It's sad when a country uses its laws to try to force a company to do certain things.
Like dealing honestly with shareholders? Using sound building materials and engineering practices? Promoting worker safety?
All of these are areas of government law trying to force companies to do things that they would sometimes prefer to avoid. I don't find my particular examples to be sad at all; on the contrary, I am generally grateful for them.
Not to say all such laws are good, of course. Many are not. But your statement of outrage is overly broad, and thus not especially effective. It's not the government power of regulation that is the problem; it's particular uses of it that may be foolish.
If you don't give us Hebrew, we'll declare you a monopoly! Well, that's bullshit. Laws are laws... either Microsoft is a monopoly by their laws or not. It should have nothing to do with microsoft's decision not to have certain software packages in Hebrew.
Presumably they have other reasons to think of Microsoft as a monopoly. Were it not for the Hebrew support issue, I suspect, they may not have had the political will to carry through with the antitrust action, even in the face of a flagrant violation. But given that the preservation of their culture and language is pretty much the reason for the modern state's existance in the first place, it's no surprise that they're willing to use whatever means is at hand to browbeat a company into supporting Hebrew.
If Microsoft doesn't like it, they can fight it in Israeli court. If that's not worth it to Microsoft, they can choose to take their toys and go home. It's not like the revenue loss would kill them.
That's the breaks when you go up against a sovereign nation that is as comfortable with the application of force and as fierce in matters of self-defense as Israel.
This really makes you wonder how Isreal looks at things...
This is the least of the issues that might make a person wonder about how Israel's government looks at things. C'mon, they bombed Syria a few days ago. This bit with Microsoft is trivial. If you want to wonder about Israel, try on a real issue for size: wonder why they're still expanding the settlements.
This was inevitable. That was clear to me from the moment I found out that 2.4GHz is the same band as microwave ovens. I could already hear the cry: "You're microwaving me?!"
It's probably stupid, to be sure, and there are most likely many worse risks around these children than wireless networking. But there was bound to be a lawsuit, and we may as well get it over with. I just hope that it is so crushingly defeated as to deter more suits like it.
I think it's also safe to say that Bill Gates' best work is in the past. How could he possibly top the coup of licensing MS-DOS to IBM? (Short of total world domination, anyway.)
Brick Top: You're always gonna have problems moving an asteroid in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut it up into six pieces and pile it all together.
Sol: Would someone mind telling me, who are you?
Brick Top: And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in deep space for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up asteroid will look like curry to a pisshead. You need at least sixteen hundred pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through an asteroid that weighs 10 tons in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked asteroid every minute. Hence the expression, 'as greedy as a pig.'
RUBBISH! Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs. by CHRIS LYDGATE AND NICK BUDNICK
[...] Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. [...]
The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?
[...] After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.
We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.
Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.
Boy, were we wrong. [...]
---
Much hilarity ensues. See http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/allstories.lasso?xx in=3485
I know many others have said this already, but I think the 48GX is as good as it gets. I have owned or extensively used the 11C, 12C, 15C, 32ii(?) 42S, 48S, 48SX, 48G, 48GX, and 49somethingorother. (Why? See * below.)
Of all these, the only one I hate is the newest one, the 49. The location and size of the Enter key is not well suited to RPN operation, it's slow at simple operations, and it hangs for a second every now and then for no apparent reason. It may have scads of nice features and outperform a G5 tower, but I'll never know because these basic interface issues keep me from giving it more chances. It bites.
The 48GX is wonderful. I wish I owned one now that my 48SX has died.
*: The 11C and 15C I owned in high school, the 12C I found lying in the street one day. (!) Later, the company I used to work for made assemblies out of sheet metal. I started there as a grunt, and ended up taking over much of the design work (done by hand) in the early nineties. They were too cheap to buy me a real computer until much later, but they *would* get me all the calculators I could eat.
I wrote parametric design software for the ungrateful wretches (I'm not bitter:) which immediately filled up the memory on the 32. I re-wrote it all for the 42S, wore out its keyboard, got another, then filled up all its memory with more parametric designs. So they bought me a 48S, which the re-written software filled up at once. That led to a 48SX with a 128k card. Later employees got 48Gs or GX's, which got my programs.
