I thought this was worthy for cross posting to my journal.

    For the 2012 election, the answer is easy.

        Write in JWSmythe!

        I promise restoration of the rights of all people, as protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

        I promise transparency in our government, and open public audit of all government projects.

        I promise revocation of the Income Tax (25% of your income for most citizens), to be replaced by a 2% sales tax. This effectively gives a 23% raise to all working citizens.

        I promise increase in tariffs on foreign goods to be no less than 2% of the retail value, to encourage growth in the industrial sectors of America.

        I promise immediate closure of all tax "loop holes" to ensure all "big money" corporations pay in their fair share.

        I promise yearly "dividend" payments to the citizens of the United States on any excess tax paid by the citizens and profit from foreign tariffs.

        I promise health care in the form of open access doctors and hospitals to be no less than 25% of the total medical service field (at least 25% of doctors will be free for the citizens). You may still purchase insurance, and doctors may still provide special expert service, but for those who can't afford it, free services are available, and more positions will be available for both new and skilled doctors.

        I promise open borders, reducing the lengthy and confusing immigration/emigration procedures. Diverse and contridactory policies exist now, including Canadians who are welcome across the friendly open borders, but Mexicans who are frequently detained, arrested, or left to die in military style borders and checkpoints. This will reduce operational costs for enforcement agencies by billions yearly.

        I promise retiring the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, returning their duties to the appropriate intelligence agencies. This removes over $55 billion in yearly government expenses that are simply not necessary.

        And oddly enough, I'm dead serious. I'm not a billionaire, so I cannot afford the campaign. The estimated cost for the 2008 Presidential election was $1.6 billion per candidate. Neither established party back me. I would hurt their corporate interests.

        And yes, I am an American born citizen. I have traveled to the majority of US states, and both bordering nations. I don't know everything, but I know people who I can trust who are experts in their fields. No individual can run the country properly, but a good team will return the United States to it's prior reputation of the nation all others want to emulate, rather than the most powerful and embarrassing nation in the world.

I agree that we've pretty much both said a good amount for our piece each. I appreciate the civil discourse, and the insight you offer me into your frame of mind. I wouldn't call it alien, and I understand the desires and hopes that you wish to accomplish, just have different weights on what matters. :)

So, to sum up, "Thanks"

I got a fun pre-xmas present, a new Phenom II X4 955. It's a 3.4Ghz CPU that runs very happily at 4Ghz. The previous occupant in that socket was an Athlon II X4 2.8Ghz, that ran happily for a year at 3Ghz.

    I spent an hour fiddling with overclock settings, and settled at 4.2Ghz (more or less). While sitting with just the browser open, Asus Probe (temp, fan, and voltage monitor) started screaming that the core voltage was above threshold. At about 6pm, there was a thunk, and everything went dark. I'm not sure if it was the power supply or motherboard died. I had ongoing problems with the motherboard since I got it, where bios settings would mysteriously change themselves after weeks of working normally. The power supply wasn't anything spectacular, but it seemed to work. I headed down to CompUSA, and picked up a new power supply, motherboard, and I decided that the drives weren't fast enough, so I picked up a pair of 1.5Tb SATA drives to run as a RAID0. Mmm. More speed.. :)

    I got home at about 8pm. I dismantled the whole thing, and had it reassembled in about 10 minutes. Now I have two blank drives in position (ports 1 & 2), the old drive (port 4), and the DVD player (port 6). I poke around in the BIOS a bit, getting everything set right, and setting the drives as a RAID0. I boot up to a trusty Linux CD to start the transfer. Blah, the RAID controller is really a software raid. I see both disks. There are fixes, I'm just not that far yet. I decide to just copy everything to the first SATA drive, and I'll RAID other parts later. My girlfriend would like to watch a movie with me, as I set up all my theater equipment in our new "theater room" (DLP projector, 8' wide screen, 7 speakers all properly placed and tuned +- 1dB). All I have to do is get the transfer started, and go watch the movie.

    dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc bs=1024k

    Seems simple enough, right? I switch to another console, and kill -USR1 $pid , to see where it's at. 2GB transfered. Great. The partition table should already be written. fdisk -l /dev/sda shows nothing. hmmm. fdisk -l /dev/sdc shows nothing.

