Hans leads police to Nina's body
old-polack
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/07/BAN011LDR8.DTL&tsp=1
--
old-polack
Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> No doubt about it now.
>
>
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/07/BAN011LDR8.DTL&tsp=1
Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of his
innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of manslaughter
rather than premeditated murder, though.
Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then seeing
her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in a panic
dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
Either way, it's tragic, both for her and for him, not to mention the
children... :-/
--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
Moe Trin
<IeHck.262348$M63....@newsfe13.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote
>> No doubt about it now.
[URL clipped]
>Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
Standard assumption in most courts is that the accused is innocent until
proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not to say they never make
a mistake - that's pretty well known to be possible, but that's also why
we have reviews and appeals processes.
Manslaughter generally means accidental. The prosecutor managed to find
and present enough evidence in the courtroom to convince the jury of the
more serious charge.
>Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
>seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in
>a panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
You really do want to read the Chronicle article - I don't believe you can
get the trial transcripts yet. To quote:
Reiser also acknowledged that he and his wife had fought and that he
had strangled her, a source familiar with the investigation said.
That's not official, but it's probably got some basis of fact. If you
want the official statements, wait a few weeks, and the transcripts will
become available.
Honestly, there were 12 people in that courtroom who were convinced
beyond all reasonable doubt that he had killed her under non-accidental
circumstances. If even one juror was not fully convinced, the result
is a mandatory 'not guilty' verdict. It's not as if they are persecuting
him for the hell of it. You may not have believed the evidence that was
presented in court, but the jury did.
Reiser, 44, was convicted by an Alameda County jury April 28 after
a six-month trial in which the combative software programmer testified
over 11 days that he was innocent of killing his wife, who had not been
seen since dropping off the couple's young son and daughter at his home.
On the day Reiser was convicted, Hora said, "We have a body. We just
don't know where it is."
Six months. They didn't ram it through and the jury tends to be rather
careful, especially on a murder case. Both the prosecution and defense
are extremely careful to select jurors who don't have pre-conceived ideas
and who _will_ make a fair determination based on facts presented during
the trial. Also, this is a high profile case (the URL above is of a news
story that was on the front page of the major newspaper), so it's not as
if the prosecution can get away with slight-of-hand or smoke and mirrors.
Old guy
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Tue, 08 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <IeHck.262348$M63....@newsfe13.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote
>
>>> No doubt about it now.
>
> [URL clipped]
>
>> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>> his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>> manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
>
> Standard assumption in most courts is that the accused is innocent until
> proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not to say they never make
> a mistake - that's pretty well known to be possible, but that's also why
> we have reviews and appeals processes.
Well, I have been following most of that trial - I think I may have missed
the first few sessions - via two independent sources. One was a live blog
from the courtroom with a pretty elaborate quoting of what was said in the
courtroom, whereas the other one was more of a short summary of the events,
with fewer quotes.
I stopped following the case once Reiser had been found guilty, because it
was then just only a matter of determining the sentence, and that was
scheduled to happen only in July, so the reports about this case also went
into a recess.
> Manslaughter generally means accidental. The prosecutor managed to find
> and present enough evidence in the courtroom to convince the jury of the
> more serious charge.
Well, see, on that I am not so sure. I'm not arguing that he's guilty,
obviously, but it was my impression that the prosecutor was freewheeling
and assuming a lot without presenting proper evidence, and that key
elements in the case were being totally discarded through prejudice.
If anything, it was a very sloppy case, and although Reiser is obviously
guilty and he was convicted, I see that more as a lucky strike on behalf of
the prosecutor.
No body had been found during the trial, Reiser was still maintaining his
innocence and certain paths and evidence were left unexplored. It was only
after his conviction that Reiser admitted to having killed Nina and that -
following his lead - her body was discovered.
By the same token he could have maintained his innocence and he even could
have been innocent and still sentenced on the grounds of circumstantial
evidence, because in the end, circumstantial evidence was the only thing
presented, testimonial of which is the fact that if he did indeed strangle
her, then the whole debacle of the blood stains on the sleeping bag cover
and on the pillar in the house of his mother, and him allegedly rinsing the
car "to get rid of all the blood from killing her" are moot.
>> Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
>> seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in
>> a panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
>
> You really do want to read the Chronicle article - I don't believe you can
> get the trial transcripts yet. To quote:
>
> Reiser also acknowledged that he and his wife had fought and that he
> had strangled her, a source familiar with the investigation said.
I _have_ read the article, but the word "strangled" must have eluded me
somehow. I had been awake all night and I've just had a terrible three
days behind me, so I must have missed that. ;-)
> That's not official, but it's probably got some basis of fact. If you
> want the official statements, wait a few weeks, and the transcripts will
> become available.
Probably yes.
> Honestly, there were 12 people in that courtroom who were convinced
> beyond all reasonable doubt that he had killed her under non-accidental
> circumstances. If even one juror was not fully convinced, the result
> is a mandatory 'not guilty' verdict. It's not as if they are persecuting
> him for the hell of it. You may not have believed the evidence that was
> presented in court, but the jury did.
Well, it was all circumstantial evidence, and even the District Attorney was
willing to acknowledge that. But as I wrote higher up, I believe that the
case hadn't been investigated with the proper earnest.
Had the investigators and the District Attorney's office done their jobs
well enough, then they would have seriously investigated every possible
angle to this case, and clearly that was not what was going on. They had
been investigating Reiser (and only Reiser) with prejudice from the start
and they made a case against him based upon circumstantial evidence,
presented in court with colorful propagandistic slogans and slides, and the
prosecutor was even given a second closing argument _after_ the defense
attorney had finished his. The jury needed several days to review and
debate this evidence, so they weren't at all sure about everything either.
And so they found him guilty. And now it turns out that he *is* guilty. So
the D.A. made a homerun. But - and I repeat - by the same token he could
have been innocent, and then all of this would have been just the circus
show it was presented as. This is not the way a serious investigation
should be conducted.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm certainly not going to say that over here
in Belgium such a case would have been tried better. The big difference
however is that the equivalent of the district attorneys here - simply
called "Prosecutor of the King" in an archaic title - are not elected, and
neither are the chiefs of police or sheriffs - for the few remote areas
that still have an equivalent of a sheriff. All of the aforementioned here
are public servants and are given their rank and position based upon the
results of exams, diplomas and qualifications. In other words, they don't
have to win a case in court in order to ensure a re-election, and this adds
to their credibility.
> Reiser, 44, was convicted by an Alameda County jury April 28 after
> a six-month trial in which the combative software programmer testified
> over 11 days that he was innocent of killing his wife, who had not been
> seen since dropping off the couple's young son and daughter at his
> home. On the day Reiser was convicted, Hora said, "We have a body. We
> just don't know where it is."
Yeah, I've read that. And that is just one of the things that go to show
that it's all about slogans and propaganda. They did *not* have a body,
until Reiser himself presented them with one, *after* his conviction.
Slogans like that are religious, not factual.
> Six months. They didn't ram it through and the jury tends to be rather
> careful, especially on a murder case.
I don't agree with that. If that were true, then there never would have
been any cases of innocent people being sentenced for life or even being
executed, only to have the real killer turn up much, much later. Besides,
in the O.J. Simpson trial, the jury found the defendant not guilty and it
was later on discovered - and proven in a civil court - that he was.
> Both the prosecution and defense are extremely careful to select jurors
> who don't have pre-conceived ideas and who _will_ make a fair
> determination based on facts presented during the trial.
Jurors demographically represent the people and may therefore not be savvy
enough regarding technical details or investigation methods. Well, I'm not
a lawyer and who am I to criticize how the court works, but still, jurors
can be mislead easily.
> Also, this is a high profile case (the URL above is of a news story that
> was on the front page of the major newspaper), so it's not as if the
> prosecution can get away with slight-of-hand or smoke and mirrors.
Which is all the more reason to point out that in this particular case, they
actually did pull that off, even if they did turn out to be right in the
end.
Of course, Reiser's decision to take the stand is one of the key factors
that got him convicted. Not because of what he said or didn't say, but
because he managed to make himself very much disliked by both the judge and
the jurors - the blog reported on some of the jurors' facial reactions and
body language throughout Reiser's testimony.
Of course, whether the judge liked or disliked Reiser has nothing to do with
the verdict, as the judge seemed professional enough about it - he was
actually the only one who appeared credible throughout this trial - but
even jurors are only human.
Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney to
forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
legal right in the United States - then he'd probably have been acquitted.
And the key factor in all this is that even though he did take the stand,
there was actually nothing in any of what he said that contributed anything
useful to the resolution of the case, with the sole and sad exception being
that now, _after_ the proceedings, he has finally confessed and presented
the investigators with Nina's remains in order to get a sentence reduction.
As the OP put it, "there's no doubt about it anymore now". But up until
this "now", for me, there still was, despite the court's ruling.
Jim Beard
The U.S. "system" is pretty good, but much less consistent than, for
example, the French system, where there is no jury and the judge is
trained to serve in any or all capacities as director of
investigation, prosecutor, and advocate for the defense, and his job
is to determine the facts, determine the appropriate law(s)
applicable, and render judgment in accordance thereto. There is not
a lot of flexibility in the system, for good or evil.
Results in the U.S. vary from court to court, but generally my
estimate is that the principal problem is too great a tendency for
the guilty to get off, and continue by committing the same or similar
crimes. While an innocent can be convicted, that happens rarely, and
the damage in such cases is (for society as a whole) far far less
than the damage from repeat criminals getting off and repeating.
Cheers!
jim b.
--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.
Adam
> Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney to
> forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
> legal right in the United States
United States Constitution, Amendment 5: "No person ... shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself",
commonly called "taking the fifth [amendment]".
In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
things are federal crimes.) I was an alternate juror in a New York
State criminal case (not homicide) in 2004, and the defendant did not
testify, and we the jury were explicitly instructed by the judge (I
forget his exact words) not to let this affect our verdict.
Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
use the Reiser file system? More generally, can an idea from an evil
source be morally good? (For example, I believe the Nazis were among
the first to mount an anti-smoking campaign.)
Adam
--
Email: adam seven zero seven at verizon dot net
bobbie sellers
system
because I don't want constant reminders of sad & irreparable events.
Morals have nothing to do with smoking either. If the NAZIs used
the idea that bad morals were promoted by smoking they were wrong.
Smoking is physically bad for one and the longer you smoke the more
damaging it is and the younger you start smoking the harder it is to
quit. More than likely they were concerned with the foreign exchange
advantages of curtailing tobacco imports.
later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)
--
bobbie sellers -(Back to Angband)Team *AMIGA & SF-LUG*
a retired nurse in San Francisco
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> When humans are involved, nothing is perfect. Such is life.
Sad but true...
> The U.S. "system" is pretty good, but much less consistent than, for
> example, the French system, where there is no jury and the judge is
> trained to serve in any or all capacities as director of
> investigation, prosecutor, and advocate for the defense, and his job
> is to determine the facts, determine the appropriate law(s)
> applicable, and render judgment in accordance thereto. There is not
> a lot of flexibility in the system, for good or evil.
Hmm... I have no details on the French justice system and so you may be far
better informed about that than I am, but I'm actually surprised that it
would work that way in France. It would certainly be unique in Europe.
Here in Belgium, we too have courts where there is no jury, but those are
not supreme courts, and an appeal against a decision made by a supreme
court can only be made through an arbitration court, which will then
decide, not on guilt or innocence, but on whether the supreme court
conviction was the result of a legally technical error (or an equally valid
prejudice or foul play) or not; if it was, then the supreme court ruling
may be undone.
> Results in the U.S. vary from court to court, but generally my
> estimate is that the principal problem is too great a tendency for
> the guilty to get off, and continue by committing the same or similar
> crimes.
Hmm... I consider such an approach to be too rightwinged, if you will
forgive my saying so. In my opinion, it is unethical to "punish the good
with the bad and have $DEITY sort them out later". Innocent until proven
guilty, remember?
While it is of course possible that too lax a legal/law enforcement system
may yield an acquittal for the guilty, the problem we see here is rather
that of the guilty being able to do more "mischief" - by lack of a better
word - because of the whole treadmill of red tape cops have to go through
when they apprehend someone of whom they positively know that he's guilty.
For example, suppose the cops catch someone in the act of committing a crime
but this person is under age, then there are all kinds of loopholes in the
system - and the detention facilities are already overloaded and
under-staffed as it is - and so the juvenile delinquents are already back
home for dinner before the cops who arrested them get off duty that day.
Another example, albeit of a different nature. A number of years ago, I had
plans of getting into a business endeavor with someone whom I trusted back
then - sure, I was naive - and I lent that person a sum of money, to be
paid back in full with no interest charges after one year. The guy however
turned out to be a fraud, and eventually he fled the country. Twice
already so far.
I decided to take the matter to court and hired an attorney. My attorney
did all that was necessary, and the matter went to court. Two days before
the court hearing, the guy fled to Spain with his equally deceitful wife -
he's actually a bigamist because he's also still married to another woman
in South Africa, whom he married in order to get a permanent visa there,
and he never divorced that woman - only to sneak back into Belgium about
two months later.
Of course, the hearing went on in his absence and he was convicted to pay me
back in full, *with* interests, *plus* that he had to pay for the legal
expenses of the case, *plus* the legal expenses I had made so far in order
to take the matter to court in the first place - it's a new law that says
that in any court case between two civilian entities, the loser pays for
the expenses of the other party.
I was informed of the couple's whereabouts by a friend of the woman's
mother, and I took this information to my attorney, who contacted the
bailiff and had him cash in with the guy, or confiscate goods in the
meantime. Now, the guy runs his own business and has a car, a TV,
furniture, you name it. It all just so happens to be that it's registered
to someone else's name, and as the guy is not officially employed anywhere,
they can't confiscate (part of) his salary either.
So in other words, I was conned, I sued the guy and won the case, and
instead of getting my money back, I ended up paying for all legal expenses
as well. So in the end, it all cost me more than I had already lost, and
the guy is still out there, conning people.
> While an innocent can be convicted, that happens rarely, and
> the damage in such cases is (for society as a whole) far far less
> than the damage from repeat criminals getting off and repeating.
I'm sorry, but I do not agree with that statement, even if only because of
two things. First of all, the United States is still one of the few
nations considering themselves civilized and still executing the death
penalty - which as we all know, is irreversible - and secondly, lots of
crimes fall under the category of one-offs.
For instance, a man may be guilty of manslaughter but that does not mean
that he will kill again. By the same token, there is even the fact that
not all premeditated murders are committed by serial killers. By this I do
not mean in any way that premeditated murder should not be severely
punished, but only that some crimes are not necessarily up for repetition,
and that thus the "danger to society" should be taken with a spoonful of
salt, and that it therefore does not warrant the execution of an innocent
man in the name of protecting society, especially not in any of the nations
that (through black ops) sanction the termination of certain individuals
both abroad and on proper soil for the sake of the nation's socio-political
interests. The USA are such a nation, and so are Russia, the UK, Germany,
Israel, China, Zimbabwe and many, many others.
No offense intended. It's just that in my opinion a nation cannot protect
the innocent by indulging into criminal activities itself. It's the old
debate about protecting human rights by violating them, or of a government
assigning special privileges to themselves which common citizens do not
have. It's a charade. It's hypocrisy.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney
>> to forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
>> legal right in the United States
>
> United States Constitution, Amendment 5: "No person ... shall be
> compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself",
> commonly called "taking the fifth [amendment]".
Thank you for explaining this. ;-)
> In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
> things are federal crimes.)
Now _that_ sounds bizarre to me... 8-|
> I was an alternate juror in a New York State criminal case (not homicide)
> in 2004, and the defendant did not testify, and we the jury were
> explicitly instructed by the judge (I forget his exact words) not to let
> this affect our verdict.
>
> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
> use the Reiser file system?
Well, you must keep in mind that the Reiser filesystems - there are actually
two, i.e. /reiserfs/ as supplied as part of the vanilla Linux kernel tree,
and /reiser4,/ which is highly revolutionary and still relatively new -
were not developed solely by Hans Reiser. In fact, as shown throughout his
trial, he spent a lot of time in Russia hiring programmers to work on his
filesystems, and so their work is in those filesystems as much as his is.
> More generally, can an idea from an evil source be morally good?
I would say that this depends on the idea itself. And just because Hans
Reiser killed his wife - under circumstances that he and he alone knows
into detail - doesn't mean that everything the man did was evil. He made a
mistake, and a terrible one for that matter, but that doesn't turn him into
a monster yet.
> (For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
> anti-smoking campaign.)
I wasn't aware of that, but this gives me one more reason to loathe the
Nazis (on top of all others) as I am a smoker myself and I am being
confronted all too often with the witchhunt on smokers through all the hype
and anti-smoking indoctrination in the media.
You know, here in Belgium - and I think it's all over Europe by now, albeit
that I don't know that for sure - packets of cigarettes are required to
have a text box in big print on both faces of the packet with a short text
in all three national languages saying that smoking kills you, or a similar
message - the actual message varies per batch.
A few years ago, it was decided that the back face of the packet should no
longer have that text but should have a picture in full color of a dying
person or some other distasteful picture instead.
It costs the cigarette manufacturers a lot of money to put that on those
packets - money which is recuperated by incorporating it into the retail
price, of course - while nobody actually even looks at the pictures or the
text anymore, and neither the text nor the picture have already made any
smoker give up on smoking - although the politically correct
goodie-two-shoes media do of course claim otherwise. Yet I know by my own
experience and from talking to other smokers that everyone simply dismisses
it as yet another way that the government waves its berating finger at us
again.
On the other hand, the government is equally hypocrite about it all, because
if every smoker in this small country were to quit smoking now as we speak,
then the government would have a serious and unrecoverable income balance
problem tomorrow, given how much of the price of a packet of cigarettes is
comprised of taxes. By the same token, the same thing applies to the taxes
on gasoline and dieselfuel, despite the government's propaganda to promote
bicycles and public transport and "penalize" private motorized transport.
Now, smoking may be bad for your health, but it does not - and I repeat
"not" - kill you. It just so happens to be a catalyst for cancer in those
subjects who have a predisposition to cancer in the first place.
Similarly second-hand smoke is by far not as dangerous either - don't get me
wrong though, I will *not* smoke in the presence of little babies, people
with asthma or some other airway condition - but with about 80% of all
vehicles in this country burning dieselfuel (and only a minority of those
equipped with a particle filter) a stroll along a busy street in any of the
country's major cities is far more hazardous to your health than breathing
in the smoke of someone else's cigarette.
And then there are those who say that "smoking stinks". Well, the
goodie-two-shoes health freaks who eat lots of garlic and then come breathe
in my face stink too, and then I'd rather smell burning tobacco instead.
But you know, that's just me... <grin>
Aragorn
wrote in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Adam wrote:
>
>> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
>> use the Reiser file system? More generally, can an idea from an evil
>> source be morally good? (For example, I believe the Nazis were among
>> the first to mount an anti-smoking campaign.)
