From the referenced case (Case No. 2:96-cv-099-J), U.S. District Court decision:
"If a sheriff doesn't want the Feds in his county he has the constitutional right and power to keep them out, or ask them to leave, or retain them in custody."
and
...the sheriff "has law enforcement powers EXCEEDING that of any other state OR federal official,"
Given, this is a Wyoming district court, but it's likely that AZ courts would see things the same way.
Don't be so sure about the feds' ability to do anything about the sheriff. The structure of our governmental system puts the sheriff in a pretty good position. From a column I found with a brief search:
"...the sheriff is the highest governmental authority in his county. Within that jurisdiction - inside his county - the sheriff has more power than the governor of his state. Indeed, the sheriff has more power in his county than the President of the United States. In his county, he can overrule the President and kick his people out. Remember, the President has few and limited powers."
Personally, if a real conservative were to be elected President, I'd like to see Sheriff Joe heading up Homeland Security.
Wow! Kinda defensive, aren't you? Lighten up - my attitude is just fine, thank you.
I plan on having a good time (I usually do, no matter where I am - I enjoy the kind of interaction and human observation I expect to experience there.) I've also spent time living outdoors in various extreme environments (dusty desert and alkali flats included) that would discourage all but the hardiest few.
I was just pointing out a bit of the double standard imposed by the organizers who purport to espouse a philosophy of "anything goes (almost)". Rules that apply to all except the people making the rules just strikes me as fundamentally wrong.
Since you've attended before, I have a question you might be able to answer for me regarding those who would run around trying to steal from others at night: I am a light sleeper, and don't mind a bit of physical confrontation -- what are the rules for burying bodies on the playa?:)
""We automatically own all your stuff" isn't the only BMO rule totally contrary to the events original spirit."
--I know what you mean. I'm going to attend for the first time this year, primarily because my wife has the event on her "bucket list", but also to satisfy my morbid curiosity. I was reading through their site as well as the materials they sent us, and found that because the BM "economy" is based on "gifting" or barter, there are no sales of any goods or services allowed during the event. There are, however, two exceptions to this rule: BM organizers have reserved for themselves the ability to operate a "coffee shop" selling lattes, etc., and they will sell you ice at their "Arctica" location.
Remember, all of us are equal, but some are more equal than others...
One of the problems with the general direction of this discussion is that there are many different entities being referred to generically as "ISP". Many of the posters are lumping all of them together, when in fact there are ISPs, ICPs, and IHPs, just for a start. ISP usually means an access provider, responsible only for getting a customer connected to the Internet. IHP, an Internet Hosting Provider does just that -- leases out server space for ICPs, Internet Content Providers, to house their sites.
In some cases, these overlap, and an ISP can, and in some cases does provide both the other services. In these cases, there probably is no common-carrier type of protection, as the provider may perform an editorial function in deciding what information is presented by their ICP function. In the example of an access-only provider, the applicability of common-carrier protection is more clear, unless the ISP is filtering the traffic based on content. (Filtering by traffic type, i.e.- P2P for network stability, is not content filtering, as varied content is transported via P2P, and no content as such is discriminated against.)
As I understand it, the Real ID requirement was mandated by congress. DHS is simply enforcing it as written.
And I've not seen any official references to a Real ID compliant driver's license being required to get a job. There is already a federal system to check social security numbers for that.
The big news in recent days is that Chertoff said that non-Real ID compliant DL's will not be acceptable for those wanting to fly on US-originated airline flights. He did state, though, that a passport would be valid for such purposes. Now for all you who think that the Real ID driver's license requirements are too much of a privacy intrusion, why not just get a passport? I got mine a couple of years ago, and all I needed was a photo and my birth certificate -- no fingerprints, no DNA, etc. -- simple.
As a matter of fact, if a law enforcement type ever asks for my DL, the only time I actually show the DL is if I'm driving, as that's the purpose of it. The rest of the time, I show my passport. The only information it has is my name, my birth date, and a passport number -- no address, no SS#, nothing. Drives em nuts, cause they just keep looking back and forth between it and me, and not really knowing what to do. They really don't know how to treat it: they can't run it against a state or federal database, because they have no access to State Dept. records, they can't cross reference it with any of their traffic or criminal records, and it leaves them feeling a bit out of their league.
