The problem is that HS staff does not like being shown that their charge (the students) have more power than them, which this demonstrates.
Come on, it's not about power. The school system certainly doesn't like it being known that the information they keep about their students and staff is vulnerable to theft and manipulation - it doesn't matter who can do it. Students would presumably be the ones with most to gain by hacking their records, but identity theft is arguably a bigger threat when it comes to employment records and other data on the faculty.
But it's much more likely that a student will be bored enough, have enough time, and be allowed to physically have access to a machine on (or plug a machine into) the local network - so of course that's where the friction is going to be. And, since so many students imagine themselves to be in an adversarial relationship with the teachers, the staff has to be prepared to react accordingly. It's not about not liking a student having more "power," it's about not liking a student screwing around with sensitive data. High school students are notoriously lacking in almost any sort of judgement, and routinely fail to think through the consequences of their actions. This is often more true of the geek set, pleased as they are with their high IQ and skills, and distracted as they are from the daily tribulations of "normal" people (like teachers trying to maintain a career, health insurance, and a credit rating on next to no income).
And, of course, the odds that the staff of a particular high school have themselves chosen the network infrastructure, software, security model, and so on, upon which their daily system-based activities depend - pretty slim. But they've got to live with it, and when they catch a student deliberately breaking in, of course they're defensive. Hell, a student could also very easily break out a window of a science classroom to show that a determined thief could easily steal a microscope, what with the staff's ridiculous choice of obviously inferior mere glass as a deterrent. That doesn't make the staff power-obsessed when they bust on a student for putting that brick through the window.
Didn't Bill steal most of his ideas from other people?
Say that to all the people who've gotten rich being acquired by MS. There are a lot of people who had great ideas but no where near the business sense or marketing muscle to see them really go. Making a few million by selling it to MS (or to Adobe, for that matter - plenty of other companies do the same thing), and then going back to the garage, cash in hand, to work on the next project... that's a path plenty of innovators have taken, and would take again in a heartbeat.
So if they really want to see where you came from they will follow your traffic
Um... unless a step (or steps) along the way are engineered specifically to route in a way that doesn't provide for that, and leave no logs of any kind. Yes, someone could watch all traffic going into and out of all paths surrounding such an anonymizer.
But that's not a free speech issue, and of course, criminals can use it, too, engaging in activities that are definately not protected by free speech principles.
Um... how many other not true things are relevant? Like, the whole flat-earth-help-up-by-turtles thing, maybe? I mean, it's not true, but I guess it is relevant.
the problem is these will never go into production as companies would stop making money from selling electricity
First, the companies that make laptop batteries are, generally speaking, not the ones that sell you electrons at 220/120VAC in the line to your house. Likewise, the sale of the electricity that charges your current laptop amounts to, perhaps, a few cents. With what it takes to do one load of laundry and you could charge your laptop, cell phone, iPod, and portable screw gun many times over.
unless of course they are so expensive to the consumer that companies can make enough money from them not to care about long term income
That's how every industry works. The company that makes the longer-lasting product generally gets more customers for life. Look at Honda or Sony.
i once remember a teacher telling me that a guy invented and a near 100% efficient bearing. the rights wee bought by a large company because without people buying replacement bearings they would lose a large ammount of their income
Apocryphal stories like this (just like the ones that have oil companies somehow preventing all scientists from doing research into more efficient fuels and delivery systems) are told by people with a political/idealogical axe to grind. I shouldn't be surprised that a teacher told it, but it's still embarassing. I'd hate to hear how that teacher handled history lessons, economics, biology, critical thinking, or... typing/spelling.
Are you seriously suggesting that any user who has an executable the want to install, or a self-extracting archive they want to run, or a macro they need as part of their daily business process, should have to contact at system admin? Sure, if we don't let computer users do anything, then they'll be safe. If we DO let them do things, then it's possible that someone will slip them some malware, and you need AV tools to find it/fix it/filter it.
And what if you ARE the admin? Is the NO chance that what you think is a safe executable is actually poisoned outside of your control? Isn't something helping you scan for malware fingerprints a good thing? And, doesn't somebody have to keep up with the bad guys? That costs money, on an ongoing basis.
Therefore, the MC will catch up to the MB very fast, and very little spam will be stopped.
Sorry, but I think I disagree. Your example treats stopping spam as stopping individual messages. But in the case in question, the single act of shutting these clowns down will stop untold millions of messages from being sent. The question is one of how we stop them, and there are different economies of scale depending on the target and the technique.
