I work for a 5-person tech cooperative. We were writing code, documentation, etc. that we wanted to contribute back to the community. So out of our "profit", we made sure that we set aside some funds for our members to spend some of their time abstracting code, packaging it up for release, etc.
The basic principle is the same for a freelancer - you have to raise your rates. Are you charging $100/hr? Charge $110/hr. Use the extra money to pay yourself to package up the code.
In terms of "useful tricks" - well, as a freelancer, you don't have the privilege of someone keeping you honest to your goals. You can change your personal rules whenever you want. But frankly, I would say my co-op has made a net PROFIT on open sourcing our material. When we open source it, we post about it on our blog, Twitter, etc. This increases our referrals from other developers, it means more folks are finding us on the search engines, we gain credibility with other developers when we need them to fix a bug in their module. Maybe the "trick" is to remind yourself of those advantages.
I'm also a self-taught geek, and now I am part of a Drupal/CiviCRM shop with three other folks, all self-taught. We do very well, and just made a job offer to a fifth person, also a self-taught Drupal dev. Here's some thoughts from the other side of the interview table.
A few thoughts: * Getting hired in the Drupal world as a self-taught geek is way easier than in most corners of the IT world. There's lots of small employers, and there are ways to demonstrate your skill that don't involve certs. * Drupal is a fast-moving product - we want to know that you know the latest tools. Have you developed in Drupal 7? If you're doing theming/front-end, what's your experience with Sass/Closure/etc.? Basically, if you're not plugged into the Drupal community, it's difficult to be up-to-date. So YES, go to DrupalCon, Drupal meetups, etc. - and make sure your prospective employer knows it (if you're looking to get hired by a Drupal shop) * The most important part of being hired is networking. Not what but who you know, etc. Another reason to hit the Drupal community gatherings. * I'll echo what other folks said about needing a portfolio. If you don't have one, make one. Seriously.
When hiring, we asked for folks' Drupal.org usernames, and we looked at their history. Seeing that you've made a non-trivial patch to a major module counts for a lot. Seeing that you know how to make a comprehensive and useful bug report means you'll get better responses when you're working on our projects. We asked about community involvement, as a measure of a) seeing how up-to-date folks were, and b) determining if their contacts in the community will help in a pinch - our good relationships with key Drupal devs has certainly helped us in emergencies. It also means we've been referred work (particularly because we specialize in Drupal/CiviCRM). We looked at portfolio - especially important if you want to be a themer.
Finally - one problem we had with hiring folks in your position was a lack of experience with tools used for working in groups. Familiarize yourself with at least one of the popular project management tools used in the Drupal community (I'd suggest Redmine, Open Atrium, or Basecamp). Learn git. Brush up on CLI tools like drush and ssh if you don't know them already. I think it's telling that the person we offered the job to was self-taught, but was already working in a small shop. A self-taught person with experience with the tools I listed above would have closed the gap that advantage brought to her.
One more thing, I guess - there've been a lot of good arguments for self-employment on both sides of the debate in this thread. Consider the middle option of being semi-self-employed. Moonlight doing Drupal dev. I moonlighted as a freelancer, and brought my day job from full time to part time to gone.
It sounds like you have a domain but not Active Directory. I suggest you check outwpkg, and install it on a server you have hanging around. Use winexe (if you have a Linux server) or psexec (if Windows) to push the command to run the wpkg script - and wpkg will handle your updates for you. I manage almost as many machines as you describe, spread out at about 10 different businesses. Upgrading Firefox etc. takes about 3 minutes, including downloading the package, updating my XML, pushing it out to a test group, and pushing it out more widely a few days later.
Note that wpkg also works even if you don't have a domain - you just can't deploy it remotely. Send those undergrads around one last time to install it. Trust me, it's worth it - far more flexible than Active Directory (though the two complement each other nicely).
In principle I agree with you, and I have no patience for those who use no raw data at all. I also think two people could reasonably disagree about the comparative importance of data sets. The U.S.A. has a high standard of living compared to other countries, but also has a large wealth gap compared to most industrialized nations. Which of those facts is more important? Reasonable people can disagree about this - even get angry that you privilege the "wrong" raw data.