They usually just nod, grunt, and give it back, then leave me alone. Priceless!
"If you see a Jefferson Memorial High School, do you think that Jefferson is being remembered for that school?"
--Depends. Would that be Thomas or George?
If I understand correctly, the grace period is 5 days, and NSI holds the name for 4 days, presumably releasing it just before they would be committed to buy it. How about modifying the proposed lookup scripts to check again late on the third day? Would this possibly have the effect of having NSI's timer reset, and thus causing them to fail to release the hold on the 5th day(3days+4days=7days -- oops, looks like NSI just bought a domain for a year)?
Sorry to be the wet blanket here, but this is cut-and-pasted directly from Comcast's AUP:
(snip)
Prohibited Uses and Activities
Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:
run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;...
if the Service is used in a way that Comcast or its suppliers, in their sole discretion, believe violate this AUP, Comcast or its suppliers may take any responsive actions they deem appropriate. These actions include, but are not limited to, temporary or permanent removal of content, cancellation of newsgroup posts, filtering of Internet transmissions, and the immediate suspension or termination of all or any portion of the Service. Neither Comcast nor its affiliates, suppliers, or agents will have any liability for any these responsive actions. These actions are not Comcast's exclusive remedies and Comcast may take any other legal or technical action it deems appropriate.
(snip)
Now, any of you with any shred of honesty has to admit that in function, your P2P torrent client is also a server, and that falls under this prohibition. Doesn't matter if you're DL'ing Shrek3, Debbie Does Dallas, or the latest Debian distro -- the program is still a server, and Comcast has already told all of its subscribers what they may do (read the part about "filtering of Internet transmissions...may take any other legal or technical action...").
Don't like it? Unfortunately you agreed to it when you signed up for service. How can this be fraud, when they told you up front they might take this type of action? Unhappy now? Vote with your feet and your wallet, otherwise realize that they own the ball field, the bases, the bat, balls and gloves -- you want to play the game, you have to play by their rules.
Like I said, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm just a messenger.
More accurately, the decision in the Hiibel case stated that a "suspect" may be required to identify himself, and that this could be done as simply as stating his name. There was no requirement to produce any documentation corroborating such verbal identification.
It would appear, then, that the first question you should ask an officer in these circumstances, is whether or not he has reasonable suspicion to believe you are responsible for an offense (a suspect, in other words.) If he answers in the affirmative, the most information you are required to provide is a verbal response as to your name. If negative, there does not seem to be any requirement for you to answer at all. Asking the officer the question regarding reasonable suspicion has the added benefit of getting him to commit up front as to the legality of the detainment.
As ever, IANAL, and this is simply my understanding of the decision as I read it.
Some time ago, I was an asst. mgr at a grocery store. I was in the centrally located office area, overseeing the cash register line, when I heard a sound from a hallway across from my position. A young man was running out of the hallway from our store security office, followed by one of our security officers, Bob. Bob had been "interviewing" this person following his attempted exit from the store with an unpaid-for bottle of Jack Daniels Whiskey, when he bolted out of the security office. (We had him on video, dead-to-rights.)
On instinct alone, I vaulted the office half-door, and chased the runner across the store's exit area and out the door, finally stopping him with a flying tackle in the parking lot. He unfortunately scraped significant portions of his face across the asphalt -- (I felt soooooo bad -- not!)
It may not be politically correct in this day and age, and might have gotten me involved in a lawsuit today, but DAMN, it felt good! (BTW, this was approx. 1983, and he was convicted.)
Now this is primarily just an academic exercise, but isn't a rip of a CD to MP3 files really just an approximation or translation, not an exact duplicate? Much of the hubbub I've read is the claim that the danger to the recording industry presented by digital music is that the possibility of "perfect" digital copies exists. That's why there's far less resistance to the act of recording something from the radio in an analog fashion -- the inherent flaws present in an analog recording.