    Aw fuck.

    It dawns on me, I'm not cloning the old drive to the new ones, I'm cloning the empty drive over my data! ABORT ABORT ABORT!

    Well, the partition table is gone, and presumably the beginning of the drive is overwritten, so none of that will be recovered. I think I have enough crap on there to fluff it a bit. My first and second partitions were Linux, which is easily replaced. The third and fourth partition hold Windows 7 and all my current work. The fifth partition holds all my virtual machines, which are my testbed for all kinds of fun things. Employment essential aren't a big deal, they're replicated at work, and on backups there. It's things like the 5,000 pictures that I took over the years, that I reacquired from various sources, which are now almost organized to store and back up, but I haven't finished. And a few videos including a 1hr 15min video of a live band that I'm including 400 stills into to make a good video of their performance.

    With tools on the TRK, I've been able to see the partitions to recover, but since I'm not totally familiar with the particular tool, it's been a slow process. Reading across a 1Tb drive, it takes hours. Even still, I'm not totally sure I could convince Windows to clone to the array, rather than using just one drive.

    So now, I'm starting off with a fresh Windows install. The Windows installer sees the array. I'm using 1Tb for Windows (2 1.5Tb drives RAID0 = 3Tb). Once I have a working machine again, and can play WOW with my girlfriend (she likes playing it), I'll be happier, and then can repair the messed up drive overnight on a few nights.

    The only real problems I had on the old machine were that it couldn't play Stargate: Revolution (crashes after a few minutes), and I wasn't totally satisfied with the drive speed. According to the "Windows Experience Index", my scores were:

Component
Processor 7.3
Memory (RAM) 7.3
Graphics 6.6
Gaming graphics 6.6
Primary hard disk 5.9

(current "max" score is 7.9)

    When I've looked at machines in the stores, this is way above any retail box. I just wanted to get the drive speed in line with the other parts. Dammit. So it'll take a few days to get it up and working properly. Until then, I'll be limping along on the laptop. :) No video editing on the laptop though, it just isn't fast enough, even though it's only a few months old.

Processor 3.2
Memory 4.9
Graphics 3.0
Gaming graphics 4.5
Primary hard disk 5.4

It's amazing how some people are so quick to talk about rationing and "death panels" that will kill people after the Government takes over healthcare, yet they fail to recognize the death panels that are already operating.

A woman operating under Medicaid--the insurance granted to people who are too poor to provide for their own healthcare--was dealing with liver failure and needed a transplant. After being forced to convert to a private healthcare plan as part of an overhaul that seems to be a large part of the anti-socialist agenda of taking every public service and turning it into a for-profit private industry, Alisa Wilson was continuously denied the transplant that was medically necessary to save her life.

Would this poor woman still be alive today if we had a universal healthcare system? This isn't something that can truly be answered, because there are a hojillion factors that go into who gets a transplant and who does not. However, we could at least be sure that this woman's care would have been provided on a per-need basis, rather than a profit basis.

Life and Death choices are made all the time by doctors, and insurance providers. It's absolutely ridiculous to pretend like "death panels" will spontaneously pop into existence under universal healthcare... they already exist, and they're being run by profit mongering corporatists right now.

EVERY party in the United States has some socialist policies.

This is an undeniable fact.

Labeling the Democrats as "Socialist" however does a number of things:
a) it steps on the toes of the Socialist Party of the United States, and all the other socialist parties. But that's a third party, so who cares.
b) the socialist parties all agree that the Democrats aren't socialist enough.
c) the people who openly call themselves socialists don't consider Democrats socialists.
d) nobody but the people on the right seem to think that Democrats are socialists.

So, defining Democrats as socialists just muddies the waters and makes an already overloaded term even more overloaded, and makes it impossible to keep shit straight.

"But I can quote some obscure French guy who says socialism is blah, which I can shoehorn into applying to blah."

God damn it, you're fucking playing semantics games. The people who proudly wear the term "Socialist" don't think Democrats are socialist enough to be "Socialist". How more clearly can I put this? Ideas and plans, and programs, all of these can be socialist, or at least a part of socialism, and the whole god damn United States is already chock full of socialist programs, many of which the right openly support as well.

