Provided there were landline phones in the establishment I doubt that a significant delay would result; however there are also serious issues with adjacent frequencies - my police radio opertates on a 800 MHz frequency band not that far away from the cell phone band. I already know of a lot of areas where dead spots exist in the radio system and the addition of a strong jamming singal would not help out any. The loss of comunications is a serious danger to my safety and the public's safety since the level of my reaction to a given situation escalates when I can't call for help.
Packet would be way too slow for this, however I would think a fastscan TV signal could be sent back to a base station and then a tv capture card could take the snapshots. The usual TV frequencies for amateurs (technically if the mode is allowed on the band you can use any frequency, but there are voluntay band plans that set specific freq's for various things) align on cable channel 58 (427.25) and 61 or 62 but may differ in your area. The only rules based problem with this is part 97 does not allow broadcasting, so this has to be part of some type of 2-way communication. Both sides don't have to be transmitting video but it can't be soley 1 way.
Thank you for that - I was also having trouble with the lack of details on this. As a side note please remember that the guys in uniform are just doing their job and have little to do with the case as a whole. When the investigator shows up and asks for help in a warrant he gets it. The patrol officer dosn't even know any of the case details.
I also tend to see police officers get stereotyped here a lot in just the manner you accuse us of stereotyping others. If I walked up to you at a conference and introduced myself as a police officer would you stay and talk or would you walk away? Do you have any friends that are cops? If you get to know one you will find out that there are some side effects to the training and working the streets (if you want to stay alive). Its a different experience to get up and go to work knowing that some of the people will truely want to kill you today not for what you personaly have done but just because of the job that you do.
I work in law enforcement (part time, without pay) because most of the time I end up helping people solve problems and making my community a safer place. My goal is voluntary compliance with the law, I don't want to arrest anyone unless its necessary to protect the community but if a subject is posing a threat to lives or property I will do everything within the law to stop them, including the use of deadly force if necessary.
There is already a case before the court of appeals in California about filtering. As this article points out there have been succsessful suits against libraries that do filter. They are in a catch 22 they get sued either way. No matter how the FCC rules on this it will end up in the courts.
Personaly I'd rather the 12 year old go to the computer than try and shoplift a playboy from 7-11... the latter results in a lot more paperwork and trouble when I have to take him home in the back of a patrol car.
We have several disconnectable sections of our network. Each of these sections requires a local DNS/NIS/NTP server so everything dosn't die when the link to the main backbone is pulled. I have found that it is often simpler to run such services on a small dedicated system without general user access. A second use I can see is an inexpensive integration test box. Places I have worked seem to always have great development servers but never have enough expendable/scratch boxes to install the product cleanly from scratch during testing.
I don't intend to use my firearms to protect myslef against the police - there is no justification to use force on an officer who is just doing his job. I know there is a functional court system to fix the problem if I am wrongly accused and to compensate me accordingly if it is done outside of the law. I do expect and in fact have used my firearms on two occasions to defend myself from another person. In one case two hispanic males broke into my apartment while I was home asleep. They stood between me and the phone - I couldn't have called 911 no matter how hard I tried. I displayed my gun and they ran away. They were later arrestd on drug charges. The other time a large man (and 3 of his friends) walked up to my pickup, opened the door and tried to pull me out onto the street. I drew my weapon from the center console and he fled never to be seen again. I am glad I live in a state where I am allowed to defend myself when necessary. In both of those cases the police could not have arrived in time to prevent me from being seriously harmed (or killed) by these criminals.
I know that private ownership of guns could kill me some day, but so could the 4th ammendment by supressing evidence against a killer who walks free. Are you willing to permit warrentless searches if it will save lives? mabee we can save money if the federal budget if troops are housed by people living near the base? The rights in the constitution are there to protect the minority and take 3/4 of the states to change to make sure its truely in everyone's best interest.