So, at what point do we consider the degradation of recording to be sufficient to be tolerable? As a lossy method, MP3's are an inherently imperfect copy of the original, differentiated only by degree from an analog recording.
I know we're splitting hairs here, but I wanted to hear anybody else's thoughts along these lines.
Disclaimer: Neither Comcast or Cox is available to me, nor is DSL or Cable Internet from Charter, so I have no axe to grind. As a matter of fact, I have no opinion at all as to any of these companies.
So far as I can see, through all the bitching about Comcast, one thing is missing: actual proof of the phrase "Unlimited Bandwidth" being used as a teaser to entice one to subscribe to their service. Now, I'm no fan of Comcast (see above), but I find it difficult to believe, without some evidence to the contrary, that their legal dept would let the phrase be used. I find it far more likely that those grousing about the situation somehow convinced themselves that they were subscribing to "unlimited bandwidth", when in fact what was touted was probably along the lines of "unlimited access" or some such phrase.
I deal with customers in a retail-and-service environment on a daily basis, and I find that no matter how clearly and carefully I explain something to a customer, they hear what they want to hear, not what I said to them. It's human nature. If you dont think that Comcast has covered their backsides seven ways from Sunday in both their advertising and their AUP/TOS, you are simply deceiving yourself.
If you're griping, ask yourself this: If they built the ballfield, provided the bases, balls, bats, and gloves, AND wrote the rule book, why do you think that you're going to have any luck convincing them, even though you agreed to play by those rules, that they told you something entirely different that wasn't actually in the book? Face it, it's their game. The only thing you can do is quit it and go find another game to take part in. Quitchyerbitchin and get on with your life.
RE: the email notifications you say you ignored:
Most ISP TOS/AUP docs (remember, you agreed to these as a condition of use of the service) I've seen state that any notice sent to the primary email address of the access account you have with them shall be a legally-sufficient notification. It seems to me that you should have checked it at least occasionally, and if you didn't -- your problem, not theirs.
Now, for all the fans of municipal ownership/operation of the network: you liken this to the roads and/or the water systems. What is missing in this analogy is that these things are simply Layer 1 equivalents. You need to remember that without competent management of the other layers of network, there will be nothing but chaos and disarray. Also, the already-existing utility-type systems spoken of are not constantly under attack and stretched to the limit by their equivalents of spam, DDOS, high-bandwidth movie & music downloading, customers (knowingly or not) introducing nasty viruses to the system, and the like.
Quite frankly, I do not believe that a municipality would or should have the type people on staff to properly run a network of this magnitude. Nor do I believe that very many of the type of people who "work" in the government have the personality traits of focus and intensity of purpose it takes to build and maintain a wireless, community-wide network. I know a number of people who do this type of work, and the typical "it's 5:00, time to go" attitude of government workers would never fly in their high-availability, high-pressure environment. It takes dedicated people with a vision of what they're building and delivering to their customers. I've been there, done that, and I greatly admire the people who build and run the networks.
In my experience, the qualities that are necessary to do it right are not the government's strong suit.
Inspired by the discussion, I did a little "sightseeing" myself. Is it just me, or is the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas missing? The tower's shadow is there, pointing NNE, but I can't make out the actual tower structure. Maybe it's just too far past my bedtime, but I can't see it.
Maybe not deliberate, but the result of parallax due to different satellite passes? I don't know, but it's kinda weird.
I own and operate a small rural ISP. Here's a couple of true stories from the last week:
Guy #1 calls up, says he told Outlook Express to go ahead & compact his email folders when it offered to. Now he can't get to some of the messages that were in his Inbox. Wants us to fix it on the server for him. Gets upset & threatens to quit when we tell him that we can't; it's a problem on his computer, not on our servers; and he'll likely have to pay a tech to try to retrieve them from whatever purgatory OE banished them to on his computer. Hung up on us.