>
> Morals have nothing to do with it. I will replace the Reiser file
> system because I don't want constant reminders of sad & irreparable
> events.
If you think that morals have nothing to do with it, then emotions should
not have anything to do with it either. I admit that I too will have
emotional/ethical considerations next time I decide to format a partition
on any machine, but this computer here has /reiserfs/ partitions on it and
I do not intend to convert them to anything less suited for my purposes.
Besides, the Reiser filesystems were not created by Hans Reiser alone; they
are the work of the collective coders at NameSys, and they are very good
filesystems.
Mind you that I am not saying that they are the best filesystems there are.
One's choice of filesystem should depend upon one's needs. On my heavier
system, I prefer using XFS, which is far more advanced than /reiserfs/ and
certainly more advanced than /ext3,/ but which may not be appropriate for
all kinds of implementations. For laptops, I recommend /reiserfs/ -
version 3.6, not version 4.0.
That said, RedHat's installer - and by legacy, therefore also CentOS's
installer - refuses to allow you to mount anything other than /ext3/ in the
system tree, or create anything other than /ext3/ at install time. And
this decision of theirs was already made long before Nina Reiser's life
ever came to such a tragic end.
David W. Hodgins
> One's choice of filesystem should depend upon one's needs. On my heavier
> system, I prefer using XFS, which is far more advanced than /reiserfs/ and
I'm using xfs for most of my file systems.
$ mount
/dev/hda14 on / type reiserfs (rw,noatime,notail,user_xattr)
/dev/mapper/81-home on /home type xfs (rw,relatime,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
/dev/mapper/81-opt on /opt type xfs (rw,noatime,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
/dev/mapper/81-tmp on /tmp type xfs (rw,noatime,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
/dev/mapper/81-usr on /usr type xfs (rw,noatime,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
/dev/mapper/81-var on /var type xfs (rw,noatime,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
/dev/hda15 on /var/log type xfs (rw,noatime,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
/dev/mapper/81-mnt on /var/mnt type ext2 (rw,noatime)
/dev/mapper/81-data on /var/mnt/data type xfs (rw,logbufs=8,logbsize=256k)
I've kept / using reiserfs, as xfs cannot have lilo or grub installed on it.
I'm using ext2 for /var/mnt (with /media and /mnt replaced with symlinks to
/var/mnt), as it is rarely updated, and can be kept very small (4mb), so I
quickly find out, if I try to copy data to an unmounted filesystem.
The above decisions were based on various reviews I've read, and on how I
use my system. Actions unrelated to software development, by one of the
authors of the filesystem, is not going to impact my choices, at all.
Regards, Dave Hodgins
--
Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email.
(nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for
use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.)
Dan C
> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of his
> innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of manslaughter
> rather than premeditated murder, though.
Why would you "think" that? Why "must" it have been manslaughter rather
than premeditated? Do you have evidence that the trial did not have?
> Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
> seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in a
> panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
Wow! Lots of assumptions. How much stock do you think a lawyer would
place on such statements? Do you have any actual *reason* to think any of
that might actually be true?
> Either way, it's tragic, both for her and for him, not to mention the
> children... :-/
Probably, but not necessarily.
--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Bill
>
> I've kept / using reiserfs, as xfs cannot have lilo or grub installed on it.
Yes it can, lilo and grub have been able to boot from XFS for as
long as I can remember.
Mandrake included XFS in version 8.1, I have been using both
lilo and grub on various systems with most MDK/MDV versions
since 8.1 with /boot being XFS, or not using a separate /boot
and / being XFS.
Including XFS (long before in was in the upstream kernel) is
one of the reasons I began using Mandrake.
Jim Beard
I understand what you are saying, but believe that hazards of life
cannot be eliminated, and that any judicial system that functions
in reasonable manner (the one that gave you a win in court, plus
all the costs, plus no chance of recovering money you had been
conned out of, is not functioning in reasonable manner) will now
and then inflict undesirable damage.
You set up things to minimize damage to innocents, and mete out
appropriate penalties to the guilty, and seek maximum "justice"
for all. Trying to completely preclude injust to one unjustly
accused simply makes it impossible to secure justice for anyone.
Standing down on this topic.
jim b.
Aragorn wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 July 2008 00:57, someone who identifies as *Jim Beard* wrote
> in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
>
>> When humans are involved, nothing is perfect. Such is life.
>
> Sad but true...
<snip>
Jim Beard
<snip>
> More generally, can an idea from an evil
> source be morally good? (For example, I believe the Nazis were among
> the first to mount an anti-smoking campaign.)
Some among us consider that early anti-smoking campaign
evil, evil, evil.
No cheers!
jim b.
Moe Trin
>someone who identifies as *Moe Trin* wrote
>Well, I have been following most of that trial - I think I may have
>missed the first few sessions - via two independent sources. One was
>a live blog from the courtroom with a pretty elaborate quoting of what
>was said in the courtroom, whereas the other one was more of a short
>summary of the events, with fewer quotes.
I didn't bother following the trial - it's a state trial in a different
state, and I know I don't have enough facts to form an opinion. Where
those sources you used either official, or a reasonably unbiased source
like 'Court TV' or one of the less unbiased, but _relatively_ balanced
two newspapers (Oakland Tribune or San Francisco Chronicle)?
>Well, see, on that I am not so sure. I'm not arguing that he's
>guilty, obviously, but it was my impression that the prosecutor was
>freewheeling and assuming a lot without presenting proper evidence,
>and that key elements in the case were being totally discarded
>through prejudice.
Were that the case, the defense attorney should have been constantly
objecting, and the judge would be slapping the prosecution around
pretty harshly.
>No body had been found during the trial, Reiser was still maintaining
>his innocence and certain paths and evidence were left unexplored. It
>was only after his conviction that Reiser admitted to having killed
>Nina and that - following his lead - her body was discovered.
Still the prosecutor was able to present enough information that the
defense could not disprove or object to, and the judge didn't report
that there was insufficient evidence to give to the jury.
>By the same token he could have maintained his innocence and he even
>could have been innocent and still sentenced on the grounds of
>circumstantial evidence, because in the end, circumstantial evidence
>was the only thing presented, testimonial of which is the fact that if
>he did indeed strangle her, then the whole debacle of the blood stains
>on the sleeping bag cover and on the pillar in the house of his mother,
>and him allegedly rinsing the car "to get rid of all the blood from
>killing her" are moot.
I can't say until I see the transcripts, and the coroners report. It
really isn't a requirement that the body be found. Were that the case
merely see that there are no witnesses, and dispose of the body in a
sure manner (torch the body, dispose of the ashes at sea), and no one
would be able to be convicted. No, it doesn't work that way.
>The jury needed several days to review and debate this evidence, so
>they weren't at all sure about everything either.
Of the four times I've been on a criminal jury, there was only one
case where we returned - actually in about 20 minutes. There was
absolutely no question of the defendants guilt, plenty of evidence
against him, and our biggest question was why they wasted our time
bringing this to a trial - the defense lawyer should have gotten the
idiot to plea. Other than that, I think the quickest debate/vote
was something like two days, and we acquitted that defendant. Jurors
really do tend to take the job seriously, especially on a capital
crime.
>> Six months. They didn't ram it through and the jury tends to be
>rather careful, especially on a murder case.
>
>I don't agree with that. If that were true, then there never would
>have been any cases of innocent people being sentenced for life or even
>being executed, only to have the real killer turn up much, much later.
Nothing is perfect.
>Besides, in the O.J. Simpson trial, the jury found the defendant not
>guilty and it was later on discovered - and proven in a civil court -
>that he was.
O.J was tried and acquitted of murder - that was the criminal trial.
He was then sued in a civil trial for causing the wrongful death of
two individuals, and that trial went against him. His loss of that
case in no way proved that he was guilty of capital murder OR ANY
CRIME what-so-ever. Different charges, different standards, and
requiring only a majority to decide the case, not a unanimous
decision.
>Jurors demographically represent the people and may therefore not be
>savvy enough regarding technical details or investigation methods.
>Well, I'm not a lawyer and who am I to criticize how the court works,
>but still, jurors can be mislead easily.
So are you saying that William Du Bois (his defense attorney) and the
judge were incompetent?
>Of course, Reiser's decision to take the stand is one of the key
>factors that got him convicted. Not because of what he said or didn't
>say, but because he managed to make himself very much disliked by both
>the judge and the jurors - the blog reported on some of the jurors'
>facial reactions and body language throughout Reiser's testimony.
Andrew has already pointed to the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution
which says that a person may not be "compelled in any criminal case to
be a witness, against himself". Should he take the stand of his own
accord and give evidence - that really is his problem (and that of his
defense attorney for failing to prevent him giving such evidence). It's
the old rule that you can't be convicted of stupidity, but stupidity can
get you convicted of other crimes.
>Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his
>attorney to forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would
>have been his legal right in the United States - then he'd probably
>have been acquitted.
He can be called to the stand - but he can not be compelled to answer
any questions that may tend to incriminate himself. That's basically
been construed to mean you have to answer the "State your name"
type of question, and for everything else can decline to answer citing
the fifth amendment.
Old guy
Moe Trin
>In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
>things are federal crimes.)
Well... I wouldn't go quite that far. There sure are plenty of laws on
the federal books, and I've got an ex-relative working at the Danbury
Health Resort - or what ever they call it ;-)
>Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether
>to use the Reiser file system? More generally, can an idea from an
>evil source be morally good?
No - we never adopted it on reliability reasons. Not to say it's
unreliable (it isn't that bad), but when it does go pear shaped, you
are totally screwed, and you'd better hope your backups are good.
>(For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
>anti-smoking campaign.)
Invoking Godwin so early? My, my. ;-)
How you doing otherwise?
Old guy
David W. Hodgins
> Yes it can, lilo and grub have been able to boot from XFS for as
> long as I can remember.
Yes it can boot from a xfs root filesystem, however lilo/grub cannot be
installed on a xfs filesystem (in the / or /boot filesystem, not the mbr).
If you have an xfs / or /boot filesystem, try changing /etc/lilo.conf (or
equivalent for grub), to install the boot loader on that partition, instead
of in the mbr. It won't allow it. I use the GAG bootloader, which I then
use to select which m$ or lilo boot loader I want to load. It then loads the
boot loader from the boot sector of the /, or /boot partition,
The reason I use GAG, instead of lilo, in the mbr, and install lilo in the /
filesystem, of each distro I run, is so that each bootloader is independent.
That way, when I install a new version/disto, I don't have to copy all of the
boot configuration lines from the latest version I used, or have to worry about
an older version of the bootloader not working with a new version.
For example, anyone using grub from 2008.0 will not be able to boot a 2008.1
system, that uses ext3, for the / file system. That's because the default inode
size changed from 128 bits to 256 bits, and only the 2008.1 version of grub can
from mandriva has been patched, to handle that.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:24:55 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>> his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>> manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
>
> Why would you "think" that? Why "must" it have been manslaughter rather
> than premeditated? Do you have evidence that the trial did not have?
Let's just say that I have reason to believe that the trial (and the
investigations leading /to/ the trial) did not proceed as unbiased as
it(/they) should have.
(By this statement - in the event that you should think so, given that you
chose to reply to this particular post of mine given an unrelated statement
from another post of mine - I am in no way criticizing the American justice
system - yes, the reference made earlier was to the difference between
elected District Attorneys and Chiefs of Police versus those functions
being occupied as genuine occupations by politically unaligned officials -
because legal mishaps occur everywhere. I know for a fact that they occur
here, and I can give you a fine example of a justice screw-up from (still
recent enough) Belgian history.[1])
As you may have read in one of my other posts, I have been following most of
the trial from two independent sources, and in what was quoted from the
testimony, it was clear that the investigating officers displayed a bias
against Hans Reiser, and through that bias left other possible leads
unexplored.
For instance - and I am *not* arguing Reiser's guilt here - I find it highly
dubious that Sean Sturgeon, a man who confessed before the police to having
killed eight people and left a ninth for dead, and who had a key to Nina's
apartment and had transfered a large sum of money into her bank account
only three days before she disappeared, was not even (temporarily)
arrested, investigated or even heard as a witness.
Also from the two reporters' blogs - and as vented as the personal opinions
of the reporters and legally qualified /opinionists/ - the above (and
below) hypothesis was mentioned as having a higher degree of probability
than premeditated murder.
>> Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
>> seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in a
>> panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
>
> Wow! Lots of assumptions. How much stock do you think a lawyer would
> place on such statements? Do you have any actual *reason* to think any of
> that might actually be true?
I stated this in my reply to the previous paragraph. And apparently
District Attorney Paul Hora was willing to place stock on a lot of other
assumptions, including some of his own imagination - over which he did
receive criticism.
Like I said, it's a lucky strike. The trial was a shot in the dark, full of
guesswork and circumstantial evidence. And so now it turns out that they
were right, because he did admit having killed her and he pointed them to
her remains.
>> Either way, it's tragic, both for her and for him, not to mention the
>> children... :-/
>
> Probably, but not necessarily.
Nina Reiser's life has ended. That's pretty tragic, considering her young
age and her aspirations regarding a career as a doctor.
Hans Reiser will do at least 15 to 25 years of prison, and the fact that
there was no direct evidence against him - as I have stated and as you can
read back for yourself in the blogs; Henry K. Lee was one of the bloggers,
I can't remember the other one's name - and that there was no body are the
only two reasons why he wasn't given the death sentence. All of that is
tragic too.
And then for the children... They grew up in the United States - well, one
is still very young and therefore more adaptive, but the other one is
already older and thus less flexible - and had friends there - both their
own age and friends of their parents looking over them in their absence -
and they went to school there, and were raised in English. Now they reside
in Russia, under custody of Nina's mother (who doesn't speak a single word
of English) and they have to attend Russian schools and speak Russian all
the time. And all that while they know that their mother is dead and that
their father is in jail for having killed her. I'd say that is pretty
tragic enough.
Four players, of which two children. Three players come out of the story
alive with their lives altered for ever. The fourth player's life was
ended at the age of 31. And you say "not necessarily"?
*[1]* I don't know to what Americans are up to date with events happening in
Belgium, but some of you may have read about the Dutroux affair back in the
1990s.
Marc Dutroux - English pronunciation "du-troo" - was a trader in used cars
who - aside from several fraude files he's been mentioned in and in the
meantime found guilty of - also abducted young girls and held them prisoner
as sex slaves and kiddie porn "actresses" in a (specifically designed for
that purpose) basement underneath his house, in a town called Marcinelle,
in the French-speaking part of Belgium.
The youngest girls of whom we know he abducted them were eight and nine
years old respectively, and they died in the basement of famine during
Dutroux' absence because his pathologically subordinate wife Michèle Martin
was jealous of the girls and together with his accomplice Bernard Weinberg
neglected to feed them. Upon his return, Dutroux buried the remains of the
girls in his backyard, and after having given Weinberg a sedative, he did
the same to him, burying him alive.
Eventually, Dutroux was arrested - a second time, as he had already been
arrested before because of his involvement in the car trade fraude, and he
was out on probation - and two other girls, at that time aged 13 and 15,
were rescued from the basement after having been held there for many months
without as much as seeing the sun. They had been raped over and over and
over again, almost every day for as long as they had been held prisoner
there.
After Dutroux was arrested, it was discovered that two more girls, aged 18
and 19, had been abducted by Dutroux and Weinberg and that they had in the
meantime been murdered. Their remains were found on one of Dutroux'
properties - apart from his own residence, he also owned a small workshop
and several houses in the area.
There were many goof-ups in this case. The first one was that Dutroux was
granted a weapons license for a .22 LR carbine shortly after he was
released on probation after his initial arrest (related to a fraude case),
while it's not quite so easy to get a weapons permit for any other and
law-abiding citizen here in Belgium than, say, in the USA. The chief of
police later on gave the following explanation: "At least we were then
aware that he had a weapon". I'm not sure but I even believe that Dutroux'
parole officer was not made aware of Dutroux' possession of a firearm.
A second goof-up was that the whole investigation took so long, and that
investigators and our equivalent of D.A. office officials were taken off
the case and shuffled around, causing the newly assigned officials to have
to study the files (all worthy of several thousands of pages) all over
again from the beginning, and raising the suspicion that Dutroux had some
protection from higher up, and that he may have been part of an
international paedophile network. Eventually, this turned out not to be
the case - or else the evidence was destroyed - but still it didn't quite
help the investigation.
A third goof-up was that police officers had visited Dutroux' house while
the two respectively 12- and 15-year old girls were being held captive
there, following a trail that had raised suspicion that Dutroux had
anything to do with their disappearance, and that they had looked around in
his house and <quote> had "not found or seen anything suspicious" </quote>.
They were in his basement and for some reason they had not seen the entry
hatch to the underground concrete bunker he and Weinberg had constructed
for the sake of keeping young girls imprisoned there.
A fourth goof-up was that in the months prior to the trial - which only took
place a few years ago, many years after Dutroux' final arrest, with both
the surviving ex-captives already being adult women and one of them even
already having published a book about the whole affair - Dutroux managed to
grab a sidearm from a police officer who was escorting him to (our
equivalent of) the D.A.'s office for yet another interrogation, and as such
managed to escape in a stolen vehicle.
He was "missing without a trace" for several days and was eventually spotted
while hiding in the woods by a forest guard who recognized him despite the
beard Dutroux had grown in prison, and who alerted the police, who in turn
apprehended him in a very careful and slow move, involving multiple teams
of police officers.
They _had_ to be careful, and at all time while in custody he was given a
bulletproof jacket to wear (and kept behind bulletproof glass in the
courtroom) because they knew all too well that given the chance - and
especially when he escaped from prison and was out in the open - many
citizens were so outraged by what Dutroux had done - and his guilt was
already a given even prior to his conviction - that some of them could
eventually decide to take matters into their own hands and hunt down and/or
assassinate him.
A fifth goof-up was that in the years Dutroux spent in custody pending the
actual trial that lead to his conviction only a few years ago, Dutroux
turned out to have been corresponding romantically by written letter with a
fifteen-year old girl from the Flanders...
Dutroux was eventually sentenced to life without a chance to parole or
probation, and in addition to a surplus "ten years of being available to
the government", meaning that if there ever should be any way that he could
apply for release from prison, the government still has ten years to object
to and/or revoke such a release for an indefinite amount of time.
It's all legalese, but basically it comes down to that he will effectively
spend the rest of his life in jail. I believe his wife Michèle Martin was
sentenced to 30 years, and including her time served already prior to the
trial, she was eligible for an early release after one third of her
sentence a few years ago, but her appeal was denied by the commission that
handles such early releases, possibly due to the great public protest when
the people, especially the relatives of the murdered girls, learned of this
news. Another accomplice of Dutroux, businessman Michel Nihoul, was given
a milder sentence - I believe five years - because he appeared to only have
been involved in the fraude affair and had nothing to do with the girls -
or at least, not that we know of.
So the bottom line is - again - that I was not criticizing the American
legal system, should you think that I was. We're definitely no better than
the US in that area.