The law you are looking for depends greatly on the state. Here is the reader's digest version of Florida Statute 794 as it relates to age of consent:
Suspect over 18 Victim under 12 = Capital Felony*
Suspect under 18 Victim over 12 = Life Felony**
Victim under 16 but over 12 = 1st degree felony
Suspect under 24 Victim 16 or 17 = Nothing provided the suspect is not in a position of trust/athority/custody.
Suspect over 24 Victim 16 or 17 = 2nd degree felony
* Capital felony is punishable by death or life in prison. There is currently case law that prevents the sate from asking for a death penalty for any crime but murder, so this in effect makes the only possible sentence for this crime life in prison.
**In FL there is no parole system, sentences are for a fixed number of years and 85% must be served before you get good behavior/gain time. Life is life meaning no release except by pardon.
There are certin crimes that demand more than "serve your time and start over" - If you look at the laws in most states those people convicted of a felony loose some of their civil rights. This includes voting & holding public office, free association (its common for felons to be barred from associating with other felons), firearms rights, movement (must register with the city/state/etc), required to submit to drug testing or to take medication, cannot hold some jobs (police officer, security guard, child care).
I believe that every employer has the athority to investigate the background of an applicant and the thruthfullness of answers provided on the employement application. In some instances an employer could be liable under negligence for not checking an applicant's background, for example: when they care for children, the elderly, have access to weapons, or large sums of money. I don't think that having a record should bar a person from holding most jobs as long as they are honest about their past and the employer understands the risk they may be taking. Breaking the law has its consequences and serving time in prison does not mean the person is reformed but just they served the time the court imposed (minus parole, gain time, early release, etc) its up to the individual through their actions to show they are reformed and can act within the law from now on.
All of this is still dependent on the situation. Most gun fights occur at conversational distance. In the self defense portion of the police academy we attacked each other and the instructors with training knives (rubber/plastic). The person playing the role of the police officer often got stabbed before they could get the training gun (molded plastic sized & weighted like the real thing) out of the holster. Typical police holsters have at least 1 retention device such as a snap or special draw motion, many officers use ones like the SS-III that has 3 retention devices.
Some numbers to consider: It took me 1.32 seconds to draw and fire 2 rounds on target from 5 yards the last time I was on the clock with my duty SS-III (this was an average number in our class, 1.18 was the best). A typical person can cover 20 feet and slash/stab with an edged weapon in 1.5 seconds.
In all the cases when the knife person was less than 15 feet it was not possible for anyone (instructors included) to draw in time to prevent the attack and we had to revert to hand techniques to deflect the blade, break contact, and then go to gun (after being cut hopefully somewhere not important).
So I will be happy to try your duel out at 10 or 15 feet - my bet is that you would at least get cut, probably good enough to die without medical attention and that if you are proficient with a handgun I would get shot and be in the same boat.
Lets also remember that unlike the movies real handgun rounds are not death rays. Most people that are shot center of mass do not keel over and die on the spot. During the famous FBI shooting in Miami in the 1980's the 1st shot from one of the FBI agents blew the aorta off the one suspects heart, he lived for another 2-4 minutes after that and killed an FBI agent.
In any case I don't fear the lawfull posession or carry of firearms, I know that all the criminals I encounter are armed, regardless of the laws preventing felons from posessing guns, and treat them accordingly so my partners and I go home to our loved ones at the end of the shift.
I think we are missing a bit of the story here...I have had extensive background checks by DoD, the police academy, and 2 police departments, polygraphs, phychological profiles etc. The forms ask for you to disclose all past criminal activity, on the security clearance forms its so someone can't blackmail you with something from your past, on the police side its a test of honesty and to prevent a defense lawyer from nailing you on the stand. In both cases they don't care as much about youthfull offences but they do care a whole lot about not giving full disclosure on the forms. My bet is that this person did not list the spraypaint incident and was denied clearance because of the omission. As for the records the policy on retention and seals is different from state to state, here in FL juvenile records are generaly sealed to all but the juvenile, parents/gaurdian, police/courts, and victims and are kept until the latter of: 10 years after the last entry, age 24, or 5 years after the child's death; then they are destroyed.
