Government agencies spend millions of dollars on software. The purchasing policies of those agencies are ultimately set by the legislatures.
I can't speak to these particular bills, but most "pro-open source" bills boil down to requiring that government agencies consider open source solutions when doing purchasing.
Both Windows XP and OS X have built-in fax software. If these soldiers have access to a computer, surely they have access to an analog phone line, if fax machines proper are scarce. Wouldn't a fax from the computer be more secure than e-mail?
I'm not saying that a pen-and-paper election wouldn't work here in the US, but people should be aware that Canadian elections are different from the US, and thus ballots there are usually much simpler than US ballots.
Canadian government at both the federal and provincial levels is a parliamentary system. That means that elections happen at somewhat arbitrary times (the government can call elections whenever it wants, within certain parameters), and that provincial and federal elections don't necessarily coincide. When a Canadian votes, s/he votes for his/her local MP, and the MPs then vote for Prime Minister. Thus, on election day, a Canadian often has only a single thing to vote on: the local MP (or, if it's a provincial election, the local MLA). This makes for a simple ballot.
in the US, almost all general elections for the year fall on the same day each year. Thus, in 2004 every American will face a ballot that has, at minimum, choices for both president and member of the House of Representatives. Around 2/3 of the states will also have a Senatorial race on the ballot. Almost everyone will also have to vote for state legislators, and a number of state governors will also be up, along with various mayors, city counicpersons, county executives and so on.
This means that US ballots are MUCH more complicated, and thus harder to tally in the pen-and-paper way. It also means that, unlike in Canada, a uniform, nationwide ballot is impossible.
And then the Star Trek quote in your sig to prove your point... priceless!
jf
Re:In defense of suburbia
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I hate to break it to you, but most of suburbia looks nothing like your charming bungalow, just like most cities don't look like the somewhat dull building you present as New Urbanism's pinnacle.
I live in a charming, walkable, 80-year-old city neighborhood, in a 3-bedroom brick rowhouse that is anything but characterless. Our neighborhood organization sponsors a "painted lady" contest that encourages residents to paint and decorate their home. Contrast that with my relatives who live in newly-minted suburbia: windy streets dotted with houses build according to one of three or four floorplans, all with off-white exteriors and strict homeowners association rules that prevent you from doing anything to the exterior that stands out in any way. Their houses and yards are larger, but tend to be bland and feel cheap (try knocking on the walls). And of course (the original point of this discussion) you have to drive if you want to go anywhere out of the subdivision -- and the subdivision is entirely residential.
I have nothing against the sort of cute suburban neighborhoods you describe -- but be aware that when most people buy a suburban home, that's not what they're buying. And my experience with strict suburban homeowner's associations, along with the mindset of people who live there, is that the suburbs are less, not more, encouraging of individuality.
Believe it or not, the IRS has been pushing to do this for some time. However, the congressman whose district includes Intuit (I think it's in San Diego) has repeatedly stalled the proposal. Apparently there is a law saying that the government can't compete with a private business, and he claims that the IRS making a free electronic tax-filing service available would unfairly compete with Intuit.
1. Ever heard of Joseph Padilla? US citizen, born here, Muslim convert, supposedly planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the US. Of course, if he wasn't, he's got no way to prove it, because he's being held in a Navy brig with no free access to a lawyer and no right of habeus corpus to get a charge put in against him.
2. The fifth and sixth amendments to the constitution, which govern the rights of individuals accused of crimes, make no mention of citizens, merely of "accused" and "persons."
This argument looks reasonable to me. My question, then, is why hasn't someone who contributed has GPL'd code to Linux suing SCO for trying to sell rights to their code?
Since BS is essentially bankrolling a luxurious experiment by a few well paid lawyers - it seems that for its part - it would rather have the money back than continue to invest in the salaried of attorneys - which can only mean that it doesn't think the risk/reward ratio is positive any longer.
Read the article. BayStar wants SCO to spend *more* of its resources on it's intellectual property efforts (read: lawsuits) and less on its Unix business.
That's is DEAD wrong. My wife works the night shift at walmart. She, and her coworkers, are not "locked-in". She's actually told me of some who will go out for their mid-night "lunch break".