Eventually they pulled their heads out of their asses and got us AutoCAD, but in the meantime I got to know my little HP friends very well indeed.:)
I've been following the Current Impact Risks page ever since I found out about it over a year ago.
In order to report on this issue responsibly, all that's required is to ignore any object on the list until the NEO survey folks has collected observations over a span of 20 days or more. Before that, the orbits are too unclear to be worth reporting upon. Practically all objects fall of the list before the obeservations span 20 days.
Sadly, some reporters want to get the story out first, so they jump the gun.
Well, kind of. The problem here is that MD5 is too good.
ESR's comparator will find wholly-identical code, yes, and that's good in this instance. All matches ESR's method finds will be significant... but ESR's method will not find all significant matches.
As many have pointed out, a trivial change in source will yield a dramatic change in MD5... that's the whole point of MD5. Now that the method is known, a malicious code-copier can easily make trivial changes that defeat MD5 shredding as a comparison. It only works in this case because of the long history of the codebase where no one has systematically tried to defeat this method of comparison.
What we need is a fast "hash" that is designed to measure similarity on a scale, rather than yield a straight identical-different binary result. With such a hash, any code shred over some threshold of similarity would be worth a closer look.
Alternately, as another poster suggested, comparing the parsed-but-not-compiled code might be a better choice. It would still have problems, in that it might yield many false positive matches.
The rhetoric from the free/open software folks has always been: "We don't think we're infringing, but if SCO is right we'll change the code immediately." Well, here's a chance for the community to make good on that claim.
If I read between the lines correctly, ESR's method will only find wholly-identical code+comments in three-line chunks. Keep in mind that this will not find duplications of single lines, or even triples with any non-whitespace change at all. However, it's probably going to find most of the really significant areas of dispute. These identical shreds can be examined for origins, and changed if the origin is at all murky.
Combined with the presumption that the best legal remedy is to stop infringement on the copyright, the ability to identify code that certainly needs to be changed, despite SCO's NDA, is pretty sweet.
But you're right that this will not be the end of the story. SCO has staked its life on this, and ESR's method is not enough to find everything that a desperate SCO might claim as an infringement in court. However, by the time this makes it to court, any gross violations that might exist will have been found and probably corrected. While the remaining snippets may be more focused and specific, they will also be of lesser quality as evidence of infringement.
They'll discover that he actually had *three* arrows in him, and a cloven horn by his side. Turns out that jerk Aragorn didn't put Boromir in a boat after all.
"To date, nobody has suggested that copy control technologies have locked up a work that should be in the public domain."
Heh. That's funny, considering copyright terms are now at least 70 years. It is a bit tricky to find a copy-controlled work from before 1933 to disprove his point, isn't it?
Clever bastard, that RIAA guy. I wonder when he's running for Congress?
Practicality or enforceability is not yet the point, I think. It clearly is absurd, and should not be considered an enforceable contract... which reflects the absurdity of a click-through EULA.
It seems to me that a click-through EULA is rationally (but probably not legally) equivalent to or weaker than an EVLA delivered to the manufacturer by certified mail, or initialled by a software dealer's employee. It's a sweet idea for a protest at least.
Furthermore, when we purchase software under a EULA, we allow a company to dictate terms to us, often terms that are onerous or not obvious. We wouldn't accept these entanglements when buying a book, a house, a car, or groceries. Why should we accept them here? For that matter, why shouldn't we have more say in the contract negotiations than "Yes or No"?
Dividing the state of Oregon would be a serious overeaction, I think.:) The eastern and southern parts would be hard pressed to profit from it in either the short or the long term. In the last detailed study I saw, the Portland area's tax reveue tends to subsidize the other areas of the state.
But if a person wants to get really radical about realigning borders, here's my suggestion.
Most political boundaries are either at arbitrary map reference lines, or are down the middle of rivers. This is a holdover from military planning, as rivers are natural obstacles that armies must overcome. When it comes to economic matters, this is a very inconvenient division. Try to get two states (or even counties) to agree on building a bridge!
Instead, redraw the borders based on watersheds. Put the borders on the ridgetops, and unify the valleys. In Oregon, there would be a Columbia watershed government, to which the Willamette, Hood River, Deschutes (etc) governments would be "tributary". Likewise, there would be a Great Basin government, and a bunch of small bodies along the coast (Rogue, Nestucca, Tillamook, etc.)