Well I worked on a project that eventualy became esecurityinc. I know they have been doing this stuff for a while and getting very good results. When the stuff was first being developed it drove me a bit nuts at times since I was the sysadmin on the development box and the testing set off my homegrown security scripts.
Unless you take away all deadly weapons that does not work... lets see no more knives, baseball bats, hockey sticks, cars, or rakes. A gun is no more a deadly weapon than any of those items. The key is in how it is used. I respect all of the freedoms in the constitution even when it makes the job of law enforcement harder, we can't have both individual freedom and a crime free society.
I personaly don't believe in more gun laws since they don't work, its been over 23 years since a new handgun could be legaly brought into Washington, DC. and its not helped them. More of these laws will just take money away from real law enforcement efforts to put criminals behind bars, give the officer on the strees the equipment and backup he/she needs, and more names will end up here.
Seizure and Forfeiture are two different concepts - police can seize something based on probable cause. I don't see how there can be any other effective standard here - the police need to be able to seize evidence and contraband or it will be destroyed. When its seized it goes to the evidence locker and there it shall stay until the case is over. Should I have to go get a court order to take a bloody axe from the person I find running from a body on the corner??? If I find a freshman at the local school with a pipe bomb should I send him off to english class while I wait 4 hours for a judge to issue a warrant by phone??? (yes it does take about 4 hours to prepare, submit, and obtain a warrant even by phone)
FYI here is part of the statue on seizure in FL:
FS 932.703
(d) The seizing agency may not use the seized property for any purpose until the rights to, interest in, and title to the seized property are perfected in accordance with the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act. This section does not prohibit use or operation necessary for reasonable maintenance of seized property. Reasonable efforts shall be made to maintain seized property in such a manner as to minimize loss of value.
I would think the theft case would be better than the fraud/forgery case - again I'm not a lawyer but at least here in FL the law reads in part:
F.S. 812.014 Theft -- 1) A person commits theft if he or she knowingly obtains or uses, or endeavors to obtain or use, the property of another with intent to, either temporarily or permanently: a) Deprive the other person of a right to the property or a benefit from the property. b) Appropriate the property to his or her own use or the use of any person not entitled to the use of the property.
A denial of service attack seems to fit the bill to me - and even if its not effective or is blocked by the target system's configuration it would still be theft since there is no attempted theft. The only trick is grand theft vs. petty theft - the threshold is $300 or some special conditions in the statute.
I wonder how much its going to cost to just purchase the media? I know how much the company I work for spends to solve a 900GB/Wk backup problem and its not a small sum. You can't recycle the media since you have to keep it for 7 years so you just keep building up tapes... so now they have to get a big vault someplace to store them and a few guards to watch over them... souds like a black hole to me.
Somehow I don't see my 80 year old grandmother who is legally blind jumping at this - she still has problems with my father keeping track of her check book on the computer. Given that many of the people with low vision are older and don't realy want all this technology around them I am not convinced that they would ask for something like this.
I remember very clearly my legal instructor in the academy talking about this during the block when ethics and the "under color of law" crimes were discussed (false arrest, false inprisonment, 1983 actions for violation of civil rights). As a police officer a lot rides on your word alone since there are so many situations were it is the only evidence that may exist. I also remember the point being made that a jury will be influenced by recent events and that misconduct on the part of any officer will cost cases for the whole department or even the whole area since they always make news and the jury just sees a cop on the stand and we're all alike. I do believe and trust the word of my fellow officers over any other person since I have to trust them to save my life on any given day I also know the damage they can cause me and if its clear that an officer has crossed the line you'll find they get no quarter from the rest of us who have to go back out on the street after the evening news.
Think of the consequences on the individual officer too - no job, loss of retirement, decertification, criminal charges, pubic ridicule, civil lawsuits, and prison time (they love ex-cops in those places).... these risks are just too high for the average officer to take. I'll tell the jury what I saw and what I honestly think happened but I'd rather let a defendant I think is guilty walk away than risk all of those possibilities above, its just not worth it. In any case they will be caught some day if they keep breaking the law.