Guy #2 walks into our shop. (We operate a computer repair business, as well.) Says he downloaded & installed Internet Explorer 7, and now things aren't working right on his computer, (now THERE's a surprise...). We suggest he write down everything he can think of that's not working right, and bring in the list and the computer, and we'll look it over & see what we can do. He snarls. "It's NOT a hardware problem," & stomps out without giving us any opportunity to clarify for him.
We try to help the customer, we really do. But when their attitude starts out that the problem is somehow our fault, it's difficult to get past that to the stage where we can get enough infromation from them to begin to help them. I think that what's being discussed is our frustrated reaction to their intolerance and impatience. It's only made worse by their unwillingness to: 1-admit that they had anything to do with creating the problem; 2-print out, write down, or simply remember what it was the message on their screen actually said; and 3-spend just a little bit of time to learn how to properly use the tools they need to do their everyday activities.
1.) _Most_ people who run an open wireless access point are doing so because they don't know it should be secured, or how to make it so,
--and--
2.) _Most_ ISPs providing connectivity to these people have within their TOS restrictions on "subletting" access;
the ethical approach is to assume that any open wireless access point is private, and refrain from using it, unless there is some specific indication that it is intended for open, public use (perhaps the SSID could be something like "FREEWIRELESS").
An approach of this sort would take most, if not all, of the second-guessing out of the situation. My take on the reaction to this, however, is that this would not satisfy most of those here who would rather have free access anywhere thay can find it, rather than having to actually purchase it.
Instead of intimidating, how about just plain bizarre -- Jack Nicholson as the Mac and Dennis Hopper as the PC (or the other way around; doesn't matter, it'd be a hoot either way).
Actually, Probability is the science. Statistics is the black art that is utilized in making public analyses or prognostications using the output from the probability practicioners. (Anyone remember the book "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics"?)
Slashdot Mirror
See:
http://harmonyhealth.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/your-sheriff-is-the-law-of-the-land/
From the referenced case (Case No. 2:96-cv-099-J), U.S. District Court decision:
"If a sheriff doesn't want the Feds in his county he has the constitutional right and power to keep them out, or ask them to leave, or retain them in custody."
and
Given, this is a Wyoming district court, but it's likely that AZ courts would see things the same way.
Don't be so sure about the feds' ability to do anything about the sheriff. The structure of our governmental system puts the sheriff in a pretty good position. From a column I found with a brief search:
"...the sheriff is the highest governmental authority in his county. Within that jurisdiction - inside his county - the sheriff has more power than the governor of his state. Indeed, the sheriff has more power in his county than the President of the United States. In his county, he can overrule the President and kick his people out. Remember, the President has few and limited powers."
Personally, if a real conservative were to be elected President, I'd like to see Sheriff Joe heading up Homeland Security.
I plan on having a good time (I usually do, no matter where I am - I enjoy the kind of interaction and human observation I expect to experience there.) I've also spent time living outdoors in various extreme environments (dusty desert and alkali flats included) that would discourage all but the hardiest few.
I was just pointing out a bit of the double standard imposed by the organizers who purport to espouse a philosophy of "anything goes (almost)". Rules that apply to all except the people making the rules just strikes me as fundamentally wrong.
Since you've attended before, I have a question you might be able to answer for me regarding those who would run around trying to steal from others at night: I am a light sleeper, and don't mind a bit of physical confrontation -- what are the rules for burying bodies on the playa? :)
--I know what you mean. I'm going to attend for the first time this year, primarily because my wife has the event on her "bucket list", but also to satisfy my morbid curiosity. I was reading through their site as well as the materials they sent us, and found that because the BM "economy" is based on "gifting" or barter, there are no sales of any goods or services allowed during the event. There are, however, two exceptions to this rule: BM organizers have reserved for themselves the ability to operate a "coffee shop" selling lattes, etc., and they will sell you ice at their "Arctica" location.
Remember, all of us are equal, but some are more equal than others...
There's just something a bit odd in the juxtaposition of "swish" and "menacingly" in the same sentence...
Gas from beans vs. Nuclear power .... hmmmmm Now I've got to consider which is more environmentally risky...