As an example, most environmental regulations could simply be larger (downstream) governments specifying a water quality standard at the outflow of each tributary... the details would be left to the local watershed groups to accomplish as they see fit. Large downstream communities (like Portland) would be much more affected by their regulations, for good or ill. Also, Portland would have effectively *no* say in the doings of what is now Harney county.
Likewise, this approach works for more than just environmental matters. Most economic activity is still dependent on transportation, and most transportation links still route along watersheds to some degree. Communities tend to occupy only one watershed.
I'm sure there must be some serious disadvantages, too, but I'm not worried about it... because it's all too radical to ever happen.:)
They already do. If gas tax is currently 24 cents a gallon, and you drive 50 miles a day, and your car gets 15 (hwy) miles to the gallon - thats $.80 in gas tax you paid.
I live in the city, and my office I drive 4 miles a day. I get 15mpg (city). That's $.06 gas tax.
You already pay more for the mileage you drive.
City driving has traditionally been less efficient, in MPG terms, than highway driving. This method removes even that difference.
Stiil, the point is valid; it's already skewed. (And, by the way, I am a Willamette valley resident... but I want a fair tax, not one that gives me an advantage at someone else's expense.)
Oddly, now that I've skimmed the ODOT research report, I find that I'm having trouble sustaining my outrage at the basic idea. Done properly, this could be a much more fair system of collecting a necessary tax. Done badly, it could be an abomination, of course... just like everything else.
The privacy implications still give me the willies. But with a good implementation, that may be a manageable issue. The folks working on this seem to be concerned about minimizing the impact, at least. It could be worse. I'll just have to put it on the list of things to keep an eye on.
I suppose the reason this has any chance at all is that most of the population (and thus most of the political power) of Oregon is concentrated in a small area of the state. The folks outside the Willamette valley will end up paying a disproportionately large amount of distance tax, because they drive farther from daily necessity.
The Eastern and Southern parts of the state are going to be incensed over this, and with good reason. What a stupid idea.
Thanks for the article, I'll write my legislators.
Did he not read the bill before he supported it? WTF! He shouldn't be re-elected.
Then we'd better turn out pretty much the whole US Congress next chance we get. Most of Congress did not read* the USA-PATRIOT act before it was passed.
(*) as reported at http://www.birdsall-law.com/usapatriot.htm
If you're paranoid about cops recording their actions, you're at least 10 years too late.:) The basic concept of cameras in patrol cars is not new at all. This method brings some important gains in efficiency and coverage, both of which are helpful to the public and to law enforcement. (If the system preserves the chain of evidence properly, anyway.)
What I'd really like to see, though, is a discreet portable camera + DVR for civillian use. (Better would be a camera with a wireless link to a DVR, so that the recorder could be carried by someone else.) Think of all the times you've heard about clashes at protests, with both the cops and the protesters saying the other guys started it. This sort of event is beyond the coverage of patrol car cameras, generally... a human-portable camera is about the only way to record the truth. Sadly, civillian cameras at protests regularly are seized by police, or have their film destroyed.
A portable system could be deployed by both police and protesters, making the truth much more possible to sort out later.
"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."
Well, let's hope it stays in beta. Real world testing would be a major bummer!
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad when a country uses its laws to try to force a company to do certain things.
Like dealing honestly with shareholders? Using sound building materials and engineering practices? Promoting worker safety?
All of these are areas of government law trying to force companies to do things that they would sometimes prefer to avoid. I don't find my particular examples to be sad at all; on the contrary, I am generally grateful for them.
Not to say all such laws are good, of course. Many are not. But your statement of outrage is overly broad, and thus not especially effective. It's not the government power of regulation that is the problem; it's particular uses of it that may be foolish.
If you don't give us Hebrew, we'll declare you a monopoly! Well, that's bullshit. Laws are laws... either Microsoft is a monopoly by their laws or not. It should have nothing to do with microsoft's decision not to have certain software packages in Hebrew.