Bill
> On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:24:23 -0400, Bill <bi...@bogus.domain> wrote:
>
>> Yes it can, lilo and grub have been able to boot from XFS for as
>> long as I can remember.
>
> Yes it can boot from a xfs root filesystem, however lilo/grub cannot be
> installed on a xfs filesystem (in the / or /boot filesystem, not the mbr).
>
I have always used a single boot loader in the MBR, I miss interpreted
your comment and stand corrected.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Wednesday 09 July 2008 02:12, someone who identifies as *Adam* wrote
> in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
>
>> More generally, can an idea from an evil source be morally good?
>
> I would say that this depends on the idea itself. And just because Hans
> Reiser killed his wife - under circumstances that he and he alone knows
> into detail - doesn't mean that everything the man did was evil. He made
> a mistake, and a terrible one for that matter, but that doesn't turn him
> into a monster yet.
>
>> (For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
>> anti-smoking campaign.)
>
> I wasn't aware of that, but this gives me one more reason to loathe the
> Nazis (on top of all others) as I am a smoker myself and I am being
> confronted all too often with the witchhunt on smokers through all the
> hype and anti-smoking indoctrination in the media.
I forgot to add something to this whole ethics debate, particularly with
regard to the Nazis... The Volkswagen Beetle was designed by Ferdinand
Porsche as ordered by Adolf Hitler himself as "a car for the people of the
Third Reich" - hence the brandname Volkswagen, which literally means "car
of/for the people" - and it turned out to be the best selling car of the
world, having also been in production the longest. I believe the
second-longest running car was the French Citroën 2CV, also know as "the
goat" and "the ugly duckling" over here in Europe. :-)
While in Europe, the original rear-wheel drive and rear-engine-mounted
Beetle was eventually phased out in the 1970s and in the 1990s replaced by
the front-wheel driven and front-engine-mounted "New Beetle" - which was
based upon the chassis, engine and transmission of the Volkswagen Golf -
the original Beetle still remained in production in Mexico until at least
the late 1990s, and I believe even the early 2000s.
It could no longer be used in Europe because it was no longer considered
safe, ecologic and economic enough by modern vehicle standards, but
apparently Latin-American countries were more lax regarding those issues,
and the original Beetle kept selling quite well over there - I believe some
were also shipped from Mexico to Asian countries. Well, they were not fast
and their handling was terrible, but they could use low octane fuel and
they were built like a tank, although that is not to say that they didn't
rust. ;-)
In addition, this original Beetle as commissioned by Adolf Hitler was also
the direct ancestor to today's Porsche 911, and just about every stock
broker (or Microsoft Executive, retired or otherwise) drives one of
those... :p
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Tue, 08 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <XkRck.262594$M63....@newsfe13.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Well, I have been following most of that trial - I think I may have
>> missed the first few sessions - via two independent sources. One was
>> a live blog from the courtroom with a pretty elaborate quoting of what
>> was said in the courtroom, whereas the other one was more of a short
>> summary of the events, with fewer quotes.
>
> I didn't bother following the trial - it's a state trial in a different
> state, and I know I don't have enough facts to form an opinion. Where
> those sources you used either official, or a reasonably unbiased source
> like 'Court TV' or one of the less unbiased, but _relatively_ balanced
> two newspapers (Oakland Tribune or San Francisco Chronicle)?
One of them was Henry K. Lee's blog and I believe he was from one of those
two newspapers/agencies. The other one was from a website called Threat
Level. In my reply to Dan C, I wrote that I couldn't cite this source by
name, for which I apologize to Dan. It only just dawned to me again while
reading your reply.
>> Well, see, on that I am not so sure. I'm not arguing that he's
>> guilty, obviously, but it was my impression that the prosecutor was
>> freewheeling and assuming a lot without presenting proper evidence,
>> and that key elements in the case were being totally discarded
>> through prejudice.
>
> Were that the case, the defense attorney should have been constantly
> objecting, and the judge would be slapping the prosecution around
> pretty harshly.
This has happened. There were many accounts of either attorney objecting
and of the judge calling them both to the bench or even in his office in
mid-trial. In the end however, DuBois' objections were mainly overruled,
and at times a heated debate between Reiser and DuBois surfaced a few
times, causing Reiser - who couldn't keep quiet while he was not on the
stand and often had to be prompted by his own attorney to answer a question
in a clear and short way - to scream out loud that he was firing DuBois and
that he wanted another attorney.
>> By the same token he could have maintained his innocence and he even
>> could have been innocent and still sentenced on the grounds of
>> circumstantial evidence, because in the end, circumstantial evidence
>> was the only thing presented, testimonial of which is the fact that if
>> he did indeed strangle her, then the whole debacle of the blood stains
>> on the sleeping bag cover and on the pillar in the house of his mother,
>> and him allegedly rinsing the car "to get rid of all the blood from
>> killing her" are moot.
>
> I can't say until I see the transcripts, and the coroners report. It
> really isn't a requirement that the body be found. Were that the case
> merely see that there are no witnesses, and dispose of the body in a
> sure manner (torch the body, dispose of the ashes at sea), and no one
> would be able to be convicted. No, it doesn't work that way.
No, but if a body _had_ been found during the investigation prior to the
court case, then there would at least have been something substantial, and
there would have been a coronary report, yielding more evidence.
Yet there was no body and everything else was pure speculation and
assumption, and the little forensic evidence presented in court with regard
to DNA samples taken from bloodstains on a pillar in the house of Reiser's
mother and on a sleeping bag cover found in Reiser's car - actually, it was
his mother's car, which he was borrowing - was proven inconclusive in
court.
>> Besides, in the O.J. Simpson trial, the jury found the defendant not
>> guilty and it was later on discovered - and proven in a civil court -
>> that he was.
>
> O.J was tried and acquitted of murder - that was the criminal trial.
> He was then sued in a civil trial for causing the wrongful death of
> two individuals, and that trial went against him. His loss of that
> case in no way proved that he was guilty of capital murder OR ANY
> CRIME what-so-ever. Different charges, different standards, and
> requiring only a majority to decide the case, not a unanimous
> decision.
Okay, you have me at a disadvantage here. I don't know all the details of
the American legal system - I don't even know the details of ours, because
the legal system is a whole world of its own, with a vocabulary comprised
of articles, paragraphs, sections and subsections :p - so I apologize for
making the comparison. ;-)
>> Jurors demographically represent the people and may therefore not be
>> savvy enough regarding technical details or investigation methods.
>> Well, I'm not a lawyer and who am I to criticize how the court works,
>> but still, jurors can be mislead easily.
>
> So are you saying that William Du Bois (his defense attorney) and the
> judge were incompetent?
I know that William DuBois was Reiser's defense attorney, yes, and that
Larry Goodman was the Alameda County Supreme Court Judge presiding over the
case. And I also know that he, Hora and DuBois all know eachother quite
well. ;-)
As I understand it, William DuBois used to work for the District Attorney's
office himself, and as stated by DuBois in court, he and judge Goodman have
<quote> "tried many cases together" </quote>. There were often signs of a
benign and respectful friendship between DuBois and Goodman. Paul Hora on
the other hand seemed more cold and remote to either one, but presented his
case with a lot of fire, brimstone and colorful Powerpoint slides with text
in which certain words were highlighted.
Mind you that those words were not taken from the testimony of any witness,
but from Hora's own suggestions of what - according to him - had happened.
At other times, the slides, when not being actively used - displayed the
image of a happy Nina Reiser at her 30th birthday party, which I personally
can only construe as a kind of emotional manipulation of the jury, since
the jury already knew what Nina Reiser looked like - the photos had already
been shown on plenty enough occasions all throughout the trial.
No, I am not saying that either DuBois or Goodman were incompetent - one
thing DuBois could however not succeed in is to get his client to shut up
when it was not his turn to speak, much to Goodman's dismay - but the
presentation of evidence is the District Attorney's responsibility, not the
judge's. However, it does again serve to be noticed that at least one
other judge - I believe it was a woman but I have forgotten her name - had
already refused to precede over the case on the grounds that there was
insufficient evidence to take it to court, and I say "at least one" because
I believe to have read that yet another judge had also already refused to
take the case to court on the same grounds before her.
In addition to the above, DuBois did in court - late in the trial - object
to the fact that Sean Sturgeon was not even subpoenaed by the D.A., to
which the judge said "Bill, *you* did not produce him as a witness either."
So both sides did screw up in that matter.
>> Of course, Reiser's decision to take the stand is one of the key
>> factors that got him convicted. Not because of what he said or didn't
>> say, but because he managed to make himself very much disliked by both
>> the judge and the jurors - the blog reported on some of the jurors'
>> facial reactions and body language throughout Reiser's testimony.
>
> Andrew has already pointed to the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution
> which says that a person may not be "compelled in any criminal case to
> be a witness, against himself". Should he take the stand of his own
> accord and give evidence - that really is his problem (and that of his
> defense attorney for failing to prevent him giving such evidence). It's
> the old rule that you can't be convicted of stupidity, but stupidity can
> get you convicted of other crimes.
Well, Reiser's way of providing long and elaborate answers that rapidly
drifted away from what was actually asked certainly didn't look good in
court - nor did his tendency to speak when he was supposed to remain quiet
- and would probably have given D.A. Paul Hora less of material to work
with, such as the absence of emotional responses from Reiser whenever Nina
was mentioned, which Paul Hora construed and presented as being the
characteristics of a psychopath, or certain things Reiser said which
allowed Hora to present Reiser to the jury as a narcissistic individual
with a delusion of grandeur, none of which was established by any
psychiatrist's reports.
DuBois on the other hand did present a witness with a degree in psychiatry
who did confirm that it was her finding that Reiser was afflicted with
Asperger Syndrome - which would explain for a lot of his behavior and even
for some of the rather bold statements he made of himself and of his
business ambitions - but then again this was her own opinion as a friend of
the family, having seen Reiser grow up - she was a friend of Beverly
Palmer's, Hans Reiser's mother - and not a conclusive or official medical
report on Reiser. So in essence, the defense stated that Reiser is an
Aspie, while the prosecution stated that he is a narcissistic and
cold-blooded psychopath, but neither the defense nor the prosecution
provided legal evidence to their claim.
Besides, and I can speak from my own experience here, psychiatrists are
actually not well-placed to diagnose Asperger Syndrome anyway - if they
even recognize it when they see it in the first place, and I've personally
gone through many sessions with two of psychiatrists who neither saw it nor
understood what it means for the subject[1] - since it is a congenital and
hereditary neurological disorder - it is a high-functioning form of autism
typically accompanied by a high or above-average level of intelligence -
not a psychiatric one.
*[1]* The problem is that there is a textbook description of the visible
*symptoms* of Asperger Syndrome - and given its nature, these symptoms are
far harder to spot than in the case of "regular" autism - but in order to
actually _understand_ it and how it affects one's entire being, one has to
*be* an Aspie.
Psychiatrists work by making notes of the things you say and by throwing in
a question every once in a while, and Aspies tend to talk a lot, but not of
how they experience their life. Not many of us are capable of describing
how they feel, and some of us feel that they are normal while the rest of
the world is crazy.
And well... Looking at the human race, can you blame them? :-)
Dan C
>>> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>>> his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>>> manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
>> Why would you "think" that? Why "must" it have been manslaughter rather
>> than premeditated? Do you have evidence that the trial did not have?
> Let's just say that I have reason to believe that the trial (and the
> investigations leading /to/ the trial) did not proceed as unbiased as
> it(/they) should have.
Unless you were there for the trial, conducted the interviews, and had
access to the entire evidence inventory, you do NOT have "reason to
believe" that. You are basing your "reason to believe" on biased news
reporting, obviously unofficial blogs, and third-hand gossip. None of
those are legally solid enough to provide actual "reason to believe".
Sorry, no insult intended, but that's how it is.
<SNIP>
lordy
> On Tuesday 08 July 2008 07:58, someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote
> in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
>
>> No doubt about it now.
>>
>>
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/07/BAN011LDR8.DTL&tsp=1
>
> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of his
> innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of manslaughter
> rather than premeditated murder, though.
>
were more keen to give him the benefit of the doubt that the would
someone else. Of course there are a few similar high profile cases,
where the same phenomema was observed. And in those cases, there
is also a past history of the authorities discrimination against the
groups involved. So even when guilt was proved, some people still
doubted.
However there is no real persecution of hackers :)
Lordy
Adam
>> In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
>> things are federal crimes.)
>
> Now _that_ sounds bizarre to me... 8-|
As I understand it, and I'm not an expert: Back in the early days of the
U.S. (1780s), there was much debate over how strong the federal
government should be relative to each state's government. For the most
part, the Federalists won out over the Anti-Federalists, and federal law
and court decisions override anything more local. However, anything not
regulated by the federal government can be regulated by a state, which
is basically why most crimes, marriages, driver's licenses, etc. are
state matters. Also, local laws can be more restrictive than federal
laws, e.g. the constitutional amendment prohibiting "the manufacture,
sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" in this country has
been repealed, but state, county, and municipality laws can still
restrict this, and a few do.
>> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
>> use the Reiser file system?
[snip]
> just because Hans
> Reiser killed his wife - under circumstances that he and he alone knows
> into detail - doesn't mean that everything the man did was evil.
As I can see from the various responses, some people are going to let
Reiser's actions affect their choice of file system, and some are not.
There is no one "right" answer, and each individual has to decide what
he or she is comfortable with.
However, among those who replied to my question in this newsgroup, there
does seem to be a majority who are basing their decision about file
systems entirely on technical grounds.
Similarly, there are those whose opinion of Ubuntu (or even M$) is
partly based on the company's philosophies and practices, and those
whose opinion is based solely on its technical aspects. Both can be
considered valid viewpoints.
>> (For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
>> anti-smoking campaign.)
>
> I wasn't aware of that, but this gives me one more reason to loathe the
> Nazis (on top of all others) as I am a smoker myself and I am being
> confronted all too often with the witchhunt on smokers through all the hype
> and anti-smoking indoctrination in the media.
I was just looking for a more concrete example of evil having a good
idea, which is how anti-smoking is generally perceived where I am. I
didn't mean to get into a pro/anti-smoking discussion.
To tie this back to the federal-state issue, state cigarette tax varies
wildly (I believe mine is again the highest in the country), and some
people buy theirs out of state to save money. Cheapest of all are those
sold on "tribal lands" (Native Americans), which are not subject to
federal or state taxes. Back in '94, I was paying $15/carton of 200
locally, but paid $6 on a reservation in Arizona. I was probably the
only person who noticed the lack of state tax stamps on the cellophane.
Adam (New York State, USA)
Adam
>> In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
>> things are federal crimes.)
>
> Well... I wouldn't go quite that far.
Certainly a lot more attention goes to state crimes than federal crimes.
> There sure are plenty of laws on
> the federal books, and I've got an ex-relative working at the Danbury
> Health Resort - or what ever they call it ;-)
My father was on a federal jury once -- a town highway supervisor was
charged with embezzlement. Nowhere near as exciting as murders or
robberies, or even the drug dealer that I was on a state jury for.
>> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether
>> to use the Reiser file system?
>
> No - we never adopted it on reliability reasons.
I noticed several decisions based solely on technical reasons, and only
one (bobbie's) based on morality. Both are valid. I don't buy gasoline
and motor oil from one major company because they fired me.
>> (For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
>> anti-smoking campaign.)
>
> Invoking Godwin so early? My, my. ;-)
Does that count? :-) I wasn't comparing anybody, just looking for
someone or something commonly regarded as evil.
> How you doing otherwise?
I've solved, or rather gotten around, many problems by switching. I'm
still on dialysis awaiting transplant, which was a good excuse to switch
to DSL to keep my voice line free for THE call. That also solved my
problem with dropped dialup connections. (I know Verizon doesn't have
the greatest reputation, but I needed DSL ASAP, not several months
later.) That also means I need to be reachable by cell phone when I'm
not home. I thought I lived in a cell dead zone, but solved that by
switching to another cell provider. And switching also solved my
computer lockup problem, which was worsening -- I concluded the problem
was at least the hard drive and power supply, so I just scrapped it and
bought a bottom-of-the-line Compaq desktop, the best deal locally that
week. Now I have Vista (which it shipped with, but I hate), 3 Linux
distros (including Mandriva 2008.0 for everyday tasks), Win2K under
VMware, and data, all on a 120GB HD. And my new ISP just dropped all
newsgroups except the big-8, so I switched to Motzarella for text groups
like this one.
And I've switched from analog to digital TV reception by getting one of
those converter boxes for my set-top UHF antenna. I went from getting
two channels badly, one of them interesting, to eight channels clearly,
seven of no interest and one of very slight interest. That is supposed
to be progress. The "catch" in the FCC regulation is that all FULL
POWER stations must convert to digital broadcasting by February 2009,
and the one interesting station was a local college's translator of a
PBS station, and the translator is NOT a full power station, and doesn't
have to switch, and hasn't yet.
How have you been doing?
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Aragorn wrote:
>>> In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
>>> things are federal crimes.)
>>
>> Now _that_ sounds bizarre to me... 8-|
>
> As I understand it, and I'm not an expert: Back in the early days of the
> U.S. (1780s), there was much debate over how strong the federal
> government should be relative to each state's government. For the most
> part, the Federalists won out over the Anti-Federalists, and federal law
> and court decisions override anything more local. However, anything not
> regulated by the federal government can be regulated by a state, which
> is basically why most crimes, marriages, driver's licenses, etc. are
> state matters. Also, local laws can be more restrictive than federal
> laws, e.g. the constitutional amendment prohibiting "the manufacture,
> sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" in this country has
> been repealed, but state, county, and municipality laws can still
> restrict this, and a few do.
I understand better now, thank you. As you may have read through one of my
earlier posts, I am respectively Belgian and Flemish. Belgium is a federal
state as well, with the Flanders (aka the Flemish Region), the Brussels
Capitol Region and the Wallonian Region as its "states". The regional
governments are equal in authority to the federal government, rather than
to be subject to it.
At this stage, the government is debating about a new state reform that
would give more authority to the regional governments. So far, health
care, social security, income revenue taxes, VAT, import taxes,
(un)employment, the justice department and many other things are still
ruled at the federal level - which in turn has to comply with the EU level
- but the new structure would lean over more closely to a confederal
construct, rather than the federal construct it is now.
>>> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
>>> use the Reiser file system?
>>
>> [...] just because Hans Reiser killed his wife - under circumstances that
>> he and he alone knows into detail - doesn't mean that everything the man
>> did was evil.
>
> As I can see from the various responses, some people are going to let
> Reiser's actions affect their choice of file system, and some are not.
> There is no one "right" answer, and each individual has to decide what
> he or she is comfortable with.
I suppose that applies to everything in life.
> However, among those who replied to my question in this newsgroup, there
> does seem to be a majority who are basing their decision about file
> systems entirely on technical grounds.
