do you want to see the occasional well-though indy flick?
Your point on the effort involved is well-taken; I'll be curious to see how far these efforts get, particularly in light of the fact that they seem reluctant to pool resources (well, the Opensim people, anyway). But there are a lot of people out there already who have put an enormous amount of time into patching up and improving Falcon4 after Hasbro stopped supporting it (I don't know how many people here know it, but a version of the F4 source mysteriously appeared on a public server a few days after Hasbro canned the dev team, making this game uniquely updatable in the sim world), and none of them get a dime for their efforts.
You have a good point, but it's very poorly made. You picked as an example a group of men (mostly men) who had undergone a sort of classical education the likes of which most of us cannot envision today. Maybe I just hang out with a lower class of people, but I don't know anyone who can off-hand throw out quotes from Hindu scripture. These guys went to school during a time when you had to learn some Latin, for Christ's sake. Find a college that has that as a graduation requirement today.
I happen to agree with you, but you're not doing the argument any favors with that example.
When's the last time Amazon let you haggle with them on the price?
The point is that there is no negotiation with their pricing model. Bargaining assumes the ability of both sides to offer and counter-offer. You might say, "Well, if you don't like their price, go somewhere else" but that's not bargaining or haggling--it's boycotting.
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Having worked for an e-commerce company that's been on the receiving end of this sort of thing, I have to tell you that if you wanted a notification every time your data "might" be compromised, your inbox would be overflowing on a daily basis. Far more extortion attempts are made than successful cracks. Any moron can (and does) drop you a line saying "I aM 34337, y0u aR3 0wn3d, 53nD m3 $$$!" without any proof at all that they actually have your database. Some subscribe for a few accounts opened with previously stolen numbers and send you those as their proof. You aren't always sure if they're bluffing or not.
So a lot of companies won't notify you because they're not sure, and people make these threats all the time. When someone calls their bluff, you get fried. But at the same time, if they sent e-mail to their customer base every time someone made the threat, they wouldn't have any customer base left pretty soon. It's like bomb-threats. I don't know what the answer is, myself, but the motivations are pretty understandable.
As it happens, I'm staring out my office window at both the Needle and EMP as I'm reading this, and you've got me thinking about it. It looks to me like if it were to come down, it probably wouldn't hit EMP. One of the three support legs is aimed almost right at the monstrosity. It looks to me like if it just tipped over without the support legs buckling, it would be likely to either drop aimed straight up Queen Anne, or toward Elliot Bay, or right on top of the KOMO building. On the plus side, that means it probably won't come down on top of me, either. Bonus!
What, we don't already have these two groups? I think tech-literate countries already have very similar cultures and lifestyles, compared to the third world (can anyone say McDonald's?) And as far as rulers, WTO? UN? They may not have the rule of law, but as far as the first world is concerned, they exercise a great deal of practical control.
Whether or not the third-world will remain that way is anyone's guess. They're certainly not in good shape at the moment, of course. But there's a school of thought which suggests that they have a certain advantage over the first world when it comes to technological advance. They may not have the money or the education just yet, but if they were to acquire it, their advance would not be a matter of "catching up" with current first world technologies--it would be a matter of leap-frogging them. The third world is not burdened by our aging technological infrastructure, and consequently could much more easily impliment the Next Big Thing, whatever it happens to be. There's also a cultural advantage--the first world builds huge megalithic corporate entities around its technologies, which amass tremendous cultural power and hugely vested interests in maintaining the status quo. We're seeing some of the effects of this now with the whole messy RIAA vs. Napster debate. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about the technology involved can agree that on-line, digital distribution is the coming thing. But it won't come here as quickly as it might, because too many people mired in the old machinery will fight the change. If someone fed Somalia and then gave them a few mil in spending money to engage in leisure time activities and set up commerce, who would object to something like Napster? Any incoming system or technology will be new--might as well pick the best. And whatever it is, it won't have to fight the old for possession.
I'm not going to suggest that the third world is going to stomp all over the first any time soon. But I would suggest that it could, given the resources; and that talking about it 'catching up' to the first world misses the point--why not go past, instead?
It's not just that, it's having moving parts at all. Any time you have a component that spins, jerks, or slides, you're going to get failures. Friction is a bitch. I don't know the statistics, but anecdotally speaking, I replace more crapped out hard drives and power supplies than any other kind of component on my boxes.