For example: these guys can't make money without having something to sell. If a small number of commission-paying vendors were stopped (in their dealings with jerks like this), then the cash source goes away. Of course there is a very important place in the market for affiliate programs... but the most successful ones are those that carefully vet the participants, and that monitor the click traffic to make sure it's not showing signs of spammage. Dam up the cash when that's the right approach, and you'll remove millions of messages from the 'net in a single blow. Keep doing it, and it will cease to be the easy living that these guys probably first found it to be. Follow the money.
The issue is that users will STILL accept anything offered. Install weather toolbars and so on
One of the problems with getting Linux into the mainstream is that it's not easy for the average Mom to install something she actually wants, like a weather toolbar. Some things, in the Windows (XP in particular) environment remain difficult/non-intuitive to mess around with, but those things that the users want to be able to play with have been made reachable and fairly simple to alter. Yes, that's also where the problems come in. But to suggest that the solution to the problem is to make the environment un-alterable (in the way that a typical user, not a fanboy would understand it), that's going to stop people from letting third-party tools take care of the thinking for them... and that's just what the average user wants (not to have to think).
I know it's impossible for anyone reading material from this web site to put aside what they know (or to pretend that they don't have technical critical thinking skills), but you've got to look at this from the point of view of an administrative assistant, a shopkeeper, a grandma, or a dance student.
A good approach would be to outlaw internet access to any computer with windows installed.
That sort of smugness is all that the average Windows-using person hears from most Linux enthusiasts. The holier-than-thou smack talk does more to keep people from looking into Linux than anything that Bill Gates could do or not do to Windows.
German industrial might and the famous german rigidness is a seperate thing to the Nazi idea.
Granted. I suppose, though, that the Nazis would have been little more than an annoying club if they didn't have that Teutonic horsepower to tap into. And beer, of course. Very pure beer.
I think you just might be missing the point about victorious, mechanized, German-made stuff sort of evoking that sort of image. At least for some history students, anyway.
Hell, even the Germans usually have a sense of humor, or at least irony, when it comes to their current society's pacifist-ish stance contrasted with their domineering approach to things like robot competitions and car manufacturing.
You're missing the point. Unethical Humans = Corruption. The difference between a democracy and everything else is that in a democracy, we have a regular exercise during which we change (or have the option to) those people running federal, state, county, and municipal governments. Actual corruption (say, granting presidential pardons to campaign-backing international money launderers on your last day in office) may happen, but the press picks up on it, and we know about it. That gives us an opportunity to keep such things in mind as we vote for candidates, their parties, and for certain points of view. Places like China, though, or Syria, or Iran, or Myanmar give at best lip service to the process (including the free speech/press required to keep it fairly transparent), and thus their systems are inferior (for us citizens) to a representative republic with a constitution like our own.
Are you telling me that every rep is still united in supporting this war?
Well, yeah, that's pretty much it. Democracy in the middle east is the single most important thing we can do to stabilize the region and take the steam out of movements that seek to de-stabilize non-Islamist, non-theocratic thugocracies. As that stuff settles down, the boon to the global economy and reduction in security requirements will have as much or more of an impact on our federal budget than did the end of the cold war when the USSR imploded. What senator doesn't want that to happen? Even the craziest of them know that watching the people in Iraq vote for their own government is a good thing, and that walking out while those citizens are being attacked by religious zealots from other countries like Syria, Iran, etc., is nuts. So they vote to keep the pressure on the bad guys and shore up the good guys. There's nothing non-representational about that, just basic common sense.
Doesn't the very notion of Triumphant Robotic German Anything automatically invoke Godwin? I'm not sure that's allowed at the story-posting level.
That said, all I saw on cable news about this one this morning was stationary 'bots in the background with some Euronerds walking around, and the talking heads repeating the silliness about it just being a few years before the human players won't stand a chance. I'll hold off until my Roomba can win a fight with a puppy protecting its chew toy in the living room.
Things like this are the symptom, not the problem. The problem in that case is that if you don't buy your own medical coverage, you can still cost me (and all the other taxpayers) the million dollars it will cost to deal with the head injury you sustain because you fly through the windshield when you run into something. To the extent that things like driving a car badly (or just having bad luck and getting hit by someone else) can generate enormous costs that are passed on to the rest of us as taxes... then the rest of us, acting through congress, can act to mitigate that tremendous expense. Now, if we were to undo the underlying Nanny-state principle that forces me to pay for your medical bills if you can't, then we'd be looking at seatbelts as a Very Good Idea that any driver would be crazy not to use, but which would still be an option, like buying decent tires or having better anti-lock breaks.
