Not a bad analysis, but you got the Administration wrong. This was begun way before Bush (granted, he didn't stop it, but one assumes he had other things to do, War in Iraq and all.)
Because the existence of such a warrant may be sealed. It's easier to just not report any such requests based on warrants, than to provide tracking records to show that a warrant was used.
Of course, it might also show that the police or investigators lied like bandits about where and how they got their information, especially if it's used to violate client-attorney privilege. It's hard to know what evidence to have thrown out, or that might be used for political harassment, if you are never allowed to know that such a search was done. And while I may deserve a tinfoil hat for such suspicion, it's a justified hat with the history of warrant-free searches for 'terrorists' under this government.
No tinfoil hat deserved or needed. Power coupled with the disease of unaccountability offers predictable results. The human race has been grappling with that reality for thousands of years: apparently we still don't have a solution.
The LEADS system also can be used to check for warrants and criminal histories, but such checks would not be reflected on the records obtained by The Dispatch
Why anyone would trust any online system with anything that could cost them a job, impact their credit, prevent them from receiving health insurance, prevent them from being considered from a job, put-your-privacy-concern-here, etc.... is beyond me.
And what's beyond me is why warrant and criminal history checks would not be included.
'Sharing an idea the right way is just as important as doing the work itself,' he says. 'If you create something but nobody knows, it's as if it never happened.'"
I'm still not sure what point you're trying to make, actually, other than that citizens and non-citizens have the same rights, and that there's no real difference between them.
Like I said, other rights don't necessarily apply, and you really cannot dispute that. Whether they apply, or not, is at the discretion of Congress and the courts.
My point is that the Constitution doesn't guarantee all rights accorded to citizens to all those who are not citizens. If that were true, there'd really be no difference. Granted, there are many who would like to eradicate that distinction. I believe that would be a mistake.
We've had the migrant workers before suddenly they couldn't cross the border (or the border moved across them). Check your history.
Check yours. The "migrant workers" of which you speak generally had a very limited role in our economy, and for the most part were here legally. One can argue if they took jobs away from Americans, but if so it was a strictly limited issue. There are many who were concerned about the poor treatment they often received. It wasn't a big deal in comparison.
The same cannot be said for the current wave of illegals, who are spreading throughout our society, and are causing significant economic disruption wherever they go. Suppose someone began to sell millions of self-replicating humanform robots, who would work for nothing but the power required to run them, and do any kind of labor required. Would you not expect that that would cause some problems, lowering of wages, loss of jobs among domestic workers, and so forth? Would it not also be reasonable to expect those people who had had their lives so disrupted to object?
Well, that's what's happening now. Only it's not advanced technology that's causing this (as it has so many times in the past) but people, who have their own sovereign nation, but have chosen to relocate here without our consent. I'm sorry that they mismanaged their own nation into the ground, turned it into a corrupt hellhole that can't properly support its own citizens... but they did.
We're not obliged to give them ours.
That's the facts. Deal with it.
If you actually cared about scientific studies, you would not be using drugs, as every single study concerning the psychological effects of drugs would tell you to simply stop it.
As someone whose only use of "drugs" is an occasional beer, I must say you're generalizing a lot. What do you mean by "drugs"? Pot? Cocaine? Heroin? Crystal Meth? Ecstasy? Hypnotics? Valium? Any of hundreds of prescription medications? Alcohol? I mean, it's pretty damned unscientific to just lump every potentially psychoactive substance into one overarching category of "drugs", and assume that the long-term effects of each compound are the same.
Personally, I don't use recreational drugs (and yes, such things exist just as there are recreational alcoholic beverages) other than the aforementioned bottle of beer, because I don't like the feeling of not being in control of myself. That's just me, and it doesn't mean I feel compelled to force my pattern of living on anyone else, or feel that I (or the government) has the right to tell another American that he can't do something, just because I don't think he should. I might add, that really is the source of the War on Drugs: some people just don't think we should smoke pot, and have gained a lot of money and power in the attempt. For my part, I think those people should just get laid and have a couple of joints. Maybe they'd loosen up a little.
Now, you talk about "scientific studies" yet cite none. You don't have to, of course, after all this is Slashdot so supporting documentation is not a requirement. Still, if that's the case you shouldn't mention them.