Which - considering what I wrote earlier about Hans Reiser having committed
a crime but not necessarily being evil incarnate - would be the only sane
criterion. ;-)
> Similarly, there are those whose opinion of Ubuntu (or even M$) is
> partly based on the company's philosophies and practices, and those
> whose opinion is based solely on its technical aspects. Both can be
> considered valid viewpoints.
Well, my stance (in a nutshell) with regard to Microsoft is that their
operating systems are a joke by design, that their software is far too
buggy, that they are a proprietary software vendor and thus the wrong
choice according to my personal conviction and that as a corporate entity,
they are plain evil.
Mind you, I am not using GNU/Linux because I wanted to escape from Microsoft
or because I've had problems with Windows. I am running GNU/Linux because
it's a (very reliable and very powerful) UNIX operating system and it is
mainly comprised of FOSS.
>>> (For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
>>> anti-smoking campaign.)
>>
>> I wasn't aware of that, but this gives me one more reason to loathe the
>> Nazis (on top of all others) as I am a smoker myself and I am being
>> confronted all too often with the witchhunt on smokers through all the
>> hype and anti-smoking indoctrination in the media.
>
> I was just looking for a more concrete example of evil having a good
> idea, which is how anti-smoking is generally perceived where I am. I
> didn't mean to get into a pro/anti-smoking discussion.
>
> To tie this back to the federal-state issue, state cigarette tax varies
> wildly (I believe mine is again the highest in the country), and some
> people buy theirs out of state to save money. Cheapest of all are those
> sold on "tribal lands" (Native Americans), which are not subject to
> federal or state taxes. Back in '94, I was paying $15/carton of 200
> locally, but paid $6 on a reservation in Arizona. I was probably the
> only person who noticed the lack of state tax stamps on the cellophane.
There are no tax stamps on our cigarettes here, as far as I can tell. There
is only a glued-on pricetag. Yet what I do know is that more than half of
what you pay for them in the shop - currently that's 5.30 Euro per packet
of 25 cigarettes, so you can calculate how much that would be for a
200-cigarette carton - actually, they're not wrapped in carton here but
instead most packets are made of carton and the 200-cigarette wrapping is a
transparent foil.
The only place where you can get them without the taxes is on an airplane -
once it is airborne and has reached a certain altitude (provided that
cigarettes are still sold on airplanes, because I don't know about that) -
or on the ferries between the European mainland and the United Kingdom,
once they have cleared the territorial waters.
What I did notice however was that although the prices of cigarettes in
Belgium have been standardized for as long as I remember - the price of
packet of cigarettes depends on how many cigarettes are in the packet - it
would seem that the prices of cigarettes are - or at least /were/ when I
was 18 - different per brand of cigarettes in the UK. British cigarettes
were much more affordable than "import" brands - e.g. the French Gauloises.
Oh well, I suppose that's all regulated via the EU now...
Aragorn
> On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:27:42 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>>>> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>>>> his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>>>> manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
>
>>> Why would you "think" that? Why "must" it have been manslaughter
>>> rather than premeditated? Do you have evidence that the trial did
>>> not have?
>
>> Let's just say that I have reason to believe that the trial (and the
>> investigations leading /to/ the trial) did not proceed as unbiased as
>> it(/they) should have.
>
> Unless you were there for the trial, conducted the interviews, and had
> access to the entire evidence inventory, you do NOT have "reason to
> believe" that.
Evidence as was available was presented in court and reported by the
sources through which I have kept at current with the proceedings at
the trial.
> You are basing your "reason to believe" on biased news reporting,
> obviously unofficial blogs, and third-hand gossip.
I don't see any bias whatsoever in a literal summary of who showed up
when, was wearing what and said what - as quoted literally. I also
don't think that a reporter live-blogging from the courtroom via a
laptop and a wireless connection would have had any time to insert any
bias in his reporting.
> None of those are legally solid enough to provide actual "reason to
> believe".
Neither did the evidence as presented in court, as noted by the judge
and as admitted to by the District Attorney. It was all circumstantial,
and the fact that at least one - and if I remember correct two - judge(s)
refused to precede over the case on the grounds that the evidence itself
wouldn't stand in court says enough.
My opinion that the trial against Hans Reiser was a lucky strike is based
upon my own interpretation of literal quotes and unbiased reporting
whatsoever - show me one instance where the reporter displayed any bias
_in_ _favor_ _of_ _Reiser_ and I'll buy you a case of beer.
Source #1:
http://www.sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/author?blogid=37&auth=230
Source #2:
http://www.wired.com
Hans Reiser is guilty of having caused the death of his wife; this is now
a given since he admitted to having killed her and has lead the police to
the place where he buried her remains, but all throughout the trial there
was a very reasonable doubt on whether Hans Reiser had even killed her -
or whether she was even dead in the first place, as she could just as well
have been abducted - not to mention on whether it was premeditated murder,
second degree murder or manslaughter in the event that he had indeed killed
her.
Naturally, and specifically given the poor evidence against Reiser, the
District Attorney would go for murder in the first degree. That is after
all standard procedure if the defendant persists at pleading not guilty and
won't strike a plea bargain with the District Attorney's Office. And so
that's what Paul Hora was pleading to the jury, and that is what the jury
eventually concluded, as the path of a possible voluntary or involuntary
manslaughter was never explored in court.
> Sorry, no insult intended, but that's how it is.
No, that's how *you* interpret what _I_ have said. I believe I've made myself
more clear in the above paragraphs, and I am supplying you with the sources
of information which have lead me to conclude that the trial did not go by
as it should have - both from the prosecution's side and from the defense's
side.
Moe Trin
<ae_ck.171979$8k.8...@newsfe18.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>> Where those sources you used either official, or a reasonably
>> unbiased source like 'Court TV' or one of the less unbiased, but
>> _relatively_ balanced two newspapers (Oakland Tribune or San
>> Francisco Chronicle)?
>
>One of them was Henry K. Lee's blog and I believe he was from one of those
>two newspapers/agencies.
Lee is a stringer for the SF Comical - he wouldn't be making false
statements, but he isn't the court reporter, nor is he completely
unbiased. His job is to write material that sells newspapers.
>The other one was from a website called Threat Level.
Sorry - I don't do anonymous posters.
>This has happened. There were many accounts of either attorney
>objecting and of the judge calling them both to the bench or even in
>his office in mid-trial. In the end however, DuBois' objections were
>mainly overruled,
That's not totally unusual. Defense will usually grab at every straw
they see - their job is to get the defendant off free. The prosecution
doesn't have the same incentive, but they will protest when they see
the need.
[O.J. Simpson's legal fun]
>Okay, you have me at a disadvantage here. I don't know all the details
>of the American legal system
Two types of court - criminal and civil. Criminal is where you may be
tried for violating a law - such as murder or driving to fast. The
defendant is on one side, and the government is on the other. In a jury
trial, the entire jury has to agree that without a doubt, the defendant
is guilty. In a _civil_ case Party A was wronged by Party B, and is
seeking relief from Party B (so Party A files suit - sues - Party B,
which often means seeking monetary reward from Party B). In MOST cases,
the government isn't involved (other than supplying the courtroom and
judge). The case is decided by a majority vote. This means it's a lot
easier to gain a decision, as you don't have to _prove_ beyond any
doubt, but merely have to convince a majority. That was O.J.'s problem.
Assuming a jury trial (not all trials have juries), the people on the
the jury are lectured by all three sides - defense, prosecution, and the
judge (and members of his staff) that they must ONLY make a decision
based on the evidence presented. If they can't do this, they are not
selected to be on this jury. While the prosecutor and defense attorney
(and their staffs) try to see that the defendant and any witnesses are
presentable, it's what they say/present while under oath that counts,
and the jury is usually instructed to ignore other things. If the
defendant is being a problem and the judge agrees, the defendant MAY
be put in a separate room, and view the proceedings over closed-circuit
television - the jury seeing/hearing from the defendant if needed also
by closed-circuit TV.
This jury took three days of deliberation to return a verdict. During
those three days, they were not playing cards, or watching the ball
games. They talk - a lot - and try to agree what happened based on the
evidence presented. If there is even a _hint_ that they did something
else, we get a mis-trial and we get to replay the game with a new jury.
Criminal trials by jury are never fun - I've been on two such trials.
The two sides get to present evidence that supports their side of the
story, with the judge there to keep everyone following the rules. The
jury listens and watches what is presented. Then they go into a meeting
room and try to reach a decision based on that information. What
other people like you or me think/feel/know/believe doesn't matter a
damn. It's the jury that makes the decision, and that is what counts.
No, it's not perfect. Tell me what is.
>I don't even know the details of ours, because the legal system is a
>whole world of its own, with a vocabulary comprised of articles,
>paragraphs, sections and subsections :p - so I apologize for making
>the comparison. ;-)
The legal system exists primarily to give employment to lawyers.
>I know that William DuBois was Reiser's defense attorney, yes, and
>that Larry Goodman was the Alameda County Supreme Court Judge presiding
>over the case. And I also know that he, Hora and DuBois all know
>eachother quite well. ;-)
It's a trade group - they really do work in the same buildings and often
see each other. This means absolutely nothing as to their conduct "on
the job". The DA's office people are lawyers. Judges are also lawyers -
appointed (sometimes elected) from the common mob of lawyers. Oh, and
that is the County Superior Court, not the Supremes. There are state
and federal supreme courts and they handle appeals, not common trials.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g53fan$74l$2...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>> Well... I wouldn't go quite that far.
>
>Certainly a lot more attention goes to state crimes than federal crimes.
Agreed - the federal cases don't seem to have the theatrics of the state
level stuff - taxes, interstate fraud, and so on.
>My father was on a federal jury once -- a town highway supervisor was
>charged with embezzlement. Nowhere near as exciting as murders or
>robberies, or even the drug dealer that I was on a state jury for.
See - not even interesting.
>> No - we never adopted it on reliability reasons.
>
>I noticed several decisions based solely on technical reasons, and only
>one (bobbie's) based on morality. Both are valid. I don't buy gasoline
>and motor oil from one major company because they fired me.
Picky, picky. There have been some rather spectacular failures using the
ReiserFS, and they were _apparently_ not all that uncommon.
>> How you doing otherwise?
>
>I've solved, or rather gotten around, many problems by switching.
That's good. That problem was annoying.
>I'm still on dialysis awaiting transplant, which was a good excuse to
>switch to DSL to keep my voice line free for THE call.
Hopefully not to much longer.
>That also solved my problem with dropped dialup connections. (I know
>Verizon doesn't have the greatest reputation, but I needed DSL ASAP,
>not several months later.)
I'd still be looking elsewhere. I suspect you're stuck for a year or
some such rot - but look around.
http://www.business.com/directory/internet_and_online/internet_service_
providers_isp/isps_by_country/united_states/
That's all one line. Other have reported problems switching from
Verizon DSL - rules to the contrary not-withstanding.
>And my new ISP just dropped all newsgroups except the big-8, so I
>switched to Motzarella for text groups like this one.
That's been a major problem. What frosts me is that the problem was
just 88 groups, but Verizon decided to be ridiculous. Not as bad as
TimeWarner who simply dropped all of Usenet. Look at the money they
save!!! And of course they aren't going to reduce fees for reduced
service - nooooo that would be wrong!
>And I've switched from analog to digital TV reception by getting one of
>those converter boxes for my set-top UHF antenna. I went from getting
>two channels badly, one of them interesting, to eight channels clearly,
>seven of no interest and one of very slight interest.
200 channels... nothing on. Yeah, I know the problem. Where did you
buy it?
>That is supposed to be progress. The "catch" in the FCC regulation is
>that all FULL POWER stations must convert to digital broadcasting by
>February 2009, and the one interesting station was a local college's
>translator of a PBS station, and the translator is NOT a full power
>station, and doesn't have to switch, and hasn't yet.
How long are they going to continue as an analog station? I'm getting
the same rations of crap here (worse - I'm not seeing anything but full
power stations), as the television industry has lost interest in
programming for anything but the five year old mind with an attention
span of less than 15 seconds.
>How have you been doing?
Well, I'm still plugging along. Had a minor accident on the bicycle
and got slightly b0rked. Head scrape wouldn't stop bleeding (aspirin
as a blood thinner), so to Urgent Care. Because of rib and shoulder
pain, they decided to take some pictures. Nothing broken, but the
following day the radiologist calls about a 12 mm spot on the upper
portion of the right lung. 12 mm? It's getting smaller. (It had been
spotted 8 years ago, and was followed for 3 years - before being
diagnosed as possible Valley Fever, but inactive. A PET scan about
six months ago said it was calcinofied - and inactive.) Whoopie.
Old guy
Dan C
>>> Let's just say that I have reason to believe that the trial (and the
>>> investigations leading /to/ the trial) did not proceed as unbiased as
>>> it(/they) should have.
>> Unless you were there for the trial, conducted the interviews, and had
>> access to the entire evidence inventory, you do NOT have "reason to
>> believe" that.
> Evidence as was available was presented in court and reported by the
> sources through which I have kept at current with the proceedings at
> the trial.
OK, so (like I said), you weren't actually there during the
investigations or the trial, and are relying on "reported" information to
base your conclusions on. Sorry, that doesn't count for much.
>> You are basing your "reason to believe" on biased news reporting,
>> obviously unofficial blogs, and third-hand gossip.
> I don't see any bias whatsoever in a literal summary of who showed up
> when, was wearing what and said what - as quoted literally. I also
> don't think that a reporter live-blogging from the courtroom via a
> laptop and a wireless connection would have had any time to insert any
> bias in his reporting.
Well, I do. It doesn't take any time to put your own "spin" on a story as
you type it. Again I am not saying that is necessarily what happened, but
it certainly was possible, and therefore reaching conclusions such as you
have stated (like "must have been manslaughter") is completely baseless.
>> None of those are legally solid enough to provide actual "reason to
>> believe".
> Neither did the evidence as presented in court, as noted by the judge
> and as admitted to by the District Attorney. It was all circumstantial,
> and the fact that at least one - and if I remember correct two -
> judge(s) refused to precede over the case on the grounds that the
> evidence itself wouldn't stand in court says enough.
Well, obviously the evidence *did* stand up in court, enough for a verdict
to be reached. In case you didn't know, people are convicted *every day*
on nothing more than circumstantial evidence. It's still just as valid,
and the conviction is just as real.
> My opinion that the trial against Hans Reiser was a lucky strike is
> based upon my own interpretation of literal quotes and unbiased
> reporting whatsoever - show me one instance where the reporter displayed
> any bias _in_ _favor_ _of_ _Reiser_ and I'll buy you a case of beer.
I don't have enough information to show you that, but then again I am not
the one who is making claims (assertations, really) that the trial was
biased or even corrupted. That's the difference between our positions.
I'm gonna be away from computers for the next several days, so any replies
to this will have a delayed response from me...
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:31:07 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>>>> Let's just say that I have reason to believe that the trial (and the
>>>> investigations leading /to/ the trial) did not proceed as unbiased as
>>>> it(/they) should have.
>
>>> Unless you were there for the trial, conducted the interviews, and had
>>> access to the entire evidence inventory, you do NOT have "reason to
>>> believe" that.
>
>> Evidence as was available was presented in court and reported by the
>> sources through which I have kept at current with the proceedings at
>> the trial.
>
> OK, so (like I said), you weren't actually there during the
> investigations or the trial, and are relying on "reported" information to
> base your conclusions on. Sorry, that doesn't count for much.
By the same token, witnesses being heard in the courtroom are also "reported
information". Still that information is taken for granted, if only because
the witness must be sworn in.
>>> You are basing your "reason to believe" on biased news reporting,
>>> obviously unofficial blogs, and third-hand gossip.
>
>> I don't see any bias whatsoever in a literal summary of who showed up
>> when, was wearing what and said what - as quoted literally. I also
>> don't think that a reporter live-blogging from the courtroom via a
>> laptop and a wireless connection would have had any time to insert any
>> bias in his reporting.
>
> Well, I do. It doesn't take any time to put your own "spin" on a story as
> you type it. Again I am not saying that is necessarily what happened, but
> it certainly was possible, [...
There is no reason whatsoever as to why two unaffiliated reporters working
for different news agencies would put a(n identical) spin on the events in
a courtroom or deliberately misquote witnesses, attorneys or the judge
himself for that matter.
> ...] and therefore reaching conclusions such as you have stated (like
> "must have been manslaughter") is completely baseless.
I was also including my own evaluation of Hans Reiser's personality as an
Aspie, and being one myself, I understand such a person's logic, and
knowing myself as well as a number of other Aspies, I know that it would be
nearly impossible - note: "/nearly/ impossible", so not /entirely/
impossible - for an Aspie to commit a coldblooded murder.
Besides, Hans Reiser already confessed that he strangled Nina while they
were physically fighting, so I see no premeditation in that. Of course,
you can now argue that they may have been physically fighting because she
was fighting for her life, but then I don't think that Reiser would have
opted for strangulation if he really did plan on killing her. There would
have been lots of other and far less conspicuous ways to kill a person if
it was really planned ahead.
>>> None of those are legally solid enough to provide actual "reason to
>>> believe".
>
>> Neither did the evidence as presented in court, as noted by the judge
>> and as admitted to by the District Attorney. It was all circumstantial,
>> and the fact that at least one - and if I remember correct two -
>> judge(s) refused to precede over the case on the grounds that the
>> evidence itself wouldn't stand in court says enough.
>
> Well, obviously the evidence *did* stand up in court, enough for a verdict
> to be reached.
The verdict of first degree murder, as purported by the D.A. from day one
without that he had a shred of evidence, because Reiser chose to plead not
guilty. Like I said, standard procedure.
The rest was all a matter of credibly establishing that Nina Reiser was
indeed dead and not simply missing, and of convincing the jury. It is my
belief that in this particular case, the D.A. simply managed to convince
the jury that it all went down as he claimed that it did, because the
evidence was circumstantial at the start of the trial and it was still only
circumstantial when the judge sent the jury off to deliberate.
> In case you didn't know, people are convicted *every day* on nothing more
> than circumstantial evidence.
I find *that* hard to believe. I'm pretty convinced that others may be
convicted over circumstantial evidence, but certainly not every day -
unless you are talking worldwide, of course. If that were the case, then
there would be something seriously wrong with the legal system.
> It's still just as valid, and the conviction is just as real.
The conviction is real, yes. It's official, there's no denying that.
>> My opinion that the trial against Hans Reiser was a lucky strike is
>> based upon my own interpretation of literal quotes and unbiased
>> reporting whatsoever - show me one instance where the reporter displayed
>> any bias _in_ _favor_ _of_ _Reiser_ and I'll buy you a case of beer.
>
> I don't have enough information to show you that, but then again I am not
> the one who is making claims (assertations, really) that the trial was
> biased or even corrupted. That's the difference between our positions.
Yet you *are* making claims that my two independent sources of information -
which I have supplied to you - were biased and were putting a spin on
things.
As a sidenote, I think that if those reporters were really twisting the
facts in that way, then judge Goodman or prosecutor Hora would certainly
sue those agencies for libel.