Many regulations like the one you mention derive from deeper underlying causes. But once we've swallowed the notion that we all get to (have to!) pay for other people's idiocy, then all the sudden that opens the door for being able to (having to) step in and mitigate those costs. It's going to be pretty hard to sell, though, the notion that an emergency responder, coming up on the scene of a motorcycle accident with an obviously soon-to-be-very-expensive-head-wound on a guy that didn't wear a helmet, would have to see if someone is adequately insured before going into the mode of saving their life, and ultimately seeing them get treatment, therapy, etc. If he's not insured, we've all just picked up the tab for a few hundred thousand dollars. It would take me most of my life to pay the taxes that would treat that one guy. So: we can stop treating him, or we can do a few things to alter behavior in a way that help staunch the cash draining effect. But that's where your Freedom discussion should be focused: how far can society go in using your cash and mine to pay for the results of some other guy doing something dumb with his freedom?
But that's my point! The matter at hand is, on principle, not a bad thing. Why make a partisan display (the pandering part of the drama) for something that just isn't a bad idea anyway? Now, congressional representatives are a lot more likely to act that way, but senators are usually a lot more sensible, as they were in this case.
The Read-ID thing was a rider on a military spending... Your democracy is dead
Except that the very same senate that would appear not to have a single member willing to make the mistake of shooting this down does have the power (which they've been using for years) to stop the voting on judicial appointees. No, the reason this rider didn't trigger the same sort of procedural blocks is because the idea isn't bad and it's not worth putting up a fight just to be partisan when the matter at hand is actually worth doing.
Then how is that sitting senators and congressional representatives (and governors, and presidents, etc) who are up for relection are sometimes kicked out and replaced by someone with a significantly different message and appeal to the voters?
Clearly, however, when bills like this are passed after so much opposition has been raised by the people, we have a problem with what we claim to be the greatest method of government on the planet.
You've got to come to terms with the possibility that "the people" you're thinking of, in this case, aren't actually the majority of the people. For example: I think the legislation in question is perfectly reasonable, doesn't meaningfully introduce new risks, and substantially shapes identification and security issues around the current facts of life (relative to well-prepared foreign nationals looking for the legitimatizing magic bullet of a driver's license so that they can deal with finances, travel, and other pleasantries whether or not they are who they say they are). So, that means that I was represented, and that the Senate did just what I'd expect people looking out for my interests to do.
As for your being 16: the only thing you're missing at that age (as I was) is a significant enough number of run-ins with people trying to steal from your business, defraud your bank, turn out not to have legitimate insurance (because they're not who they said they were when they got their license) after they just totalled your car in a collision... you know, all that stuff that you'll get to experience, and which will shape your thoughts a bit in areas like this.
Are all politicians sensible or even rational? No, not hardly. Do some lose their power because someone else stands up and demonstrates that their take on the world is a better fit for more of the voters in their district/state/country? Yes. And they get a few years to show if we were right to believe them, and then we get to throw the bums out if they were lying just a little too much.
Let's brush up on representative government: the senators that voted on this matter were and regularaly are the product of a national vote. The entire country puts forward people to sit in that chamber. I think you're also a little vague on your wish that the prez was dead... he doesn't actually play a role in how the senate frames legislation, or how they vote, or how they hash out differences with congress. He's the last stop on the way to a functioning piece of legislation, and 100 votes in the senate (or a comparable vote in congress) would trump a veto from him, or whomever you prefer anyway.
I call BS on that. If the vote was over whether or not rapists should get funding so that they could quit their jobs and concentrate more effectively on their hobby, would you consider yourself unrepresented if someone didn't back the measure? Some things simply are a good idea, a terrible idea, or are a better/worse move than the alternative(s), and get the appropriate votes.
I would consider myself unrepresented if my senator voted against perfectly reasonable legislation simply so that they could enjoy a bit of drama and chest thumping. That's not being a representative, it's pandering to partisans that can't be objective about something as straightforward as a consistent set of standards in providing official ID.
I do not pretend to be a Constitutional Scholar, but this just seems to be (SO WRONG) on so many levels it isn't funny.