I can't speak to tickets vs. warnings... it's completely at the officer's discretion, but the possibility certainly exists that they want to justify the stop. They call it in for two reasons, both for officer safety. First, where they are at and who they are with a regularly logged anytime they get out of the vehicle, so if they trigger an alarm or have time only to yell out their callsign people at least know where to start looking. Second, your plate is usually run by the dispatcher through NCIC (National Crime Information Center database) before or during the stop to see if the vehicle is reported as stolen or has any wants or warrants attached. That's why the officer may seem to follow you around for a while after you've gotten busted before actually pulling you over.
I don't know of any instances where the dashcam tape has been trashed after a shooting. Usually, the criminal just wants to get clear of the scene (and rightly so--time taken trying to find the recorder is time wasted getting away from a point that every other cop in the city is bearing down on at full speed). I would guess the reason you aren't typically informed that your plate was called in are twofold. One, for the officer, it's a matter of routine--I'm sure they don't give it a second thought. And two, it would probably seem a little intimidating to most people--'Yeah, pal, I've got your number, better not piss me off.'
Sure; I like getting decent threads going. Love seeing how other people think. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Hm. Interesting.
I think you under-estimate the calming (read: frightening) effect of having a gun pointed at you, and over-estimate the calming effects of a camera (when wielded by someone you don't respect--ie, the cops as new-age paparazzi). People can get seriously pissed when someone is taking their picture without permission, and there's hardly any deterrent effect--how many tapes have you seen of stars popping photographers? They've got more to lose from the exposure than most of us would.
Furthermore, as I recall from my CJ coursework years ago, most police firearm fatalities do not result of a situation with guns getting out of control, but rather from ambush scenarios. I don't see how your argument would apply in such cases. Generally, police training favors officers over criminals in situations where escalation is occurring. And you might note that the increasing prevalence of dashboard cameras in patrol cars has not seemed to decrease the tendency to try to shoot it out with the officer who just pulled a criminal over, either. Plus, I think that most criminals realize that their tag number has already been recorded by the dispatcher before a stop is even initiated. Again, it doesn't seem to stop them from running or shooting it out.
In general, I think the problem with your argument is that it assumes too much in the way of rational thought from a criminal in the heat of the moment. The adrenaline that comes from almost being caught will be there whether an armed officer is involved or not. The difference is that a weapon can have an immediate effect on the outcome, whereas a camera's effect will be delayed... perhaps fatally.
Personally, I'd rather have armed cops than a government that can track me down anytime later from a surveillance photo.
Also, I don't understand your reasoning behind "Knowing a cop poses no lethal threat would drastically reduce the amount of violence directed toward them." Huh? Surely the other way around--more people are going to think twice about taking a swing at someone with a sidearm than someone with a camera.
Just to deal with one question... someone can vote for a candidate in one state but not in another because voting for president is a state process. Candidates have to work to get on the ballot in each of the fifty states (unless their party has previously garnered a certain percentage of the popular vote). Believe it or not, this is a good thing. You have to be a pretty damn serious candidate to get enough signatures in all fifty states; the process weeds out the various loonies you'd normally see on your ballot, the ones that usually run for city council seats or county dogcatcher. It's good to have choices for president, but not too many choices.
Related to this is the reason that people dreaming up a federal system of vote tabulation are just beating off: the people of the US do not vote for the presidency... the states vote for the presidency. The races are run in each of the states, not across the entire nation. This is inked into the Constitution, and for various theoretical reasons that won't be gone into here, an amendment changing it has a whelk's chance in a supernova of passing.
I'm sure it sounds good to clueless management, but whether they say you can stop tracking your time or not, under most state laws they are still required to pay you for any overtime worked.
Exempt employees are, of course, exempt, but if they were having to pay you OT before, they'll still have to pay you OT in the future--or you can refuse to work it. It will be in your own interest to keep track of time worked whether they require it or not.
Yeah, I ran into that too. No ID at all. But I'd have to do a hell of a lot of walking before I could inflict as much damage in the current system as a single person as I could (theoretically) if it was a unified system.
Katz is apparently weak on his constitutional law. You can't install a 'national' system because there is no such thing as a 'national' vote. The president is elected by the states--not by the populace. There's a huge misconception out there that the presidential election, and the electoral college, is intended to reflect the will of the people. Nope; the chief executive is supposed to be chosen by the states. Senators and representatives are supposed to be the people's representative to the federal government. The presidency, however, is not supposed to be the popularity contest we've turned it into. I think the fact that people don't understand this intention is why there is such a huge backlash against the Electoral College, which IMHO is not such a horrible thing. Frankly, the presidency is not supposed to have as much power as Congress anyway. As long as you're happy with your other federal elected officials, you shouldn't be bitching too much about who is president.