I'm also not convinced that the "nutters" are any further out there than reasonable folks on both left and right. There are very smart thoughtful folks on both the left and right who read raw data. Many of them hold views every bit as radical - and opposite from one another - as the "nutters" of their political wing.
As disagreeable to me as some of the extremists on both sides are, I don't conflate the "shouting match" politics with radical politics generally. For instance, Slashdot's tilt on the MPAA/RIAA (or COICA) is far out of the mainstream, but despite being a fringe opinion, it's well thought out, backed with raw data, and I find more reasonable than the approach from both mainstream left and mainstream right.
Reading through others' comments, I remembered: - In NYC at least, there's a city-wide censorware blacklist run by the Board of Ed. If that's the case where you are, find a way to bypass it, immediately. There were constant mishaps. For example, one teacher had a curriculum based around students' use of Goodreads. One day early in the term, goodreads.com got blacklisted as a social networking site. Many phone calls to the censors were needed.
- It's much easier to troubleshoot issues if the students all use one login - "student" works well.
- Students shouldn't be able to save files to their local desktop. That said, sometimes the network will be down and they need a way to save their work. Flash drives aren't an option in that environment.
- Having a way to update to the most recent version of Flash is often a surprisingly necessary thing to do. Most of the content at www.pbs.org, for instance, is Flash-based.
I worked for a program that brought computers into inner-city schools in NYC. I was responsible for overseeing two computer labs that received after-school use, and a dozen laptops that went in a rolling media cart. The laptops were running Edubuntu. I was on a six-month contract and so I don't have as many answers as I'd like, but here's a few lessons learned.
MOST IMPORTANT: - You can't give the school computers, particularly running Linux, and walk off - even if the teachers are tech-savvy (most will not be). Your project will die off quickly if you don't make a long-term commitment to support it.
Edubuntu-specific: - Linux support for wireless drivers is less than perfect. Skip wireless, or test thoroughly. Flaky wireless gave our Edubuntu project a poor reputation very quickly. - Also test the printer drivers. - Many schools have inane requirements that you'll need to support. For instance, our program required that the students be tested using software from Scholastic that was Windows-only and made of fail. The school neglected to tell us that this was a requirement at the time we decided to go with Edubuntu. We also weren't told that they'd want them for a comics-making course - there's no comic-making software for Linux.
More generically: - Everything not nailed down will walk off. Not just mice and power cables, but even stupid things like monitor-to-PC VGA cables walk. Make laptops get checked in and out. The cables connecting peripherals to desktops should be inaccessible to users. - 3 out of your 4 non-ruggedized laptops will need replacing after a year.
Re:WTF? If AMD64 can't do it with a full x86 core.
on
Ubuntu Ports To ARM
·
· Score: 1
First download on this page is a Linux ARM ICA client.
* Unreasonable searches and seizures must be done with a smile or the next one is free
* Verbal abuse from border agents must refrain from using racial/ethnic epithets
* Coupon good for a free McDonald's Happy Meal issued to every person detained without charges by DHS (Offer valid to U.S. citizens only. Void where prohibited.)
* Michael Chertoff must pinky swear not to laugh when asked if any complaints submitted to DHS are actually, you know, linked to their accountability.
I was present at one of the houses being raided minutes before the raid. I can confirm from my colleagues in I-Witness Video that the FBI was involved - I saw a photo, but can't remember where. I also was present at the house about an hour before the raid, when an FBI agent knocked on the door for an ostensibly unrelated reason.
More about all this at http://iwitnessvideo.info./ Sorry for replying so late - I've been busy, as you can see:)
Um, do you really not see making partisan statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict on a thread about the TSA as flamebait? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamebait
Sadly, a police officer used this argument on a friend of mine when they arrested her for protesting a speaker at her college...
The basic argument was, "You could be a dupe for al-Qaeda, your protest could be a decoy while they do a bombing," along with the typical we-live-in-a-post-9/11-world crap.