Except that most state legislatures would get pretty tired of hearing how their citizens are finding that they can't rent a car or get credit, or drive in some other state because that other state has started caring more about whether or not the people presenting an ID actually are who they say they are. We (the other states) generally accept the drivers' licenses issued by other states as a valid form of ID. But if I know that a given state's standards are really lax, and my own state is getting serious about illegal immigration, or foreign nationals buying truckloads of fertalizer, etc., it becomes unworkable. States don't have to participate, but if they have their citizens' interests at heart, they'll provide them with ID that will continue to serve them throughout the country as IT and security worries evolve.
It really sucks to think that the US goverment is for the business, by the business instead of for the people, by the people.
Except... plenty of other people are just as vehement that people representing them (as, say, their senator or congress creature) are "for the labor union, by the labor union" or "for the anti-business taxers/regulators, by them" or "for the Nanny State, by the people who want a Nanny to take care of them."
Nice display of the Canadian demographic, by the way. I'm sure they'll be delighted to have you! We know that Canadians just hate businesses. You know - those Canadian industries and other employers that enable Canadians to earn a living and pay those heftier taxes?
Ah, you mean, like, where the people that get elected by the voters are actually shipped to North Korea, and replaced by cyborgs or something?
Or by "you" you actually mean yourself, and mean that you're not feeling represented because you couldn't persuade enough other people to support your preferred representative(s). Perhaps you didn't invest enough time? Maybe your position or message don't resonate with typical people? Certainly you put a lot of your own time and effort into educating people, right?
I cannot believe with so many people raising awareness and complaints to this issue our elected officals
Maybe your idea of "so many" is a little off, and maybe "awareness and complaints" don't alter the actual facts:
1) There's nothing in state motor vehicle licensing databases that a federal investigator can't get to anyway
2) A consistent set of standards by which people (notably, of course, immigrants - legal or not) need to prove who they are before they get an item as enabling (in terms of access, banking, and so on) as a driver's license is.... well, not crazy, or draconian, or anything other than reasonable.
That's it... I quit voting
That'll fix it! Or, really, it gives you even more room to whine, I guess. How about making a more persuasive case that we should let some states issue official IDs (which are then honored in other states) without worrying about who the person actually is? Tough sell? Yes, it is... and is why you don't see our representatives acting like it's an inherently bad idea to smooth out the discrepancies in the process. Streamlining and further validating the process will save money, lives, and time. The downside would be... let's see, a situation where it's harder for liars to get mainstream IDs?
I've had plenty of suburban Maryland friends beg me to bring my tree stand and my bow and help preserve their shrubs. Of course, I don't want to lose my hunting license, so I usually decline. But my biggest concern isn't missing my shot, or having a through-and-through go anywhere than into the dirt... no, my concern is that I've put a shaft right through the heart of a good size buck and watched him make a very speedy (and reckless) 50 yards at least... and that's plenty to get them through the dining room window, or out into traffic, leaving a big old blood trail. Not helpful with the other neighbors that are still a little fuzzy on the whole concept. I've since adopted neck shots... well placed, it's like hitting a circuit breaker - wham!
I'm with you. As a resident of the suburban Washington DC area, I can tell you that we should have a Baseball Bat season for deer. There are so many that if you just step into the bushes and swing, you'll probably kill two at least, and not risk putting a broadhead into Mrs. Smith's poodle next door.
My fist deer kill was with a bow, and I only hunt them during bow and muzzleloader season. Too many inexperienced hunters around here, packed into WAY too little viable hunting ground for me to feel safe during firearms season. I love, love, love venison, but am increasingly distressed at the truth of what you've said (about the unhuntable habitiat happening to be the thing that's most boosting their population). Have to travel quite a ways out of town, or become best buddies with a local farmer in order to have safe hunting ground... and that's not where the worst of the population problem is.
No wonder I'm turning into an upland bird hunter. At least then, when I travel, I'm going someplace where the farmers are glad I'm coming!
As for so-called internet hunting... here's my take: how about the only people that are allowed are those that can prove 1) a disability and 2) that they've hunted in the field and tagged at least a couple of deer in their lives, and 3) that they will demonstrate taking receipt of the meat - and I'm not talking about just FedExing the backstraps, either.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that HS staff does not like being shown that their charge (the students) have more power than them, which this demonstrates.