Perhaps your wife works in a suburban/rural Walmart? My understanding is that the lock-ins take place in inner city Walmarts (yes, they do exist) for the ostensible "safety" of the employees (actually to prevent theft). Check this article here (from the NY Times but put on another page so you don't have to register).
The U.S. is not being "forced" or "imposed on" in any way here. Our democraticly elected government signed a treaty that said that we'd abide by the rules of the WTO (in fact, I think we were one of the founders). We did this because by and large we decided that we'd benefit economicly from WTO membership, and as near as I can tell, by and large we have.
If we decide to refuse to abide by a WTO ruling, black helicopters full of WTO troops do not descend on major U.S. cities and impose curfews. Soldiers do not hold our grandmothers at riflepoint and foce them to gamble online.
By refusing to follow the WTO's rulings, all that happens is that we get kicked out of the WTO. Presumably this will have any number of negative effects on our economy -- but I'm no expert. If you don't want to be bound by the rulings of the WTO, then go vote for someone who will pull us out of it. But don't go on about how other countries are "forcing" us to do things that we don't want to do. Sheesh.
I had heard that laptop batteries tend to lose their effectiveness over the course of 3 years or so even when not in use. In other words, a battery might lose its effectiveness sitting in my closet just as quickly as it does sitting in my laptop. Anyone know if this is true?
If you are doing the installation yourself, do what I do on my computer: just put a shortcut on the desktop labeled "Internet". People just click on it without a second thought.
Under Mac OS, if you set IE or Camino or whatever as your default browser, then all invocations of a browser URL will launch that browser and not Apple's proprietary Safari.
Nobody is saying that MS can't use IE as it chooses. The issue here was that there was a feature built into the OS that forced the user to use the IE browser even if s/he had explictly told the OS that another browser was the default. That is using the OS monopoly to create a browser monopoly, and that is exactly what Microsoft was found guilty of and told to stop doing.
i had a dot-com job where i was the manager of a large community discussion area, for which we had a number of paid freelance moderators. one day, at a point when everyone pretty much knew that our days were numbered, i got a call from my boss's boss (who worked on the other coast). he wanted to know if, just for his reference, i could send him all the information pertaining to the moderators i managed, including contact info and invoicing for the past few months for them? just in case, you know, anyone needed it.
i got laid off the next week, but, on the bright side, so did he.
I am a freelance editor and it briefly looked like one of my clients wanted me to incorporate rather than work as an independent contractor. Fortunately, they ended up deciding not to make me switch -- fortunately, because as far as I could tell incorporating would be nothing but hassle. My bookkeeping would get a *lot* more conplicated, and my taxes would go up (since I would no longer get to deduct half of my self-employment tax from my taxable income). So, I would really like to know what the advantges of incorporation are for people like me (and presumably the orginal poster). For a home-based, computer-based business, you're not going to be going into debt to fund anything, so what exactly are you being protected from?
I worked for 8 months from Germany, but my legal address was a Mailboxes Etc. box in Berkeley, CA. This is a better option than a US PO Box because your address will look "real" -- mine was "1536 Solano Ave. #248" -- 1536 Solano Ave. being the location of the Mailboxes Etc. and 248 being the box number. I set the box up near a friend of mine who agreed to collect my checks, deposit them by mail, and forward the interesting stuff to me, but Mailboxes Etc. will be happy to forward everything to your overseas address once a week or whatever for a fee.
In short, I had a legal address in CA and no one asked any questions. Since I am a freelancer and work from home anyway, the administrative end of the comanies I worked with didn't know the difference -- to them, it just looked like I had moved somewhere else in CA -- and the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board didn't care either.
From other posts you've made responding to similar suggestions, it sounds like your comany lawyers are a little uncomfortable with the idea, and they will obviously have the final say. But really, I think if you find a friend with a CA address who is willing to say that you live with him or her, and who will do little things like put your name on their mailbox, I don't think anyone can touch you. Pay a nominal fee to your friend for rent. Make sure you come back to CA several times a year, and be sure to stay at "your" home when you do. Register to vote at your new address, and do so, by absentee ballot if necessary. Get everything in Japan in your wife's name. It seems to me that if you do all this it would take a determined effort to prove you're doing something illegal.