One of the problems with the general direction of this discussion is that there are many different entities being referred to generically as "ISP". Many of the posters are lumping all of them together, when in fact there are ISPs, ICPs, and IHPs, just for a start. ISP usually means an access provider, responsible only for getting a customer connected to the Internet. IHP, an Internet Hosting Provider does just that -- leases out server space for ICPs, Internet Content Providers, to house their sites.
In some cases, these overlap, and an ISP can, and in some cases does provide both the other services. In these cases, there probably is no common-carrier type of protection, as the provider may perform an editorial function in deciding what information is presented by their ICP function. In the example of an access-only provider, the applicability of common-carrier protection is more clear, unless the ISP is filtering the traffic based on content. (Filtering by traffic type, i.e.- P2P for network stability, is not content filtering, as varied content is transported via P2P, and no content as such is discriminated against.)
Agreed.
As I understand it, the Real ID requirement was mandated by congress. DHS is simply enforcing it as written.
And I've not seen any official references to a Real ID compliant driver's license being required to get a job. There is already a federal system to check social security numbers for that.
The big news in recent days is that Chertoff said that non-Real ID compliant DL's will not be acceptable for those wanting to fly on US-originated airline flights. He did state, though, that a passport would be valid for such purposes. Now for all you who think that the Real ID driver's license requirements are too much of a privacy intrusion, why not just get a passport? I got mine a couple of years ago, and all I needed was a photo and my birth certificate -- no fingerprints, no DNA, etc. -- simple.
As a matter of fact, if a law enforcement type ever asks for my DL, the only time I actually show the DL is if I'm driving, as that's the purpose of it. The rest of the time, I show my passport. The only information it has is my name, my birth date, and a passport number -- no address, no SS#, nothing. Drives em nuts, cause they just keep looking back and forth between it and me, and not really knowing what to do. They really don't know how to treat it: they can't run it against a state or federal database, because they have no access to State Dept. records, they can't cross reference it with any of their traffic or criminal records, and it leaves them feeling a bit out of their league.
They usually just nod, grunt, and give it back, then leave me alone. Priceless!
"If you see a Jefferson Memorial High School, do you think that Jefferson is being remembered for that school?" --Depends. Would that be Thomas or George?
If I understand correctly, the grace period is 5 days, and NSI holds the name for 4 days, presumably releasing it just before they would be committed to buy it. How about modifying the proposed lookup scripts to check again late on the third day? Would this possibly have the effect of having NSI's timer reset, and thus causing them to fail to release the hold on the 5th day(3days+4days=7days -- oops, looks like NSI just bought a domain for a year)?
I could be wrong, but might it work?
Wow, sorry for the run-together formatting. The preview had it laid out in paragraphs, and I thought it would post that way.
Sorry to be the wet blanket here, but this is cut-and-pasted directly from Comcast's AUP: (snip) Prohibited Uses and Activities Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to: run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers; ...
if the Service is used in a way that Comcast or its suppliers, in their sole discretion, believe violate this AUP, Comcast or its suppliers may take any responsive actions they deem appropriate. These actions include, but are not limited to, temporary or permanent removal of content, cancellation of newsgroup posts, filtering of Internet transmissions, and the immediate suspension or termination of all or any portion of the Service. Neither Comcast nor its affiliates, suppliers, or agents will have any liability for any these responsive actions. These actions are not Comcast's exclusive remedies and Comcast may take any other legal or technical action it deems appropriate.
(snip)
Now, any of you with any shred of honesty has to admit that in function, your P2P torrent client is also a server, and that falls under this prohibition. Doesn't matter if you're DL'ing Shrek3, Debbie Does Dallas, or the latest Debian distro -- the program is still a server, and Comcast has already told all of its subscribers what they may do (read the part about "filtering of Internet transmissions...may take any other legal or technical action...").
Don't like it? Unfortunately you agreed to it when you signed up for service. How can this be fraud, when they told you up front they might take this type of action? Unhappy now? Vote with your feet and your wallet, otherwise realize that they own the ball field, the bases, the bat, balls and gloves -- you want to play the game, you have to play by their rules.