> I'm gonna be away from computers for the next several days, so any replies
> to this will have a delayed response from me...
No problem. The 'Net isn't going anywhere. ;-)
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Wed, 09 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <ae_ck.171979$8k.8...@newsfe18.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>>*Moe Trin* wrote
>
>>> Where those sources you used either official, or a reasonably
>>> unbiased source like 'Court TV' or one of the less unbiased, but
>>> _relatively_ balanced two newspapers (Oakland Tribune or San
>>> Francisco Chronicle)?
>>
>>One of them was Henry K. Lee's blog and I believe he was from one of those
>>two newspapers/agencies.
>
> Lee is a stringer for the SF Comical - he wouldn't be making false
> statements, but he isn't the court reporter, nor is he completely
> unbiased. His job is to write material that sells newspapers.
>
>>The other one was from a website called Threat Level.
>
> Sorry - I don't do anonymous posters.
Apparently the name of the reporter is David Kravets. I remembered that I
had bookmarked the page, but my Konqueror crashed on the many ad banners on
that website, so I had to open it up in Mozilla. I've just finished
reading the latest post on the matter.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/hans_reiser_trial/index.html
In the blog, the reporter also mentions that judge Larry Goodman was willing
to take manslaughter into account, but Reiser refused the deal presented to
him.
>> This has happened. There were many accounts of either attorney
>> objecting and of the judge calling them both to the bench or even in
>> his office in mid-trial. In the end however, DuBois' objections were
>> mainly overruled,
>
> That's not totally unusual. Defense will usually grab at every straw
> they see - their job is to get the defendant off free.
Just as it is the prosecution's job to get a conviction. ;-)
> The prosecution doesn't have the same incentive, but they will protest
> when they see the need.
They have more room to play, that is true. For the defense, it's all or
nothing, while for the D.A., there are many degrees of homicide and nearly
all will lead to a prison sentence - unless there is mention of the
defendant being unaccountable for his actions, in which case he may wind up
in a mental hospital.
> [O.J. Simpson's legal fun]
>
>> Okay, you have me at a disadvantage here. I don't know all the details
>> of the American legal system
>
> Two types of court - criminal and civil. Criminal is where you may be
> tried for violating a law - such as murder or driving to fast.
Driving too fast is considered "criminal" in the US? We've got special
police courts for that kind of stuff, and usually that kind of offenses
only goes to trial if the offender doesn't pay the speeding tickets.
(And then there are still loopholes, such as disputes over whether the
speeding camera was legitimately used. A whole bunch of people were
acquitted from having to pay their speeding tickets here only a few months
ago because the camera had not yet been legally approved.)
> The defendant is on one side, and the government is on the other. In a
> jury trial, the entire jury has to agree that without a doubt, the
> defendant is guilty.
I can't say for sure whether the jury has to unanimously agree in the event
of a Supreme Court trial over here. I've only seen the inside of a
courtroom up close once myself, and that was a police court, with three
judges.
It's a stupid story. Back in 1987, I received a ticket for parking in the
wrong place, but back then, I was living together with a woman who was
quite sloppy, and she had misplaced the bank transfer form. After about
two weeks, I finally found the form again and I was on my way to the bank
to pay the ticket, when I opened up my mailbox and there was a subpoena
inside.
So I went to the courtroom and one of the judges told me "Well go ahead,
son. What's your explanation?" So I literally told him what had happened,
while he was expecting that I would deny having parked there or something.
So he smiled and said "It's okay, you don't have to pay the fine, but
you'll have to pay for the legal costs of appearing here - which is less,
though - and you'll get one year of probation."
So I paid my bill and that was it, but that one year of probation is still
on my record, and that's why I will never be asked to be a juror. I can
have my record cleaned - it's called "Restoring One's Honor" - but it's a
very expensive and tedious procedure and you can apply for it only once in
your lifetime. So why would I bother? :-)
> In a _civil_ case Party A was wronged by Party B, and is seeking relief
> from Party B (so Party A files suit - sues - Party B, which often means
> seeking monetary reward from Party B). In MOST cases, the government isn't
> involved (other than supplying the courtroom and judge). The case is
> decided by a majority vote. This means it's a lot easier to gain a
> decision, as you don't have to _prove_ beyond any doubt, but merely have
> to convince a majority. That was O.J.'s problem.
>
> Assuming a jury trial (not all trials have juries), [...
Yep, same as over here. There was no jury in the police court where I had
to appear either.
> ...] the people on the jury are lectured by all three sides - defense,
> prosecution, and the judge (and members of his staff) that they must ONLY
> make a decision based on the evidence presented. If they can't do this,
> they are not selected to be on this jury. While the prosecutor and
> defense attorney (and their staffs) try to see that the defendant and any
> witnesses are presentable, it's what they say/present while under oath
> that counts, and the jury is usually instructed to ignore other things. If
> the defendant is being a problem and the judge agrees, the defendant MAY
> be put in a separate room, and view the proceedings over closed-circuit
> television - the jury seeing/hearing from the defendant if needed also
> by closed-circuit TV.
That's what almost happened to Hans Reiser, because he repeatedly ignored
the court rules and interrupted others while they were talking.
> This jury took three days of deliberation to return a verdict. During
> those three days, they were not playing cards, or watching the ball
> games. They talk - a lot - and try to agree what happened based on the
> evidence presented. If there is even a _hint_ that they did something
> else, we get a mis-trial and we get to replay the game with a new jury.
I'm not sure but I think that in the event of a mistrial the defendant is
acquitted over here. Again, I'm not sure about this though.
You Americans also have something called "double jeopardy", which says that
a person can never be convicted for the same crime twice. I don't believe
we have that over here, and as such it would open the door to a renewed
trial in the event of a mistrial, provided that new evidence can be found.
Well, I am certainly no lawyer and I'm not too familiar with our legal
system. And I'd like to keep it that way. <lol>
> Criminal trials by jury are never fun - I've been on two such trials.
> The two sides get to present evidence that supports their side of the
> story, with the judge there to keep everyone following the rules. The
> jury listens and watches what is presented. Then they go into a meeting
> room and try to reach a decision based on that information. What
> other people like you or me think/feel/know/believe doesn't matter a
> damn. It's the jury that makes the decision, and that is what counts.
I never contested that. ;-)
> No, it's not perfect. Tell me what is.
Well... GNU/Linux comes pretty close... :p (Just kidding. :-))
>> I don't even know the details of ours, because the legal system is a
>> whole world of its own, with a vocabulary comprised of articles,
>> paragraphs, sections and subsections :p - so I apologize for making
>> the comparison. ;-)
>
> The legal system exists primarily to give employment to lawyers.
Lawyers seem to make much more money in the US than they do here,
though. :-) Over here, people don't sue eachother so easily, or over one
person swatting another person's favorite mosquito, so to speak. :-)
>> I know that William DuBois was Reiser's defense attorney, yes, and
>> that Larry Goodman was the Alameda County Supreme Court Judge presiding
>> over the case. And I also know that he, Hora and DuBois all know
>> eachother quite well. ;-)
>
> It's a trade group - they really do work in the same buildings and often
> see each other. This means absolutely nothing as to their conduct "on
> the job". The DA's office people are lawyers. Judges are also lawyers -
> appointed (sometimes elected) from the common mob of lawyers. Oh, and
> that is the County Superior Court, not the Supremes. There are state
> and federal supreme courts and they handle appeals, not common trials.
Oh, I'm sorry. You have to keep in mind that I'm not only not an American,
but English is also not the primary language in my country - in fact, it's
not even an official language in my country :-) - and so things have
different names over here. In addition, most of those names literally
still stem from the days of Napoleon, as do many of our laws. ;-)
As a small and not court-related example, we now have a unified police force
with several branches, divided over local police and federal police.
However, up until the early 2000s, we had two separate police forces, one
of which was under the Department of Defense until the early-to-mid 1990s,
and they were called "Rijkswacht", which literally translates to "Imperial
Guard".
They had jurisdiction over the entire country - which is a kingdom, not an
empire, but under Napoleon it was, of course - and their training was much
longer than that of the "regular" police - 3 years versus 6 months - and
included many military disciplines. After those three years, they were
given a rank of "guard master", which was equal to the rank of sergeant in
the army. (When I was putting in my military service, I had to salute
before them when they came to investigate a burglary and weapons theft in
the base, committed by people posing and dressed as military officers.)
The "Rijkswacht" also had different weapons compared to the "regular police"
- I am using the term "regular police" to denote that they were simply
called "the police" and that they were under civilian command, not military
command. Regular police patrols used white cars with a blue stripe running
over the middle of the top, while "Rijkswacht" vehicles had a red stripe
with an emblem of a grenade. The stripes have in the meantime not been
repainted - so the ones with the red stripe are still used - but officially
it's now a blue stripe and all new police vehicles get the blue one, along
with a new emblem.
Regular police had .38 revolvers as sidearms - although they were later on
replaced by 9mm pistols - and pump-action shotguns. The "Rijkswacht" had
9mm pistols as sidearms and Uzis, MP5s and FN FAL 7.62 mm NATO
semi-automatic rifles.
The recently unified police corps mainly uses 9 mm pistols, the Steyr AUG
assault rifle in with the semi-automatic 9 mm carbine conversion kit, H&K
MP5 submachineguns, bolt-action FN sniper rifles, and - or so it is claimed
by Barrett Firearms - also a number of Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber
semi-automatic long range sniper rifles. Special ops teams also have the
FN Five-Seven pistol, the FN P-90 submachinegun (which uses the same 5.7 mm
caliber) and the FN F-2000 5.56 mm modular assault rifle.
Anyway, that was all just some information away from the courtroom, but it
shows you the roots of our legal system, i.e. a short Frenchman with a big
hat named Napoleon Bonaparte. :-)
Moe Trin
<SFjdk.175903$8k.1...@newsfe18.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>> Two types of court - criminal and civil. Criminal is where you may be
>> tried for violating a law - such as murder or driving to fast.
>
>Driving too fast is considered "criminal" in the US? We've got special
>police courts for that kind of stuff, and usually that kind of offenses
>only goes to trial if the offender doesn't pay the speeding tickets.
That was meant to show a range of crimes. Nearly all speeding violations
are handled by mail - and if you _do_ go to court, it would be a low
level, like a police court. But if you are ridiculous (we had some idiot
busted for 140 MPH in a 65 MPH zone - 225 KM/H vs 105 limit), then you
may wind up in criminal court rather than the lessor, and suffer
_substantially_ greater punishment (in this case, 6 months as a guest of
the county sheriff and a $5000 fine).
>You Americans also have something called "double jeopardy", which says
>that a person can never be convicted for the same crime twice.
That's the same fifth Amendment - "nor shall any person be subject for
the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor
be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
>I don't believe we have that over here, and as such it would open the
>door to a renewed trial in the event of a mistrial, provided that new
>evidence can be found.
If you are tried and convicted OR acquitted - you're done. No second
chance. A _mistrial_ doesn't count, because no verdict was reached,
but it's up to the prosecution whether they will retry the case. New
evidence of the _SAME_ crime doesn't change things, but _MAY_ get you
charged with something else.
Old guy
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <SFjdk.175903$8k.1...@newsfe18.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Driving too fast is considered "criminal" in the US? We've got special
>> police courts for that kind of stuff, and usually that kind of offenses
>> only goes to trial if the offender doesn't pay the speeding tickets.
>
> That was meant to show a range of crimes. Nearly all speeding violations
> are handled by mail - and if you _do_ go to court, it would be a low
> level, like a police court. But if you are ridiculous (we had some idiot
> busted for 140 MPH in a 65 MPH zone - 225 KM/H vs 105 limit), then you
> may wind up in criminal court rather than the lessor, and suffer
> _substantially_ greater punishment (in this case, 6 months as a guest of
> the county sheriff and a $5000 fine).
Over here I don't think there's a prison sentence to such an offense, albeit
that one /may/ be decided on in court later on, but such an offense would
absolutely yield an immediate withdrawal of the driver's license - and at
that speed, most likely for life, without having the chance of applying for
a driver's license ever again - and impounding of the vehicle.
As for the fines, I think that for that particular offense and the given
speed, the fine would be far higher than USD $5000. As for the prison
sentence, our prisons are already overpopulated and so any sentence less
than one year is "indefinitely postponed", which in practice means that it
is to be seen as probation.
Any similar offense, regardless of the measures taken by the court to
prevent it from happening again - some people do drive without driver's
licenses and in vehicles that do not have an insurance - within the time of
probation will result in a prison sentence exceeding one year and thus to
be carried out in full, minus time served already before the trial and an
eventual sentence reduction on good behavior (with release on parole), plus
an additional and even much higher fine than the original fine.
If the second offense takes place beyond the term of probation, it will be
tried like a new case, but the judge will of course take the earlier
offense into account when sentencing the defendant.
>> You Americans also have something called "double jeopardy", which says
>> that a person can never be convicted for the same crime twice.
>
> That's the same fifth Amendment - "nor shall any person be subject for
> the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall
> be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor
> be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
So you guys have quite an elaborate fifth amendment. ;-)
>> I don't believe we have that over here, and as such it would open the
>> door to a renewed trial in the event of a mistrial, provided that new
>> evidence can be found.
>
> If you are tried and convicted OR acquitted - you're done. No second
> chance. A _mistrial_ doesn't count, because no verdict was reached,
> but it's up to the prosecution whether they will retry the case. New
> evidence of the _SAME_ crime doesn't change things, but _MAY_ get you
> charged with something else.
And what if you have been found guilty in court - either by a judge or by a
jury, depending on the offense - and sentenced, and then later on new
evidence to the same case is discovered which acquits you from the crime
you were convicted over? Would the case then be re-opened?
Moe Trin
<kexdk.121569$AH5....@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>> But if you are ridiculous (we had some idiot busted for 140 MPH in a
>> 65 MPH zone - 225 KM/H vs 105 limit), then you may wind up in
>> criminal court rather than the lessor, and suffer _substantially_
>> greater punishment (in this case, 6 months as a guest of the county
>> sheriff and a $5000 fine).
>Over here I don't think there's a prison sentence to such an offense,
>albeit that one /may/ be decided on in court later on, but such an
>offense would absolutely yield an immediate withdrawal of the driver's
>license - and at that speed, most likely for life, without having the
>chance of applying for a driver's license ever again - and impounding
>of the vehicle.
My understanding of this case was that this was a second offense, and
yes, that gets a longer suspension of the driving rights. Speeding like
many other laws is a state law, and the punishment varies by state.
This was considered a "serious violation" of the laws, which adds to the
punishments.
>As for the fines, I think that for that particular offense and the
>given speed, the fine would be far higher than USD $5000.
I don't write the laws.
>As for the prison sentence, our prisons are already overpopulated and
>so any sentence less than one year is "indefinitely postponed", which
>in practice means that it is to be seen as probation.
We have the same overpopulation problem, so the county has an auxiliary
jail called 'Tent City' - literally large army tents in a barbed wire
enclosure. It's not a resort.
[Second offense]
Similar - but again, this is a state matter, and may be (is) different
in other states.
>So you guys have quite an elaborate fifth amendment. ;-)
The actual constitution was written in 1787 and was ratified by 9 of
the 13 states by June 1788. The ten amendments were proposed by the
first session of congress and ratified by December 1791. Amazing how
much law was in such a small document.
>And what if you have been found guilty in court - either by a judge or
>by a jury, depending on the offense - and sentenced, and then later on
>new evidence to the same case is discovered which acquits you from the
>crime you were convicted over? Would the case then be re-opened?
Not automatically. You (your lawyer) would have to file an appeal. In
such case, it's _usually_ a non-jury proceeding, and the outcome would
be either no change, a reduction of sentence, or a release and
removal of the record of conviction. It's not considered "double
jeopardy" because they can't increase your sentence for _this_ crime.
Old guy
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <kexdk.121569$AH5....@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>>*Moe Trin* wrote
>
>>> But if you are ridiculous (we had some idiot busted for 140 MPH in a
>>> 65 MPH zone - 225 KM/H vs 105 limit), then you may wind up in
>>> criminal court rather than the lessor, and suffer _substantially_
>>> greater punishment (in this case, 6 months as a guest of the county
>>> sheriff and a $5000 fine).
>
>> Over here I don't think there's a prison sentence to such an offense,
>> albeit that one /may/ be decided on in court later on, but such an
>> offense would absolutely yield an immediate withdrawal of the driver's
>> license - and at that speed, most likely for life, without having the
>> chance of applying for a driver's license ever again - and impounding
>> of the vehicle.
>
> My understanding of this case was that this was a second offense, and
> yes, that gets a longer suspension of the driving rights. Speeding like
> many other laws is a state law, and the punishment varies by state.
> This was considered a "serious violation" of the laws, which adds to the
> punishments.
Well, with regard to traffic violations themselves, Belgium has two kinds,
i.e. serious and non-serious. It's quite complicated what is considered a
serious traffic violation and what is not, and the rules change all the
time.
For instance, maximum speeds are regularly altered - downwise, of course -
depending on the type of roads and sometimes even upon the weather. When
under certain weather conditions exhaust fumes could contribute to a smog
problem, highway traffic is limited to a maximum of 90 km/h (or about 55
mph), whereas the maximum speed on the highway is normally 120 km/h all
over Belgium (although - and this is still fairly recent - trucks and buses
have to be electronically limited to 90 km/h).
Main roads with at least two lanes in each direction and little to no
traffic lights have a 90 km/h speed limit, which may - depending on the
location - be reduced to 70 km/h at certain points - e.g. near traffic
lights, although this is not a requirement - to increase safety. Regional
roads - i.e. roads that lead from one town or village into another and have
houses on the side of them - have a 70 km/h speed limited. City traffic -
i.e. as defined by "within the more densely populated areas" - is limited
to 50 km/h, except near schools or in other possibly hazardous areas where
there is a 30 km/h speed limit. Lastly, certain private areas - e.g. the
parking lots for malls and the entries and exits to them, or factory plant
roads - have 30 km/ to 10 km/h speed limits.
With regard to maximum speeds, there are three kinds of violations. A
non-serious one, a severe one and a very heavy one. Non-serious is when
your vehicle's actual speed - i.e. not the speed as presented on the
dashboard but as measured through calibrated equipment relying on the
Doppler effect - is less than 10% above the maximum allowed speed in that
area.
A severe offense is when you exceed that 10%. A heavy offense is when you
exceed the speed limit by 40 km/h or more (or drunk driving), which may
lead to an immediate withdrawal of your driver's license for a by the
police officers themselves, usually for two to four weeks. If the speed is
as ridiculously high as you gave in your example, then they probably will
also impound your vehicle. If you're drunk behind the wheel or you test
positive on an alcohol test before even getting into your vehicle, your
keys are impounded for at least the day itself.
>> As for the fines, I think that for that particular offense and the
>> given speed, the fine would be far higher than USD $5000.
>
> I don't write the laws.
I wasn't criticizing. I was merely stating how things are over here.