Furthermore, the contention that recreational drug use automatically leads to consumption of harder or more dangerous drugs is specious. If that were the case, why don't more alcoholics end up as heroin addicts? It seems to me that the real danger is people, people who work very hard to convince their customers to make the jump from smoking a few joints to shooting up. Take them out of the equation, and my intuition (backed up by numerous equally-non-existent studies) says that you'd find a lot fewer people progressing beyond pot.
As for immigrants, they seem to be the hardest workers around.
Prove that. I don't accept "they seem to...", and neither should you, even if it appears to support your position. Facts, ma'am, just the facts. People who are being paid a subsistence wage and have no choice but to work as hard as they can cannot be considered to be intrinsically superior to an employee who is fairly treated and isn't in a position of constant jeopardy.
More importantly, they're the lowest paid workers around. Don't forget to add that little item to the mix, since it's by far the most important attribute of the Mexican immigrant worker. If they were paid a wage equal to what an American worker were paid (given that we have to pay taxes of various sorts and they don't), given benefits, 401K plans and all the rest, they would not be so attractive to domestic employers. Period.
There's a reason that so many big corporations are against legitimizing the illegal Mexican immigrant. If that were to happen, if these people were granted visas or some form of limited citizenship, they would be in the system, and could no longer be ignored by it. They would be taxed, have Social Security numbers, would have to be PAID MORE, would be contributing to infrastructure and civil services, and would no longer have such an advantage over the domestic worker. Is that wise? Would that be of long-term benefit to the U.S. and it's people? I don't know. But I do know that what's going on right now isn't working for us, and is just another form of foreign aid.
No, the real benefit of the illegal immigrant is the fact that he or she is here illegally. That gives employers a degree of control over said workers that would never be tolerated by citizens (or by the State, which places limits upon what how badly companies can treat their employees... the ones the State knows about, anyway.) Make the State officially aware of no-longer-quite-so-illegal Mexican workers, and their employers would lose a significant competitive advantage.
While I'm personally dead set against illegal immigration (first and foremost because it is illegal and secondly because it's causing long term economic and social damage to my country) I will say this. If you don't want to follow the law, the same kind of law that Mexico applies to any American violating Mexico's sovereign territory, then fine. Give them visas to work here, FORCE employers to pay them a competitive wage, TAX them appropriately... and then see how long illegal immigration lasts. They are taking advantage of their illegal status in much the same way as those who employ them. That's the real problem that needs to be addressed.
Face it, our illegal friends "valued presence" here (our President's own words) is only practical because the immigrant can undercut the American worker, and because our own corporations are more concerned about cutting costs than anything else. If that were no longer possible, if the illegal were required to compete on something like equal footing, I think you'd see some big changes.
I'm not willing to sell my fellow Americans short, or sell them out.
If they were sometimes required to directly push the levers to turn right, cut the ignition wire to stop the car, or remove and disassemble the motor (and then rebuild it) to recharge fuel, they would all use taxis.
Actually, some of us old timers grew up with British motorbikes. Every weekend you had to strip the engine and rebuild it. Now I can replace a turbo faster than the average taxi will arrive. I can rebuild an automatic gearbox faster than I can get a taxi over the Christmas holiday.
Yes, I learned about the command line on ttys in the 1970's too. And my mother was a Fortran programmer (IBM709 and 7090).
But I know people of all ages who save files in a random directory with a pointless name and then cant find them.
Sure, I've done it myself. But given that my own personal network has hundreds of thousands of files in it, I have to impose some organization, some semblance of order upon what would otherwise become a morass of unlocatable information. Furthermore, I have to have the self-discipline to maintain that order. That's not so unusual: people do it all the time in non-computer-related efforts (we all keep paper records, most people have some kind of filing system.) People that are incapable of doing that generally have other organizational issues, having nothing to do with their computers.
In regards to saving files, I agree, we all do stupid things now and then. We sometimes run red lights too, if you want to continue the automobile analogy. The difference is... we don't blame the machine for our own screwups. That would be like blaming your file cabinet when you put a piece of paper in the wrong folder. I know people of all ages who do that, ridiculous as it sounds.
When comes to computing technology, the bar is pretty low nowadays. Every generation has new technological issues to deal with, new things to learn in order to function in society. Being able to handle a hierarchical directory structure is currently one of those things.
At the rate we're dumbing things down, at some point even plants will be able to use a computer.
Yeah. Frankly though, all I'm thinking about at the moment (this being Saturday night and all) as that free Linux beer you guys are always talking about. How does it stack up against the other imports?