IMHO you need to spend a little more time in your local drug area - people will do anything for what they want including sell their children. It dosn't matter if its a joint or a rock or some Mad Dog 20-20. I've seen stuff like that but more common is mommy smokes 3 packs a day and drinks a six pack of colt 45 but can't seem to find the money to put food on the table... sure lets let her get stoned too.
Also drugs are not lumped together - there is a schedule that lists them on a scale of 1-5 and determines the requirements for posession/use:
1 - High potential for abuse NO excepted medical uses.
2 - High potential for abuse some excepted medical uses (cocaine is here).
.... to 5 - low potential for abuse excepted medical uses.
I know that we need to provide better treatment for simple adicts - my cousin is a recovering heroin adict and is now in jail and not getting much help for his underlying problems but I have to say I'm glad he is in jail and not still stealing to feed his habit. His habit started with tobacco then marijuana and he moved on to harder and harder drugs. It would have cost a lot less money to treat him when he was 13 and smoking than it will now. That is the reason I will write underage smoking citations - its the best tool I have right now to address the problem.
Decriminalization is a simple fix that won't work on such a complex social and economic probelm.
The same parallels can be made with laws such as Possession of Burglars Tools (FL S810.06) or Drug Paraphernalia(FL S893.15). Both these laws require the state to prove what the item was intended to be used for - I can't arrest you for walking down the street with a crowbar in your bag but if its 3AM and your standing in the shadows at the back door to the local pawn shop I'm pretty close to getting out my chrome bracelets (better have a good story to tell me on this one).
The people who write our laws are mostly lawyers by trade and so they understand conventional issues like the example I gave above, but they arn't for the most part technicaly savy so they get advice from their friends (read lobby) who are mostly big buisess types that keep the re-election fund growing so they see that making posession of a crowbar a crime would be bad and probably not survive the courts the same is not true in the technology field.
~
The case law (as I remember it from my LEO academy) arose from a case were a major drug dealer shredded his incriminating documents and then threw them out. When he put out the trash they were fair game under the abandonment rule (no warrant required) so the police picked them up. The police then put the documents back together. At trial the defense tried to exclude these documents saying that by shredding them the defendant had an expectation of privacy and they were siezed in violation of the 4th ammendment. The Supreme Court disagreed and in part stated that the defendant should have done a better job of destroying the documents. As far as I know this is the case law that has been applied to computer files (but I'm not a lawyer...). I'd like to be able to quote the case names but I'd probably get them wrong off the top of my head - http://www.findlaw.com and search if you want to.
Just as a side note - my employer just purchased a bunch of IBM intellistations, some with linux on them, some NT, some dual boot. The linux system for my desk was good to go right out of the box, I just slapped it on the network, it grabbed an IP via dhcp and I was ready to go. IBM was very willing to work with us to make sure we got a good turn key solution for our linux requirements. This saved my co workers and I a bunch of setup time and really made a difference in getting the systems on the end users desk as fast as possible.
I don't think Network computing is the right answer for everyone. I think this all boils down to the fact that the same solution isn't for all users. Just like a one size fits all t-shirt usualy dosn't fit anyone very well.
In an office environment where you want to provide a very standard environment to a large mumber of users the SunRay solution looks very attractive to me. How much time does your typical sysadmin spend keeping patches and application software up to date? For a lot of people all they realy need is a web browser, email, calander, and office suite (spreadsheet, wp, slide show). Between StarOffice and Netscape all that is pretty much taken care of.
At home I wouldn't want to have a network setup like that. I don't spend that much time keeping my system set up the way I want it and I don't mind downloading or installing applications that I want and I don't want to rely on the network being alive to use my system.
Each particular setup has a user that it best fits and some others that it does not fit at all. At least we have a choice here as to which products best fit the job.