I was listening to a radio report on the longstanding tradition in Texas of a prayer being read over the loudspeaker before a public high school football game. I was really trying hard to maintain some objectivity. There was a girl being interviewed who often read the prayer before the game, who was speaking very passionately about this being her religion, and that ACLU-spearheaded attempts to stop the prayer were interfering with her free exercize of it. Then the interviewer asked her: What if there was a Mormon or Buddhist student in her high school who wanted to read a prayer before a game?
"Oh, I wouldn't like that," she said. "I mean, we pray to God. I wouldn't want a prayer to a false god."
That's when I signed up for the ACLU. The thing that most pissed me off was the unthinkingness of it. I grew up in Buffalo, NY, which is overwhelmingly Catholic. If there were prayers in the public schools there, they would probably be Our Fathers and Hail Marys and calls for intercessions with saints -- all things that a good Southern Baptist like the girl being interviewed would find to be horrifying popery. The reason that governments (including school districts and their appointed representatives) shouldn't lead prayers is that by selecting certain prayers, they are declaring some gods to be false, just like our interviewee. And that is completely against the "no established religion" clause.
jf
Re:My thoughts on them
on
Joining the ACLU?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
On the First Amendment, they will argue the "separation" part of freedom of religion till they are blue in the face, but completely ignore the "free exercise" part. I think the framers of the Constitution did a brilliant job of balancing these two concepts and to wildly expand on one by gutting the other detracts from what makes this amendment so great.
I would love to hear an instance of the ACLU cracking down on "free exercize" of religion. Really, I would. I don't claim to have followed every ACLU religion case, but every time someone claims that the ACLU is restricting the exercize of reigion, that "exercize" turns out to be by someone in a government-backed position of authority (and yes, public school teachers fall under this category) who try to "exercize" their religion in the course of their duties.
Slashdot Mirror
Government agencies spend millions of dollars on software. The purchasing policies of those agencies are ultimately set by the legislatures.
I can't speak to these particular bills, but most "pro-open source" bills boil down to requiring that government agencies consider open source solutions when doing purchasing.
jf
The only thing the electoral college system does is give a disproportionate number of votes to white southerners.
No, you're completely wrong. It also gives a disproportionate number of votes to white midwesterners.
jf
Both Windows XP and OS X have built-in fax software. If these soldiers have access to a computer, surely they have access to an analog phone line, if fax machines proper are scarce. Wouldn't a fax from the computer be more secure than e-mail?
jf
I'm not saying that a pen-and-paper election wouldn't work here in the US, but people should be aware that Canadian elections are different from the US, and thus ballots there are usually much simpler than US ballots.
Canadian government at both the federal and provincial levels is a parliamentary system. That means that elections happen at somewhat arbitrary times (the government can call elections whenever it wants, within certain parameters), and that provincial and federal elections don't necessarily coincide. When a Canadian votes, s/he votes for his/her local MP, and the MPs then vote for Prime Minister. Thus, on election day, a Canadian often has only a single thing to vote on: the local MP (or, if it's a provincial election, the local MLA). This makes for a simple ballot.
in the US, almost all general elections for the year fall on the same day each year. Thus, in 2004 every American will face a ballot that has, at minimum, choices for both president and member of the House of Representatives. Around 2/3 of the states will also have a Senatorial race on the ballot. Almost everyone will also have to vote for state legislators, and a number of state governors will also be up, along with various mayors, city counicpersons, county executives and so on.
This means that US ballots are MUCH more complicated, and thus harder to tally in the pen-and-paper way. It also means that, unlike in Canada, a uniform, nationwide ballot is impossible.
And then the Star Trek quote in your sig to prove your point ... priceless!
jf
I hate to break it to you, but most of suburbia looks nothing like your charming bungalow, just like most cities don't look like the somewhat dull building you present as New Urbanism's pinnacle.
I live in a charming, walkable, 80-year-old city neighborhood, in a 3-bedroom brick rowhouse that is anything but characterless. Our neighborhood organization sponsors a "painted lady" contest that encourages residents to paint and decorate their home. Contrast that with my relatives who live in newly-minted suburbia: windy streets dotted with houses build according to one of three or four floorplans, all with off-white exteriors and strict homeowners association rules that prevent you from doing anything to the exterior that stands out in any way. Their houses and yards are larger, but tend to be bland and feel cheap (try knocking on the walls). And of course (the original point of this discussion) you have to drive if you want to go anywhere out of the subdivision -- and the subdivision is entirely residential.