Come on, it's not about power. The school system certainly doesn't like it being known that the information they keep about their students and staff is vulnerable to theft and manipulation - it doesn't matter who can do it. Students would presumably be the ones with most to gain by hacking their records, but identity theft is arguably a bigger threat when it comes to employment records and other data on the faculty.
But it's much more likely that a student will be bored enough, have enough time, and be allowed to physically have access to a machine on (or plug a machine into) the local network - so of course that's where the friction is going to be. And, since so many students imagine themselves to be in an adversarial relationship with the teachers, the staff has to be prepared to react accordingly. It's not about not liking a student having more "power," it's about not liking a student screwing around with sensitive data. High school students are notoriously lacking in almost any sort of judgement, and routinely fail to think through the consequences of their actions. This is often more true of the geek set, pleased as they are with their high IQ and skills, and distracted as they are from the daily tribulations of "normal" people (like teachers trying to maintain a career, health insurance, and a credit rating on next to no income).
And, of course, the odds that the staff of a particular high school have themselves chosen the network infrastructure, software, security model, and so on, upon which their daily system-based activities depend - pretty slim. But they've got to live with it, and when they catch a student deliberately breaking in, of course they're defensive. Hell, a student could also very easily break out a window of a science classroom to show that a determined thief could easily steal a microscope, what with the staff's ridiculous choice of obviously inferior mere glass as a deterrent. That doesn't make the staff power-obsessed when they bust on a student for putting that brick through the window.
Didn't Bill steal most of his ideas from other people?
Say that to all the people who've gotten rich being acquired by MS. There are a lot of people who had great ideas but no where near the business sense or marketing muscle to see them really go. Making a few million by selling it to MS (or to Adobe, for that matter - plenty of other companies do the same thing), and then going back to the garage, cash in hand, to work on the next project... that's a path plenty of innovators have taken, and would take again in a heartbeat.
So if they really want to see where you came from they will follow your traffic
Um... unless a step (or steps) along the way are engineered specifically to route in a way that doesn't provide for that, and leave no logs of any kind. Yes, someone could watch all traffic going into and out of all paths surrounding such an anonymizer.
But that's not a free speech issue, and of course, criminals can use it, too, engaging in activities that are definately not protected by free speech principles.
Heh. I don't think he really thought that one through...
whether or not that is true, its still relevant
Um... how many other not true things are relevant? Like, the whole flat-earth-help-up-by-turtles thing, maybe? I mean, it's not true, but I guess it is relevant.
the problem is these will never go into production as companies would stop making money from selling electricity
First, the companies that make laptop batteries are, generally speaking, not the ones that sell you electrons at 220/120VAC in the line to your house. Likewise, the sale of the electricity that charges your current laptop amounts to, perhaps, a few cents. With what it takes to do one load of laundry and you could charge your laptop, cell phone, iPod, and portable screw gun many times over.
unless of course they are so expensive to the consumer that companies can make enough money from them not to care about long term income
That's how every industry works. The company that makes the longer-lasting product generally gets more customers for life. Look at Honda or Sony.
i once remember a teacher telling me that a guy invented and a near 100% efficient bearing. the rights wee bought by a large company because without people buying replacement bearings they would lose a large ammount of their income
Apocryphal stories like this (just like the ones that have oil companies somehow preventing all scientists from doing research into more efficient fuels and delivery systems) are told by people with a political/idealogical axe to grind. I shouldn't be surprised that a teacher told it, but it's still embarassing. I'd hate to hear how that teacher handled history lessons, economics, biology, critical thinking, or... typing/spelling.
Are you seriously suggesting that any user who has an executable the want to install, or a self-extracting archive they want to run, or a macro they need as part of their daily business process, should have to contact at system admin? Sure, if we don't let computer users do anything, then they'll be safe. If we DO let them do things, then it's possible that someone will slip them some malware, and you need AV tools to find it/fix it/filter it.
And what if you ARE the admin? Is the NO chance that what you think is a safe executable is actually poisoned outside of your control? Isn't something helping you scan for malware fingerprints a good thing? And, doesn't somebody have to keep up with the bad guys? That costs money, on an ongoing basis.
Therefore, the MC will catch up to the MB very fast, and very little spam will be stopped.
Sorry, but I think I disagree. Your example treats stopping spam as stopping individual messages. But in the case in question, the single act of shutting these clowns down will stop untold millions of messages from being sent. The question is one of how we stop them, and there are different economies of scale depending on the target and the technique.