Of course I realize that this is all just Constitutional theory and that the practice has worked out somewhat differently. The office of the president has gained more power that it was originally intended to have. But consider that regardless of who is elected, rarely does a president enact the entire agenda he seeks--and never without Congressional approval. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that we should try running the system as it was intended to be run before launching off on some quixotic expedition for something better. The Founders were really pretty bright guys, and I think that their designs, if followed, might work better than we give them credit for.
Obviously not a sysadmin... I log everything I can get my hands on and it's priceless for troubleshooting. I don't expect that whoever is running the school's network is any different, public entity or not.
I think that we're fighting the wrong fight here. If the technology exists to collect such information, it will be used, and it will be susceptible to abuse. That's pretty clear from the history of technology. The only question will be, who gets to abuse it? By fighting for less disclosure, we are essentially tying our own hands when we have need to root out abuses by those in power.
David Brin makes this issue his central argument in "The Transparent Society" which was published a couple of years ago. It's a must read for anyone interested in privacy issues, IMHO, just to get an out-of-the-box take on the problems. What he says, essentially, is that the more you attempt to lock down information, the more susceptible it is to undetected abuse by those who do control it. And with data collection technologies becoming less and less obtrusive, soon there will be no way to know that it's happening at all--unless we can create a meme that will call for _more_ disclosure, not less. The solution is not to try to lock away public (or in some cases even private) records, but to make them more accessible to everyone. In essence, what he says is that it's more valuable to open everything up to everyone (providing a sort of check and balance environment) than it is to restrict knowledge to a few who may abuse it with impunity, protected by those same privacy laws. He does not state, but I believe that it is implied, that we really only have a brief window of time to accomplish this, before we lock things down to such an extent that recovering such freedoms becomes problematic.
Not everyone will buy this--I'm not sure I do completely--but it's certainly worth considering the un-intended consequences of reactionary calls for secrecy.
I guess people see what they want to see; I read those results as ambivalent, given that the largest percentage was in "Somewhat Agree" and that the previous question indicates that a similar percentage gives corporations credit for the prosperity gained over the same period. Furthermore, I suspect that a differently phrased question ("What aspects of American life have corporations too much power over?" for instance) would have elicited substantially different results. If you ask anyone if they feel picked on, they're more likely to say yes than if you ask them to provide specific examples.
You're proving my point again by using the CDA and DMCA as examples of where the Dems have failed you. I repeat (for the last time) just because these things are important to you does not mean they are important to the mainstream. Whether they should be or not is another matter. Those issues affected a relatively small segment of the public and there was little popular opposition to them--outside of the geek community, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who can tell you what the acronyms mean. On the other hand, Clinton just vetoed HR4392, which more people came out against because they felt it affected them more. As for the Bush/Reagan years, Robert Bork (denied) and Clarence Thomas (raked over the coals) come to mind. The Senate can't just perpetually refuse to confirm any candidate offered up, you know. Even on that level, compromise is necessary.
I'll skip on an argument about overseas behavior of corporations; it's not really the purview of the US government.
I see what you are saying about civil rights vs voting Nader. I withdraw my criticism. I would say, however, that voting for Nader doesn't really run a risk--it produces a foreseeable outcome, one that we're running into right now. As long as you accept that outcome, more power to you. I think people should vote their conscience--again, it's about which values you hold more dear.
I don't think abortion will get hammered in one fell swoop, but I think a Republican administration and Congress will certainly accelerate the nickel and dime chiseling at it that we've been seeing already. Personally, that's more of a concern for me than corporate power; but everyone is entitled to their views.
If you expect personalized service on every issue you support, you're going to be disappointed--which gets back to my original point, that the left has problems compromising. You sound like you're aware of all these things and have made a solid decision based on your own values--but I think you're an exception in that. And even so, it's still a factor that will favor the right over the left and something I will continue to lament.
I'll take your word for it that you are not giving up on the more mainstream issues--if you happen to value the fringe issues more, that's certainly a valid choice. I don't believe that Nader's issues have as much mainstream support as you say, although I would be willing to look at any poll links you might provide.