I doubt very much that the local police have the time or the energy to go around looking into people's homes with these things. I also doubt that the courts would allow it to be used in drive-by manner. If however the police are executing a search or an arrest warrent then I think its a great idea. I don't want any of my friends names (or my own) on the memorial...
WINS never should have existed in the first place. I don't want another naming service to mess with at all - on our UNIX boxes we have NIS host resolution off and it uses just DNS, if MS would make their stuff a bit more flexable the same could be true for the PC world. For the most part every modern platform can talk DNS. Any new protocal that comes out will have to be added to existing sytems - I don't want to mess with doing this. This whole name resolution nightmare was created by MS, make them change to fix it not the rest of us.
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Provided there were landline phones in the establishment I doubt that a significant delay would result; however there are also serious issues with adjacent frequencies - my police radio opertates on a 800 MHz frequency band not that far away from the cell phone band. I already know of a lot of areas where dead spots exist in the radio system and the addition of a strong jamming singal would not help out any. The loss of comunications is a serious danger to my safety and the public's safety since the level of my reaction to a given situation escalates when I can't call for help.
Packet would be way too slow for this, however I would think a fastscan TV signal could be sent back to a base station and then a tv capture card could take the snapshots. The usual TV frequencies for amateurs (technically if the mode is allowed on the band you can use any frequency, but there are voluntay band plans that set specific freq's for various things) align on cable channel 58 (427.25) and 61 or 62 but may differ in your area. The only rules based problem with this is part 97 does not allow broadcasting, so this has to be part of some type of 2-way communication. Both sides don't have to be transmitting video but it can't be soley 1 way.
Thank you for that - I was also having trouble with the lack of details on this. As a side note please remember that the guys in uniform are just doing their job and have little to do with the case as a whole. When the investigator shows up and asks for help in a warrant he gets it. The patrol officer dosn't even know any of the case details.
I also tend to see police officers get stereotyped here a lot in just the manner you accuse us of stereotyping others. If I walked up to you at a conference and introduced myself as a police officer would you stay and talk or would you walk away? Do you have any friends that are cops? If you get to know one you will find out that there are some side effects to the training and working the streets (if you want to stay alive). Its a different experience to get up and go to work knowing that some of the people will truely want to kill you today not for what you personaly have done but just because of the job that you do.
I work in law enforcement (part time, without pay) because most of the time I end up helping people solve problems and making my community a safer place. My goal is voluntary compliance with the law, I don't want to arrest anyone unless its necessary to protect the community but if a subject is posing a threat to lives or property I will do everything within the law to stop them, including the use of deadly force if necessary.
There is already a case before the court of appeals in California about filtering. As this article points out there have been succsessful suits against libraries that do filter. They are in a catch 22 they get sued either way. No matter how the FCC rules on this it will end up in the courts.
... the latter results in a lot more paperwork and trouble when I have to take him home in the back of a patrol car.
Personaly I'd rather the 12 year old go to the computer than try and shoplift a playboy from 7-11
We have several disconnectable sections of our network. Each of these sections requires a local DNS/NIS/NTP server so everything dosn't die when the link to the main backbone is pulled. I have found that it is often simpler to run such services on a small dedicated system without general user access. A second use I can see is an inexpensive integration test box. Places I have worked seem to always have great development servers but never have enough expendable/scratch boxes to install the product cleanly from scratch during testing.
I don't intend to use my firearms to protect myslef against the police - there is no justification to use force on an officer who is just doing his job. I know there is a functional court system to fix the problem if I am wrongly accused and to compensate me accordingly if it is done outside of the law. I do expect and in fact have used my firearms on two occasions to defend myself from another person. In one case two hispanic males broke into my apartment while I was home asleep. They stood between me and the phone - I couldn't have called 911 no matter how hard I tried. I displayed my gun and they ran away. They were later arrestd on drug charges. The other time a large man (and 3 of his friends) walked up to my pickup, opened the door and tried to pull me out onto the street. I drew my weapon from the center console and he fled never to be seen again. I am glad I live in a state where I am allowed to defend myself when necessary. In both of those cases the police could not have arrived in time to prevent me from being seriously harmed (or killed) by these criminals.