Besides, the fine is not determined by law over here. There are decrees
with predetermined fines, but once it concerns such an outrageous offense
as the one you described, the judge is the one to determine what the fine
will be.
>> As for the prison sentence, our prisons are already overpopulated and
>> so any sentence less than one year is "indefinitely postponed", which
>> in practice means that it is to be seen as probation.
>
> We have the same overpopulation problem, so the county has an auxiliary
> jail called 'Tent City' - literally large army tents in a barbed wire
> enclosure. It's not a resort.
Prisons in Belgium are prisons, so I don't think they're quite the holiday
park either, but given the overpopulation understaffing problem, some may
have less comfort than others, and yet many facilities have a surprising
degree of comfort. There are no labor camps here.
One of the problems that we're facing now in terms of the penitentiary
system in Belgium is that there was a time in the past - which is now
slowly starting to disappear - that there was a great accent on the human
rights of the perpetrators - before and after the trial - to such a degree
that they were often better off than their victims.
I've given you the example of the civil case that I won, while I ended up
paying for the whole damn thing, didn't get my money back and had to
witness that the conman whom it concerns is still conning other people.
And apparently - or so did the friend of his wife's mother tell me - there
were three other such cases filed against him already when I filed mine.
> [Second offense]
>
> Similar - but again, this is a state matter, and may be (is) different
> in other states.
Then it sounds a lot like the USA are in fact a confederation rather than a
federation. Or at least very close to it. ;-)
>> So you guys have quite an elaborate fifth amendment. ;-)
>
> The actual constitution was written in 1787 and was ratified by 9 of
> the 13 states by June 1788. The ten amendments were proposed by the
> first session of congress and ratified by December 1791. Amazing how
> much law was in such a small document.
You'd also be amazed of the amount of laws and paperwork exist here in
Belgium, which has a nationwide population only the size of New York
City. :-)
>> And what if you have been found guilty in court - either by a judge or
>> by a jury, depending on the offense - and sentenced, and then later on
>> new evidence to the same case is discovered which acquits you from the
>> crime you were convicted over? Would the case then be re-opened?
>
> Not automatically. You (your lawyer) would have to file an appeal. In
> such case, it's _usually_ a non-jury proceeding, and the outcome would
> be either no change, a reduction of sentence, or a release and
> removal of the record of conviction.
Over here, the investigators themselves would ask for a re-opening of the
case. For instance, if evidence were to surface that you have been
convicted of murder while you're innocent - e.g. they find the real killer,
and/or missing pieces of the puzzle are found and put together - then the
legal system will of course not let you serve a sentence you have not
deserved.
> It's not considered "double jeopardy" because they can't increase your
> sentence for _this_ crime.
I didn't consider this to be related to "double jeopardy" in any way. :-)
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Friday 11 July 2008 04:05, someone who identifies as *Moe Trin* wrote
> in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
>
>> My understanding of this case was that this was a second offense, and
>> yes, that gets a longer suspension of the driving rights. Speeding like
>> many other laws is a state law, and the punishment varies by state.
>> This was considered a "serious violation" of the laws, which adds to the
>> punishments.
>
> Well, with regard to traffic violations themselves, Belgium has two kinds,
> i.e. serious and non-serious. It's quite complicated what is considered a
> serious traffic violation and what is not, and the rules change all the
> time.
... And the serious kind is again divided into "severe" and "heavy", of
course, as you could read in the paragraph below... ;-)
> For instance, maximum speeds are regularly altered - downwise, of course -
> depending on the type of roads and sometimes even upon the weather. When
> under certain weather conditions exhaust fumes could contribute to a smog
> problem, highway traffic is limited to a maximum of 90 km/h (or about 55
> mph), whereas the maximum speed on the highway is normally 120 km/h all
> over Belgium (although - and this is still fairly recent - trucks and
> buses have to be electronically limited to 90 km/h).
I'm also going to add that tour buses used to be limited to 100 km/h, and
that there are certain areas of the Belgian highway network that do have
speed limits due to danger - e.g. a dangerous combination of an exit lane
from one highway and an entry lane from another one - or areas with
permanent traffic congestion, such as the Ring around the city of Antwerp.
The Kennedy Tunnel in Antwerp - which is a highway tunnel and which
surprisingly was already congested on the day it was opened back in the
1960s - had a speed limit of 100 km/h until recently - just like the rest
of the Antwerp Ring, but now has a speed limit of only 70 km/h.
Similarly, there is an area near Ghent where the speed limit drops to 90
km/h first and then down to 70 km/h for quite a stretch because of a
dangerous entry lane.
The massive nationwide speed limit frenzy was introduced a few years ago by
the previous Federal Government, which was a coalition of socialists and
rightwing liberals. Among those socialists - they were the ones in charge
of traffic and mobility - there were many who really had green sympathies
and who wanted to promote public transport, and who leaned on statistics of
traffic accidents the way a drunk man leans on a light post, i.e. for
support, rather than illumination. <grin>
See, the thing is that most traffic accidents with injuries or fatalities
here in Belgium are caused by trucks on weekdays and by inexperienced
drivers - read: young people - who may or may not be under the influence of
alcohol or drugs on weekends.
Trucks are a real problem because (a) truck drivers often drive overloaded
trucks which impede their handling and increase their braking distance, (b)
truck drivers work long hours and are often under a lot of stress, causing
them not to respect the legally established rest periods and the 8 hours of
driving maximum per day, and (c) the already mentioned electronic speed
limitation of trucks, in combination with the stress factor.
Especially the latter is both dangerous and annoying to other traffic
participants. Trucks may only occupy the right and middle lane on highways
- they are not allowed to enter the left lane, unless this left lane is a
selection lane to an exit. They are limited to 90 km/h, but this
limitation is of course different per truck, and so with this limiter in
place, truck drivers use either cruise control or simply push the pedal to
the metal and go as fast as they can without slowing down.
Now, when one such truck has a speed limitation set that makes it go 90.6
km/h max and it approaches another truck which has a speed limitation that
makes it go only 89.7 km/h max, the one doing 90.6 will overtake the one
doing 89.7. And you can imagine that with such a small difference, it'll
literaly take several kilometers/miles before the faster truck has
overtaken the other one and enters the right hand lane again.
Another problem is that trucks don't keep their distance. Quiet often the
distance between two trucks in the same lane on the highway - and given the
speed limits for trucks, the right hand lane is usually populated by trucks
only - will be a lot shorter than the rear truck's emergency braking
distance, and sometimes not even enough for another car to drive in between
that space without seriously getting claustrophobic.
In addition to the above two paragraphs, there is the fact that truckers
typically don't give a rat's rear end about other traffic participants. So
if they're driving that closely together near an entry lane and you happen
to try entering the highway from that lane, you're /foobarred,/ because
they won't let you in.
> [...]
>
> With regard to maximum speeds, there are three kinds of violations. A
> non-serious one, a severe one and a very heavy one. Non-serious is when
> your vehicle's actual speed - i.e. not the speed as presented on the
> dashboard but as measured through calibrated equipment relying on the
> Doppler effect - is less than 10% above the maximum allowed speed in that
> area.
I should also mention that non-serious speed limit violations - i.e. below
110% of the speed limit - are usually not penalized, because the cops know
that a vehicles dashboard speed indicator may be and usually is off.
Still, it does happen, and it happened to me twice in two weeks time back
in 2006 - the only two days in that period that I drove my car, and I
normally do stick to the speed limits - and both times I had to pay a 50
Euro fine.
It turned out later that both speeding offenses came from the same local
cop, someone specifically assigned to this kind of stalking, because he
uses an unmarked vehicle with a speeding camera.
I strongly disapprove of this kind of stalking, because it is not intended
to make traffic go by safer - fixed speed cameras /do/ on the other hand
have that effect, as do marked police vehicles. It's sole intent is to
bring in money for the government, i.e. repression rather than prevention.
> One of the problems that we're facing now in terms of the penitentiary
> system in Belgium is that there was a time in the past - which is now
> slowly starting to disappear - that there was a great accent on the human
> rights of the perpetrators - before and after the trial - to such a degree
> that they were often better off than their victims.
Another problem that we're now facing is youth crime. Teenagers today are
all "raised" by parents who actually do _not_ raise them at all, and
schools don't really care about raising them either. They're the daycare
kids of overworked dual-earning families.
Now, lately, there's a lot of aggression from teenagers - when they're not
alone, of course - against singled out adult individuals, usually on public
transport. In quite a few of these recent cases, this has resulted in the
death of the victim. There are now also a lot more kids who bring knives
to school and stab another student, also with the death of the victim as a
result in some of those cases.
Another such example is a new "sport" among teenagers and even younger kids
- well, it's not that new, because they've already been doing it for many
years. They gather on bridges over highways and throw bricks or even
concrete blocks onto the windshields of cars or trucks. You can imagine
the consequences if you happen to get hit by one such object. You could
get killed and/or you might kill someone else in the process.
It's a crazy world... 8-|
Adam
> Belgium is a federal
> state as well, with the Flanders (aka the Flemish Region), the Brussels
> Capitol Region and the Wallonian Region as its "states". The regional
> governments are equal in authority to the federal government, rather than
> to be subject to it.
Now, to me, that sounds odd. What if laws conflict?
> At this stage, the government is debating about a new state reform that
> would give more authority to the regional governments.
[snip]
> but the new structure would lean over more closely to a confederal
> construct, rather than the federal construct it is now.
The USA tried that, with the "Articles of Confederation" in 1783, but
that document didn't work very well. For example, the federal
government could request money from the states, but had no way to
enforce that. Its flaws were the main reason the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 was held, which produced the national constitution
that, with amendments, is still in use. In preparation for that
convention, James Madison studied past governments and constitutions to
see what worked.
I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "A More Perfect Union," by
William Peters, to anyone interested in how the U.S. Constitution got
the way it is. It's a straightforward history of the Constitional
Convention, but as gripping as any novel, with ordinary (if idealistic)
men as its characters.
>> There is no one "right" answer, and each individual has to decide what
>> he or she is comfortable with.
>
> I suppose that applies to everything in life.
Yes, although often "decisions" are made by following others. (I don't
want to get into a philosophical discussion here, though.) For example,
I'm using Mandriva because, at the first LUG meeting I attended, I asked
the president, "What distro would you recommend for someone with
computer experience, but new to Linux?"
>> Similarly, there are those whose opinion of Ubuntu (or even M$) is
>> partly based on the company's philosophies and practices, and those
>> whose opinion is based solely on its technical aspects. Both can be
>> considered valid viewpoints.
>
> Well, my stance (in a nutshell) with regard to Microsoft is that their
> operating systems are a joke by design, that their software is far too
> buggy, that they are a proprietary software vendor and thus the wrong
> choice according to my personal conviction
I'd consider those based on technical aspects.
> and that as a corporate entity, they are plain evil.
That's a moral decision. A decision can be made based on either, both,
or neither of those factors.
Ubuntu is also emphasizing their corporate philosophies. I'd guess
that's been a factor in some people's decisions. If someone created a
distro bearing my surname, I'd consider that one too.
>> Cheapest of all [cigarettes] are those
>> sold on "tribal lands" (Native Americans), which are not subject to
>> federal or state taxes.
>
> The only place where you can get them without the taxes is on an airplane -
> once it is airborne and has reached a certain altitude (provided that
> cigarettes are still sold on airplanes, because I don't know about that) -
> or on the ferries between the European mainland and the United Kingdom,
> once they have cleared the territorial waters.
Again, those are places where federal, and other municipal, taxes don't
apply. BTW, does anyone here know what would happen if a crime were
committed in a place like that?
> it would seem that the prices of cigarettes are - or at least /were/
> when I was 18 - different per brand of cigarettes in the UK.
In the U.S. it has varied by brand for as long as I can remember. Now
I'm seeing signs for obscure brands for $4+/pack, and name brands for
$5+/pack. (20 per pack is standard for domestic brands.)
Adam
Adam
>> I've solved, or rather gotten around, many problems by switching.
>
> That's good. That problem was annoying.
Are you referring to the dropped dialup connections, or sporadic system
lockups? My parents stayed with the same dialup ISP I'd been using and
the dropped connections got even worse. They recently switched to
NetZero dialup, and, lo and behold, no dropped connections at all.
>> I'm still on dialysis awaiting transplant, which was a good excuse to
>> switch to DSL to keep my voice line free for THE call.
>
> Hopefully not to much longer.
I hope not too, but of course there's no way to know that.
>> (I know
>> Verizon doesn't have the greatest reputation, but I needed DSL ASAP,
>> not several months later.)
>
> I'd still be looking elsewhere. I suspect you're stuck for a year or
> some such rot - but look around.
[snip]
> Other have reported problems switching from
> Verizon DSL - rules to the contrary not-withstanding.
My one-year contract has expired. (Yes, it's been that long!) I'm
aware that switching from Verizon DSL will probably be a pain. My
previous ISP, the one with the dropped dialup connections, also offered
DSL, but the reviews on dslreports.com said that it took several months
to get service. (And, oddly, their web page said they didn't even offer
DSL to my address.) In my case, it was less than 48 hours between my
online order for Verizon DSL, and being online with it. So far, my
dissatisfaction isn't strong enough to bother with switching.
>> And my new ISP just dropped all newsgroups except the big-8, so I
>> switched to Motzarella for text groups like this one.
>
> That's been a major problem. What frosts me is that the problem was
> just 88 groups, but Verizon decided to be ridiculous. Not as bad as
> TimeWarner who simply dropped all of Usenet.
I believe what happened was that the NYS AG submitted anonymous reports
of child porn sites to the various ISPs, and then the ISPs, in violation
of their /own/ TOS, did nothing to block what was they then had been
told was a site of CP. To avoid a major suit for false advertising
(i.e. not following their own TOS), they settled.
> Look at the money they
> save!!! And of course they aren't going to reduce fees for reduced
> service - nooooo that would be wrong!
Someone pointed out that this change would probably cost VZ. Before,
they could simply get all the posts for, e.g.,
alt.binaries.multimedia.watchingpaintdry, only once, and then all the VZ
customers could then get it from VZ's own newsserver. Now, each request
for a post from that group will have to be sent over the 'net to some
third-party newsserver.
I'm not too upset -- one of my own maxims is, "Any problem that can be
solved by a small amount of money, is a small problem," and anyway I
have more important things to worry about.
>> And I've switched from analog to digital TV reception by getting one of
>> those converter boxes for my set-top UHF antenna. I went from getting
>> two channels badly, one of them interesting, to eight channels clearly,
>> seven of no interest and one of very slight interest.
>
> 200 channels... nothing on. Yeah, I know the problem. Where did you
> buy it?
The letter that came with the coupon(s) listed stores (with addresses)
in my area that carried the things. I'd planned on doing research, but
happened to be at Wal-Mart and saw an endcap display, so it was a
semi-impulse purchase. $50 + tax on $50 - $40 coupon = $10+.
>> the one interesting station was a local college's
>> translator of a PBS station, and the translator is NOT a full power
>> station, and doesn't have to switch, and hasn't yet.
>
> How long are they going to continue as an analog station?
I don't know. Not much longer, I hope. Once the fall semester starts,
I'll try asking them again.
> the television industry has lost interest in
> programming for anything but the five year old mind with an attention
> span of less than 15 seconds.
Now that I have DSL, I've been watching things that may be of no more
value, but at least suit my taste better.
Totally unrelated question: I was given an OLD (ca. 1995) system unit...
it's running Win95B but I could probably get Damn Small Linux on it
eventually. Is there anything useful I could do with it? (Anybody have
any ideas, no matter how wild?) Or should I just pitch the thing? Is
it worth starting a separate thread for this? Local LUG members, and
several web sites, had suggestions, but none that, to me, would be worth
the cost of electricity and the desk space.
>> How have you been doing?
>
> Well, I'm still plugging along. Had a minor accident on the bicycle
> and got slightly b0rked. Head scrape wouldn't stop bleeding (aspirin
> as a blood thinner), so to Urgent Care. Because of rib and shoulder
> pain, they decided to take some pictures. Nothing broken
Ouch! Have you recovered from that yet?
> but the
> following day the radiologist calls about a 12 mm spot on the upper
> portion of the right lung. 12 mm? It's getting smaller. (It had been
> spotted 8 years ago, and was followed for 3 years - before being
> diagnosed as possible Valley Fever, but inactive. A PET scan about
> six months ago said it was calcinofied - and inactive.) Whoopie.
Is that anything worth worrying about?
Adam
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Aragorn wrote:
>> Belgium is a federal
>> state as well, with the Flanders (aka the Flemish Region), the Brussels
>> Capitol Region and the Wallonian Region as its "states". The regional
>> governments are equal in authority to the federal government, rather than
>> to be subject to it.
>
> Now, to me, that sounds odd. What if laws conflict?
The laws generally don't conflict, but there are certain departments that
exist on both the regional and federal level, and their ministers may state
opposing opinions, which indeed leads to all kinds of trouble.
That is one of the reasons why we need a more incisive state reform, but the
French-speaking politicians are giving the Flemish politicians a hard time
about that, because /they/ believe that the Flemish want to declare
independence, and the French-speaking newspapers are so paranoid about
possible hostility from the Flemish parties that they themselves have now
started a media war against Flemish politicians, comparing them with Nazis,
etc.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as Godwin's Law in politics. :-)
>> At this stage, the government is debating about a new state reform that
>> would give more authority to the regional governments.
> [snip]
>> but the new structure would lean over more closely to a confederal
>> construct, rather than the federal construct it is now.
>
> The USA tried that, with the "Articles of Confederation" in 1783, but
> that document didn't work very well. For example, the federal
> government could request money from the states, but had no way to
> enforce that.
That is also the current situation here, yes.
> Its flaws were the main reason the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was
> held, which produced the national constitution that, with amendments, is
> still in use. In preparation for that convention, James Madison studied
> past governments and constitutions to see what worked.
Well, in my opinion, ideally, Belgium would cease to exist and the regions
become independent nations. Not because I have anything against the
French-speaking population or even the German-speaking population - we
generally never have trouble with those - but simply because the current
bureaucracy has proven not to work, and we need to come to a simplified and
modern governmental system, and with the current hate campaign and
anti-Flemish propaganda going on in some of Wallonia's most important
newspapers - and even in the Wallonian television news a number of months
ago, but that was evened out - and the conservatively unionist Wallonian
political parties - from left to right and everything in between - blocking
negotiations over a new state reform, it is all the more clear that this
reform is needed.
The reason as to why the Wallonian politicians are against a state reform is
that they currently receive money from the Flemish region via a transfer
through the federal government. They themselves have been plagued with
corruption and scandals, and instead of trying to run their region the way
it should be run, they prefer the easy way, which is to drain money from
the Flemish region. However, their egos are too big to think in terms of
what is sane and what's not.
A second thing is that Belgium is a Kingdom, and that the Royalty -
especially the Queen and the Princes - are French-speaking. The King
himself was raised in Dutch but does of course speak multiple languages.