You've all misinterpreted what "uncooperative" means. It means that the target is not actively participating in being found. It doesn't mean that the target is being belligerent.
You misinterpreted that I wasn't trying to be serious.
A lot of that goes to motivation: people learn some pretty damn complex activities when it comes to earning a driver's license, for example
That's because cars only have one level of user interface. If they were sometimes required to directly push the levers to turn right, cut the ignition wire to stop the car, or remove and disassemble the motor (and then rebuild it) to recharge fuel, they would all use taxis.
They claim that they are not interested in understanding, but it seems like they are strongly interested in not understanding. Is there something to be gained by accommodating this?
Not really. It will just make systems appear childlike in nature to those who are willing to learn, and generally unpleasant to use. Of course, I started out in 1975 on a mainframe and spent a lot of years after that at the command line, so perhaps I'm not the best person to ask. But, like most other things in life, there's a balance that has to be struck, and no matter what you do people will still be required to learn something about their machines.
A lot of that goes to motivation: people learn some pretty damn complex activities when it comes to earning a driver's license, for example. Yet, when it comes to a computer many of those same people can't be bothered to put forth one iota of effort.
If someone sends a file to me over Empathy, and I want to open it in Amarok, then I shouldn't have to work with two completely different mental models of content storage.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a bad analysis, but you got the Administration wrong. This was begun way before Bush (granted, he didn't stop it, but one assumes he had other things to do, War in Iraq and all.)
Now if we could just clean out the assholes who caused this current economic meltdown that started at Freddie and Fannie
Don't forget Phil Gramm. He's in this up to his eyeballs.
Maybe ... but I look at the five grand a year I pay in real estate taxes, and 56% goes to education, the rest for city services.
Because the existence of such a warrant may be sealed. It's easier to just not report any such requests based on warrants, than to provide tracking records to show that a warrant was used.
Of course, it might also show that the police or investigators lied like bandits about where and how they got their information, especially if it's used to violate client-attorney privilege. It's hard to know what evidence to have thrown out, or that might be used for political harassment, if you are never allowed to know that such a search was done. And while I may deserve a tinfoil hat for such suspicion, it's a justified hat with the history of warrant-free searches for 'terrorists' under this government.
No tinfoil hat deserved or needed. Power coupled with the disease of unaccountability offers predictable results. The human race has been grappling with that reality for thousands of years: apparently we still don't have a solution.
"IT Test account". Shared by a bunch of different offices. Looks like whoever did the search was smart enough to muddy the waters a bit.
Indeed. And the fact that such a "test account" even exists should result in some seroius headrolling.
That particular bunch of assholes is pretty cavalier with our personal info, that's for sure. Not that they're alone in that.
Roads, schools, hospitals etc. etc.
Bad examples. Those are typically funded from real-estate taxes levied by individual counties. That has nothing to do with Federal taxation.
The LEADS system also can be used to check for warrants and criminal histories, but such checks would not be reflected on the records obtained by The Dispatch
Why anyone would trust any online system with anything that could cost them a job, impact their credit, prevent them from receiving health insurance, prevent them from being considered from a job, put-your-privacy-concern-here, etc.... is beyond me.
And what's beyond me is why warrant and criminal history checks would not be included.
'Sharing an idea the right way is just as important as doing the work itself,' he says. 'If you create something but nobody knows, it's as if it never happened.'"
Just ask Leonardo da Vinci.
I'm still not sure what point you're trying to make, actually, other than that citizens and non-citizens have the same rights, and that there's no real difference between them.
Like I said, other rights don't necessarily apply, and you really cannot dispute that. Whether they apply, or not, is at the discretion of Congress and the courts.
My point is that the Constitution doesn't guarantee all rights accorded to citizens to all those who are not citizens. If that were true, there'd really be no difference. Granted, there are many who would like to eradicate that distinction. I believe that would be a mistake.
It's not like I'm in the States and too stupid to realize things might be done differently elsewhere.
He didn't call anybody stupid, you stupid faggot.
Yes he did, all of America in fact, and you just furthered my point about the lack of civility. Thanks for your support. It was much appreciated.
Distributed.net Finds Optimal 25-Mark Golomb Ruler
that this summary managed to garner 208 comments.
We've had the migrant workers before suddenly they couldn't cross the border (or the border moved across them). Check your history.