I know that private ownership of guns could kill me some day, but so could the 4th ammendment by supressing evidence against a killer who walks free. Are you willing to permit warrentless searches if it will save lives? mabee we can save money if the federal budget if troops are housed by people living near the base? The rights in the constitution are there to protect the minority and take 3/4 of the states to change to make sure its truely in everyone's best interest.
The law you are looking for depends greatly on the state. Here is the reader's digest version of Florida Statute 794 as it relates to age of consent:
Suspect over 18 Victim under 12 = Capital Felony*
Suspect under 18 Victim over 12 = Life Felony**
Victim under 16 but over 12 = 1st degree felony
Suspect under 24 Victim 16 or 17 = Nothing provided the suspect is not in a position of trust/athority/custody.
Suspect over 24 Victim 16 or 17 = 2nd degree felony
* Capital felony is punishable by death or life in prison. There is currently case law that prevents the sate from asking for a death penalty for any crime but murder, so this in effect makes the only possible sentence for this crime life in prison.
**In FL there is no parole system, sentences are for a fixed number of years and 85% must be served before you get good behavior/gain time. Life is life meaning no release except by pardon.
There are certin crimes that demand more than "serve your time and start over" - If you look at the laws in most states those people convicted of a felony loose some of their civil rights. This includes voting & holding public office, free association (its common for felons to be barred from associating with other felons), firearms rights, movement (must register with the city/state/etc), required to submit to drug testing or to take medication, cannot hold some jobs (police officer, security guard, child care).
I believe that every employer has the athority to investigate the background of an applicant and the thruthfullness of answers provided on the employement application. In some instances an employer could be liable under negligence for not checking an applicant's background, for example: when they care for children, the elderly, have access to weapons, or large sums of money. I don't think that having a record should bar a person from holding most jobs as long as they are honest about their past and the employer understands the risk they may be taking. Breaking the law has its consequences and serving time in prison does not mean the person is reformed but just they served the time the court imposed (minus parole, gain time, early release, etc) its up to the individual through their actions to show they are reformed and can act within the law from now on.
All of this is still dependent on the situation. Most gun fights occur at conversational distance. In the self defense portion of the police academy we attacked each other and the instructors with training knives (rubber/plastic). The person playing the role of the police officer often got stabbed before they could get the training gun (molded plastic sized & weighted like the real thing) out of the holster. Typical police holsters have at least 1 retention device such as a snap or special draw motion, many officers use ones like the SS-III that has 3 retention devices.
Some numbers to consider: It took me 1.32 seconds to draw and fire 2 rounds on target from 5 yards the last time I was on the clock with my duty SS-III (this was an average number in our class, 1.18 was the best). A typical person can cover 20 feet and slash/stab with an edged weapon in 1.5 seconds.
In all the cases when the knife person was less than 15 feet it was not possible for anyone (instructors included) to draw in time to prevent the attack and we had to revert to hand techniques to deflect the blade, break contact, and then go to gun (after being cut hopefully somewhere not important).
So I will be happy to try your duel out at 10 or 15 feet - my bet is that you would at least get cut, probably good enough to die without medical attention and that if you are proficient with a handgun I would get shot and be in the same boat.
Lets also remember that unlike the movies real handgun rounds are not death rays. Most people that are shot center of mass do not keel over and die on the spot. During the famous FBI shooting in Miami in the 1980's the 1st shot from one of the FBI agents blew the aorta off the one suspects heart, he lived for another 2-4 minutes after that and killed an FBI agent.
In any case I don't fear the lawfull posession or carry of firearms, I know that all the criminals I encounter are armed, regardless of the laws preventing felons from posessing guns, and treat them accordingly so my partners and I go home to our loved ones at the end of the shift.
