One of my favorite quotes is from Jerry Pournelle. "The poor are what the rich use to scare the middle class into working." The wealthy have already left us behind. The rest of us will be the ones fighting wars they start and continue, running out of food, water and medicine.

Seriously? How can you be that naive on /,? The US Attorney in Seattle can't get SPD video. He had to take the SPD to court to get video and still likely never got all of what he asked for. Who has the "right credentials"? Certainly not the local ABC affiliate, KOMO TV. They sued and got jacked around. "In October of 2008, Rachner was arrested while out with friends. Police stopped them, and Rachner refused to identify himself, which is not legally mandatory. He was arrested for obstruction of justice. One officer bragged to colleagues he arrested Rachner because he “acted edjumicated.” Rachner filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Accountability, the civilian-run oversight organization of the Seattle Police Department. Immediately after he filed the complaint, the city filed obstruction charges against Rachner that were later dropped because the prosecution lacked proof. Rachner received one dash-cam video recorded from a police cruiser’s dashboard camera during his criminal case but learned of six others that police refused to release. Rachner sued the Seattle police in 2008 for covering up the existence of the six other videos from the night of his arrest and other records pertaining to his case. He won a judgement against them in 2010, but filed a subsequent lawsuit on Oct.6, 2011, for false arrest, “spoilation of video evidence” and “malicious prosecution.” According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Police Department is currently under federal investigation for not releasing video evidence from dash-cams when requested. Seattle news station KOMO, an ABC affiliate, filed a lawsuit against the SPD in September, claiming that the SPD had knowingly violated the Washington state Public Records Act. U.S. Attorney Mike McKay of Seattle has also sued the SPD for refusing to release records about criminal investigations and arrests." I would far and away rather have a few more property crimes than leave in a secret police state.

The judges in AU are on a network that does not have a requirement that all users have passwords. Thus, many judges don't even password protect their PCs that are net-connected. It is no surprise that their db got hacked with the abysmal lack of security on the judicial network.

My apt complex switched from crappy Millenium cable to the even worse Ygnition (a company that specializes in overpriced underserved cable for apt complexes). After 6 months and two rate hikes to $60/month for CNN, ESPN, TBS, and a half-dozen other of the bigger cable channels. I cut the cord and went with Netflix. I got a LG BD390 BlueRay with WiFi for $350 that will pay for itself in 9 months with the savings. The BD390 can wifi movies from either Netflix or my PC using Nero MediaHome 4. For roughly the same price, I could have got a playstation or xbox, but I did not want to waste even more time glued to the TV playing games...

JonesDay.com has a contact link on their homepage with a webform. I commended them on their victory and commiserated with their looking like uber cyberbullies.

Winning a lawsuit against MS in Seattle for selling XP at a premium would be like finding Exxon guilty of price-gouging in Texas. That is not going to happen. Had she filed in California, her chances of winning would have gone up tremendously.

A credit card is portable and used all over the world. A PBX is fixed on the customer's site. From the point of the customers, CCs use the CC company's equipment. In this case, the customer was using their own equipment. Since they are a 'security' outfit running their own hardware to save money the phone company should not be liable for their security risks with obviously insecure setups.

http://www.fff.org/comment/ed0900e.asp "When Congress enacted a law in 1982 that created a drug czar, President Reagan scorned the provision: "The creation of another layer of bureaucracy within the Executive Branch would produce friction, disrupt effective law enforcement, and could threaten the integrity of criminal investigations and prosecutions.⦠The so-called "drug Czar" provision was enacted hastily without thoughtful debate and without benefit of any hearings." and... "In recent years, Americans have also been blessed with a "health-care czar" (Ira Magaziner in 1993), an "AIDS czar" (various political appointees since 1993), and endless local "zoning czars" and "land-use czars." But no matter how many czars are appointed, it is never enough. A government advisory panel in 1998 called for the appointment of a "food czar" to "oversee the patchwork of food safety regulations." Technology overpowered another corrupt industry. Give it up already.