I have nothing against the sort of cute suburban neighborhoods you describe -- but be aware that when most people buy a suburban home, that's not what they're buying. And my experience with strict suburban homeowner's associations, along with the mindset of people who live there, is that the suburbs are less, not more, encouraging of individuality.
jf
Believe it or not, the IRS has been pushing to do this for some time. However, the congressman whose district includes Intuit (I think it's in San Diego) has repeatedly stalled the proposal. Apparently there is a law saying that the government can't compete with a private business, and he claims that the IRS making a free electronic tax-filing service available would unfairly compete with Intuit.
jf
1. Ever heard of Joseph Padilla? US citizen, born here, Muslim convert, supposedly planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the US. Of course, if he wasn't, he's got no way to prove it, because he's being held in a Navy brig with no free access to a lawyer and no right of habeus corpus to get a charge put in against him.
2. The fifth and sixth amendments to the constitution, which govern the rights of individuals accused of crimes, make no mention of citizens, merely of "accused" and "persons."
jf
This argument looks reasonable to me. My question, then, is why hasn't someone who contributed has GPL'd code to Linux suing SCO for trying to sell rights to their code?
jf
"its command", not "it's command".
Yeah, I know, it's pedantic, but there's no sweeter act of pedantry than correcting a grammar pedant.
jf
Since BS is essentially bankrolling a luxurious experiment by a few well paid lawyers - it seems that for its part - it would rather have the money back than continue to invest in the salaried of attorneys - which can only mean that it doesn't think the risk/reward ratio is positive any longer.
Read the article. BayStar wants SCO to spend *more* of its resources on it's intellectual property efforts (read: lawsuits) and less on its Unix business.
jf
That's is DEAD wrong. My wife works the night shift at walmart. She, and her coworkers, are not "locked-in". She's actually told me of some who will go out for their mid-night "lunch break".
Perhaps your wife works in a suburban/rural Walmart? My understanding is that the lock-ins take place in inner city Walmarts (yes, they do exist) for the ostensible "safety" of the employees (actually to prevent theft). Check this article here (from the NY Times but put on another page so you don't
have to register).
jf
...of this legal action might be that some of the secrets of how Google works will be revealed?
jf
The U.S. is not being "forced" or "imposed on" in any way here. Our democraticly elected government signed a treaty that said that we'd abide by the rules of the WTO (in fact, I think we were one of the founders). We did this because by and large we decided that we'd benefit economicly from WTO membership, and as near as I can tell, by and large we have.
If we decide to refuse to abide by a WTO ruling, black helicopters full of WTO troops do not descend on major U.S. cities and impose curfews. Soldiers do not hold our grandmothers at riflepoint and foce them to gamble online.
By refusing to follow the WTO's rulings, all that happens is that we get kicked out of the WTO. Presumably this will have any number of negative effects on our economy -- but I'm no expert. If you don't want to be bound by the rulings of the WTO, then go vote for someone who will pull us out of it. But don't go on about how other countries are "forcing" us to do things that we don't want to do. Sheesh.
jf
--- Join the Society Against Raping the Word "Definitely".
How about a society against raping the word "rape"?
I had heard that laptop batteries tend to lose their effectiveness over the course of 3 years or so even when not in use. In other words, a battery might lose its effectiveness sitting in my closet just as quickly as it does sitting in my laptop. Anyone know if this is true?
jf
If you are doing the installation yourself, do what I do on my computer: just put a shortcut on the desktop labeled "Internet". People just click on it without a second thought.
jf
Under Mac OS, if you set IE or Camino or whatever as your default browser, then all invocations of a browser URL will launch that browser and not Apple's proprietary Safari.
