I'm wondering what happens if an individual State decides that any "evidence" derived from this wholesale Federal surveillance is Constitutionally inadmissable, and therefore refuses to allow any such evidence to be used against its citizens, either for prosecution or harrassment?
Seems to me that's not an impossible response from the stronger RealID Resistance states.
An article someone sent me which makes similar points:
=================== 545 People By Charlie Reese --
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.
In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority.
They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.
I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.
No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget.
He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House?
She is the leader of the majority party.
She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want.
If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
I've been told that Demonoid's share ratio is pretty low anyway, only 10% (0.1) -- anyone know for sure?
I've found that unless there are no leechers at all, it's hard to AVOID winding up with at least a ratio of 0.3 -- which seems like a reasonable giveback to me. A ratio of 1.0 or greater isn't always practical, nor should it be necessary in a healthy system with many contributors. Everyone giving back a little bit equates to the same as a few giving much and the rest giving nothing, tho the latter situation obviously is less fair.
Unless the mall is visible from the NY side of the state line, they were out of their jurisdiction.
I once got a cop fired for harrassing someone (myself:) while out of his juridiction -- that last part was what interested his boss, and got him the boot.
Very true. And just because the ordering process is now handled online rather than via telephone or mail should not be regarded as a fundamental change of operations.
Nowadays people are accustomed to buying a prebuilt house, and going down to the mall to buy everything else. But until about 40 years ago, a very large percentage of interstate commerce was via mail order. Sears, Spiegel, Montgomery Wards, and probably others I'm not familiar with all had catalogs 2 inches thick, where you could order almost anything other than food, and in most small towns, catalog shopping was the rule rather than the exception. Sears and others sold kit houses; they and other catalog vendors also sold carpet, appliances, furniture, etc., all via mail order. (Yes, Sears and Monkey Wards had widespread storefronts, but the selection was limited; you still wound up ordering most stuff from the catalog. Eventually they killed most of their storefronts and went to primarily catalog sales.)
BTW, Sears kit buildings (you could buy not only houses, but also barns and outbuildings) are being sought for the Historical Register. One of the attic trusses will have a date plaque which serves to document the building.
(As it happens, I live in a mail-order kit house, tho it's a "U-Build-It" brand, and dates to 1956.)
Taking your post seriously for the purpose of argument -- do we really want to start amending the Constitution during an era when personal rights and freedoms are eroding at a record pace? What sort of Constitution would we have after that?
Hmm... I think you may have nailed it. Satellite goes down due to some engineering mistake, insurance company won't pay cuz it's our own damn fault. Satellite goes down due to "they won't *let* us fix it", insurance pays, then insurance company sues the patent holder. -- It would be very interesting to get a look at their insurance contract.
I didn't say that. What I don't like is when the auction is essentially open-ended. If the auction could go on indefinitely, you really can't know when to bail and go look for an alternative to purchase. You might be high bid and get outbid late, which is fine if the auction closes at a fixed time, so you can know it's time to move on.
I dislike "flexible" prices in general, and especially "what's it worth to you?" pricing. When that's added to "oh, it might be higher tomorrow" -- well, that's no longer a good deal, and often not even a fair deal.
I'd further say that failure to recognise when prices have gone beyond that point is endemic on eBay, where I often see last year's junk being sold for this year's new-item prices.
There are cases like that... in fact, when I decide I need something that is (for practical purposes) only available on eBay, I actively seek out auctions no one else has noticed.:)
But I refuse to get into a bidding war, or into a situation where there's no firm deadline and therefore I don't know whether I've bought the item or not (thus don't know if I should be bidding on an alternative instead).
Thanks for the warning... as a buyer, I hate the competition with other bidders -- on eBay, if what I want lacks a reasonable Buy It Now, I usually set a proxy bid and that's it. Sounds like on ubid, I can rest assured that all reasonable bids will be outbid by an endless parade of late-arriving auction fever sufferers, so I might as well not bother in the first place.
Get an account at a bank you don't use for anything else (so if something goes wrong, it can't be linked to/debit from your main account). Associate THAT account with Paypal. Keep only the token minimum (usually $20) in that account. Problem solved.
Tho I'd contend it's already of marginal utility, since 1) it can be stuffed, and 2) there's no way to search for JUST negative feedback (received or left for others) which is by far the best tool for learning the truth about a given eBayer's attitude and trustworthyness. Positive feedback alone is pretty useless.
The parent post got modded funny but it's no joke. About half the time when I search for something, *especially* something nefararious like "Nigerian scam", half the results that come back are in the form of "Buy Nigerian scams on Amazon!" or "Search for Nigerian scams on Google". How is this useful??!
I can't speak as a seller, but as a buyer I was impressed with the security and policies from Kagi (the first online payment processor I used to pay someone, many years ago). I did get their seller contract to look at and it seemed straightforward and very specific. http://www.kagi.com/
Anyone have any good, bad, or indifferent experiences with 'em to relate?