The United States is already partly a socialist country. We practice some socialism here. This is again, undeniable fact. Are Democrats pushing us towards more socialism rather than less? Well, yeah, they are. But to those of us standing squarely in the "fucking dissolve all corporations and hand over the reigns to the workers" Socialists are still going to bitch and moan every god damn time you call the Democrats socialists, because either you're making a statement that applies to every god damn politician in the country, or you're equating them to us... and we think they're nearly as bat-shit crazy right-wing as you are.

So, let's stop arguing about people being socialist or not, because the term applies as well to Republicans as to Democrats. Let's label people Socialists when they're part of a Socialist party, and we can get to discussing PROGRAMS and governmental actions that are either socialist or not.

Beyond all of which, WHY WOULD THE RIGHT FUCKING CARE if the Democrats are socialists or not? I only care that people call them socialists, because they're not a fucking Socialist party. You know what? Republicans are also democrats! Because you know, they advocate a form of democratic government. And Democrats are republicans, because you know, they advocate for a republican form of government.

These party terms are so fucking overloaded that they can't be used anymore. And what fucking politician in the United States is not a die hard democrat, republican and socialist? Of course, only some of them are Democrats, Republicans or Socialists. So, we confine our discussion to those party names, not to the generic ideas, because seriously... pudge? You're a fucking democrat, too.

From Captain Splendid, I was made aware that pudge made a response to my most recent journal entry, funny thing, even though the journal entry was posted yesterday, it already seems to be archived, meaning no one can post any new comments to it. Funny how someone with admin rights of a blog can fuck with the rules for his own purposes...

Anyways, in this newest JE, he presents an alternative definition to socialism from the one that I had presented, which was then used to craft the valid statement (under that definition): "Obama is a socialist."

First of all, get this straight, I don't think "socialist" is an epithet, so playing semantic games just to throw a label on someone, is kind of retarded. This is similar to Marxist Hacker 42 in his most recent journal labeling "tax cuts" as a "liberal" idea, and then using this to throw the label of "liberal" onto Reagan. I responded in his particular JE about how retarded this is, as every single politician in the US currently could thusly be cast as "liberal", thus negating any use of the term.

So, let's take a look at the definition of "socialism" that pudge provides from Bastait:

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole -- with their common aim of legal plunder -- constitute socialism.

So, let's look here. Every single politician of the United States since its inception has vouched for one or another of these ideas. So thus, under the definition afforded by pudge, George Washington was a socialist. George W. Bush is a socialist. EVERYONE is a god-damned socialist.

So, thus, this raises the question... what use does this term hold? I mean, at least "human being" doesn't describe every animal on the planet. "Animal" excludes plants from life forms, and even "life forms" excludes inanimate objects from the universe of discourse. But when your universe of discourse is "politics", and your term applies to EVERY SINGLE ENTITY within that set... why not just label it the universal term: "politics"?

But no... we'd rather find a term that applies to every single entity in the universe of discourse, thus we can apply it to anyone we dislike... like say... an personally unpopular president. Bonus points, when the term is widely regarded as a epithet, because of a fear-mongering witch-hunt driving crackpot.

So, congratulations pudge! You've managed to construct a definition of "socialism" broadly enough that you can include Obama as a socialist... too bad you've made the hole so big that Bush II is now a socialist. (Remember all that work he did trying to fix public schools?)

Rather, let's actually take a look at what Bastait was likely trying to drive at here: Programs and ideas are socialist, sure, of course. But being for just a single socialist idea doesn't make you a socialist, otherwise the term loses all meaning. Nothing good comes of using a term that can be so broadly applied that it applies to anything and everything relevant to the discussion. So, we need a better definition of "socialist" rather than just "Is for at least one idea that is a part of socialism".