The Queen is of Italian origin. And of course, the King is totally against
the division of the country.
Currently, all Flemish parties striving for Flemish independence - some are
Flemish-nationalists, but others (like myself) simply feel that a Monarchy
is an archaic (and very expensive) concept and that the current federal
construct has already been proven not to work - see their ideal Flanders as
a republic. The French-speaking politicians are almost all royalists and
unionists, and some of them would even rather have that the Flemish people
become a minority group - we currently make up for 57% of the Belgian
population - in an officially French-speaking Belgium. So we have a
problem.
You know, this struggle isn't new, and dates back to long before Belgium
even existed as a nation. We've been invaded by the French twice - I've
already mentioned Napoleon but there was a similar invasion in the 13th
century - and for as long as the Flanders has existed, it has had to fight
French-speaking people for preservation of its own language.
Back when my grandmother was still a little girl, she was not even allowed
to speak Flemish in the schoolyard - it was a school run by nuns. The
French came over here and imposed their language upon us, and penalized us
for speaking our own tongue. It was a time of /bourgoisie,/ the nobles
being of French origin and considering us as subordinate savages. And so
this ancient struggle is still going on, even though we actually make up
for the majority of the Belgian population.
One of the reasons for the tenaciousness of the bourgeoisie in this is
simply that Flemish - which itself is a dialect of Dutch - is too hard for
them to learn - or at the very least, it costs them more effort than
they're willing to put in. French is grammatically more complex than
Dutch, but has a much simpler pronunciation, and some consonants of the
alphabet are never used in the French language.
For instance, there are no natively French words with a "k" in them, and the
French use "ou" instead of a "w". So it's harder for them to learn Dutch
than it is for us to learn French. And their education does not quite
encourage the learning of Dutch either. I believe it's even only an
optional language in some educational directions, while French is mandatory
in all Flemish schools.
>>> There is no one "right" answer, and each individual has to decide what
>>> he or she is comfortable with.
>>
>> I suppose that applies to everything in life.
>
> Yes, although often "decisions" are made by following others. (I don't
> want to get into a philosophical discussion here, though.)
A pity, because aside from the fact that more philosophy is needed in this
world, I personally also enjoy philosophizing. :p
> For example, I'm using Mandriva because, at the first LUG meeting I
> attended, I asked the president, "What distro would you recommend for
> someone with computer experience, but new to Linux?"
George W. Bush was at a LUG meeting? :p (Just kidding, of course! :-))
>>> Similarly, there are those whose opinion of Ubuntu (or even M$) is
>>> partly based on the company's philosophies and practices, and those
>>> whose opinion is based solely on its technical aspects. Both can be
>>> considered valid viewpoints.
>>
>> Well, my stance (in a nutshell) with regard to Microsoft is that their
>> operating systems are a joke by design, that their software is far too
>> buggy, that they are a proprietary software vendor and thus the wrong
>> choice according to my personal conviction
>
> I'd consider those based on technical aspects.
With regard to Windows, the technical aspect comes first, and that is that I
myself want a UNIX-style operating system, and that GNU/Linux is a very
solid and professional-grade UNIX operating system that easily rivals the
big guys like Solaris or even AIX for that matter.
The fact that Microsoft software is proprietary is a second factor, in
addition to but behind the above. The fact that Microsoft is plain evil is
a third factor, behind all others, but nevertheless very important, and I
would never use a distribution whose makers have signed the same vilainous
and poisonous FUD patent deals with Microsoft as so many already have.
>> and that as a corporate entity, they are plain evil.
>
> That's a moral decision. A decision can be made based on either, both,
> or neither of those factors.
Yes, see above. :-)
> Ubuntu is also emphasizing their corporate philosophies. I'd guess
> that's been a factor in some people's decisions. If someone created a
> distro bearing my surname, I'd consider that one too.
Well, Ubuntu is not a person's name. :-) It means something like "unity" in
one of the many African languages, and the idea for such a distribution
came from Mark Shuttleworth, a South African multi-millionaire and
businessman - he's already been into space, so he's not exactly a low
profile kind of person. :-)
Yet, they are giving their distribution away for free, so they do need to
get their corporate income elsewhere. It's no different from what RedHat,
Novell/SuSE or Mandriva do.
And speaking of the house distribution to this newsgroup, I've already said
it a long time ago and I've been saying it ever since: Mandriva is
suffering from a severe degree of corporatitis. Their newsletters are
nothing other than commercial offers, and differ only from spam by their
lower frequency and by the fact that one has to be subscribed to the
newsletter.
In addition to that, their customer service is appalling, and they consider
their userbase to comprise only of those people who've taken on a paid
membership to the Mandriva Club.
Bill Mullen
Adam wrote:
> Totally unrelated question: I was given an OLD (ca. 1995) system
> unit... it's running Win95B but I could probably get Damn Small Linux
> on it eventually. Is there anything useful I could do with it?
> (Anybody have any ideas, no matter how wild?) Or should I just pitch
> the thing? Is it worth starting a separate thread for this? Local
> LUG members, and several web sites, had suggestions, but none that,
> to me, would be worth the cost of electricity and the desk space.
Without some idea of the specs of the machine, it'd be difficult to say
for sure, but if it can manage to run X successfully, you could use it
to login to another Linux box on the LAN with XDMCP. Since all of your
login session actually runs on that other system, and this one merely
provides the display and relays your keyboard and mouse input, even a
very low-spec 'puter can often handle this sort of arrangement nicely.
HTH!
--
Bill Mullen
RLU #270075
Moe Trin
>Non-serious is [...] less than 10% above the maximum
Depends - generally they don't bother you up to 5 or 10 MPH over the
limits - though in my younger days I got plenty of "warning tickets"
in that range. In that state (Connecticut), the warning carried 3
points, and if you got 10 points in any 12 month period, you lost your
license (1st time one year, second time 3 years, third time permanent,
but as noted this varies by state).
>A severe offense is when you exceed that 10%. A heavy offense is when
>you exceed the speed limit by 40 km/h or more (or drunk driving),
>which may lead to an immediate withdrawal of your driver's license for
>a by the police officers themselves, usually for two to four weeks.
If you are over the 5-10 MPH range (or in it, if you are unlucky) on
up to _perhaps_ 30 MPH over (less in some areas), you'll get lots of
points (in Connecticut, it was 10 points - there goes your license),
and a fine. Repeat offenders tend to loose the license, and are subject
to substantial fines - upwards of hundreds of dollars. Drunk driving
is a major no-no and your license is gone at 0.08% BAC. You're also in
jail for 10 days and fined $250 for the first offense. A second offense
is 90 days and $500, and _if_ you get your license back (in a year) you
may be required to install an ignition interlock (breath tester before
the car will start). 3rd DUI in five years _or_ DUI while a person
under 15 is is the vehicle - 2 years jail, 3 years suspension, and the
ignition interlock is now mandatory.
There is another punitive measure: the cost of the mandatory vehicle and
driver insurance. The cost of the insurance depends on age, sex, and
driving record. You are asked for three documents (vehicle and driver
license, and proof of insurance card) at all traffic stops or accidents.
[Tent City]
>Prisons in Belgium are prisons, so I don't think they're quite the
>holiday park either, but given the overpopulation understaffing
>problem, some may have less comfort than others, and yet many
>facilities have a surprising degree of comfort.
Most definitely NOT here. Comfort is air conditioning which brings
the temperatures inside down to ~27-29C. Tent city lacks that, and the
cooling is provided by misters (very fine water sprays). For most of
the year, the humidity is very low, and the evaporation of the mist
reduces the local temperature. This doesn't help on days like today
(had some substantial thunderstorms last night, and more are forecast)
when the dew point and temperature at 08:00 was 21 and 24C = 83% RH.
>There are no labor camps here.
Nor here. As part of your sentence at city/county level, you may be
assigned "road work" - which means walking along the sides of the roads
picking up trash, but given the lack of things to do otherwise...
>Then it sounds a lot like the USA are in fact a confederation rather
>than a federation. Or at least very close to it. ;-)
Section 8 of Article 1 of the constitution - the feds handle national
issues, such as defense, relations with other countries, minting of
currency, post offices, regulation of commerce, and enacting laws
necessary to enforce the constitution. Section 10 of Article 1 - the
states are not allowed to mess with those national issues. The 10th
Amendment merely says "The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved
to the States, respectively, or to the people." Some licenses (my
pilot and radio operator license for example) are issued by the feds.
Others, like the drivers license and vehicle registration, come from
the individual state - although all _other_ states accept those
licenses as long as you are living in the issuing state - and if you
loose your license in one state, you can't go to another state and
get one there.
>You'd also be amazed of the amount of laws and paperwork exist here
>in Belgium, which has a nationwide population only the size of New
>York City. :-)
You'd be amazed - maybe horrified - of the amount of laws and paperwork
in New York City - never mind the stuff from New York state.
Old guy
Moe Trin
>See, the thing is that most traffic accidents with injuries or
>fatalities here in Belgium are caused by trucks on weekdays and by
>inexperienced drivers - read: young people - who may or may not be
>under the influence of alcohol or drugs on weekends.
A new law in Arizona sets significant limits on teen drivers, relating
to night driving, and numbers of people under 18 who can be in the
car at the same time. You may also loose your license for any trace
of alcohol or any drugs (that actually goes up to age 21), speeding,
or reckless driving and a number of other offenses.
>Trucks are a real problem because (a) truck drivers often drive
>overloaded trucks
Weigh stations (generally near state borders, but some states have
them all over the place) and portable scales. Overweight? The vehicle
doesn't resume travel until it's unloaded below the limit, AND the
owner and driver are fined. They also look for faulty equipment, worn
tires, lights, etc.
>truck drivers work long hours and are often under a lot of stress,
>causing them not to respect the legally established rest periods and
>the 8 hours of driving maximum per day
There are similar restrictions - and you may be required to show the
log books - which includes today's starting time/location - at weight
check points, and if you get pulled over for any reason. There are
fines, and you may loose your commercial license for repeated violations.
>In addition to the above two paragraphs, there is the fact that
>truckers typically don't give a rat's rear end about other traffic
>participants. So if they're driving that closely together near an
>entry lane and you happen to try entering the highway from that lane,
>you're /foobarred,/ because they won't let you in.
Did I mention that police vehicles don't have to be marked as such?
Well, some states do require a sign on the back and doors, but don't
specify what the sign must look like. Hmm, blue car, blue sign, and
blue letters saying POLICE - yup, that's legal. And the flashing blue
and/or red lights - they're usually concealed.
>Another problem that we're now facing is youth crime.
And you think this is unique?
Old guy
Moe Trin
[tribal lands - a.k.a. $NATIVE_AMERICAN nations]
>Again, those are places where federal, and other municipal, taxes
>don't apply. BTW, does anyone here know what would happen if a crime
>were committed in a place like that?
Depends - you would _probably_ be subjected to tribal law (just as you
would be subject to Japanese law if you committed a crime in Japan),
but if incarceration is involved you'd likely be handed over to the
feds who would act as an agent for the $NATIVE_AMERICAN nation.
[price of ciggies]
>In the U.S. it has varied by brand for as long as I can remember. Now
>I'm seeing signs for obscure brands for $4+/pack, and name brands for
>$5+/pack.
Geez that's cheap. The price varies by city, county and state, as each
has their own set of taxes, as well as the expected variation in the
price/profit per store. "Generics" here are in the $5.50 range, while
the national brands are right around $6.00. I was in Las Vegas two
weeks ago, and the prices were about $0.30 higher. I think it's
already been mentioned that most governments see tobacco and booze are
an unlimited source of tax revenue, and it's "what the sheep will pay"
for limits.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g57re6$4nl$1...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>> That's good. That problem was annoying.
>
>Are you referring to the dropped dialup connections
Yes
>My parents stayed with the same dialup ISP I'd been using and the
>dropped connections got even worse. They recently switched to
>NetZero dialup, and, lo and behold, no dropped connections at all.
Hmmm... I thought they were not having significant problems, but you
were. Well, it's been a while.
>My one-year contract has expired. (Yes, it's been that long!) I'm
>aware that switching from Verizon DSL will probably be a pain.
I've seen some horror stories in other newsgroups. It _shouldn't_
be that big of a deal.
>I believe what happened was that the NYS AG submitted anonymous
>reports of child porn sites to the various ISPs, and then the ISPs,
>in violation of their /own/ TOS, did nothing to block what was they
>then had been told was a site of CP. To avoid a major suit for false
>advertising (i.e. not following their own TOS), they settled.
I've heard that. I've also heard stories that the original anonymous
complaints to the A/G may have been from one or more of the ISPs as a
way to get out of a service that was not well used.
>Someone pointed out that this change would probably cost VZ. Before,
>they could simply get all the posts for, e.g.,
>alt.binaries.multimedia.watchingpaintdry,
Hmmm - that one isn't on giganews
>only once, and then all the VZ customers could then get it from VZ's
>own newsserver. Now, each request for a post from that group will
>have to be sent over the 'net to some third-party newsserver.
To an extent, yes. Looking at the list of groups I'm following and
the rough bandwidth figures, I've got 27 alt.* groups (no alt.b*), and
34 comp.* groups, and the alt.* needs twice the bandwidth. Thing is, the
A/G can't touch what's inside the packets - Verizon has no control
other than censorship which would cause all kinds of waves.
>> Where did you buy it?
>
>The letter that came with the coupon(s) listed stores (with addresses)
>in my area that carried the things. I'd planned on doing research, but
>happened to be at Wal-Mart and saw an endcap display, so it was a
>semi-impulse purchase. $50 + tax on $50 - $40 coupon = $10+.
I haven't gotten the coupons yet, and my local Wal-Mart is a mess right
now due to reconstruction. I was in there a week ago, and spent 20
minutes looking for stuff I should have found in less than five.
>Totally unrelated question: I was given an OLD (ca. 1995) system unit...
>it's running Win95B but I could probably get Damn Small Linux on it
>eventually. Is there anything useful I could do with it?
Depends - I'm using a 486-33 as a print spooler, and two Pentium-90s as
file servers. Might be overkill for you. I also have a 486DX2 with a
bunch of external SCSI drives as a backup server. It runs 24/7 because
my sister in Connecticut uses it as a remote backup - I do the same
with a... /proc/cpuinfo says it's a P133 at her place. None of my
servers use X, so that reduces the horsepower requirements a lot.
>> Had a minor accident on the bicycle and got slightly b0rked.
>Ouch! Have you recovered from that yet?
Yeah - big problem is that any cut on the head normally bleeds easily,
and the aspirin aggravates the problem. Had a beautiful black eye for
about two weeks as well.
>> diagnosed as possible Valley Fever, but inactive. A PET scan about
>> six months ago said it was calcinofied - and inactive.) Whoopie.
>
>Is that anything worth worrying about?
Valley fever is, as it's not uncommon here and can be fatal. But I've
got enough other things wrong that it's the least of the problems. They
yanked a benign tumor out of me earlier, and there is something else
screwing with my blood work that they haven't found yet. Apparently
not critical/fatal, but they're looking.
Old guy
Adam
[Belgium]
> The laws generally don't conflict, but there are certain departments that
> exist on both the regional and federal level, and their ministers may state
> opposing opinions, which indeed leads to all kinds of trouble.
Here, there's a definite hierarchy, though there are often similar
departments. Federal, state, county, municipality... they may not like
the regulations passed higher up, but have to comply. Or, as I said,
they can pass more restrictive regulations.
[US "Articles of Confederation"]
>> Its flaws were the main reason the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was
>> held, which produced the national constitution that, with amendments, is
>> still in use. In preparation for that convention, James Madison studied
>> past governments and constitutions to see what worked.
I should add that the original purpose of the Constitutional Convention
was to amend the Articles of Confederation, but they soon decided to
scrap those and start from scratch. (Except there were already 13
states and therefore 13 state governments.)
> Well, in my opinion, ideally, Belgium would cease to exist and the regions
> become independent nations.
That sounds like a pretty radical change! (Although it did happen with
the Soviet Union.) The map of Europe has changed so much in the past
two decades that I can't even keep track of it. I admit I don't follow
European politics that closely, but isn't the trend toward unification
these days instead of the opposite, what with the EU and all?
> And of course, the King is totally against the division of the country.
Somehow monarchy usually likes to keep the status quo.
> You know, this struggle isn't new, and dates back to long before Belgium
> even existed as a nation.
I was surprised to discover that happened as recently as 1830.
> Flemish - which itself is a dialect of Dutch
To my wholly untrained ear, Dutch sounds a little like German to me,
though of course they look quite different in writing. (After all,
Dutch, German, and English are all Germanic languages.)
>> (I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion here, though.)
>
> A pity, because aside from the fact that more philosophy is needed in this
> world, I personally also enjoy philosophizing. :p
I'm thinking this is a newsgroup for Mandriva Linux, after all. I did
have one semester of college-level philosophy, in an attempt to find
answers to the BIG questions in life, or at least figure out what the
questions were, but I don't think I found any.
> I
> would never use a distribution whose makers have signed the same villainous
> and poisonous FUD patent deals with Microsoft as so many already have.
I have a hypothetical question for you. What if you needed a complex
specialized application, and the only one available was from a company
you disagreed with, but the app itself was ideal for your purposes,
well-written, well supported, and inexpensive? (And, hypothetically,
there was no other program available that even attempted this task.)
[Ubuntu]
> Yet, they are giving their distribution away for free, so they do need to
> get their corporate income elsewhere. It's no different from what RedHat,
> Novell/SuSE or Mandriva do.
But Ubuntu seems to be the only distribution with a sort of world
philosophy and ideals. All the others seem to be just software.
> And speaking of the house distribution to this newsgroup, I've already said
> it a long time ago and I've been saying it ever since: Mandriva is
> suffering from a severe degree of corporatitis.
I'll have to take your word for it. I've really never dealt with them
directly, just downloaded the OS and run it. I'm not really familiar
with any other distro, so I'm not even sure what's Linux, and what's
just Mandriva's way of doing things. I'm a pragmatist (in the more
general sense), so I'll probably stick with it until I see sufficient
reason to change.
Adam
Adam
>
> I've seen some horror stories in other newsgroups. It _shouldn't_
> be that big of a deal.
I'm not even sure whom I should switch to. Somehow almost everybody
claims that their own ISP is the absolute worst.
>> I believe what happened was that the NYS AG submitted anonymous
>> reports of child porn sites to the various ISPs
>
> I've heard that. I've also heard stories that the original anonymous
> complaints to the A/G may have been from one or more of the ISPs as a
> way to get out of a service that was not well used.
That's possible... but what would that have gotten them? I don't think
the ISPs came off any better because of that "reason".
>> alt.binaries.multimedia.watchingpaintdry,
>
> Hmmm - that one isn't on giganews
Probably bandwidth. Some of the videos there are several days long,
especially the ones of enamel house paint.
>> Now, each request for a post from that group will
>> have to be sent over the 'net to some third-party newsserver.