I would like to combine two of your points and use them against you: One, that the supreme court is a final defense, not the only defense, and two, the functions of the Democrats over the last eight years. I would like to point out that the Dems have not been in control the last eight years--they've had the presidency, but not Congress, and I would say that they have been functioning as one of the defenses. Although things have gotten worse on the abortion rights front, imagine how much worse they might have been with a Republican president and Congress. That's what you're looking at now, with the added risk of more conservative Supremes (point taken regarding their unpredictability, though).
In general, though, I think you're making my point for me. Corporate powermongering does not compare to the civil rights movement--nobody is getting lynched by AT&T. Yet the far left insists on equating issues in that way and overemphasizing their importance to the mainstream, and that keeps them from compromising and winning.
Well, that's an excellent point. I guess the question is, are you willing to give up on the issues you have in common (I'm assuming environment, abortion rights, etc) just because your pet issues aren't up for discussion? The extreme right (religious fanatics, anti-abortion extremists, etc) are willing to table theirs for the moment and throw in behind Bush--and consequently win on the middle issues.
I think it would be great if everyone could have their needs addressed, but I'm afraid it's not too realistic in such a complex society. Everybody's got their pet peeves, but sometimes you have to realize that yours aren't necessarily as important to the rest of the country. I don't have anything against third parties or champions of not widely popular issues, but I tend to think more people will win in the long run if we could pool our resources on topics that everyone can get behind rather than concentrating on the things that everyone can't.
I agree that the system is broke, but I don't think you can completely absolve Nader, either, unless you happen to think he's an idiot. I don't: I think he is bright enough to realize that in the current system, broken or not, his candidacy pulled voters away from Gore. That he still chose to run means he bears some responsibility for the result. Maybe he doesn't care, and that's fine, but there are far larger differences between Gore and Bush than he's been telling you.
This is a recurring problem that the left has which the right successfully avoids--no one on the left knows how to compromise. Everyone is so stuck on their principles that they don't seem to realize that politics is the art of the compromise and that you can't always have everything your own way. In my view, it's the right's ability to compromise on marginal candidates that gives them a power far out of proportion to their actual numbers. They can organize themselves and get out the vote for a candidate who is close to what they want, even if he/she is not their ideal. The left gets splintered and fractionalized over relatively minor issues and has difficulty building mass behind a single candidate. They have to rely on masses of swing voters rather than solid blocks like the right can--this is why large turnouts tend to favor the Dems. People are generally more left than right in the US, but you wouldn't know it by looking at most elections.
Your reasoning is a little shaky, too. Your vote would count the same whether you voted third-party or not. If you're in a swing state, any way you vote makes a difference. It changes the outcome regardless of whether you go third-party or mainstream--because, effectively, your third-party vote effects the mainstream run-off the same as if you had voted for one of the Big 2 candidates.
I'm all for people voting for who they want, but voting for Nader just because he's not Bush or Gore is the same thing as voting for Gore because he's not Bush. A protest vote for a third-party candidate doesn't show anything except that you're disaffected and incapable of exercising responsible choices (this is in no way a knock at people who actually truly support Nader or Browne and their platforms--just the ones that think voting for them is a way to teach the system a lesson).
Amen. I guess they have to put something up on TV, but this one could take a few days to sort out, given the reliance on absentee ballots in Washington and Oregon. I live in Seattle, and can remember a House race a couple of years ago that took a week to call because of absentee votes.
Actually, the "intended voting process" you keep referring to does not even include voting directly for any candidate, best or otherwise. The intention of the drafters of the Constitution never included a popular election of the President. The selection of electors to the electoral college is a process left to the states--it is they, not the Constitution, that decides whether or not you get to vote at all. Your point is well taken, but your argument does not hold water--the founders never intended you to vote for the President at all.
Although I'm no fan of the two-party system, you might consider some of the less pleasant ramifications of the alternative. For one thing, it would make a hash of the ideal of an informed voter. Most people have difficulty keeping up with proposals for two candidates--can you imagine the apathy for the process if everyone had to compare thirty? For another, the vote would be extremely diluted in a broad race. That pesky ol' Constitution requires that the victor have a majority of electoral votes. More than two or three popular candidates make it extremely likely that no single candidate would achieve a majority at all, kicking the decision over to the House and rendering your vote completely useless. Even absent the Constitutional requirement, it would be difficult for a winner with a clear mandate from only a small percentage of the total population to lead effectively. Another thing you might consider is the possibility that not everyone is voting for the Big 2 just because they think they have to--could be that the Big 2 also happen to represent a more popular platform to the majority than the more extreme off-party planks.