For example: these guys can't make money without having something to sell. If a small number of commission-paying vendors were stopped (in their dealings with jerks like this), then the cash source goes away. Of course there is a very important place in the market for affiliate programs... but the most successful ones are those that carefully vet the participants, and that monitor the click traffic to make sure it's not showing signs of spammage. Dam up the cash when that's the right approach, and you'll remove millions of messages from the 'net in a single blow. Keep doing it, and it will cease to be the easy living that these guys probably first found it to be. Follow the money.
The issue is that users will STILL accept anything offered. Install weather toolbars and so on
One of the problems with getting Linux into the mainstream is that it's not easy for the average Mom to install something she actually wants, like a weather toolbar. Some things, in the Windows (XP in particular) environment remain difficult/non-intuitive to mess around with, but those things that the users want to be able to play with have been made reachable and fairly simple to alter. Yes, that's also where the problems come in. But to suggest that the solution to the problem is to make the environment un-alterable (in the way that a typical user, not a fanboy would understand it), that's going to stop people from letting third-party tools take care of the thinking for them... and that's just what the average user wants (not to have to think).
I know it's impossible for anyone reading material from this web site to put aside what they know (or to pretend that they don't have technical critical thinking skills), but you've got to look at this from the point of view of an administrative assistant, a shopkeeper, a grandma, or a dance student.
A good approach would be to outlaw internet access to any computer with windows installed.
That sort of smugness is all that the average Windows-using person hears from most Linux enthusiasts. The holier-than-thou smack talk does more to keep people from looking into Linux than anything that Bill Gates could do or not do to Windows.
German industrial might and the famous german rigidness is a seperate thing to the Nazi idea.
Granted. I suppose, though, that the Nazis would have been little more than an annoying club if they didn't have that Teutonic horsepower to tap into. And beer, of course. Very pure beer.
I think you just might be missing the point about victorious, mechanized, German-made stuff sort of evoking that sort of image. At least for some history students, anyway.
Hell, even the Germans usually have a sense of humor, or at least irony, when it comes to their current society's pacifist-ish stance contrasted with their domineering approach to things like robot competitions and car manufacturing.
Democracy=Corruption
But Totalitarian Thugocracy != Corruption? Brutal Stalinism != Corruption? Fundamentalist Theocracy != Corruption?
You're missing the point. Unethical Humans = Corruption. The difference between a democracy and everything else is that in a democracy, we have a regular exercise during which we change (or have the option to) those people running federal, state, county, and municipal governments. Actual corruption (say, granting presidential pardons to campaign-backing international money launderers on your last day in office) may happen, but the press picks up on it, and we know about it. That gives us an opportunity to keep such things in mind as we vote for candidates, their parties, and for certain points of view. Places like China, though, or Syria, or Iran, or Myanmar give at best lip service to the process (including the free speech/press required to keep it fairly transparent), and thus their systems are inferior (for us citizens) to a representative republic with a constitution like our own.
Are you telling me that every rep is still united in supporting this war?
Well, yeah, that's pretty much it. Democracy in the middle east is the single most important thing we can do to stabilize the region and take the steam out of movements that seek to de-stabilize non-Islamist, non-theocratic thugocracies. As that stuff settles down, the boon to the global economy and reduction in security requirements will have as much or more of an impact on our federal budget than did the end of the cold war when the USSR imploded. What senator doesn't want that to happen? Even the craziest of them know that watching the people in Iraq vote for their own government is a good thing, and that walking out while those citizens are being attacked by religious zealots from other countries like Syria, Iran, etc., is nuts. So they vote to keep the pressure on the bad guys and shore up the good guys. There's nothing non-representational about that, just basic common sense.
Doesn't the very notion of Triumphant Robotic German Anything automatically invoke Godwin? I'm not sure that's allowed at the story-posting level.
That said, all I saw on cable news about this one this morning was stationary 'bots in the background with some Euronerds walking around, and the talking heads repeating the silliness about it just being a few years before the human players won't stand a chance. I'll hold off until my Roomba can win a fight with a puppy protecting its chew toy in the living room.
NOW we have seatbelt laws...