To answer the original question, I'm currently using Microsoft's Indexing Server. I bought SearchSimon for $25 or so - basically a disappointment, but still a worthwhile purchase for me, since I found it useful to look at the included source code. I found an article which I can't find right now about rolling your own page based on the Index Server engine.
But this raises my question - how do you enforce metadata tagging? I can't even find a decent Windows-based metadata browser/editor for after-the-fact bulk tagging. I'm aware that certain commercial projects hook the save function on MS Office and replace your save dialog bog with one that has required metadata fields. Is there a way to get that functionality without paying thousands and thousands of dollars? Or, if one is going to pay that kind of money, what project should one go with?
PS - Thanks to everyone mentioning Nutch/Xapian, I will definitely check them out tomorrow.
Don't feel safer just yet, Mr. parent post. Last night in Crown Heights (Brooklyn), a civil rights attorney (Michael Tarrif Warren) and his wife Evelyn (also a civil rights attorney I believe) witnessed a police officer making an arrest. He stopped to observe the arrest and was told by an officer to, "Get the fuck out of here, this is none of your business." Michael replied, "You don't have to talk to me that way sir, I'm a lawyer." He was told, "I don't give a fuck who you are." and walked away. Michael proceeded to take notes while in his car - at this point the sergeant (one Sgt. Talby of the 77th Precinct, NYPD) punched him several times hard through the open window and arrested both Mr. Warren and his wife.
Thankfully, the news got to the local media quickly, and when they broadcast news of the arrest, 200 folks showed up at the 77th Precinct's door (full disclosure: I was one of them). Sadly, this is hardlyanisolatedinstance. It just happens to be the one that happened yesterday.
I realize that some of the sources I'm linking aren't exactly bastions of objective journalism, but if you'd like the other side of the issue, you have two choices: 1) Read the recommendations of NYPD officers on NYPD Rant, the largest message board for NYPD officers. In response to St. Louis ACLU handing out cameras to monitor police misconduct, many recommend "disappearing" the tapes or refusing to work in the area (see here
2) Next time you see police arresting or ticketing someone, pull out a notepad. Make sure to not interfere in any way with the police action - just take down names, badge numbers, police car numbers, and physical description of the arrestee. See what happens. I tried doing this once or twice in NYC, and was told, like Mr. Warren, that it was none of my business, to get lost.
The full article is available lots of places, like here.
Sorry that you're looking to find evidence of anti-conservative bias, but, well...you're just not up to speed on the politics of the 2004 RNC. Those of us who are (both right- and left-wing) would find your defense of...Karl Rove, was it? They'd find it your straw man argument sort of laughable. Last I checked, Bloomberg, Doctoroff, and company are all high-ranking Republicans in the context discussed (NYC). The NYT article I linked to is just the tip of this iceberg, I'm afraid.
Off-topic, and I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but the road analogy seems off. Urban planning studies generally show that adding road capacity is generally followed by an increase in the number of cars, which makes sense. New roads spawn new development, and as traffic decreases, public transit, carpooling, etc. seem less attractive.
So in addition to saying that sometimes heavily-trafficked roads ARE unnecessary, or at least that necessity is relative, I'd say the analogy breaks down, unless we believe that there are folks who wouldn't be programmers if not for C#.
Of course you have less freedom in Iran than the U.S. - very few people dispute that. The question is, "Why are we, as Americans, justifying our actions by saying, 'They do worse in Iran?'" As many others have pointed out, there is no possible justification for tasering a handcuffed suspect. None.
Why do you think that being a dick justifies a tasing? That assumption seems to be the start of your misconception.
The state argument in the pot case (Raich v. Ashcroft) is actually worse than that - they argued that if you bought medical marijuana, you weren't buying it from someplace else, and so you're affecting the interstate commerce of marijuana by, um, not buying it from Oregon. Or something. As you say, a reasoning of convenience.
Googling for NYPD RNC edited tapes turns up a bunch of hits.
I was actually involved in this story - I volunteered to watch videos of the RNC protests to write logs for them for I-Witness Video. I logged the differences between the tapes, although it was someone else who first noticed the difference - Eileen Clancy, who's mentioned in the article. Also edited out, but not mentioned in the NYT article, is the NYPD beating the shit out of a black protestor.