Like I said, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm just a messenger.
More accurately, the decision in the Hiibel case stated that a "suspect" may be required to identify himself, and that this could be done as simply as stating his name. There was no requirement to produce any documentation corroborating such verbal identification.
It would appear, then, that the first question you should ask an officer in these circumstances, is whether or not he has reasonable suspicion to believe you are responsible for an offense (a suspect, in other words.) If he answers in the affirmative, the most information you are required to provide is a verbal response as to your name. If negative, there does not seem to be any requirement for you to answer at all. Asking the officer the question regarding reasonable suspicion has the added benefit of getting him to commit up front as to the legality of the detainment.
As ever, IANAL, and this is simply my understanding of the decision as I read it.
Some time ago, I was an asst. mgr at a grocery store. I was in the centrally located office area, overseeing the cash register line, when I heard a sound from a hallway across from my position. A young man was running out of the hallway from our store security office, followed by one of our security officers, Bob. Bob had been "interviewing" this person following his attempted exit from the store with an unpaid-for bottle of Jack Daniels Whiskey, when he bolted out of the security office. (We had him on video, dead-to-rights.)
On instinct alone, I vaulted the office half-door, and chased the runner across the store's exit area and out the door, finally stopping him with a flying tackle in the parking lot. He unfortunately scraped significant portions of his face across the asphalt -- (I felt soooooo bad -- not!)
It may not be politically correct in this day and age, and might have gotten me involved in a lawsuit today, but DAMN, it felt good! (BTW, this was approx. 1983, and he was convicted.)
I'd never chance it in today's legal climate.
Maybe the editors were concerned about offending nudists or the Amish?
Now this is primarily just an academic exercise, but isn't a rip of a CD to MP3 files really just an approximation or translation, not an exact duplicate? Much of the hubbub I've read is the claim that the danger to the recording industry presented by digital music is that the possibility of "perfect" digital copies exists. That's why there's far less resistance to the act of recording something from the radio in an analog fashion -- the inherent flaws present in an analog recording.
So, at what point do we consider the degradation of recording to be sufficient to be tolerable? As a lossy method, MP3's are an inherently imperfect copy of the original, differentiated only by degree from an analog recording.
I know we're splitting hairs here, but I wanted to hear anybody else's thoughts along these lines.
Disclaimer: Neither Comcast or Cox is available to me, nor is DSL or Cable Internet from Charter, so I have no axe to grind. As a matter of fact, I have no opinion at all as to any of these companies. So far as I can see, through all the bitching about Comcast, one thing is missing: actual proof of the phrase "Unlimited Bandwidth" being used as a teaser to entice one to subscribe to their service. Now, I'm no fan of Comcast (see above), but I find it difficult to believe, without some evidence to the contrary, that their legal dept would let the phrase be used. I find it far more likely that those grousing about the situation somehow convinced themselves that they were subscribing to "unlimited bandwidth", when in fact what was touted was probably along the lines of "unlimited access" or some such phrase. I deal with customers in a retail-and-service environment on a daily basis, and I find that no matter how clearly and carefully I explain something to a customer, they hear what they want to hear, not what I said to them. It's human nature. If you dont think that Comcast has covered their backsides seven ways from Sunday in both their advertising and their AUP/TOS, you are simply deceiving yourself. If you're griping, ask yourself this: If they built the ballfield, provided the bases, balls, bats, and gloves, AND wrote the rule book, why do you think that you're going to have any luck convincing them, even though you agreed to play by those rules, that they told you something entirely different that wasn't actually in the book? Face it, it's their game. The only thing you can do is quit it and go find another game to take part in. Quitchyerbitchin and get on with your life.
RE: the email notifications you say you ignored: Most ISP TOS/AUP docs (remember, you agreed to these as a condition of use of the service) I've seen state that any notice sent to the primary email address of the access account you have with them shall be a legally-sufficient notification. It seems to me that you should have checked it at least occasionally, and if you didn't -- your problem, not theirs.