So, let's go back to the list, and look at them in detail:
* tariffs: nearly every politician supports this. In particular, the Constitution puts exclusive rights to tariffs with the Federal Government. The Founding Fathers were socialists?
* protection: broad category... does military defense apply? I presume protectionism: I'm against it. But conservatives are for
* benefits: broad category, what doesn't apply? I presume work benefits: I may be in a minority here, who thinks it's a good thing that jobs provide healthcare, vacation time, and sick leave. I know, I've got those CRAZY socialist ideas...
* subsidies: sometimes good, sometimes bad. Even conservatives have subsidies that they're behind
* encouragements: again, another super broad term. What doesn't apply? Aren't there encouragements for marriage? Focus on the Family and National Organization for Marriage are socialist organizations!?
* progressive taxation: yes, I hold the super crazy idea that people with more money should be paying more taxes. There is a minimum amount of money required to live, and for anyone living around or near that amount of money, every dollar matters more. You think Bill Gates would notice a $1,000 extra tax burden? Do you think Jane Doe working as single mom at a minimum wage job would notice?
* public schools: Show me a politician in the US who thinks we should ditch public schools entirely (and all public funds to education), and I will show you an unelectable politician.
* guaranteed jobs: maybe I'm crazy to think that if someone wants to work, that they should be able to have a job. I also don't think that the employer should hold as much power over employees as they do. Leaving a job means being without support until one finds a new job. So, you can't just quit a job that is harmful to you. And being forced to stay in a current job that is harmful, while looking for a new job, and until said new job has been found, is intolerably cruel. If one could be guaranteed a position at another company, or ANYWHERE that would support them after they leave a harmful job... well, then I think the world would be a better place, because employees would actually jump ship from a harmful job, and put the company out of business... the invisible hand of self interest cannot work for employees as long as there is not a surplus of jobs in their field.
* guaranteed profits: entirely against them. One needs a way to weed out bad companies.
* minimum wages: I may be crazy, but I think that people deserve a living wage. See above comments about guaranteed jobs. If I'm working for only 50 cents an hour, then my employer is abusing me. "So just leave!" says the free marketeer... yet, then I'm making 0 cents an hour. Awesome, you just killed my entire income.
* right to relief: Burton's Legal Thesaurus seems to point me to "cause of action". So... anyone in favor of being able to go to courts to receive fair compensation for injury and harm should be labeled a socialist? "Your Honor, the defendant asked me to borrow $1,000. I loaned him the money under the understanding that he would return that value, with interest of $100, in two years time. Here is the signed and notarized contract." The judge: "Excuse me plaintiff, but it seems you're a SOCIALIST... case dismissed."
* a right to the tools of labor: I'm sure the author had something specific in mind here, but I seriously have no clue what he's going on about...
* free credit: Perhaps he means credit without interest? Or credit granted to people who don't deserve it? I find the idea a poor one. I would not expect anyone to grant me a credit line (except the federal government for a student loan, because they cannot be discharged in bankruptcy without some serious hardship.) Anyone who does would have to realize that they're throwing away money... so, I suppose if they want to be idiots enough to hand me free money, I won't complain...
* and so on, and so on: finishing up the broad categories of socialism with the indeterminate phrase of "there's a ton more here, than I care to list, but since the above list covers everyone already, why the hell do I think it necessary to make the list seem longer?" *shrug*

So, this entire list is bogus in the first place. The author is just throwing every conceivable thing that he disagrees with and labeling it "socialism". What a wonderful word... taxes are now "legal plunder" so they are socialism. Even taxing people to pay for the common defense of the states is now socialism... YAY! Sure there are things that are not socialism: criminal offenses of the law, punishing criminals, the common defense of the states ITSELF... but how are you going to pay for any of this? That's right... through LEGAL PLUNDER. A government cannot do anything at all without LEGAL PLUNDER... that is, unless it's using ILLEGAL plunder, but then who would hold them accountable? You with your AR-15 rifle and about 5 magazines of ammo, against tanks and smart bombs, and worse? HAHAHAHhahahahaha... "second amendment resolutions" for the lose.

I'm going to make up a list of things that I'm against, and I'm going to label it... "bullshit". Everything that I disagree with is now "bullshit", and anyone who is for even one of those ideas is now an "asshole". Congratulations pudge, you're ab asshole... oh, and Captain Splendid, I love you man, and I think you're great, but you disagree with me on at least one topic, so you're an asshole as well. HOLY CRAP, my own mom is an asshole!!! This world is going to hell in a handbasket, because everyone disagrees with me about at least one thing, I mean, because everyone but me is an asshole. I must be the ONLY sane person left in the world, wtf?!?!?!!?

