Over 20 years ago, while I was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz ("Go Slugs!"), I had David Huffman for CIS (Computer and Information Sciences) 10, "Introduction to Cypernetics".
This class covered a range of codes and encoding methods. We spent, surprise, some time on Huffman encoding, as well as covering Shannon's work.
Huffman was a great professor, and even back then he was doing the Origami work and should it to us in class.
An Amateur is someone who does it for "the love of" the activity or from a deep passion. A Professional is someone who just does it for the paycheck.
I have a dear friend who is in "fulltime ministry" with college students. He draws a paycheck every month, but he says, "I never want to become a professional!" He says, that it is from the pleasure he gets, the passion he has from working with students, that he gets the energy to get out of bed every morning.
Of course, in our society, we have been conditioned to think that being a professional is better. I would rather see amateurs doing things.
I would like to see amateur politicians, doctors, etc. People who love to do what they are doing.
As we look at the problems with e-voting (which are legion and significant), let's not diminish our case by bringing into play issues that aren't related to e-voting.
A poor optical scanner pick-up isn't an e-voting issue. Significant, yes? E-voting related, no!
That said, I believe the e-voting issues are shinning a light on some of the significant QA problems we have in our voting system. I would like to see an audit from top to bottom, with strong QA processes put into place.
This is the right solution to this problem. I installed a 2.5 KW solar array this last year (December) and moved to time of day metering.
Under time of day metering, we are charged/paid 35 cents a kilowatt hour during "prime time" (Noon to 6 PM) and are charged/paid 7 cents a kilowatt hour during "non-prime time".
Since the array went online in December, I have seen the electric component of our utility bill drop from approximately $100.00 a month to between $20.00 (in December, when we were home during prime time due to the Christmas break) to $5.00 a month (which is what they charge us to send a bill with $0.00) in February.
I am currently generating and selling 6-8 net prime kilowatts a day, which offsets 42-56 non-prime kilowatts a day.
My investment in the system was approximately $11K after buy-downs (based on the number of watts I produce) and tax credits starting from a base costof $22K.
On this $11K investment I am seeing a projected after-tax return of $1080 a year or 9.8%. If you take a look at the pre-tax return I would have to get to match this, I would have to be getting an ROI of between 15-18%!
This is the best money I have spent ever! The grid tie setup is the way to go, since it lets me use the grid as my battery!
If there is anything you learn about SJ quickly, it is that he is the absolute definition of "hands-on".
If this wasn't run past Steve and fully approved by him at a minimum, I would be surprised. That he was likely asking hard questions and pushing his team to do it, wouldn't surprise me at all.
One of Apple's major customer segments is video prodution for television and movies. Apple for years has had an extremely strong niche in the Entertainment industry (why do you think you see Macs in almost every TV show and movie as the "computer of choice"?). Over the last 18 months they have spent a lot acquiring products to fill out their digital video, video effects, and audio editing and production product line. What we have hear is showing, by eating their own dog food, that they are serious and that you can do it all on the Mac.
Steve is the master salesman and technical visionary. His finger-prints are all over this move!
So, dropping a "t" from a word makes me an idiot who can't read or understand the law?
Please, get a life...of course, maybe your life is attacking folks with no possible accountability.
Yours,
Jordan
PS. And yes, I do consider a a typo of one letter to be, in this case, moot (not mute). If this was a filing, rather than a discusison on Slashdot, I would have proofed it twice and ran it through a spell checker.
The fact is that he did, based on my reading of the statue commit extoration.
The lesson to be learned:
1. Have a contract in place, don't do things on a handshake and a nod.
A contract - and the exercise of building one - isn't just a legal play. A good contract is an agreement on what X will do for Y, and what Y will do in return for X. It is like an API definition.
2. If you have a dispute, don't take it into your hands.
He should have sat down with an attorney and have had them put together a letter of the following form:
"Dear Sir,
The service I have been providing to you per our oral agreement of December XX, XXXX and subsequentally afirmed in various conversations and by you use of the service, is currently costing me $XXX.XX a month to provide due to the traffic level of XXX,XXX visits per month.
To date I have not received payment for this service. Given the current situation, I can no longer continue to provide this service beyond (today+30 days).