Check yours. The "migrant workers" of which you speak generally had a very limited role in our economy, and for the most part were here legally. One can argue if they took jobs away from Americans, but if so it was a strictly limited issue. There are many who were concerned about the poor treatment they often received. It wasn't a big deal in comparison.
The same cannot be said for the current wave of illegals, who are spreading throughout our society, and are causing significant economic disruption wherever they go. Suppose someone began to sell millions of self-replicating humanform robots, who would work for nothing but the power required to run them, and do any kind of labor required. Would you not expect that that would cause some problems, lowering of wages, loss of jobs among domestic workers, and so forth? Would it not also be reasonable to expect those people who had had their lives so disrupted to object?
Well, that's what's happening now. Only it's not advanced technology that's causing this (as it has so many times in the past) but people, who have their own sovereign nation, but have chosen to relocate here without our consent. I'm sorry that they mismanaged their own nation into the ground, turned it into a corrupt hellhole that can't properly support its own citizens... but they did.
We're not obliged to give them ours. That's the facts. Deal with it.
There is a large difference....
Not to some people. Our duly-elected President for one. And that's unfortunate.
If you actually cared about scientific studies, you would not be using drugs, as every single study concerning the psychological effects of drugs would tell you to simply stop it.
As someone whose only use of "drugs" is an occasional beer, I must say you're generalizing a lot. What do you mean by "drugs"? Pot? Cocaine? Heroin? Crystal Meth? Ecstasy? Hypnotics? Valium? Any of hundreds of prescription medications? Alcohol? I mean, it's pretty damned unscientific to just lump every potentially psychoactive substance into one overarching category of "drugs", and assume that the long-term effects of each compound are the same.
Personally, I don't use recreational drugs (and yes, such things exist just as there are recreational alcoholic beverages) other than the aforementioned bottle of beer, because I don't like the feeling of not being in control of myself. That's just me, and it doesn't mean I feel compelled to force my pattern of living on anyone else, or feel that I (or the government) has the right to tell another American that he can't do something, just because I don't think he should. I might add, that really is the source of the War on Drugs: some people just don't think we should smoke pot, and have gained a lot of money and power in the attempt. For my part, I think those people should just get laid and have a couple of joints. Maybe they'd loosen up a little.
Now, you talk about "scientific studies" yet cite none. You don't have to, of course, after all this is Slashdot so supporting documentation is not a requirement. Still, if that's the case you shouldn't mention them.
Furthermore, the contention that recreational drug use automatically leads to consumption of harder or more dangerous drugs is specious. If that were the case, why don't more alcoholics end up as heroin addicts? It seems to me that the real danger is people, people who work very hard to convince their customers to make the jump from smoking a few joints to shooting up. Take them out of the equation, and my intuition (backed up by numerous equally-non-existent studies) says that you'd find a lot fewer people progressing beyond pot.
The cost of food and services will go up when the illegal worker force is dealt with one way or another.
And you know what? We were well-enough fed before illegal immigration reared its ugly head, and we'll survive whatever happens if it goes away.
As for immigrants, they seem to be the hardest workers around.
Prove that. I don't accept "they seem to ...", and neither should you, even if it appears to support your position. Facts, ma'am, just the facts. People who are being paid a subsistence wage and have no choice but to work as hard as they can cannot be considered to be intrinsically superior to an employee who is fairly treated and isn't in a position of constant jeopardy.
... the ones the State knows about, anyway.) Make the State officially aware of no-longer-quite-so-illegal Mexican workers, and their employers would lose a significant competitive advantage.
... and then see how long illegal immigration lasts. They are taking advantage of their illegal status in much the same way as those who employ them. That's the real problem that needs to be addressed.
More importantly, they're the lowest paid workers around. Don't forget to add that little item to the mix, since it's by far the most important attribute of the Mexican immigrant worker. If they were paid a wage equal to what an American worker were paid (given that we have to pay taxes of various sorts and they don't), given benefits, 401K plans and all the rest, they would not be so attractive to domestic employers. Period.
There's a reason that so many big corporations are against legitimizing the illegal Mexican immigrant. If that were to happen, if these people were granted visas or some form of limited citizenship, they would be in the system, and could no longer be ignored by it. They would be taxed, have Social Security numbers, would have to be PAID MORE, would be contributing to infrastructure and civil services, and would no longer have such an advantage over the domestic worker. Is that wise? Would that be of long-term benefit to the U.S. and it's people? I don't know. But I do know that what's going on right now isn't working for us, and is just another form of foreign aid.