Sarcasm aside... defining things so broadly it refers effectively to everyone and then using it to apply it to a single person you're against belies the point that you're referring to EVERYONE anymore. Hey, pudge! You're a real human being... And you breathe oxygen. And I really can't believe that you eat food. It's just disgraceful.

A little while ago, someone on Slashdot pointed me at the Sale of Goods Act in relation to purchased electronics. The act, for those unfamiliar with it, requires that goods be 'suitable for the purpose for which sold.' This is a fairly broad term, but it basically means that they must be able to do anything that the seller claims that they can do. Under this law, you have 6 years from the date of purchase to file a lawsuit if the item does not match the claims.

This was relevant to me because my MacBook Pro is now out of warranty and the battery is dying. Looking in the System Profiler, its full charge capacity was showing up as 1476mAh after 56 charges. When new, it was 5500mAh. These numbers don't mean anything by themselves, but Apple claims that their batteries retain 80% of their full charge capacity after 300 charge cycles. Claiming this means that a battery that does not retain 4400mAh after 300 charge cycles is not suitable for the purpose for which sold, and they are legally required to refund or replace it (irrespective of the time that has elapsed, although I can only sue them if they don't within 6 years of the time of sale).

I called their support line and was put through to an Indian woman, who explained that the warranty had expired. I quoted the relevant parts of law to her, and (after being kept on hold for a bit), was transferred to someone senior. He very quickly agreed to send out a replacement battery.

Interestingly, he did not ask that the original battery be sent out, nor that I provide a credit card number where I would be billed if the battery turned out not to be defective. I've had two batteries replaced in warranty, and this was standard procedure then, so apparently I get better service out of warranty. I don't have a great deal of use for a battery that only lasts about 35 minutes on a full charge, but I'll probably keep it as a spare.

As always, it pays to know the law. It's a shame that Apple, which claims to be a customer-focussed company, doesn't educate its support team about this though. Possibly the Indian call centre deals with people from everywhere English speaking, while the Irish one only deals with people in the UK and Ireland, so the people there are more familiar with British law, but if I had not quoted the relevant act then I would have been charged £99 for a battery, on top of the £1.50 it cost to call their support line for half an hour.

A socialist purports social policies that directly attack the exploitation of the haves against the have nots. The Rich should have higher taxes, they have a higher moral obligation to provide to the social good, because they've benefited more from the social good. Employers should not have the power in a corporation, the EMPLOYEES should have all the power.

There will come a time, where running a corporation through any other means than a democratically elected republican management will be viewed in the same way that we view dictatorships... HARSHLY.

Obama does not stand for this idea, and is FOR THAT REASON not a socialist. It's a moderate, a centrist. That he's proposing support systems to protect HUMAN DIGNITY against tarnish is not a sign of socialism. Republicans agree that slavery is a tarnish against Human Dignity. That one must be paid for their work, and that humans cannot be owned.

It is a common exercise in Ethics classes to consider the situation of a starving child stealing a loaf of bread in order to stave off starvation. Is the child justified? Ethics finds this to be a grey area. How has our society decided to resolve this situation? If you are unable to afford food, then we will grant you public money to purchase food, so that you do not have to steal that food, even though it could be argued as justified under the legal doctrine of necessity.

Go on, I dare you. Argue the side that claims that people do not deserve by Human Dignity to be fed (not on filet mignon, but just fed). That they do not deserve by Human Dignity to have housing, safety, protection from fire, prevention of life-threatening medical conditions. All of these policies are implemented openly and "happily" all but unanimously by Americans.

Now, I want you to load of up a picture of the most pity-worthy starving child in Africa. I want you to ask yourself: "What does this person deserve to have, just because they are human?" Food? Somewhere to be protected from the elements? If they're coughing and sick, don't they deserve to be seen by a doctor? Who could argue against the natural human social behavior of empathy to provide for those in need?

Now, when you talk about denying healthcare to someone, just because they can't afford it... I want you to ask yourself... Who the fuck are you to deny humanity from another human being? What's next, stealing candy from a baby, because it didn't pay for it?

Pamela Geller is despicable.
  I mean really despicable. If this country is or was ever great, than 9/11 should be no more than a triviality compared to its greatness. Compared to what this country represents, the fact that 19 lunatics with boxcutters flew planes into some buildings and killed 3000 people should be nothing but a blip on our history.