Nor is this an isolated incident - the NYPD routinely denies that tapes exist. In an unrelated case, a witness's tape caught several plainclothes cops on camera with videotapes in one of these cases, and the NYPD said, "How do you know those are cops, that could be anyone." Eileen had to be called to the stand to testify that those people had been identified as cops in other videos before the NYPD (and DA's office) admitted that tapes existed and released them to the defense.
Or how about the Miami PD denying they attacked a first aid station during protests there in 2003, despite reports that the PD videotaped it?
I'd like to see the Feds take action in THOSE cases (the DOJ was supposed to look into the NYPD abuses, but Google turns up nothing after the initial announcement). Josh Wolf is a brave man, and his reasons for not providing the tape certainly, in the context of our country's law enforcement tactics, certainly outweigh the potential benefit of releasing the tape.
I much prefer dual-booting, here's why: - All my documents/MP3s are available to me regardless of OS. I could set up file sharing, but that would require me to run two computers, which runs up the electricity bill. It also means booting up two computers, and waiting until I can log in on the Windows machine - wireless cards generally don't connect until one logs in.
- QEMU and VMWare weren't terribly hard for me to set up, even with little Linux knowledge.
- Like others have said, I live in an apartment, I have a SO who wouldn't appreciate an extra computer, and all that.
My latest (and finally successful) move to Linux was with Ubuntu about 8 months ago - I found its repartitioning to be totally in line with what I wanted. I wouldn't recommend against dual-booting at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a 5-person tech cooperative. We were writing code, documentation, etc. that we wanted to contribute back to the community. So out of our "profit", we made sure that we set aside some funds for our members to spend some of their time abstracting code, packaging it up for release, etc.
The basic principle is the same for a freelancer - you have to raise your rates. Are you charging $100/hr? Charge $110/hr. Use the extra money to pay yourself to package up the code.
In terms of "useful tricks" - well, as a freelancer, you don't have the privilege of someone keeping you honest to your goals. You can change your personal rules whenever you want. But frankly, I would say my co-op has made a net PROFIT on open sourcing our material. When we open source it, we post about it on our blog, Twitter, etc. This increases our referrals from other developers, it means more folks are finding us on the search engines, we gain credibility with other developers when we need them to fix a bug in their module. Maybe the "trick" is to remind yourself of those advantages.
I'm also a self-taught geek, and now I am part of a Drupal/CiviCRM shop with three other folks, all self-taught. We do very well, and just made a job offer to a fifth person, also a self-taught Drupal dev. Here's some thoughts from the other side of the interview table.
A few thoughts:
* Getting hired in the Drupal world as a self-taught geek is way easier than in most corners of the IT world. There's lots of small employers, and there are ways to demonstrate your skill that don't involve certs.
* Drupal is a fast-moving product - we want to know that you know the latest tools. Have you developed in Drupal 7? If you're doing theming/front-end, what's your experience with Sass/Closure/etc.? Basically, if you're not plugged into the Drupal community, it's difficult to be up-to-date. So YES, go to DrupalCon, Drupal meetups, etc. - and make sure your prospective employer knows it (if you're looking to get hired by a Drupal shop)
* The most important part of being hired is networking. Not what but who you know, etc. Another reason to hit the Drupal community gatherings.
* I'll echo what other folks said about needing a portfolio. If you don't have one, make one. Seriously.
When hiring, we asked for folks' Drupal.org usernames, and we looked at their history. Seeing that you've made a non-trivial patch to a major module counts for a lot. Seeing that you know how to make a comprehensive and useful bug report means you'll get better responses when you're working on our projects. We asked about community involvement, as a measure of a) seeing how up-to-date folks were, and b) determining if their contacts in the community will help in a pinch - our good relationships with key Drupal devs has certainly helped us in emergencies. It also means we've been referred work (particularly because we specialize in Drupal/CiviCRM). We looked at portfolio - especially important if you want to be a themer.