If you aren't willing to pay for the service I am providing, will work with to transition to another service provider within these 30 days.
Please note, any assistance in such a transition, doesn't indicate a release of my claims for services provided for XX months at a cost of $x,xxx a month.
Yours,
Joe WebMaster
3. Didn't anyone every teach him "you don't spit into the wind, you don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't anger the local Sheriff!"?
You entered into a contract with the insurance company. If you have or haven't been speeding is relevant information to your insurance company, for it determines if you are a good risk or not.
Personally, I am for giving the insurance companies the information required to make informed decisions about our relative risks.
By the way, there is a difference between privacy and being annonymous. Being annonymous is a recent development of the industrial age. Prior to that time, the folks around you knew what you were doing. I am not sure that things have improved with the ability to be annonymous.
You know the solution, it just appears that you don't like it.
You need to go with good solid ear plugs and eye shades. I highly recommend both of them.
My wife and I run on different schedules at times. To keep us from destroying one another's sleep, we go with ear plugs and, when required, eye shades.
If people start stealing credit cads and banking numbers, they start leaving bigger foot prints.
We also have a system and specialists that have a relatively good success at catching folks that commit bank fruad.
If that stolen credit card and/or banking number is associated with a mail bond, they are going to leave even more clearly defined and bigger foot prints which we can track down.
Simply put, the FBI will treat a case of "wire fruad" a lot more seriously than a borrowed relay or trojaned machine.
Finally, if my "borrowed relay" (open relay) isn't allowed to send email, because my mail bond is exhausted, you can bet that I am going to take it more seriously than I might have done.
The beauty of this system is that the recipient decides what is or isn't spam. Under this proposal - which isn't new and isn't mine - you as the sender are betting 1/10 of 1 cent that I want to read your email. If I do, then you win the bet and keep that part of your bond. If I don't, then you lose the bet and pay me 1/10 of 1 cent.
A couple of other points: 1. The bond is posted in advance. It gives you permission to send a set number of emails.
2.There needs to be a set period in which I have to declare that something is spam or not, in order to collect the bounty (say a week).
3. If I say it is spam, then it is spam for me. No appeal, no ability to change my vote. If I don't like it, then you have to foreit my portion of the bond to me.
With the above ground rules in place, we would have system where I go to my ISP and post a bound equal to the number of emails I want to send in a week. If I want to send a million emails a week, then I post a bond of $1,000.
Once this is in place, I can send 1,000,000 emails in a week period. But if people start calling it spam (directly or through their spam filtering software), then I start foreitin 1/10 of 1 cent for each and every piece of span I have sent.
Maybe only 10% of the folks think it is spam, well, then he is down to 900,000 emails he can send in the next week or he has to pay up again.
It is my understanding that the spammers are getting by on 1 or 2 hits out of each mail. This is possible, because they don't have a cost (that wonderful frictionless Interet) of doing business.
The goal of this system - and we can adjust the numbers as required - is to introduce some friction to those who are taking advantage of the Internet, while keeping thingsrelatively frictionless for those that are playing by the rules.
Remember, unlike bulk mail (which is bad enough), a spammer makes me and others pay the cost of them sending a message to me. This turns it around and gets them to pay those costs.
Actually, this problem can be solved without charging postage on each and every piece of email.
The problem can be addressed by putting people at risk of being charged postage. This can be done by requiring that senders post a bond of say 1/10 of 1 cent per item sent.
If you are sending 30,000 pieces of mail a week, your bond would only be $30.00. If people like your email, you will never have to pay the toll, but if they don't like it, then you will be subject it.
The folks that will be caught in this web are spammers and direct marketers. They send millions of spams in the hope that just a few folks will bite. If we raise their cost of doing it above the return, they will be out of business ASAP.
The only way to kill spam, which depends on a frictionless mailing process, is to introduce some friction (i.e. cost) into the system.
I have had both Comcast (AT&T Digital cable) and DirectTV with Tivo. In my opinion, DirectTV with Tivo is the way to go.
In terms of signal losss we had more problems with AT&T Digital Cable then we have ever had with DirectTV. I can think of one or two times we lost the signal from DirectTV which wasn't clearly a problem on the source transmission end (i.e. fuzz/blank out form the field in broadcast during the SuperBowl).