I think we are missing a bit of the story here...I have had extensive background checks by DoD, the police academy, and 2 police departments, polygraphs, phychological profiles etc. The forms ask for you to disclose all past criminal activity, on the security clearance forms its so someone can't blackmail you with something from your past, on the police side its a test of honesty and to prevent a defense lawyer from nailing you on the stand. In both cases they don't care as much about youthfull offences but they do care a whole lot about not giving full disclosure on the forms. My bet is that this person did not list the spraypaint incident and was denied clearance because of the omission. As for the records the policy on retention and seals is different from state to state, here in FL juvenile records are generaly sealed to all but the juvenile, parents/gaurdian, police/courts, and victims and are kept until the latter of: 10 years after the last entry, age 24, or 5 years after the child's death; then they are destroyed.
Well I worked on a project that eventualy became esecurityinc. I know they have been doing this stuff for a while and getting very good results. When the stuff was first being developed it drove me a bit nuts at times since I was the sysadmin on the development box and the testing set off my homegrown security scripts.
Unless you take away all deadly weapons that does not work... lets see no more knives, baseball bats, hockey sticks, cars, or rakes. A gun is no more a deadly weapon than any of those items. The key is in how it is used. I respect all of the freedoms in the constitution even when it makes the job of law enforcement harder, we can't have both individual freedom and a crime free society. I personaly don't believe in more gun laws since they don't work, its been over 23 years since a new handgun could be legaly brought into Washington, DC. and its not helped them. More of these laws will just take money away from real law enforcement efforts to put criminals behind bars, give the officer on the strees the equipment and backup he/she needs, and more names will end up here.
FYI here is part of the statue on seizure in FL:
I wonder how much its going to cost to just purchase the media? I know how much the company I work for spends to solve a 900GB/Wk backup problem and its not a small sum. You can't recycle the media since you have to keep it for 7 years so you just keep building up tapes... so now they have to get a big vault someplace to store them and a few guards to watch over them... souds like a black hole to me.
Somehow I don't see my 80 year old grandmother who is legally blind jumping at this - she still has problems with my father keeping track of her check book on the computer. Given that many of the people with low vision are older and don't realy want all this technology around them I am not convinced that they would ask for something like this.
I remember very clearly my legal instructor in the academy talking about this during the block when ethics and the "under color of law" crimes were discussed (false arrest, false inprisonment, 1983 actions for violation of civil rights). As a police officer a lot rides on your word alone since there are so many situations were it is the only evidence that may exist. I also remember the point being made that a jury will be influenced by recent events and that misconduct on the part of any officer will cost cases for the whole department or even the whole area since they always make news and the jury just sees a cop on the stand and we're all alike. I do believe and trust the word of my fellow officers over any other person since I have to trust them to save my life on any given day I also know the damage they can cause me and if its clear that an officer has crossed the line you'll find they get no quarter from the rest of us who have to go back out on the street after the evening news.
Think of the consequences on the individual officer too - no job, loss of retirement, decertification, criminal charges, pubic ridicule, civil lawsuits, and prison time (they love ex-cops in those places).... these risks are just too high for the average officer to take. I'll tell the jury what I saw and what I honestly think happened but I'd rather let a defendant I think is guilty walk away than risk all of those possibilities above, its just not worth it. In any case they will be caught some day if they keep breaking the law.
IMHO you need to spend a little more time in your local drug area - people will do anything for what they want including sell their children. It dosn't matter if its a joint or a rock or some Mad Dog 20-20. I've seen stuff like that but more common is mommy smokes 3 packs a day and drinks a six pack of colt 45 but can't seem to find the money to put food on the table... sure lets let her get stoned too.
Also drugs are not lumped together - there is a schedule that lists them on a scale of 1-5 and determines the requirements for posession/use:
1 - High potential for abuse NO excepted medical uses.
2 - High potential for abuse some excepted medical uses (cocaine is here).
.... to 5 - low potential for abuse excepted medical uses.