Presumably they have other reasons to think of Microsoft as a monopoly. Were it not for the Hebrew support issue, I suspect, they may not have had the political will to carry through with the antitrust action, even in the face of a flagrant violation. But given that the preservation of their culture and language is pretty much the reason for the modern state's existance in the first place, it's no surprise that they're willing to use whatever means is at hand to browbeat a company into supporting Hebrew.
If Microsoft doesn't like it, they can fight it in Israeli court. If that's not worth it to Microsoft, they can choose to take their toys and go home. It's not like the revenue loss would kill them.
That's the breaks when you go up against a sovereign nation that is as comfortable with the application of force and as fierce in matters of self-defense as Israel.
This really makes you wonder how Isreal looks at things...
This is the least of the issues that might make a person wonder about how Israel's government looks at things. C'mon, they bombed Syria a few days ago. This bit with Microsoft is trivial. If you want to wonder about Israel, try on a real issue for size: wonder why they're still expanding the settlements.
This was inevitable. That was clear to me from the moment I found out that 2.4GHz is the same band as microwave ovens. I could already hear the cry: "You're microwaving me?!"
It's probably stupid, to be sure, and there are most likely many worse risks around these children than wireless networking. But there was bound to be a lawsuit, and we may as well get it over with. I just hope that it is so crushingly defeated as to deter more suits like it.
I think it's also safe to say that Bill Gates' best work is in the past. How could he possibly top the coup of licensing MS-DOS to IBM? (Short of total world domination, anyway.)
Brick Top: You're always gonna have problems moving an asteroid in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut it up into six pieces and pile it all together.
Sol: Would someone mind telling me, who are you?
Brick Top: And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in deep space for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up asteroid will look like curry to a pisshead. You need at least sixteen hundred pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through an asteroid that weighs 10 tons in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked asteroid every minute. Hence the expression, 'as greedy as a pig.'
RUBBISH!
x in=3485
Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs.
by CHRIS LYDGATE AND NICK BUDNICK
[...] Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. [...]
The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?
[...] After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.
We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.
Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.
Boy, were we wrong. [...]
---
Much hilarity ensues. See http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/allstories.lasso?x
I know many others have said this already, but I think the 48GX is as good as it gets. I have owned or extensively used the 11C, 12C, 15C, 32ii(?) 42S, 48S, 48SX, 48G, 48GX, and 49somethingorother. (Why? See * below.)
:) which immediately filled up the memory on the 32. I re-wrote it all for the 42S, wore out its keyboard, got another, then filled up all its memory with more parametric designs. So they bought me a 48S, which the re-written software filled up at once. That led to a 48SX with a 128k card. Later employees got 48Gs or GX's, which got my programs.
:)
Of all these, the only one I hate is the newest one, the 49. The location and size of the Enter key is not well suited to RPN operation, it's slow at simple operations, and it hangs for a second every now and then for no apparent reason. It may have scads of nice features and outperform a G5 tower, but I'll never know because these basic interface issues keep me from giving it more chances. It bites.
The 48GX is wonderful. I wish I owned one now that my 48SX has died.
*: The 11C and 15C I owned in high school, the 12C I found lying in the street one day. (!) Later, the company I used to work for made assemblies out of sheet metal. I started there as a grunt, and ended up taking over much of the design work (done by hand) in the early nineties. They were too cheap to buy me a real computer until much later, but they *would* get me all the calculators I could eat.
I wrote parametric design software for the ungrateful wretches (I'm not bitter
Eventually they pulled their heads out of their asses and got us AutoCAD, but in the meantime I got to know my little HP friends very well indeed.
I've been following the Current Impact Risks page ever since I found out about it over a year ago.
In order to report on this issue responsibly, all that's required is to ignore any object on the list until the NEO survey folks has collected observations over a span of 20 days or more. Before that, the orbits are too unclear to be worth reporting upon. Practically all objects fall of the list before the obeservations span 20 days.
Sadly, some reporters want to get the story out first, so they jump the gun.
Well, kind of. The problem here is that MD5 is too good.
ESR's comparator will find wholly-identical code, yes, and that's good in this instance. All matches ESR's method finds will be significant... but ESR's method will not find all significant matches.
As many have pointed out, a trivial change in source will yield a dramatic change in MD5... that's the whole point of MD5. Now that the method is known, a malicious code-copier can easily make trivial changes that defeat MD5 shredding as a comparison. It only works in this case because of the long history of the codebase where no one has systematically tried to defeat this method of comparison.