With AT&T Digital Cable, we lost the signal a number of times a month. One time we lost it for an entire weekend, because some took out a power pole. Our power was up, but we didn't have cable.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Tivo fanatic. I love Tivo and how it has changed how we watch TV. One of the things that drove me to DirectTV with Tivo was the level of integration of Tivo into the system. Tivo is your set-top box. It is the control panel. It is where everything comes together. There is no trying to mate up things not designed to interoperate.
What clinched the deal for me, was reading an interview in Forbes where the head of Comcast described Tivo users as, "Thives and pirates..."!
I have seen the Comcast DVR, and it just doesn't compare to Tivo. The combination of great service and a great system makes it a no-brainer for me.
Another great experience I had this weekend, was on their web site. I saw through the Tivo showcase that the Sundance channel was offering some movies I wanted to see. But the Sundance Channel is a premieum channel, and I don't receive it. So, I went to the web site, and ordered "Showtime" set of premieum channels. I spent a minute on the web site and three minutes later, things were up and running on my system!
What I would do, is a program of self-study to prepare yourself for the GREs.
Working the MIT OpenCourseWare materials is a great place to get started. I would also recommend workuing you way through Bob Sedgewick's algorithms.
I would use that knowledge to apply to graduate programs. UCSF has a great one in bioinformatics. An MS in bioinformatics would be a great launching pad to working on systems to be applied in medicine and biological research...
It is interesting to note that this kind of shift isn't without precedenct: Bill Atkinson (the author of QuickDraw [the imagine under the original Mac OS] and Hypercard) was a Phd in Chemistry that moved into CS.
There is probable cause for an investigation at this point and the Sargent-At-Arms of the Senate is investigating it.
Yes, the case at this point is circumstanl, but Senator Orin Hatch (I might not like his politics, but he is a straight arrow) is taking it seriously enough to launch an investigation.
Let's remember that the purpose of an investigation - which is ongoing at this point - is to put together the evidence. You present the evidence after the investigation to get an indictment. With an indictment in hand, you go to trial. If you have evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, to convince a jury, you get a conviction.
Burglary, as defined in most penal codes, is the crime of "unlawful entry".
If I leave my front door unlocked and you, without my permission, open the unlocked door, walk into my house, and take my TV, you are guilty of breaking and entering.
Yes, a security hole existed. The Replublican staffers made the choice to "open and walk through the unlocked" door and to access items that didn't belong to them.
Were the Democratic staffers stupid? Did they show a lack of wisdom? You bet, but "stupdity on my part, doesn't make it not a crime on your part."
Bottom line, as I tell my children, if it isn't yours, you don't touch it without permission from those that own it.
How different is this from Watergate? In Watergate, members of the Republican Party's Committee to Re-eleect the President (CREP, pronounced like you would think) broke into the DNC (Democratic National Committee) offices in the Watergate Hotel.
Why? To look at confidnetial files on activities, positions, planning, etc., to the end of being able to use this information to beat them in the 1972 presidental election.
What happened here? Members of the Senate Judicary Committee (the folks that craft our laws and have created Draconian laws around illegal access of computer systems) broke into a computer system - not just to see if it could be done - but for the express purpose of stealing information.
Imagine if this had been some kid who broke into a unsecure system (say a credit bureau's computer system) and was going through the notes and files there. Say he leaked the files to the media. What would be the uproar? The secret service would swoop in, the computers would be confiscated. People would be heading to Sing-Sing.
What is happening here? Well, the Sargent at Arms is investigating (remember under our separation of powers in the US, the Executive Branch can't use its police powers on the legislative branch), but has asked for support from the Secret Service's computer crimes team. Computers have been confiscated. An investigation is running...
Sounds like we are on a similar path. Do I think this deserves more play in the media? Definitely. Do I think that some heads should roll on this one? Definitely? Do I think some people need to do hard time? Defintely, for what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I believe that the folks that make the laws, when they break them, should get the maximum.
Am I surprised that this isn't getting the media play it deserves? No. Remember, before Woodward and Bernstein, Watergate was considered a "second-rate burgarly". I hope - and have some faith - that this will get the play it deserves...