I know that we need to provide better treatment for simple adicts - my cousin is a recovering heroin adict and is now in jail and not getting much help for his underlying problems but I have to say I'm glad he is in jail and not still stealing to feed his habit. His habit started with tobacco then marijuana and he moved on to harder and harder drugs. It would have cost a lot less money to treat him when he was 13 and smoking than it will now. That is the reason I will write underage smoking citations - its the best tool I have right now to address the problem.
Decriminalization is a simple fix that won't work on such a complex social and economic probelm.
The same parallels can be made with laws such as Possession of Burglars Tools (FL S810.06) or Drug Paraphernalia(FL S893.15). Both these laws require the state to prove what the item was intended to be used for - I can't arrest you for walking down the street with a crowbar in your bag but if its 3AM and your standing in the shadows at the back door to the local pawn shop I'm pretty close to getting out my chrome bracelets (better have a good story to tell me on this one).
The people who write our laws are mostly lawyers by trade and so they understand conventional issues like the example I gave above, but they arn't for the most part technicaly savy so they get advice from their friends (read lobby) who are mostly big buisess types that keep the re-election fund growing so they see that making posession of a crowbar a crime would be bad and probably not survive the courts the same is not true in the technology field.
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The case law (as I remember it from my LEO academy) arose from a case were a major drug dealer shredded his incriminating documents and then threw them out. When he put out the trash they were fair game under the abandonment rule (no warrant required) so the police picked them up. The police then put the documents back together. At trial the defense tried to exclude these documents saying that by shredding them the defendant had an expectation of privacy and they were siezed in violation of the 4th ammendment. The Supreme Court disagreed and in part stated that the defendant should have done a better job of destroying the documents. As far as I know this is the case law that has been applied to computer files (but I'm not a lawyer...). I'd like to be able to quote the case names but I'd probably get them wrong off the top of my head - http://www.findlaw.com and search if you want to.
You didn't read the 1st part -> "...while fleeing or attempting to elude a law enforcement..."
TIP: The blue lights behind you mean something...
Just as a side note - my employer just purchased a bunch of IBM intellistations, some with linux on them, some NT, some dual boot. The linux system for my desk was good to go right out of the box, I just slapped it on the network, it grabbed an IP via dhcp and I was ready to go. IBM was very willing to work with us to make sure we got a good turn key solution for our linux requirements. This saved my co workers and I a bunch of setup time and really made a difference in getting the systems on the end users desk as fast as possible.
I don't think Network computing is the right answer for everyone. I think this all boils down to the fact that the same solution isn't for all users. Just like a one size fits all t-shirt usualy dosn't fit anyone very well.
In an office environment where you want to provide a very standard environment to a large mumber of users the SunRay solution looks very attractive to me. How much time does your typical sysadmin spend keeping patches and application software up to date? For a lot of people all they realy need is a web browser, email, calander, and office suite (spreadsheet, wp, slide show). Between StarOffice and Netscape all that is pretty much taken care of.
At home I wouldn't want to have a network setup like that. I don't spend that much time keeping my system set up the way I want it and I don't mind downloading or installing applications that I want and I don't want to rely on the network being alive to use my system.
Each particular setup has a user that it best fits and some others that it does not fit at all. At least we have a choice here as to which products best fit the job.
I doubt very much that the local police have the time or the energy to go around looking into people's homes with these things. I also doubt that the courts would allow it to be used in drive-by manner. If however the police are executing a search or an arrest warrent then I think its a great idea. I don't want any of my friends names (or my own) on the memorial...
WINS never should have existed in the first place. I don't want another naming service to mess with at all - on our UNIX boxes we have NIS host resolution off and it uses just DNS, if MS would make their stuff a bit more flexable the same could be true for the PC world. For the most part every modern platform can talk DNS. Any new protocal that comes out will have to be added to existing sytems - I don't want to mess with doing this. This whole name resolution nightmare was created by MS, make them change to fix it not the rest of us.