What we need is a fast "hash" that is designed to measure similarity on a scale, rather than yield a straight identical-different binary result. With such a hash, any code shred over some threshold of similarity would be worth a closer look.
Alternately, as another poster suggested, comparing the parsed-but-not-compiled code might be a better choice. It would still have problems, in that it might yield many false positive matches.
The rhetoric from the free/open software folks has always been: "We don't think we're infringing, but if SCO is right we'll change the code immediately." Well, here's a chance for the community to make good on that claim.
If I read between the lines correctly, ESR's method will only find wholly-identical code+comments in three-line chunks. Keep in mind that this will not find duplications of single lines, or even triples with any non-whitespace change at all. However, it's probably going to find most of the really significant areas of dispute. These identical shreds can be examined for origins, and changed if the origin is at all murky.
Combined with the presumption that the best legal remedy is to stop infringement on the copyright, the ability to identify code that certainly needs to be changed, despite SCO's NDA, is pretty sweet.
But you're right that this will not be the end of the story. SCO has staked its life on this, and ESR's method is not enough to find everything that a desperate SCO might claim as an infringement in court. However, by the time this makes it to court, any gross violations that might exist will have been found and probably corrected. While the remaining snippets may be more focused and specific, they will also be of lesser quality as evidence of infringement.
Sounds like snake oil to me.
Who cares how fast it pours when it's Coors? (Or Carling, whatever.) It's still industrial swill that's not worth drinking at all.
It's amazing to me that the ability to achieve higher throughput of bad beer is regarded as a positive development...
Fair enough. But why choose just one? It should be a simple matter to rotate through several booksellers that ship nationally.
Mind you, I'm not unbiased... I'm a Powell's partisan, because it happens to be local as well as huge and wonderful.
They'll discover that he actually had *three* arrows in him, and a cloven horn by his side. Turns out that jerk Aragorn didn't put Boromir in a boat after all.
Second largest? Where's the first??
"This has been done, and is now recieving military funding."
Sorry, no. Metal Storm is something entirely different. (And, incidentally, *way* more powerful and practical at this point.)
The Metal Strom projectiles are powder-driven, although the ignition is electronic. In the gauss gun, it's all electromagnetic.
After trying the Soundex tool, I am just bewildered how anyone could think this algorithim is appropriate for a no-fly list. Example:
Name: Hughes
Soundex code: H220
Matches: haessig hages haggis haghighi hagos hajek hakes hasak hasas haschke hasegawa hasek hassick hassig haukaas hawkes haycock haycook heacock heacox hecox heikes heschke hescock heziak hickock hickok hickox higashi highshaw higuchi hikes hiscock hiscox hojczyk hojeij hokes hoosock hosack hosaka hoschek hoseck hosek hosick hossack hougas hoysock huges hugghis hughes hughs hugus husak husayko hykes housekeeper
Hawkes? Housekeeper? Hickox?
No wonder there's so many complaints!
"To date, nobody has suggested that copy control technologies have locked up a work that should be in the public domain."
Heh. That's funny, considering copyright terms are now at least 70 years. It is a bit tricky to find a copy-controlled work from before 1933 to disprove his point, isn't it?
Clever bastard, that RIAA guy. I wonder when he's running for Congress?
Practicality or enforceability is not yet the point, I think. It clearly is absurd, and should not be considered an enforceable contract... which reflects the absurdity of a click-through EULA.
It seems to me that a click-through EULA is rationally (but probably not legally) equivalent to or weaker than an EVLA delivered to the manufacturer by certified mail, or initialled by a software dealer's employee. It's a sweet idea for a protest at least.
Furthermore, when we purchase software under a EULA, we allow a company to dictate terms to us, often terms that are onerous or not obvious. We wouldn't accept these entanglements when buying a book, a house, a car, or groceries. Why should we accept them here? For that matter, why shouldn't we have more say in the contract negotiations than "Yes or No"?
We are citizens, after all, not just consumers.
Dividing the state of Oregon would be a serious overeaction, I think. :) The eastern and southern parts would be hard pressed to profit from it in either the short or the long term. In the last detailed study I saw, the Portland area's tax reveue tends to subsidize the other areas of the state.