Do I think the Democrats would have pulled this is they could? Yes. Do I think this says something about the character - in a negative way - of our legislators? Definitely.
But that is isn't being sweeped under the rug completely, that it is being addressed.
Well, to start with how about trying to pack the Supreme Court, because he "didn't like the decisions" it was making.
Then of course, there was the order excluding Americans of Japanese Ancestory from the West Coast and putting them into concentration camps for their "own safety".
There are several others I could come up with, but these are at the top of the list.
The reality is that neither the left nor the right is clean and perfect. They have equally, when they say it as "the right thing to do" for the "good of the country" abused civil rights and trampled on the constitution.
Sivaram_Velauthapill is reported to have said: Right wing goverments are more prone to abuse civil liberties than left-leaning ones.
Have to take issue with this one. Both the right and the left have abused (and respected) civil rights at various times.
For every Nixon or Hitler, there is an FDR or Mao, that is willing play fast and loose with our civil rights, if they believe it is to reach a "just end" (as defined by there needs).
Remember that the first suspension of "Habeas Corpus" was by Lincoln.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi Tony -
Pretty impressive. That tops me. I just had him for CIS 10 at US Santa Cruz and then was a TA for him one summer for the same class.
Yours,
Jordan
Over 20 years ago, while I was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz ("Go Slugs!"), I had David Huffman for CIS (Computer and Information Sciences) 10, "Introduction to Cypernetics".
This class covered a range of codes and encoding methods. We spent, surprise, some time on Huffman encoding, as well as covering Shannon's work.
Huffman was a great professor, and even back then he was doing the Origami work and should it to us in class.
Yours,
Jordan
This is perfect for the digital photography. Fast, high capacity. This is perfect.
Yours,
Jordan
An Amateur is someone who does it for "the love of" the activity or from a deep passion. A Professional is someone who just does it for the paycheck.
I have a dear friend who is in "fulltime ministry" with college students. He draws a paycheck every month, but he says, "I never want to become a professional!" He says, that it is from the pleasure he gets, the passion he has from working with students, that he gets the energy to get out of bed every morning.
Of course, in our society, we have been conditioned to think that being a professional is better. I would rather see amateurs doing things.
I would like to see amateur politicians, doctors, etc. People who love to do what they are doing.
Yours,
Jordan
Ok, I know it is April 1 and all, but I actually knew a Bo3B.
He worked for DTS at Apple and when asked, would say, "The 3 is silent".
It was on his offical Apple badge, his business cards, and I believe, I even saw it on his driver's license.
Yours,
Jordan
This is the time of day rate for "peak demand" - 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM - electricity in California.
This is, according to PG & E and the CSPUC, the marginal cost of providing/generating a KWh duing this time period.
Of course, folks that aren't on time of day metering pay 7 cents/kWh due to regulation and overburden the system during peak demand.
As we look at the problems with e-voting (which are legion and significant), let's not diminish our case by bringing into play issues that aren't related to e-voting.
A poor optical scanner pick-up isn't an e-voting issue. Significant, yes? E-voting related, no!
That said, I believe the e-voting issues are shinning a light on some of the significant QA problems we have in our voting system. I would like to see an audit from top to bottom, with strong QA processes put into place.
This is the right solution to this problem. I installed a 2.5 KW solar array this last year (December) and moved to time of day metering.
Under time of day metering, we are charged/paid 35 cents a kilowatt hour during "prime time" (Noon to 6 PM) and are charged/paid 7 cents a kilowatt hour during "non-prime time".
Since the array went online in December, I have seen the electric component of our utility bill drop from approximately $100.00 a month to between $20.00 (in December, when we were home during prime time due to the Christmas break) to $5.00 a month (which is what they charge us to send a bill with $0.00) in February.
I am currently generating and selling 6-8 net prime kilowatts a day, which offsets 42-56 non-prime kilowatts a day.
My investment in the system was approximately $11K after buy-downs (based on the number of watts I produce) and tax credits starting from a base costof $22K.
On this $11K investment I am seeing a projected after-tax return of $1080 a year or 9.8%. If you take a look at the pre-tax return I would have to get to match this, I would have to be getting an ROI of between 15-18%!