Finally - one problem we had with hiring folks in your position was a lack of experience with tools used for working in groups. Familiarize yourself with at least one of the popular project management tools used in the Drupal community (I'd suggest Redmine, Open Atrium, or Basecamp). Learn git. Brush up on CLI tools like drush and ssh if you don't know them already. I think it's telling that the person we offered the job to was self-taught, but was already working in a small shop. A self-taught person with experience with the tools I listed above would have closed the gap that advantage brought to her.
One more thing, I guess - there've been a lot of good arguments for self-employment on both sides of the debate in this thread. Consider the middle option of being semi-self-employed. Moonlight doing Drupal dev. I moonlighted as a freelancer, and brought my day job from full time to part time to gone.
It sounds like you have a domain but not Active Directory. I suggest you check outwpkg, and install it on a server you have hanging around. Use winexe (if you have a Linux server) or psexec (if Windows) to push the command to run the wpkg script - and wpkg will handle your updates for you. I manage almost as many machines as you describe, spread out at about 10 different businesses. Upgrading Firefox etc. takes about 3 minutes, including downloading the package, updating my XML, pushing it out to a test group, and pushing it out more widely a few days later.
Note that wpkg also works even if you don't have a domain - you just can't deploy it remotely. Send those undergrads around one last time to install it. Trust me, it's worth it - far more flexible than Active Directory (though the two complement each other nicely).
> Raw data has no agenda
In principle I agree with you, and I have no patience for those who use no raw data at all. I also think two people could reasonably disagree about the comparative importance of data sets. The U.S.A. has a high standard of living compared to other countries, but also has a large wealth gap compared to most industrialized nations. Which of those facts is more important? Reasonable people can disagree about this - even get angry that you privilege the "wrong" raw data.
I'm also not convinced that the "nutters" are any further out there than reasonable folks on both left and right. There are very smart thoughtful folks on both the left and right who read raw data. Many of them hold views every bit as radical - and opposite from one another - as the "nutters" of their political wing.
As disagreeable to me as some of the extremists on both sides are, I don't conflate the "shouting match" politics with radical politics generally. For instance, Slashdot's tilt on the MPAA/RIAA (or COICA) is far out of the mainstream, but despite being a fringe opinion, it's well thought out, backed with raw data, and I find more reasonable than the approach from both mainstream left and mainstream right.
Reading through others' comments, I remembered:
- In NYC at least, there's a city-wide censorware blacklist run by the Board of Ed. If that's the case where you are, find a way to bypass it, immediately. There were constant mishaps. For example, one teacher had a curriculum based around students' use of Goodreads. One day early in the term, goodreads.com got blacklisted as a social networking site. Many phone calls to the censors were needed.
- It's much easier to troubleshoot issues if the students all use one login - "student" works well.
- Students shouldn't be able to save files to their local desktop. That said, sometimes the network will be down and they need a way to save their work. Flash drives aren't an option in that environment.
- Having a way to update to the most recent version of Flash is often a surprisingly necessary thing to do. Most of the content at www.pbs.org, for instance, is Flash-based.
I worked for a program that brought computers into inner-city schools in NYC. I was responsible for overseeing two computer labs that received after-school use, and a dozen laptops that went in a rolling media cart. The laptops were running Edubuntu. I was on a six-month contract and so I don't have as many answers as I'd like, but here's a few lessons learned.
MOST IMPORTANT:
- You can't give the school computers, particularly running Linux, and walk off - even if the teachers are tech-savvy (most will not be). Your project will die off quickly if you don't make a long-term commitment to support it.
Edubuntu-specific:
- Linux support for wireless drivers is less than perfect. Skip wireless, or test thoroughly. Flaky wireless gave our Edubuntu project a poor reputation very quickly.
- Also test the printer drivers.
- Many schools have inane requirements that you'll need to support. For instance, our program required that the students be tested using software from Scholastic that was Windows-only and made of fail. The school neglected to tell us that this was a requirement at the time we decided to go with Edubuntu. We also weren't told that they'd want them for a comics-making course - there's no comic-making software for Linux.