As to eBay's new Paypal requirement, I think this is solely a move to ensure that eBay ALWAYS gets a cut from the payment processing. If some people lack the required resources, or prefer to use other payment methods, oh well, they weren't profitable to us anyway!!
I just wrote W.D. and asked about *actual* expected lifespan of their hard drives, and received this response:
=============== We no longer measure the reliability of our drives using Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). Our current drive reliability is measured using Component Design Life (CDL) and Annualized Failure Rate (AFR). The Component Design Life of the drive is 5 years and the Annualized Failure Rate is less than 0.8%. ================
Related note -- what do predators see? In the Real World, most dogs see part or all of red, orange, and yellow. A few see green. I've only encountered two that see blue (and I am a professional dog trainer with almost 40 years experience -- and in fieldtrial retrievers, we have reason to note what colours they see).
Evolution-wise, why? Probably because the coat colours of many prey animals fall into red/orange/yellow. So if you can see even part of that range against the surrounding largely-green, you're ahead by one dinner.
" it never ceases to amaze me that when facing a spending problem their first reaction is to increase taxes."
And never do we hear "Reduce spending" instead. The rest of us have to stop spending when we run out of money. Not so the gov't!!
It was a big mistake to ever let gov't live beyond its means in the first place. The rest of us don't have that luxury; why should the gov't?? Especially since WE have to pay the interest on the gov't's maxed-out credit cards!!
Totally agree with both your posts... come on, this is slashdot, not life or death. If you don't like the poster or the subject or disagree with what they say, ignore 'em and move on. No one ever died from reading a stupid joke on slashdot.
I decided a long time ago, as a personal policy, that I would only mod up, never down. There are already enough self-righteous mod-warriors in the world.
As to how this is relevant to the nominal topic, I submit that no one should use mod points prior to getting their daily caffeine injection, so they can actually understand the average/. post.;)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm wondering what happens if an individual State decides that any "evidence" derived from this wholesale Federal surveillance is Constitutionally inadmissable, and therefore refuses to allow any such evidence to be used against its citizens, either for prosecution or harrassment?
Seems to me that's not an impossible response from the stronger RealID Resistance states.
Same here. I'm starting to think I've fallen into an alternate East Germany. :/
And I thought there was a prohibition against using the military (and by extension, military resources) on U.S. soil??
An article someone sent me which makes similar points:
===================
545 People
By Charlie Reese --
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.
In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority.
They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.
I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.
No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget.
He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House?
She is the leader of the majority party.
She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want.
If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are r
I've been told that Demonoid's share ratio is pretty low anyway, only 10% (0.1) -- anyone know for sure?
I've found that unless there are no leechers at all, it's hard to AVOID winding up with at least a ratio of 0.3 -- which seems like a reasonable giveback to me. A ratio of 1.0 or greater isn't always practical, nor should it be necessary in a healthy system with many contributors. Everyone giving back a little bit equates to the same as a few giving much and the rest giving nothing, tho the latter situation obviously is less fair.
Unless the mall is visible from the NY side of the state line, they were out of their jurisdiction.
:) while out of his juridiction -- that last part was what interested his boss, and got him the boot.
I once got a cop fired for harrassing someone (myself
Very true. And just because the ordering process is now handled online rather than via telephone or mail should not be regarded as a fundamental change of operations.
Nowadays people are accustomed to buying a prebuilt house, and going down to the mall to buy everything else. But until about 40 years ago, a very large percentage of interstate commerce was via mail order. Sears, Spiegel, Montgomery Wards, and probably others I'm not familiar with all had catalogs 2 inches thick, where you could order almost anything other than food, and in most small towns, catalog shopping was the rule rather than the exception. Sears and others sold kit houses; they and other catalog vendors also sold carpet, appliances, furniture, etc., all via mail order. (Yes, Sears and Monkey Wards had widespread storefronts, but the selection was limited; you still wound up ordering most stuff from the catalog. Eventually they killed most of their storefronts and went to primarily catalog sales.)
BTW, Sears kit buildings (you could buy not only houses, but also barns and outbuildings) are being sought for the Historical Register. One of the attic trusses will have a date plaque which serves to document the building.
(As it happens, I live in a mail-order kit house, tho it's a "U-Build-It" brand, and dates to 1956.)
Taking your post seriously for the purpose of argument -- do we really want to start amending the Constitution during an era when personal rights and freedoms are eroding at a record pace? What sort of Constitution would we have after that?
[thinking] A very short one... one line, in fact:
All things not compulsory are forbidden.
Worse -- MY brain!
;)
[looking around the room]
Or possibly my computer, which has a mind of its own.