This is the best money I have spent ever! The grid tie setup is the way to go, since it lets me use the grid as my battery!
If there is anything you learn about SJ quickly, it is that he is the absolute definition of "hands-on".
If this wasn't run past Steve and fully approved by him at a minimum, I would be surprised. That he was likely asking hard questions and pushing his team to do it, wouldn't surprise me at all.
One of Apple's major customer segments is video prodution for television and movies. Apple for years has had an extremely strong niche in the Entertainment industry (why do you think you see Macs in almost every TV show and movie as the "computer of choice"?). Over the last 18 months they have spent a lot acquiring products to fill out their digital video, video effects, and audio editing and production product line. What we have hear is showing, by eating their own dog food, that they are serious and that you can do it all on the Mac.
Steve is the master salesman and technical visionary. His finger-prints are all over this move!
So, dropping a "t" from a word makes me an idiot who can't read or understand the law?
Please, get a life...of course, maybe your life is attacking folks with no possible accountability.
Yours,
Jordan
PS. And yes, I do consider a a typo of one letter to be, in this case, moot (not mute). If this was a filing, rather than a discusison on Slashdot, I would have proofed it twice and ran it through a spell checker.
The fact is that he did, based on my reading of the statue commit extoration.
The lesson to be learned:
1. Have a contract in place, don't do things on a handshake and a nod.
A contract - and the exercise of building one - isn't just a legal play. A good contract is an agreement on what X will do for Y, and what Y will do in return for X. It is like an API definition.
2. If you have a dispute, don't take it into your hands.
He should have sat down with an attorney and have had them put together a letter of the following form:
"Dear Sir,
The service I have been providing to you per our oral agreement of December XX, XXXX and subsequentally afirmed in various conversations and by you use of the service, is currently costing me $XXX.XX a month to provide due to the traffic level of XXX,XXX visits per month.
To date I have not received payment for this service. Given the current situation, I can no longer continue to provide this service beyond (today+30 days).
If you aren't willing to pay for the service I am providing, will work with to transition to another service provider within these 30 days.
Please note, any assistance in such a transition, doesn't indicate a release of my claims for services provided for XX months at a cost of $x,xxx a month.
Yours,
Joe WebMaster
3. Didn't anyone every teach him "you don't spit into the wind, you don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't anger the local Sheriff!"?
Actually, I don't see the problem.
You entered into a contract with the insurance company. If you have or haven't been speeding is relevant information to your insurance company, for it determines if you are a good risk or not.
Personally, I am for giving the insurance companies the information required to make informed decisions about our relative risks.
By the way, there is a difference between privacy and being annonymous. Being annonymous is a recent development of the industrial age. Prior to that time, the folks around you knew what you were doing. I am not sure that things have improved with the ability to be annonymous.
Yours,
Jordan
Yours,
Jordan
Love the editorial in the lead to this discussion.
Let's be clear: evidence was presented by both sides, and a jury of peers from Silicon Valley, found that IBM was not liable.
As someone who has followed this case closely, I have to agree with the decision rendered by the jury.
Of course, if you want to put on your tin-foil hat, you will find all kinds of conspiracies in this baby.
You know the solution, it just appears that you don't like it.
You need to go with good solid ear plugs and eye shades. I highly recommend both of them.
My wife and I run on different schedules at times. To keep us from destroying one another's sleep, we go with ear plugs and, when required, eye shades.
Yours,
Jordan
Hi Technician -
Actually, this is a good thing.
If people start stealing credit cads and banking numbers, they start leaving bigger foot prints.
We also have a system and specialists that have a relatively good success at catching folks that commit bank fruad.
If that stolen credit card and/or banking number is associated with a mail bond, they are going to leave even more clearly defined and bigger foot prints which we can track down.
Simply put, the FBI will treat a case of "wire fruad" a lot more seriously than a borrowed relay or trojaned machine.
Finally, if my "borrowed relay" (open relay) isn't allowed to send email, because my mail bond is exhausted, you can bet that I am going to take it more seriously than I might have done.
Yours,
Jordan
The beauty of this system is that the recipient decides what is or isn't spam. Under this proposal - which isn't new and isn't mine - you as the sender are betting 1/10 of 1 cent that I want to read your email. If I do, then you win the bet and keep that part of your bond. If I don't, then you lose the bet and pay me 1/10 of 1 cent.