Nobody is saying that MS can't use IE as it chooses. The issue here was that there was a feature built into the OS that forced the user to use the IE browser even if s/he had explictly told the OS that another browser was the default. That is using the OS monopoly to create a browser monopoly, and that is exactly what Microsoft was found guilty of and told to stop doing.
jf
Dude, no offense, but if I spent that much time on the Beltway, 95, and/or MD 295, I'd shoot myself. Seriously.
jf
i had a dot-com job where i was the manager of a large community discussion area, for which we had a number of paid freelance moderators. one day, at a point when everyone pretty much knew that our days were numbered, i got a call from my boss's boss (who worked on the other coast). he wanted to know if, just for his reference, i could send him all the information pertaining to the moderators i managed, including contact info and invoicing for the past few months for them? just in case, you know, anyone needed it.
i got laid off the next week, but, on the bright side, so did he.
jf
wow, i didn't know the dual 450s were having problems. i upgraded mine as everything is working great.
jf
I am a freelance editor and it briefly looked like one of my clients wanted me to incorporate rather than work as an independent contractor. Fortunately, they ended up deciding not to make me switch -- fortunately, because as far as I could tell incorporating would be nothing but hassle. My bookkeeping would get a *lot* more conplicated, and my taxes would go up (since I would no longer get to deduct half of my self-employment tax from my taxable income). So, I would really like to know what the advantges of incorporation are for people like me (and presumably the orginal poster). For a home-based, computer-based business, you're not going to be going into debt to fund anything, so what exactly are you being protected from?
jf
I worked for 8 months from Germany, but my legal address was a Mailboxes Etc. box in Berkeley, CA. This is a better option than a US PO Box because your address will look "real" -- mine was "1536 Solano Ave. #248" -- 1536 Solano Ave. being the location of the Mailboxes Etc. and 248 being the box number. I set the box up near a friend of mine who agreed to collect my checks, deposit them by mail, and forward the interesting stuff to me, but Mailboxes Etc. will be happy to forward everything to your overseas address once a week or whatever for a fee.
In short, I had a legal address in CA and no one asked any questions. Since I am a freelancer and work from home anyway, the administrative end of the comanies I worked with didn't know the difference -- to them, it just looked like I had moved somewhere else in CA -- and the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board didn't care either.
From other posts you've made responding to similar suggestions, it sounds like your comany lawyers are a little uncomfortable with the idea, and they will obviously have the final say. But really, I think if you find a friend with a CA address who is willing to say that you live with him or her, and who will do little things like put your name on their mailbox, I don't think anyone can touch you. Pay a nominal fee to your friend for rent. Make sure you come back to CA several times a year, and be sure to stay at "your" home when you do. Register to vote at your new address, and do so, by absentee ballot if necessary. Get everything in Japan in your wife's name. It seems to me that if you do all this it would take a determined effort to prove you're doing something illegal.
jf
I was listening to a radio report on the longstanding tradition in Texas of a prayer being read over the loudspeaker before a public high school football game. I was really trying hard to maintain some objectivity. There was a girl being interviewed who often read the prayer before the game, who was speaking very passionately about this being her religion, and that ACLU-spearheaded attempts to stop the prayer were interfering with her free exercize of it. Then the interviewer asked her: What if there was a Mormon or Buddhist student in her high school who wanted to read a prayer before a game?
"Oh, I wouldn't like that," she said. "I mean, we pray to God. I wouldn't want a prayer to a false god."
That's when I signed up for the ACLU. The thing that most pissed me off was the unthinkingness of it. I grew up in Buffalo, NY, which is overwhelmingly Catholic. If there were prayers in the public schools there, they would probably be Our Fathers and Hail Marys and calls for intercessions with saints -- all things that a good Southern Baptist like the girl being interviewed would find to be horrifying popery. The reason that governments (including school districts and their appointed representatives) shouldn't lead prayers is that by selecting certain prayers, they are declaring some gods to be false, just like our interviewee. And that is completely against the "no established religion" clause.
jf
On the First Amendment, they will argue the "separation" part of freedom of religion till they are blue in the face, but completely ignore the "free exercise" part. I think the framers of the Constitution did a brilliant job of balancing these two concepts and to wildly expand on one by gutting the other detracts from what makes this amendment so great.
I would love to hear an instance of the ACLU cracking down on "free exercize" of religion. Really, I would. I don't claim to have followed every ACLU religion case, but every time someone claims that the ACLU is restricting the exercize of reigion, that "exercize" turns out to be by someone in a government-backed position of authority (and yes, public school teachers fall under this category) who try to "exercize" their religion in the course of their duties.
jf