Hmm... I think you may have nailed it. Satellite goes down due to some engineering mistake, insurance company won't pay cuz it's our own damn fault. Satellite goes down due to "they won't *let* us fix it", insurance pays, then insurance company sues the patent holder. -- It would be very interesting to get a look at their insurance contract.
Isn't this the patent that some lawyer did for the purpose of teaching his kid how the patent system works?
Methinks it's time to patent, uh, patents.
I didn't say that. What I don't like is when the auction is essentially open-ended. If the auction could go on indefinitely, you really can't know when to bail and go look for an alternative to purchase. You might be high bid and get outbid late, which is fine if the auction closes at a fixed time, so you can know it's time to move on.
I dislike "flexible" prices in general, and especially "what's it worth to you?" pricing. When that's added to "oh, it might be higher tomorrow" -- well, that's no longer a good deal, and often not even a fair deal.
I'd further say that failure to recognise when prices have gone beyond that point is endemic on eBay, where I often see last year's junk being sold for this year's new-item prices.
There are cases like that... in fact, when I decide I need something that is (for practical purposes) only available on eBay, I actively seek out auctions no one else has noticed. :)
But I refuse to get into a bidding war, or into a situation where there's no firm deadline and therefore I don't know whether I've bought the item or not (thus don't know if I should be bidding on an alternative instead).
Oh, excellent, thank you!!
Some other good tools listed on the home page, too.
[grin] I've seen some of that ilk myself!!
:)
Used to be some strange ones came up if you searched for "women" or "god" as well
Thanks for the warning... as a buyer, I hate the competition with other bidders -- on eBay, if what I want lacks a reasonable Buy It Now, I usually set a proxy bid and that's it. Sounds like on ubid, I can rest assured that all reasonable bids will be outbid by an endless parade of late-arriving auction fever sufferers, so I might as well not bother in the first place.
Get an account at a bank you don't use for anything else (so if something goes wrong, it can't be linked to/debit from your main account). Associate THAT account with Paypal. Keep only the token minimum (usually $20) in that account. Problem solved.
What's this about dropping the feedback system??
Tho I'd contend it's already of marginal utility, since 1) it can be stuffed, and 2) there's no way to search for JUST negative feedback (received or left for others) which is by far the best tool for learning the truth about a given eBayer's attitude and trustworthyness. Positive feedback alone is pretty useless.
The parent post got modded funny but it's no joke. About half the time when I search for something, *especially* something nefararious like "Nigerian scam", half the results that come back are in the form of "Buy Nigerian scams on Amazon!" or "Search for Nigerian scams on Google". How is this useful??!
I can't speak as a seller, but as a buyer I was impressed with the security and policies from Kagi (the first online payment processor I used to pay someone, many years ago). I did get their seller contract to look at and it seemed straightforward and very specific. http://www.kagi.com/
Anyone have any good, bad, or indifferent experiences with 'em to relate?
As to eBay's new Paypal requirement, I think this is solely a move to ensure that eBay ALWAYS gets a cut from the payment processing. If some people lack the required resources, or prefer to use other payment methods, oh well, they weren't profitable to us anyway!!
I just wrote W.D. and asked about *actual* expected lifespan of their hard drives, and received this response:
===============
We no longer measure the reliability of our drives using Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). Our current drive reliability is measured using Component Design Life (CDL) and Annualized Failure Rate (AFR). The Component Design Life of the drive is 5 years and the Annualized Failure Rate is less than 0.8%.
================
Related note -- what do predators see? In the Real World, most dogs see part or all of red, orange, and yellow. A few see green. I've only encountered two that see blue (and I am a professional dog trainer with almost 40 years experience -- and in fieldtrial retrievers, we have reason to note what colours they see).
Evolution-wise, why? Probably because the coat colours of many prey animals fall into red/orange/yellow. So if you can see even part of that range against the surrounding largely-green, you're ahead by one dinner.
"He who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's vote."
This is the basis of all politics in California.
" it never ceases to amaze me that when facing a spending problem their first reaction is to increase taxes."
And never do we hear "Reduce spending" instead. The rest of us have to stop spending when we run out of money. Not so the gov't!!
It was a big mistake to ever let gov't live beyond its means in the first place. The rest of us don't have that luxury; why should the gov't?? Especially since WE have to pay the interest on the gov't's maxed-out credit cards!!
"That is the point of the bill this guy is proposing. He wants to update it from tangible to include information."
That's a scary concept. It could be extended to *any* access of information. Imagine being charged a "use tax" every time you read a book.
Totally agree with both your posts... come on, this is slashdot, not life or death. If you don't like the poster or the subject or disagree with what they say, ignore 'em and move on. No one ever died from reading a stupid joke on slashdot.
/. post. ;)
I decided a long time ago, as a personal policy, that I would only mod up, never down. There are already enough self-righteous mod-warriors in the world.
As to how this is relevant to the nominal topic, I submit that no one should use mod points prior to getting their daily caffeine injection, so they can actually understand the average