A couple of other points:
1. The bond is posted in advance. It gives you permission to send a set number of emails.
2.There needs to be a set period in which I have to declare that something is spam or not, in order to collect the bounty (say a week).
3. If I say it is spam, then it is spam for me. No appeal, no ability to change my vote. If I don't like it, then you have to foreit my portion of the bond to me.
With the above ground rules in place, we would have system where I go to my ISP and post a bound equal to the number of emails I want to send in a week. If I want to send a million emails a week, then I post a bond of $1,000.
Once this is in place, I can send 1,000,000 emails in a week period. But if people start calling it spam (directly or through their spam filtering software), then I start foreitin 1/10 of 1 cent for each and every piece of span I have sent.
Maybe only 10% of the folks think it is spam, well, then he is down to 900,000 emails he can send in the next week or he has to pay up again.
It is my understanding that the spammers are getting by on 1 or 2 hits out of each mail. This is possible, because they don't have a cost (that wonderful frictionless Interet) of doing business.
The goal of this system - and we can adjust the numbers as required - is to introduce some friction to those who are taking advantage of the Internet, while keeping thingsrelatively frictionless for those that are playing by the rules.
Remember, unlike bulk mail (which is bad enough), a spammer makes me and others pay the cost of them sending a message to me. This turns it around and gets them to pay those costs.
Yours,
Jordan
Actually, this problem can be solved without charging postage on each and every piece of email.
The problem can be addressed by putting people at risk of being charged postage. This can be done by requiring that senders post a bond of say 1/10 of 1 cent per item sent.
If you are sending 30,000 pieces of mail a week, your bond would only be $30.00. If people like your email, you will never have to pay the toll, but if they don't like it, then you will be subject it.
The folks that will be caught in this web are spammers and direct marketers. They send millions of spams in the hope that just a few folks will bite. If we raise their cost of doing it above the return, they will be out of business ASAP.
The only way to kill spam, which depends on a frictionless mailing process, is to introduce some friction (i.e. cost) into the system.
Yours,
Jordan
I have had both Comcast (AT&T Digital cable) and DirectTV with Tivo. In my opinion, DirectTV with Tivo is the way to go.
In terms of signal losss we had more problems with AT&T Digital Cable then we have ever had with DirectTV. I can think of one or two times we lost the signal from DirectTV which wasn't clearly a problem on the source transmission end (i.e. fuzz/blank out form the field in broadcast during the SuperBowl).
With AT&T Digital Cable, we lost the signal a number of times a month. One time we lost it for an entire weekend, because some took out a power pole. Our power was up, but we didn't have cable.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Tivo fanatic. I love Tivo and how it has changed how we watch TV. One of the things that drove me to DirectTV with Tivo was the level of integration of Tivo into the system. Tivo is your set-top box. It is the control panel. It is where everything comes together. There is no trying to mate up things not designed to interoperate.
What clinched the deal for me, was reading an interview in Forbes where the head of Comcast described Tivo users as, "Thives and pirates..."!
I have seen the Comcast DVR, and it just doesn't compare to Tivo. The combination of great service and a great system makes it a no-brainer for me.
Another great experience I had this weekend, was on their web site. I saw through the Tivo showcase that the Sundance channel was offering some movies I wanted to see. But the Sundance Channel is a premieum channel, and I don't receive it. So, I went to the web site, and ordered "Showtime" set of premieum channels. I spent a minute on the web site and three minutes later, things were up and running on my system!
Yours,
Jordan
I think this is a great idea.
What I would do, is a program of self-study to prepare yourself for the GREs.
Working the MIT OpenCourseWare materials is a great place to get started. I would also recommend workuing you way through Bob Sedgewick's algorithms.
I would use that knowledge to apply to graduate programs. UCSF has a great one in bioinformatics. An MS in bioinformatics would be a great launching pad to working on systems to be applied in medicine and biological research...
It is interesting to note that this kind of shift isn't without precedenct: Bill Atkinson (the author of QuickDraw [the imagine under the original Mac OS] and Hypercard) was a Phd in Chemistry that moved into CS.