I am not prepared to say that off-party candidacies are a bad thing; I think even now they play a valuable role, though it may be more minor than their fans would like. But I think you should take a little more time to consider how a strong multi-party might actually work, rather than just taking a reactionary position against the Big 2.
Beheading, or other forms of revolution, exist outside of the prevailing system of governance, not within it. In a functioning monarchy, the monarch governs by the grace of (insert deity of your choice) not the will of the people. If a revolution occurs, the system is no longer a monarchy. Just because a system can evolve/devolve into a different system doesn't invalidate the original.
I agree with the need to return to a more self-reliant sort of society and would like to add a point you did not mention--the more reliant you become on government, the more control it has over you.
I don't, however, agree with Bush's social security plan. It absolutely flies in the face of the self-reliance and individual control you are in such favor of. Since when does the government need to be involved _at all_ in my retirement investments? Privatizing Social Security is contradictory. It amazes me that so many people, and both major candidates, can overlook something so fundamental--Social Security is not a retirement plan! It is a safety net; it's what's there for your when your other retirement plans fall through. The stipend should never be enough for anyone to retire on, and we're doing a great disservice to people by suggesting it should. Those people that are counting on Social Security to retire on are absolutely the last people that should be allowed to manage it themselves--they blew their private savings, now let them blow the public's savings. I do believe in a Social Security system--I think it's a hallmark of a civilization to be able to take care of its unlucky and downtrodden--but I don't like that people are trying to turn it into something it was never intended to be.
When I was a lowly IT grunt, that's how I thought about it, too. But when I became responsible for budgeting labor and prioritizing issues in my department, I realized that as enjoyable as troubleshooting and tracking down the real problem may be, it's also not the point. The point is to get the box fixed and get the user back in business in the shortest amount of time. The more my tech dinks with something that could be solved with a ghost job, the less time he has to work on something that can't--and the longer the real user is unable to get his work done. All of this costing money that doesn't need to be spent.
If we have similar recurring problems, it's different, of course--then we'll dive into it. But if it looks to be a one-off (and these are usually user-caused in some respect, whether they admit it or not--I'm not running a concentration camp, I'm not going to spend an hour grilling them to force them to tell me what fool thing they've done this time just so I can tell them not to do it again) the best possible solution is to ghost it and move to the next one.
Yeah, and how about that shoddily built, expensive new baseball stadium we all voted against, too? At least we're a swing state in the presidential election--my vote might actually count for something this time.
Problem is (and this is the reason you're seeing these initiatives all of a sudden) when you count on someone else to create your entertainment, you don't always get what you want. In this case, there's a dearth of commercial development of hardcore flight combat simulations. There are good economic reasons for this--the community isn't large enough to support the effort a company would have to put into a game--but a lot of people in the F4 community look around and don't see anyone working on the next generation of the sort of game they want to buy.
Think of it like independent film-making. Do you constantly want Hollywood formula slop, or do you want to see the occasional well-though indy flick?
Your point on the effort involved is well-taken; I'll be curious to see how far these efforts get, particularly in light of the fact that they seem reluctant to pool resources (well, the Opensim people, anyway). But there are a lot of people out there already who have put an enormous amount of time into patching up and improving Falcon4 after Hasbro stopped supporting it (I don't know how many people here know it, but a version of the F4 source mysteriously appeared on a public server a few days after Hasbro canned the dev team, making this game uniquely updatable in the sim world), and none of them get a dime for their efforts.
You have a good point, but it's very poorly made. You picked as an example a group of men (mostly men) who had undergone a sort of classical education the likes of which most of us cannot envision today. Maybe I just hang out with a lower class of people, but I don't know anyone who can off-hand throw out quotes from Hindu scripture. These guys went to school during a time when you had to learn some Latin, for Christ's sake. Find a college that has that as a graduation requirement today.
I happen to agree with you, but you're not doing the argument any favors with that example.
When's the last time Amazon let you haggle with them on the price?
The point is that there is no negotiation with their pricing model. Bargaining assumes the ability of both sides to offer and counter-offer. You might say, "Well, if you don't like their price, go somewhere else" but that's not bargaining or haggling--it's boycotting.