No, the real benefit of the illegal immigrant is the fact that he or she is here illegally. That gives employers a degree of control over said workers that would never be tolerated by citizens (or by the State, which places limits upon what how badly companies can treat their employees
While I'm personally dead set against illegal immigration (first and foremost because it is illegal and secondly because it's causing long term economic and social damage to my country) I will say this. If you don't want to follow the law, the same kind of law that Mexico applies to any American violating Mexico's sovereign territory, then fine. Give them visas to work here, FORCE employers to pay them a competitive wage, TAX them appropriately
Face it, our illegal friends "valued presence" here (our President's own words) is only practical because the immigrant can undercut the American worker, and because our own corporations are more concerned about cutting costs than anything else. If that were no longer possible, if the illegal were required to compete on something like equal footing, I think you'd see some big changes.
I'm not willing to sell my fellow Americans short, or sell them out.
The right to vote, for one.
Read this. It's the first thing I Googled. It's a PDF, but informative.
If they were sometimes required to directly push the levers to turn right, cut the ignition wire to stop the car, or remove and disassemble the motor (and then rebuild it) to recharge fuel, they would all use taxis.
Actually, some of us old timers grew up with British motorbikes. Every weekend you had to strip the engine and rebuild it. Now I can replace a turbo faster than the average taxi will arrive. I can rebuild an automatic gearbox faster than I can get a taxi over the Christmas holiday.
Yes, I learned about the command line on ttys in the 1970's too. And my mother was a Fortran programmer (IBM709 and 7090).
But I know people of all ages who save files in a random directory with a pointless name and then cant find them.
Sure, I've done it myself. But given that my own personal network has hundreds of thousands of files in it, I have to impose some organization, some semblance of order upon what would otherwise become a morass of unlocatable information. Furthermore, I have to have the self-discipline to maintain that order. That's not so unusual: people do it all the time in non-computer-related efforts (we all keep paper records, most people have some kind of filing system.) People that are incapable of doing that generally have other organizational issues, having nothing to do with their computers.
... we don't blame the machine for our own screwups. That would be like blaming your file cabinet when you put a piece of paper in the wrong folder. I know people of all ages who do that, ridiculous as it sounds.
In regards to saving files, I agree, we all do stupid things now and then. We sometimes run red lights too, if you want to continue the automobile analogy. The difference is
When comes to computing technology, the bar is pretty low nowadays. Every generation has new technological issues to deal with, new things to learn in order to function in society. Being able to handle a hierarchical directory structure is currently one of those things.
At the rate we're dumbing things down, at some point even plants will be able to use a computer.
What they'd do with it I don't know.
Linux. Someone had to say it.
Yeah. Frankly though, all I'm thinking about at the moment (this being Saturday night and all) as that free Linux beer you guys are always talking about. How does it stack up against the other imports?
Free antivirus, Hopefully I get my suggestion in before everyone else :P
Not only that, but it looks like you got Frist Psot as well. Good job.
You've all misinterpreted what "uncooperative" means. It means that the target is not actively participating in being found. It doesn't mean that the target is being belligerent.
You misinterpreted that I wasn't trying to be serious.
That's because cars only have one level of user interface. If they were sometimes required to directly push the levers to turn right, cut the ignition wire to stop the car, or remove and disassemble the motor (and then rebuild it) to recharge fuel, they would all use taxis.
Look, are we talking about the Mac or Linux here?
They claim that they are not interested in understanding, but it seems like they are strongly interested in not understanding. Is there something to be gained by accommodating this?
Not really. It will just make systems appear childlike in nature to those who are willing to learn, and generally unpleasant to use. Of course, I started out in 1975 on a mainframe and spent a lot of years after that at the command line, so perhaps I'm not the best person to ask. But, like most other things in life, there's a balance that has to be struck, and no matter what you do people will still be required to learn something about their machines.
A lot of that goes to motivation: people learn some pretty damn complex activities when it comes to earning a driver's license, for example. Yet, when it comes to a computer many of those same people can't be bothered to put forth one iota of effort.
If someone sends a file to me over Empathy, and I want to open it in Amarok, then I shouldn't have to work with two completely different mental models of content storage.
Yet another abstraction layer.