Instead, we've got people like Geller trying to make it the American Reichstag. I've never been more ashamed of other Americans than I am of Geller and Gingrich and Reid and anybody who's tried to turn the building of a community center into something ugly. Even if the people behind this community center were everything they're being accused of, it still does not excuse the kind of behavior I've seen these past few weeks.

I've never felt so disgusted with other Americans. I wish I could pass myself off as Canadian, honest to god. I wish I could get a goddamn visa to live in Finland or Belgium or evem goddamned Serbia. Anything but a country where people like Geller and Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved get treated like patriots for (and despite!) denigrating such basic, founding principles as freedom of religion and property rights. They say things like "oh, it's not about freedom of religion and property rights, it's about good taste". Good taste! Now the standard for freedom of speech is supposed to be good taste. And they say "oh, the muslim group must compromise". If they "must" then it's not a goddamn compromise. I don't care if you hate the idea of a community center with a mosque built near ground zero or near your house. If you go on television and try to compare it to Nazis putting signs up at Auschwitz, that makes you the scum of the Earth. You share a hell with the religious fundamentalists that perpetrated the crime in the first place.

So ten years after the fact, this bunch is going to turn into a bunch of drama queens over 9/11, turn the site of the Twin Towers into hallowed ground (or, as Ben Quale says, "hollowed ground"). Is the USA such a flimsy society? Are Americans such weak sisters that they're going to turn a tragedy into a pyre on which to burn each other (yes, the people who want to build the community center are Americans. Yes, there are bombs being thrown at mosques throughout the US in the last few days. Yes, there are "Americans" burning korans in Wal-Mart parking lots. Fucking mutts). I'm so tired of you, America. Never missing a chance to tell the world how great you are, how superior, how above the behavior of "terrorists" but the veneer of your Christian "reformation" turns out to be pretty goddamned thin, after all.

Things like this make me wish there actually was an afterlife where people were judged for their behavior on Earth. I'm willing to do the time for my crimes, as long as I can do it with the knowledge that people who've tried to spread this kind of ugliness were going to do the time for theirs. I'm so tired of you, America.

Rewriting history textbooks isn't nearly enough for the Religious Right. It appears that the "conservative alternative to Wikipedia, "Conservapedia" has some serious issues with Einstein, too.

The first note in the references section of the Conservapedia entry on "Counter-examples to Relativity" will be of special interest to any physicists out there.

I guess that Colbert's throwaway joke about "reality having a liberal bias" was truer than he knew.

Why does it have to be so hard?

And finding a boyfriend? That, too.

WTF is finding anything important in life so freaking hard. I really hate that so much of my life has been handed to me on a silver platter, because I have no real sense of applying effort. Sometimes I have had such great luck, but luck is sporadic, and I'm in a giant dry spell right now.

I'm crazy intelligent, and I have had this independently recognized through various awards, but no one cares about how intelligent you are, because they only care about work experience. And right now, there's this wonderful question of "why haven't you worked in two years?" And it's like; honestly, I could answer that, but your HR department would pop an aneurysm over the answer.

I've managed to dig myself into a pretty crappy hole (more accurately, this hole kind of dug itself, I didn't really lift a finger at it) and I really don't know how to get out of it right now.

Have a "boyfriend" who is kind of an enabler of my laziness hasn't really helped either... I honestly think the guy would let me get away with murder...

I hate it when I put work into humor and no one notices, so maybe some folks will notice it here. :)

    There was a story a few days ago titled Giant Planet Nine Times the Mass of Jupiter Found

    Thread, segue, tangent, and a reference to Space Panda's, I doctored up
    this photo.

    Who can't love a cute cuddly planet eating space panda?

    Too bad we can't embed images into the comments, it would have been funnier faster.

    So, enjoy. :)

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Bill Dog for being a reasonable, respectful debate partner.

I can deal with people calling me "evil" when they're not being belligerent about it.

Keep up the reasonable attitude!

I found a pointer to the actual complaint filed in the District Court of Arizona titled "Martin H. Escobar vs Jan Brewer et al."