More generically:
- Everything not nailed down will walk off. Not just mice and power cables, but even stupid things like monitor-to-PC VGA cables walk. Make laptops get checked in and out. The cables connecting peripherals to desktops should be inaccessible to users.
- 3 out of your 4 non-ruggedized laptops will need replacing after a year.
First download on this page is a Linux ARM ICA client.
* Unreasonable searches and seizures must be done with a smile or the next one is free
* Verbal abuse from border agents must refrain from using racial/ethnic epithets
* Coupon good for a free McDonald's Happy Meal issued to every person detained without charges by DHS
(Offer valid to U.S. citizens only. Void where prohibited.)
* Michael Chertoff must pinky swear not to laugh when asked if any complaints submitted to DHS are actually, you know, linked to their accountability.
I was present at one of the houses being raided minutes before the raid. I can confirm from my colleagues in I-Witness Video that the FBI was involved - I saw a photo, but can't remember where. I also was present at the house about an hour before the raid, when an FBI agent knocked on the door for an ostensibly unrelated reason.
More about all this at http://iwitnessvideo.info./ Sorry for replying so late - I've been busy, as you can see :)
Who are Dennis Kucinich's senatorial friends? Because, um, Kucinich isn't a senator.
Um, do you really not see making partisan statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict on a thread about the TSA as flamebait? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamebait
Note that Obama is for ending the use of federal law enforcement in states where marijuana is decriminalized:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/12/MNKK10FD53.DTL
He also used to be pro-decriminalization, but running for POTUS will turn even good people into panderers.
If we could get human meat, that would be great for my vegan restaurant Soybabies - specializing in mock human.
Everything will be vegan except for the fake vegetables, which will be made out of meat. Anyone up for a side of Cowliflower or Mock Choy?
Sadly, a police officer used this argument on a friend of mine when they arrested her for protesting a speaker at her college...
The basic argument was, "You could be a dupe for al-Qaeda, your protest could be a decoy while they do a bombing," along with the typical we-live-in-a-post-9/11-world crap.
To answer the original question, I'm currently using Microsoft's Indexing Server. I bought SearchSimon for $25 or so - basically a disappointment, but still a worthwhile purchase for me, since I found it useful to look at the included source code. I found an article which I can't find right now about rolling your own page based on the Index Server engine.
But this raises my question - how do you enforce metadata tagging? I can't even find a decent Windows-based metadata browser/editor for after-the-fact bulk tagging. I'm aware that certain commercial projects hook the save function on MS Office and replace your save dialog bog with one that has required metadata fields. Is there a way to get that functionality without paying thousands and thousands of dollars? Or, if one is going to pay that kind of money, what project should one go with?
PS - Thanks to everyone mentioning Nutch/Xapian, I will definitely check them out tomorrow.
You can't seriously expect me to put the fate of the free world in the hands of someone who decides that Twitter is useful, can you?
Don't feel safer just yet, Mr. parent post. Last night in Crown Heights (Brooklyn), a civil rights attorney (Michael Tarrif Warren) and his wife Evelyn (also a civil rights attorney I believe) witnessed a police officer making an arrest. He stopped to observe the arrest and was told by an officer to, "Get the fuck out of here, this is none of your business." Michael replied, "You don't have to talk to me that way sir, I'm a lawyer." He was told, "I don't give a fuck who you are." and walked away. Michael proceeded to take notes while in his car - at this point the sergeant (one Sgt. Talby of the 77th Precinct, NYPD) punched him several times hard through the open window and arrested both Mr. Warren and his wife.
Thankfully, the news got to the local media quickly, and when they broadcast news of the arrest, 200 folks showed up at the 77th Precinct's door (full disclosure: I was one of them). Sadly, this is hardly an isolated instance. It just happens to be the one that happened yesterday.
I realize that some of the sources I'm linking aren't exactly bastions of objective journalism, but if you'd like the other side of the issue, you have two choices:
1) Read the recommendations of NYPD officers on NYPD Rant, the largest message board for NYPD officers. In response to St. Louis ACLU handing out cameras to monitor police misconduct, many recommend "disappearing" the tapes or refusing to work in the area (see here
2) Next time you see police arresting or ticketing someone, pull out a notepad. Make sure to not interfere in any way with the police action - just take down names, badge numbers, police car numbers, and physical description of the arrestee. See what happens. I tried doing this once or twice in NYC, and was told, like Mr. Warren, that it was none of my business, to get lost.