:)
But if a person wants to get really radical about realigning borders, here's my suggestion.
Most political boundaries are either at arbitrary map reference lines, or are down the middle of rivers. This is a holdover from military planning, as rivers are natural obstacles that armies must overcome. When it comes to economic matters, this is a very inconvenient division. Try to get two states (or even counties) to agree on building a bridge!
Instead, redraw the borders based on watersheds. Put the borders on the ridgetops, and unify the valleys. In Oregon, there would be a Columbia watershed government, to which the Willamette, Hood River, Deschutes (etc) governments would be "tributary". Likewise, there would be a Great Basin government, and a bunch of small bodies along the coast (Rogue, Nestucca, Tillamook, etc.)
As an example, most environmental regulations could simply be larger (downstream) governments specifying a water quality standard at the outflow of each tributary... the details would be left to the local watershed groups to accomplish as they see fit. Large downstream communities (like Portland) would be much more affected by their regulations, for good or ill. Also, Portland would have effectively *no* say in the doings of what is now Harney county.
Likewise, this approach works for more than just environmental matters. Most economic activity is still dependent on transportation, and most transportation links still route along watersheds to some degree. Communities tend to occupy only one watershed.
I'm sure there must be some serious disadvantages, too, but I'm not worried about it... because it's all too radical to ever happen.
They already do. If gas tax is currently 24 cents a gallon, and you drive 50 miles a day, and your car gets 15 (hwy) miles to the gallon - thats $.80 in gas tax you paid.
I live in the city, and my office I drive 4 miles a day. I get 15mpg (city). That's $.06 gas tax.
You already pay more for the mileage you drive.
City driving has traditionally been less efficient, in MPG terms, than highway driving. This method removes even that difference.
Stiil, the point is valid; it's already skewed. (And, by the way, I am a Willamette valley resident... but I want a fair tax, not one that gives me an advantage at someone else's expense.)
Oddly, now that I've skimmed the ODOT research report, I find that I'm having trouble sustaining my outrage at the basic idea. Done properly, this could be a much more fair system of collecting a necessary tax. Done badly, it could be an abomination, of course... just like everything else.
The privacy implications still give me the willies. But with a good implementation, that may be a manageable issue. The folks working on this seem to be concerned about minimizing the impact, at least. It could be worse. I'll just have to put it on the list of things to keep an eye on.
The Road User Fee Task Force: http://www.odot.state.or.us/ruftf/
:)
Read the paper, yell at your legislator.
I suppose the reason this has any chance at all is that most of the population (and thus most of the political power) of Oregon is concentrated in a small area of the state. The folks outside the Willamette valley will end up paying a disproportionately large amount of distance tax, because they drive farther from daily necessity.
The Eastern and Southern parts of the state are going to be incensed over this, and with good reason. What a stupid idea.
Thanks for the article, I'll write my legislators.
Did he not read the bill before he supported it? WTF! He shouldn't be re-elected.
Then we'd better turn out pretty much the whole US Congress next chance we get. Most of Congress did not read* the USA-PATRIOT act before it was passed.
(*) as reported at http://www.birdsall-law.com/usapatriot.htm
If you're paranoid about cops recording their actions, you're at least 10 years too late. :) The basic concept of cameras in patrol cars is not new at all. This method brings some important gains in efficiency and coverage, both of which are helpful to the public and to law enforcement. (If the system preserves the chain of evidence properly, anyway.)
What I'd really like to see, though, is a discreet portable camera + DVR for civillian use. (Better would be a camera with a wireless link to a DVR, so that the recorder could be carried by someone else.) Think of all the times you've heard about clashes at protests, with both the cops and the protesters saying the other guys started it. This sort of event is beyond the coverage of patrol car cameras, generally... a human-portable camera is about the only way to record the truth. Sadly, civillian cameras at protests regularly are seized by police, or have their film destroyed.
A portable system could be deployed by both police and protesters, making the truth much more possible to sort out later.
"Which is why I will never trust the Strategic Defence Initiative - the star wars project. It only takes one line of mistyped code in what will always be a beta release."
Well, let's hope it stays in beta. Real world testing would be a major bummer!