A lot of arguments are made throughout much of the complaint about violations of various rights, however towards the end of the complaint is actually, what I perceive as being the most significant piece:

Count Six, "Federal Preemption & Unauthorized or Supervised Federal Immigration Conduct" allegation 58:

Hm, well, let's take a look at these laws shall we? 8 U.S.C. 1357:

What a love piece of law this is... it's like it sets out the legal way that a state or local officer or employee may enforce the immigration laws of the United States. And it requires written federal consent.

I believe that I have stated before that my primary issue with this bill was that Arizona lacks the legal authority to enforce US Immigration Laws, and this pretty much explicitly states how they could get that authority. Yet, rather than follow legal channels, they've decided to just hop the border and do what they want to do.

Any one find some irony in this? That the people calling out for the Federal government to enforce the law... are calling for their state and local governments to break the law themselves? What happened to the importance of "Rule of Law" and "Do it right, or don't do it at all!"

Note: (10)(A) allows the officers to communicate with the Federal Attorney General if they find out someone is illegal, but by federal statutory law they do not have the authority to question someone's immigration status themselves.

If the AZ law held only that Police had to take due responsibility to validate the immigration status of individuals in custody before release (one of the provisions that it does provide) then things would be ok. You have already collected their information, and so you just run it by the AG, and they come back perhaps with a "nope, he's not documented, please detain him until we can take custody". VIOLA, IT'S FUCKING LEGAL.

The whole thing boils down to this. Even if Arizona had specific written authorization for every employee and officer of their state and local governments, each of those individuals would require them to have "knowledge of, and adhere to, Federal law relating to the function" and have written certification, that they have "received adequate training regarding the enforcement of relevant Federal immigration laws." and even then they would be "subject to the direction and supervision of the Attorney General."

While people are purporting that the AZ law mirrors US immigration law, the fact is that it attempts to establish a unilateral cooperation that requires bilateral agreement, and fails to establish the proper authority and supervision of state and local employees.

That's all I have to say about this... you can argue until you're blue in the face, but the law is the fucking law. Yes, it is absolute fact that the immigrants need to have their paperwork on them. Yes, it is absolute fact that immigrants can be questioned by lawfully authorized representatives of the Federal government. But No, it is absolute fact that SB 1070 does not establish the proper authority.

Some time around 2005, Slashdot ran an article about a new hosting company, MacMiniColo that was taking advantage of the new machines that Apple had just released to offer cheap hosting. I got in contact with them, and a little while later, I had a Mac Mini, sitting in a rack somewhere, running OpenBSD and acting as my dedicated server. A 1.42GHz G4 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB disk was (and still is) more than adequate for my needs. The biggest load on it is eJabberd, and even that only used under 1% of the CPU.

I had really great service from these people. The hard drive failed a little under a year after I bought the Mini, and Apple refused to honour the warranty because they couldn't find the records of the sale (then, a few weeks later, they could, but by then it was out of the warranty period). MacMiniColo replaced the disk for me at their own expense.

After five years with them, however, I had a little look around and noticed that VPS hosting has gone down in price a lot. I've written a book on Xen, so I thought I might try a Xen-based VPS now that FreeBSD has Xen support.

GigaTux only claims to offer Linux, but I dropped them an email and they were happy to install FreeBSD for me. I still haven't tried the Xen-enabled kernel yet; they installed the stock x86-64 kernel in an HVM domain for me and performance has been fantastic.

I'm sharing a server with 64 other guests and in spite of that performance tends to be better than my ageing Mac Mini. I was getting 1000IOPS while untaring the ports tree, which is far more than the Mini's old 2.5" laptop drive could handle, and is amazing considering that it's going via the slow, QEMU-derived, emulated device, rather than the fast PV driver. I've been installing software from ports, so everything is compiled on the machine, and even that has been fast.

And my Mini? They found someone else who wants it, and offered me about a third of what I paid for it originally - not bad depreciation after five years of constant use. Shipping it back to the UK would have cost almost as much as buying one on eBay, so I sold it on. Hopefully someone else will get some good use out of it.

As an aside, I've been really impressed by how well OpenBSD works on Mac/PowerPC hardware. If you've got an old Mac Mini lying around, chuck OpenBSD on it and you've got a reasonable low-volume server. The newer ones, of course, are x86 hardware, so will run just about anything.