Sigh...I know I'm being trolled, but...
OK, fine. Here.
The full article is available lots of places, like here.
Sorry that you're looking to find evidence of anti-conservative bias, but, well...you're just not up to speed on the politics of the 2004 RNC. Those of us who are (both right- and left-wing) would find your defense of...Karl Rove, was it? They'd find it your straw man argument sort of laughable. Last I checked, Bloomberg, Doctoroff, and company are all high-ranking Republicans in the context discussed (NYC). The NYT article I linked to is just the tip of this iceberg, I'm afraid.
Off-topic, and I don't disagree with your general sentiment, but the road analogy seems off. Urban planning studies generally show that adding road capacity is generally followed by an increase in the number of cars, which makes sense. New roads spawn new development, and as traffic decreases, public transit, carpooling, etc. seem less attractive.
So in addition to saying that sometimes heavily-trafficked roads ARE unnecessary, or at least that necessity is relative, I'd say the analogy breaks down, unless we believe that there are folks who wouldn't be programmers if not for C#.
Of course you have less freedom in Iran than the U.S. - very few people dispute that. The question is, "Why are we, as Americans, justifying our actions by saying, 'They do worse in Iran?'" As many others have pointed out, there is no possible justification for tasering a handcuffed suspect. None.
Why do you think that being a dick justifies a tasing? That assumption seems to be the start of your misconception.
"the judge called that punishment [life in prison] 'unreasonable.'"
Clearly the judge has never installed ARCserve...
The state argument in the pot case (Raich v. Ashcroft) is actually worse than that - they argued that if you bought medical marijuana, you weren't buying it from someplace else, and so you're affecting the interstate commerce of marijuana by, um, not buying it from Oregon. Or something. As you say, a reasoning of convenience.
You want proof the NYPD edits its tapes that it uses as evidence? Here's the NY Times article (you have to pay):
Here is a graphic that you don't need to pay for.
Googling for NYPD RNC edited tapes turns up a bunch of hits.
I was actually involved in this story - I volunteered to watch videos of the RNC protests to write logs for them for I-Witness Video. I logged the differences between the tapes, although it was someone else who first noticed the difference - Eileen Clancy, who's mentioned in the article. Also edited out, but not mentioned in the NYT article, is the NYPD beating the shit out of a black protestor.
Nor is this an isolated incident - the NYPD routinely denies that tapes exist. In an unrelated case, a witness's tape caught several plainclothes cops on camera with videotapes in one of these cases, and the NYPD said, "How do you know those are cops, that could be anyone." Eileen had to be called to the stand to testify that those people had been identified as cops in other videos before the NYPD (and DA's office) admitted that tapes existed and released them to the defense.
Or how about the Miami PD denying they attacked a first aid station during protests there in 2003, despite reports that the PD videotaped it?
I'd like to see the Feds take action in THOSE cases (the DOJ was supposed to look into the NYPD abuses, but Google turns up nothing after the initial announcement). Josh Wolf is a brave man, and his reasons for not providing the tape certainly, in the context of our country's law enforcement tactics, certainly outweigh the potential benefit of releasing the tape.
I wish I had mod points - this is quite funnny.
I much prefer dual-booting, here's why:
- All my documents/MP3s are available to me regardless of OS. I could set up file sharing, but that would require me to run two computers, which runs up the electricity bill. It also means booting up two computers, and waiting until I can log in on the Windows machine - wireless cards generally don't connect until one logs in.
- QEMU and VMWare weren't terribly hard for me to set up, even with little Linux knowledge.
- Like others have said, I live in an apartment, I have a SO who wouldn't appreciate an extra computer, and all that.
My latest (and finally successful) move to Linux was with Ubuntu about 8 months ago - I found its repartitioning to be totally in line with what I wanted. I wouldn't recommend against dual-booting at all.