Agreed!
Now, for all the fans of municipal ownership/operation of the network: you liken this to the roads and/or the water systems. What is missing in this analogy is that these things are simply Layer 1 equivalents. You need to remember that without competent management of the other layers of network, there will be nothing but chaos and disarray. Also, the already-existing utility-type systems spoken of are not constantly under attack and stretched to the limit by their equivalents of spam, DDOS, high-bandwidth movie & music downloading, customers (knowingly or not) introducing nasty viruses to the system, and the like.
Quite frankly, I do not believe that a municipality would or should have the type people on staff to properly run a network of this magnitude. Nor do I believe that very many of the type of people who "work" in the government have the personality traits of focus and intensity of purpose it takes to build and maintain a wireless, community-wide network. I know a number of people who do this type of work, and the typical "it's 5:00, time to go" attitude of government workers would never fly in their high-availability, high-pressure environment. It takes dedicated people with a vision of what they're building and delivering to their customers. I've been there, done that, and I greatly admire the people who build and run the networks.
In my experience, the qualities that are necessary to do it right are not the government's strong suit.
Inspired by the discussion, I did a little "sightseeing" myself. Is it just me, or is the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas missing? The tower's shadow is there, pointing NNE, but I can't make out the actual tower structure. Maybe it's just too far past my bedtime, but I can't see it.
Maybe not deliberate, but the result of parallax due to different satellite passes? I don't know, but it's kinda weird.
I feel your pain.
I own and operate a small rural ISP. Here's a couple of true stories from the last week:
Guy #1 calls up, says he told Outlook Express to go ahead & compact his email folders when it offered to. Now he can't get to some of the messages that were in his Inbox. Wants us to fix it on the server for him. Gets upset & threatens to quit when we tell him that we can't; it's a problem on his computer, not on our servers; and he'll likely have to pay a tech to try to retrieve them from whatever purgatory OE banished them to on his computer. Hung up on us.
Guy #2 walks into our shop. (We operate a computer repair business, as well.) Says he downloaded & installed Internet Explorer 7, and now things aren't working right on his computer, (now THERE's a surprise...). We suggest he write down everything he can think of that's not working right, and bring in the list and the computer, and we'll look it over & see what we can do. He snarls. "It's NOT a hardware problem," & stomps out without giving us any opportunity to clarify for him.
We try to help the customer, we really do. But when their attitude starts out that the problem is somehow our fault, it's difficult to get past that to the stage where we can get enough infromation from them to begin to help them. I think that what's being discussed is our frustrated reaction to their intolerance and impatience. It's only made worse by their unwillingness to: 1-admit that they had anything to do with creating the problem; 2-print out, write down, or simply remember what it was the message on their screen actually said; and 3-spend just a little bit of time to learn how to properly use the tools they need to do their everyday activities.
"...install dirtbags on airliners..."
;)
You mean that even after all the anti-terrorist precautions you want to let patent attorneys fly?
Well. OK, as long as they WILL be jettisoned at 35,000 feet.
Actually, since:
1.) _Most_ people who run an open wireless access point are doing so because they don't know it should be secured, or how to make it so,
--and--
2.) _Most_ ISPs providing connectivity to these people have within their TOS restrictions on "subletting" access;
the ethical approach is to assume that any open wireless access point is private, and refrain from using it, unless there is some specific indication that it is intended for open, public use (perhaps the SSID could be something like "FREEWIRELESS").
An approach of this sort would take most, if not all, of the second-guessing out of the situation. My take on the reaction to this, however, is that this would not satisfy most of those here who would rather have free access anywhere thay can find it, rather than having to actually purchase it.
Instead of intimidating, how about just plain bizarre -- Jack Nicholson as the Mac and Dennis Hopper as the PC (or the other way around; doesn't matter, it'd be a hoot either way).
Actually, Probability is the science. Statistics is the black art that is utilized in making public analyses or prognostications using the output from the probability practicioners. (Anyone remember the book "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics"?)