Yours,
Jordan
Hi Porkchop -
There is probable cause for an investigation at this point and the Sargent-At-Arms of the Senate is investigating it.
Yes, the case at this point is circumstanl, but Senator Orin Hatch (I might not like his politics, but he is a straight arrow) is taking it seriously enough to launch an investigation.
Let's remember that the purpose of an investigation - which is ongoing at this point - is to put together the evidence. You present the evidence after the investigation to get an indictment. With an indictment in hand, you go to trial. If you have evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, to convince a jury, you get a conviction.
Yours,
Jordan
Hi Pork Chop -
Burglary, as defined in most penal codes, is the crime of "unlawful entry".
If I leave my front door unlocked and you, without my permission, open the unlocked door, walk into my house, and take my TV, you are guilty of breaking and entering.
Yes, a security hole existed. The Replublican staffers made the choice to "open and walk through the unlocked" door and to access items that didn't belong to them.
Were the Democratic staffers stupid? Did they show a lack of wisdom? You bet, but "stupdity on my part, doesn't make it not a crime on your part."
Bottom line, as I tell my children, if it isn't yours, you don't touch it without permission from those that own it.
Yours,
Jordan
All -
How different is this from Watergate? In Watergate, members of the Republican Party's Committee to Re-eleect the President (CREP, pronounced like you would think) broke into the DNC (Democratic National Committee) offices in the Watergate Hotel.
Why? To look at confidnetial files on activities, positions, planning, etc., to the end of being able to use this information to beat them in the 1972 presidental election.
What happened here? Members of the Senate Judicary Committee (the folks that craft our laws and have created Draconian laws around illegal access of computer systems) broke into a computer system - not just to see if it could be done - but for the express purpose of stealing information.
Imagine if this had been some kid who broke into a unsecure system (say a credit bureau's computer system) and was going through the notes and files there. Say he leaked the files to the media. What would be the uproar? The secret service would swoop in, the computers would be confiscated. People would be heading to Sing-Sing.
What is happening here? Well, the Sargent at Arms is investigating (remember under our separation of powers in the US, the Executive Branch can't use its police powers on the legislative branch), but has asked for support from the Secret Service's computer crimes team. Computers have been confiscated. An investigation is running...
Sounds like we are on a similar path. Do I think this deserves more play in the media? Definitely. Do I think that some heads should roll on this one? Definitely? Do I think some people need to do hard time? Defintely, for what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I believe that the folks that make the laws, when they break them, should get the maximum.
Am I surprised that this isn't getting the media play it deserves? No. Remember, before Woodward and Bernstein, Watergate was considered a "second-rate burgarly". I hope - and have some faith - that this will get the play it deserves...
Do I think the Democrats would have pulled this is they could? Yes. Do I think this says something about the character - in a negative way - of our legislators? Definitely.
But that is isn't being sweeped under the rug completely, that it is being addressed.
Yours,
Jordan
Well, to start with how about trying to pack the Supreme Court, because he "didn't like the decisions" it was making.
Then of course, there was the order excluding Americans of Japanese Ancestory from the West Coast and putting them into concentration camps for their "own safety".
There are several others I could come up with, but these are at the top of the list.
The reality is that neither the left nor the right is clean and perfect. They have equally, when they say it as "the right thing to do" for the "good of the country" abused civil rights and trampled on the constitution.
Yours,
Jordan
Sivaram_Velauthapill is reported to have said:
Right wing goverments are more prone to abuse civil liberties than left-leaning ones.
Have to take issue with this one. Both the right and the left have abused (and respected) civil rights at various times.
For every Nixon or Hitler, there is an FDR or Mao, that is willing play fast and loose with our civil rights, if they believe it is to reach a "just end" (as defined by there needs).
Remember that the first suspension of "Habeas Corpus" was by Lincoln.
Yours,
Jordan
Folks are probably wondering how this isn't like the clones in terms of what it will do for Apple?
Well, to put it bluntly, when Apple got into cloning originally, it had a sub-5% market share.
In this business (Download Music Sales & Distribution), they have a 70% marketshare (according to Nielen).
It is amazing what a position of strength can do for you!
Yours,
Jordan