Things like this are the symptom, not the problem. The problem in that case is that if you don't buy your own medical coverage, you can still cost me (and all the other taxpayers) the million dollars it will cost to deal with the head injury you sustain because you fly through the windshield when you run into something. To the extent that things like driving a car badly (or just having bad luck and getting hit by someone else) can generate enormous costs that are passed on to the rest of us as taxes... then the rest of us, acting through congress, can act to mitigate that tremendous expense. Now, if we were to undo the underlying Nanny-state principle that forces me to pay for your medical bills if you can't, then we'd be looking at seatbelts as a Very Good Idea that any driver would be crazy not to use, but which would still be an option, like buying decent tires or having better anti-lock breaks.
Many regulations like the one you mention derive from deeper underlying causes. But once we've swallowed the notion that we all get to (have to!) pay for other people's idiocy, then all the sudden that opens the door for being able to (having to) step in and mitigate those costs. It's going to be pretty hard to sell, though, the notion that an emergency responder, coming up on the scene of a motorcycle accident with an obviously soon-to-be-very-expensive-head-wound on a guy that didn't wear a helmet, would have to see if someone is adequately insured before going into the mode of saving their life, and ultimately seeing them get treatment, therapy, etc. If he's not insured, we've all just picked up the tab for a few hundred thousand dollars. It would take me most of my life to pay the taxes that would treat that one guy. So: we can stop treating him, or we can do a few things to alter behavior in a way that help staunch the cash draining effect. But that's where your Freedom discussion should be focused: how far can society go in using your cash and mine to pay for the results of some other guy doing something dumb with his freedom?
But that's my point! The matter at hand is, on principle, not a bad thing. Why make a partisan display (the pandering part of the drama) for something that just isn't a bad idea anyway? Now, congressional representatives are a lot more likely to act that way, but senators are usually a lot more sensible, as they were in this case.
The Read-ID thing was a rider on a military spending ... Your democracy is dead
Except that the very same senate that would appear not to have a single member willing to make the mistake of shooting this down does have the power (which they've been using for years) to stop the voting on judicial appointees. No, the reason this rider didn't trigger the same sort of procedural blocks is because the idea isn't bad and it's not worth putting up a fight just to be partisan when the matter at hand is actually worth doing.
but this is, as far as I have seen, impossible
Then how is that sitting senators and congressional representatives (and governors, and presidents, etc) who are up for relection are sometimes kicked out and replaced by someone with a significantly different message and appeal to the voters?
Clearly, however, when bills like this are passed after so much opposition has been raised by the people, we have a problem with what we claim to be the greatest method of government on the planet.
You've got to come to terms with the possibility that "the people" you're thinking of, in this case, aren't actually the majority of the people. For example: I think the legislation in question is perfectly reasonable, doesn't meaningfully introduce new risks, and substantially shapes identification and security issues around the current facts of life (relative to well-prepared foreign nationals looking for the legitimatizing magic bullet of a driver's license so that they can deal with finances, travel, and other pleasantries whether or not they are who they say they are). So, that means that I was represented, and that the Senate did just what I'd expect people looking out for my interests to do.
As for your being 16: the only thing you're missing at that age (as I was) is a significant enough number of run-ins with people trying to steal from your business, defraud your bank, turn out not to have legitimate insurance (because they're not who they said they were when they got their license) after they just totalled your car in a collision... you know, all that stuff that you'll get to experience, and which will shape your thoughts a bit in areas like this.
Are all politicians sensible or even rational? No, not hardly. Do some lose their power because someone else stands up and demonstrates that their take on the world is a better fit for more of the voters in their district/state/country? Yes. And they get a few years to show if we were right to believe them, and then we get to throw the bums out if they were lying just a little too much.
Let's brush up on representative government: the senators that voted on this matter were and regularaly are the product of a national vote. The entire country puts forward people to sit in that chamber. I think you're also a little vague on your wish that the prez was dead... he doesn't actually play a role in how the senate frames legislation, or how they vote, or how they hash out differences with congress. He's the last stop on the way to a functioning piece of legislation, and 100 votes in the senate (or a comparable vote in congress) would trump a veto from him, or whomever you prefer anyway.
The vote was 100-0. No representation
I call BS on that. If the vote was over whether or not rapists should get funding so that they could quit their jobs and concentrate more effectively on their hobby, would you consider yourself unrepresented if someone didn't back the measure? Some things simply are a good idea, a terrible idea, or are a better/worse move than the alternative(s), and get the appropriate votes.
I would consider myself unrepresented if my senator voted against perfectly reasonable legislation simply so that they could enjoy a bit of drama and chest thumping. That's not being a representative, it's pandering to partisans that can't be objective about something as straightforward as a consistent set of standards in providing official ID.
I do not pretend to be a Constitutional Scholar, but this just seems to be (SO WRONG) on so many levels it isn't funny.
Except that most state legislatures would get pretty tired of hearing how their citizens are finding that they can't rent a car or get credit, or drive in some other state because that other state has started caring more about whether or not the people presenting an ID actually are who they say they are. We (the other states) generally accept the drivers' licenses issued by other states as a valid form of ID. But if I know that a given state's standards are really lax, and my own state is getting serious about illegal immigration, or foreign nationals buying truckloads of fertalizer, etc., it becomes unworkable. States don't have to participate, but if they have their citizens' interests at heart, they'll provide them with ID that will continue to serve them throughout the country as IT and security worries evolve.
It really sucks to think that the US goverment is for the business, by the business instead of for the people, by the people.
Except... plenty of other people are just as vehement that people representing them (as, say, their senator or congress creature) are "for the labor union, by the labor union" or "for the anti-business taxers/regulators, by them" or "for the Nanny State, by the people who want a Nanny to take care of them."
Nice display of the Canadian demographic, by the way. I'm sure they'll be delighted to have you! We know that Canadians just hate businesses. You know - those Canadian industries and other employers that enable Canadians to earn a living and pay those heftier taxes?
You no longer have a representative government
Ah, you mean, like, where the people that get elected by the voters are actually shipped to North Korea, and replaced by cyborgs or something?
Or by "you" you actually mean yourself, and mean that you're not feeling represented because you couldn't persuade enough other people to support your preferred representative(s). Perhaps you didn't invest enough time? Maybe your position or message don't resonate with typical people? Certainly you put a lot of your own time and effort into educating people, right?
I cannot believe with so many people raising awareness and complaints to this issue our elected officals
Maybe your idea of "so many" is a little off, and maybe "awareness and complaints" don't alter the actual facts:
1) There's nothing in state motor vehicle licensing databases that a federal investigator can't get to anyway
2) A consistent set of standards by which people (notably, of course, immigrants - legal or not) need to prove who they are before they get an item as enabling (in terms of access, banking, and so on) as a driver's license is.... well, not crazy, or draconian, or anything other than reasonable.
That's it... I quit voting
That'll fix it! Or, really, it gives you even more room to whine, I guess. How about making a more persuasive case that we should let some states issue official IDs (which are then honored in other states) without worrying about who the person actually is? Tough sell? Yes, it is... and is why you don't see our representatives acting like it's an inherently bad idea to smooth out the discrepancies in the process. Streamlining and further validating the process will save money, lives, and time. The downside would be... let's see, a situation where it's harder for liars to get mainstream IDs?
I've had plenty of suburban Maryland friends beg me to bring my tree stand and my bow and help preserve their shrubs. Of course, I don't want to lose my hunting license, so I usually decline. But my biggest concern isn't missing my shot, or having a through-and-through go anywhere than into the dirt... no, my concern is that I've put a shaft right through the heart of a good size buck and watched him make a very speedy (and reckless) 50 yards at least... and that's plenty to get them through the dining room window, or out into traffic, leaving a big old blood trail. Not helpful with the other neighbors that are still a little fuzzy on the whole concept. I've since adopted neck shots... well placed, it's like hitting a circuit breaker - wham!
I'm with you. As a resident of the suburban Washington DC area, I can tell you that we should have a Baseball Bat season for deer. There are so many that if you just step into the bushes and swing, you'll probably kill two at least, and not risk putting a broadhead into Mrs. Smith's poodle next door.
My fist deer kill was with a bow, and I only hunt them during bow and muzzleloader season. Too many inexperienced hunters around here, packed into WAY too little viable hunting ground for me to feel safe during firearms season. I love, love, love venison, but am increasingly distressed at the truth of what you've said (about the unhuntable habitiat happening to be the thing that's most boosting their population). Have to travel quite a ways out of town, or become best buddies with a local farmer in order to have safe hunting ground... and that's not where the worst of the population problem is.
No wonder I'm turning into an upland bird hunter. At least then, when I travel, I'm going someplace where the farmers are glad I'm coming!
As for so-called internet hunting... here's my take: how about the only people that are allowed are those that can prove 1) a disability and 2) that they've hunted in the field and tagged at least a couple of deer in their lives, and 3) that they will demonstrate taking receipt of the meat - and I'm not talking about just FedExing the backstraps, either.