>
> To an extent, yes. Looking at the list of groups I'm following and
> the rough bandwidth figures, I've got 27 alt.* groups (no alt.b*), and
> 34 comp.* groups, and the alt.* needs twice the bandwidth.
Well, I'm basically using as much bandwidth for newsgroups as before,
only now almost all of it requires VZ to get it thru the 'net from other
newsservers.
[DTV converter]
>> The letter that came with the coupon(s) listed stores (with addresses)
>> in my area that carried the things.
>
> I haven't gotten the coupons yet, and my local Wal-Mart is a mess
My letter listed RadioShack, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Wal-Mart
stores, all within a half hour's drive from my home. The coupons are
only good for 90 days after being issued. Most converters block any
analog signals; look for one with "analog pass-through" (I think that's
what it's called) if that's important to you.
>> Is there anything useful I could do with it?
>
> Depends - I'm using a 486-33 as a print spooler, and two Pentium-90s as
> file servers. Might be overkill for you. I also have a 486DX2 with a
> bunch of external SCSI drives as a backup server.
Yep, I think it would be overkill for me. I'm not running any kind of
server, and my main system handles print spooling well enough. And I
don't want to buy any more drives for the old box when I'd be better off
buying drives for the new one.
> Valley fever is, as it's not uncommon here and can be fatal. But I've
> got enough other things wrong that it's the least of the problems. They
> yanked a benign tumor out of me earlier, and there is something else
> screwing with my blood work that they haven't found yet. Apparently
> not critical/fatal, but they're looking.
Oh dear! It always seems to be something, doesn't it? When things go
too smoothly, I'm now suspicious.
Adam
Adam
>> BTW, does anyone here know what would happen if a crime
>> were committed in a place like that?
>
> Depends - you would _probably_ be subjected to tribal law
But what would happen if a crime were committed, say, halfway across the
Atlantic on a ship or plane? Who's in charge there?
> [price of ciggies]
>
> I think it's
> already been mentioned that most governments see tobacco and booze are
> an unlimited source of tax revenue, and it's "what the sheep will pay"
> for limits.
I just bought gasoline today (July 12 2008, Hyde Park, NY, USA,
$4.279/gallon which is I think about 0.714 Euros per liter), and the
signs there for cigarettes ranged from $4.77 for obscure brands up to
$5.70 for Marlboros (packs of 20). I think the state cigarette tax is
again the highest in the country. I agree with you about tobacco and
liquor taxes being practically unlimited.
Adam
Adam
>> Totally unrelated question: I was given an OLD (ca. 1995) system
>> unit... it's running Win95B but I could probably get Damn Small Linux
>> on it eventually. Is there anything useful I could do with it?
>
> for sure, but if it can manage to run X successfully, you could use it
> to login to another Linux box on the LAN with XDMCP. Since all of your
> login session actually runs on that other system, and this one merely
> provides the display and relays your keyboard and mouse input, even a
> very low-spec 'puter can often handle this sort of arrangement nicely.
Thanks, Bill, great idea! It's a 100 MHz 486DX, 48 MB RAM, 420 MB HD
(remember when something like that was SOTA?), so I'm not sure offhand
if it's powerful enough to run X. I really like your idea of using the
old machine as a terminal for the new one. None of the "uses for an old
computer" web pages mentioned that, probably because they're thinking of
Windows. If I didn't live alone (and therefore not need another
terminal), I'd go with it. Thanks again!
Adam
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <sDAdk.121570$AH5....@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Non-serious is [...] less than 10% above the maximum
>
> Depends - generally they don't bother you up to 5 or 10 MPH over the
> limits - though in my younger days I got plenty of "warning tickets"
> in that range. In that state (Connecticut), the warning carried 3
> points, and if you got 10 points in any 12 month period, you lost your
> license (1st time one year, second time 3 years, third time permanent,
> but as noted this varies by state).
There was talk of a system with driver's licenses that have points. I
believe a new driver's license was to get six points, and you could lose
those points - one at a time or up to three at a time - if you get caught
breaking traffic law.
However, that system was in the freezer for a long time and when it
resurfaced a few months ago, the current administration felt it needed more
research on its viability, while others were totally against it. So far,
it hasn't happened yet, but I know of some European countries that have
such a system.
Similarly, the whole taxing on transport is under revision now, with various
alternatives being on the table. The current system is as it has been for
many decades already, i.e. a car is rated to have a certain "fiscal
horsepower", which has nothing whatsoever to do with the engine's power or
the type of fuel used. One fiscal horsepower equals 200 cc of volumentric
displacement, and so the bigger your engine - whether it has more or less
brake horsepower than another engine - the more you pay.
For new cars however, there is a registration tax, which holds both the
fiscal horsepower and the actual brake horsepower - or more correctly, the
engine power in kiloWatts - into account, and whichever of the two is
_least_ favorable (for the owner of the vehicle) is the one that applies.
As an example, I currently drive an Opel Astra GTC 2.0 liter Turbo (170 BHP,
gasoline-powered) - I believe the model exists in the US as the Saturn
Astra, but I don't know what the designation for the GTC variant is; it is
the three-door model with the lower roofline and lowered sports suspension
- and when I purchased that car in 2006, I had to pay approximately 2600
Euro of registration tax. That is *huge!*
But so anyway, this system of fiscal horsepowers is on the table for
revision in favor of a taxing per "pollution factor". But of course, what
those idiots in Brussels consider "pollution" is actually just the
carbondioxide emission - and carbondioxide is actually *not* polluting, but
it *is* a greenhouse gas, and they want to let the unwashed masses think
that they're doing something about the global warming phenomenon.
Either way, my car has an average CO0 emission of 262 grams per 100 km, and
with 115-125 grams per 100 km considered "environmentally friendly", I'm
bound to lose again there.
Those with a bigger and/or more powerful engine are of course even worse
off. Don't even think about owning a V8 here unless it's a delivery truck
or offroader with only two seats, or unless you're very wealthy. I've just
filled my fuel tank with supreme unleaded - 98 Octane European scale, I
guess that'll be 92 Octane US scale - and the price was 1.550 Euro per
liter, so... (Diesel is slightly more affordable, but the difference in
price used to be bigger, and that's why 90% of all vehicles registered in
Belgium drive on dieselfuel.)
> [...]
>
> There is another punitive measure: the cost of the mandatory vehicle and
> driver insurance. The cost of the insurance depends on age, sex, and
> driving record. You are asked for three documents (vehicle and driver
> license, and proof of insurance card) at all traffic stops or accidents.
Insurance is mandatory here, and the tariff also depends on age and prior
driving record, albeit not in terms of traffic violations but in terms of
accidents caused by you. It's a bonus-malus system, i.e. you cause no
accidents for a year, and you go down one step on the scale - I'm currently
at -2, which is an insurance-company-related rating, as 0 is the legal
minimum; for me it means that no matter what, my level won't change anymore
- and when you cause an accident, you go up two steps, or five steps if you
cause a second accident within the same year.
Drivers under the age of 23 get a very high starting point on the scale - I
think it's 10, but it could already be higher now - because they are
considered a financial liability for the insurance company due to their
inexperience. However, I don't think the gender matters with regard to
your insurance premium. That would be considered discrimination and thus
illegal over here.
> Most definitely NOT here. Comfort is air conditioning which brings
> the temperatures inside down to ~27-29C. Tent city lacks that, and the
> cooling is provided by misters (very fine water sprays). For most of
> the year, the humidity is very low, and the evaporation of the mist
> reduces the local temperature. This doesn't help on days like today
> (had some substantial thunderstorms last night, and more are forecast)
> when the dew point and temperature at 08:00 was 21 and 24C = 83% RH.
In some detention facilities here in Belgium, the inmates even have an
internet connection and possible a private television set... <grin>
>> There are no labor camps here.
>
> Nor here. As part of your sentence at city/county level, you may be
> assigned "road work" - which means walking along the sides of the roads
> picking up trash, but given the lack of things to do otherwise...
Low-security facilities offer penitentiary leave - i.e. the inmate is
allowed to go home for the weekend - and also offer community service doing
what you describe.
High-security facilities offer no such thing - although there are "internal"
jobs the inmates can do, such as helping out in the kitchen or in the
library - and our current justice department is actually quite scared of
escaping inmates from such facilities, given that about 20 of them escaped
by climbing over the wall of one facility two years ago, and two others
have independently escaped from prison via outside help who had hijacked a
helicopter and forced the pilot to land on the prison's court. Some of
those facilities now have a safety net spanning the court.
>> Then it sounds a lot like the USA are in fact a confederation rather
>> than a federation. Or at least very close to it. ;-)
>
> Section 8 of Article 1 of the constitution - the feds handle national
> issues, such as defense, relations with other countries, minting of
> currency, post offices, regulation of commerce, and enacting laws
> necessary to enforce the constitution. Section 10 of Article 1 - the
> states are not allowed to mess with those national issues. The 10th
> Amendment merely says "The powers not delegated to the United States
> by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved
> to the States, respectively, or to the people." Some licenses (my
> pilot and radio operator license for example) are issued by the feds.
> Others, like the drivers license and vehicle registration, come from
> the individual state - although all _other_ states accept those
> licenses as long as you are living in the issuing state - and if you
> loose your license in one state, you can't go to another state and
> get one there.
Well, one thing I know is that your individual states are ruled by a
governor. In Belgium, a governor is a non-elected official who rules the
province, but provinces and towns don't have specific laws. They do
however have specific additional taxes, from which they organize roadworks
and other maintenance jobs, and from which they pay their personnel.
Towns and provinces may however have special regulations with regard to
building and what is officially named "spatial organization", i.e. the
layout of the built areas, agricultural areas, industrialized areas, and
specific quota. It's all quite complicated, and a lot from the federal,
regional, province and town levels is now slowly becoming more regulated
from the European level on.
I guess it's all a slow process towards a "United States of Europe",
although we're not quite there yet, and I'm not even so sure that it would
be a good idea, given the large amount of attention to a free market
economy and the small amount of attention towards other affairs in the
European Constitution. It seems we will be getting a European President
from next year on or so, though. I'm not so sure on whether that's a good
idea either, given that the European President will be elected by the
European Parliament, not by the people.
Anyway, with the European construct getting bigger and more bureaucratic,
you can understand that I have one more reason to opt for the termination
of Belgium as a single nation, and an independence of the Flemish region
instead. :-)
>> You'd also be amazed of the amount of laws and paperwork exist here
>> in Belgium, which has a nationwide population only the size of New
>> York City. :-)
>
> You'd be amazed - maybe horrified - of the amount of laws and paperwork
> in New York City - never mind the stuff from New York state.
Did your bureaucrats take lessons over here, or is the USA simply the place
where Belgium ships all of its worn-out red tape to? :p
Dan C
>> OK, so (like I said), you weren't actually there during the
>> investigations or the trial, and are relying on "reported" information
>> to base your conclusions on. Sorry, that doesn't count for much.
> By the same token, witnesses being heard in the courtroom are also
> "reported information". Still that information is taken for granted, if
> only because the witness must be sworn in.
Exactly. That's a significant difference. Persons tend to be quite a bit
more likely to tell the truth when they know that lying can send them to
jail for perjury. Please don't try to misdirect things with statements
like that. There is a HUGE difference between *testimony* by sworn
witnesses, and *reporting* by journalists.
>> ...] and therefore reaching conclusions such as you have stated (like
>> "must have been manslaughter") is completely baseless.
> I was also including my own evaluation of Hans Reiser's personality as
> an Aspie, and being one myself, I understand such a person's logic, and
> knowing myself as well as a number of other Aspies, I know that it would
> be nearly impossible - note: "/nearly/ impossible", so not /entirely/
> impossible - for an Aspie to commit a coldblooded murder.
Damn, I just *knew* you'd find a way to inject the Aspie angle into this
thread, just like you do in pretty much *every* thread you participate in.
It's completely irrelevant to the case, and /please/ don't expect me (or
anyone else) to think Aspies are so unlikely to commit a murder. They may
be less likely than other folks (I don't know), but so are nuns, priests,
grandparents, retards, etc, etc, etc, etc,.... Those subcategories of
people *DO* in fact occasionally commit such crimes.
> Besides, Hans Reiser already confessed that he strangled Nina while
> they
> were physically fighting, so I see no premeditation in that.
You are very naive.
> Of course, you can now argue that they may have been physically fighting
> because she was fighting for her life, but then I don't think that
> Reiser would have opted for strangulation if he really did plan on
> killing her.
I don't see how you could possible know what Reiser may or may not have
been thinking, or even speculate on it.
> There would have been lots of other and far less conspicuous ways to
> kill a person if it was really planned ahead.
Perhaps. Doesn't mean that a LOT of folks aren't killed by strangulation.
They are.
>> Well, obviously the evidence *did* stand up in court, enough for a
>> verdict to be reached.
> The verdict of first degree murder, as purported by the D.A. from day
> one without that he had a shred of evidence, because Reiser chose to
> plead not guilty. Like I said, standard procedure.
And your point? There was apparently enough evidence of first degree
murder for a jury to convict him of it.
> The rest was all a matter of credibly establishing that Nina Reiser was
> indeed dead and not simply missing, and of convincing the jury. It is
> my belief that in this particular case, the D.A. simply managed to
> convince the jury that it all went down as he claimed that it did,
> because the evidence was circumstantial at the start of the trial and it
> was still only circumstantial when the judge sent the jury off to
> deliberate.
That's what good lawyers do. They "convince a jury" that their side is
correct. Sometimes it's easy, and other times it takes more work. As
previously stated, this is how it works, and it happens every day.
>> In case you didn't know, people are convicted *every day* on nothing
>> more than circumstantial evidence.
> I find *that* hard to believe.
Again, you are very naive. I am referring of course to how things happen
in the USA, and your lack of understanding may be related to that fact.
> I'm pretty convinced that others may be convicted over circumstantial
> evidence, but certainly not every day - unless you are talking
> worldwide, of course. If that were the case, then there would be
> something seriously wrong with the legal system.
I am speaking only of the legal system in the USA. It happens every day,
and I would guess that it's numbered in the *thousands* of times per day
across the entire country. This does not indicate anything wrong with the
legal system, as it is perfectly allowed by the existing laws.
>> It's still just as valid, and the conviction is just as real.
> The conviction is real, yes. It's official, there's no denying that.
Yes. My point was that it's just as real whether the verdict was arrived
at with circumstantial evidence, or physical/material evidence. Makes no
difference in the end.
>> I don't have enough information to show you that, but then again I am
>> not the one who is making claims (assertations, really) that the trial
>> was biased or even corrupted. That's the difference between our
>> positions.
> Yet you *are* making claims that my two independent sources of
> information - which I have supplied to you - were biased and were
> putting a spin on things.
Wrong. Go back and read what I've written again, and show me where I made
such claims. I simply said that it *may* have been biased, because the
writers of said information were not present in the investigation rooms,
courtroom, jury rooms, etc... Only the people present at those places can
actually *KNOW* what the evidence really was.
While the justice system in the USA (or anywhere else) is not perfect, it
is the best that we can do with the existing laws as they are written. I
do believe that the USA's system is probably the best overall in the world
as to providing a fair trial to all accused criminals, and protecting
their rights. Yes, mistakes are made, but if one cannot have any faith in
the system, then there is nothing left but anarchy. I think the present
state of affaires is preferable to that.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <BnBdk.121571$AH5....@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> See, the thing is that most traffic accidents with injuries or
>> fatalities here in Belgium are caused by trucks on weekdays and by
>> inexperienced drivers - read: young people - who may or may not be
>> under the influence of alcohol or drugs on weekends.
>
> A new law in Arizona sets significant limits on teen drivers, relating
> to night driving, and numbers of people under 18 who can be in the
> car at the same time. You may also loose your license for any trace
> of alcohol or any drugs (that actually goes up to age 21), speeding,
> or reckless driving and a number of other offenses.
In Belgium - and also in the rest of Europe, for as far as I can tell - you
may only drive a car from the age of 18 on. You /may/ however drive a
farmer's tractor from the age of 14 on - but only on the trajectory between
the farm and the field - and there is no need to get a license for that.
In Belgium, one is considered legally an adult as of the age of 18. It used
to be 21, but that was changed in the late 1970s. The selling of alcohol
and/or cigarettes to people under 16 is forbidden by law. Sex is
considered legal as of the age of 14, provided that there is only an age
difference of less than 2 years between both participants, and that it is
with full consent, and this is valid up until the youngest of the two is
18. So technically, if a 16-year old girl has sex with a 20-year old guy,
it's considered statutory rape, even if they are consenting.
Drugs are a whole different and difficult matter of their own. In general,
drugs are forbidden, but the possession - not the buying nor the selling -
of a small amount of marihuana is considered legal, and one is allowed to
own one single marihuana plant. Other narcotics such as pills, cocaine or
whatever are considered illegal. In the Netherlands, marihuana is fully
legalized, and so that's where the Belgian users go to buy the stuff.
>> Trucks are a real problem because (a) truck drivers often drive
>> overloaded trucks
>
> Weigh stations (generally near state borders, but some states have
> them all over the place) and portable scales. Overweight? The vehicle
> doesn't resume travel until it's unloaded below the limit, AND the
> owner and driver are fined. They also look for faulty equipment, worn
> tires, lights, etc.
It's the same here, with one big difference: the stations are not always
manned, and such weighing and checking are actually only done through
special actions from the police, and at given locations.
>> truck drivers work long hours and are often under a lot of stress,
>> causing them not to respect the legally established rest periods and
>> the 8 hours of driving maximum per day
>
> There are similar restrictions - and you may be required to show the
> log books - which includes today's starting time/location - at weight
> check points, and if you get pulled over for any reason. There are
> fines, and you may loose your commercial license for repeated violations.
Same as the above. It is usually counted on by the truckers or their
expedition companies that the chances of being pulled over for such a
checkup are quite small, and they don't mind paying the fines since they
make far more money by overloading the trucks on the days that there is no
checkup. They consider it a small price to pay for more profit.
>> In addition to the above two paragraphs, there is the fact that
>> truckers typically don't give a rat's rear end about other traffic
>> participants. So if they're driving that closely together near an
>> entry lane and you happen to try entering the highway from that lane,
>> you're /foobarred,/ because they won't let you in.
>
> Did I mention that police vehicles don't have to be marked as such?
Well, I do know that from loads of US-made movies. :-)
> Well, some states do require a sign on the back and doors, but don't
> specify what the sign must look like. Hmm, blue car, blue sign, and
> blue letters saying POLICE - yup, that's legal. And the flashing blue
> and/or red lights - they're usually concealed.
Concealed police vehicles are used here mainly by undercover police
officers, but traffic police only deploys them for catching people who
break the speed limits. They are often deployed in a concealed manner.
I've even seen a picture once - albeit that I don't remember whether this
was in Belgium; it was surely in Europe, judging by the type and brand of
car - where such a car was actually hidden underneath a bunch of branches
and leaves, with only the windshield and the camera flash exposed.
>>Another problem that we're now facing is youth crime.
>
> And you think this is unique?
No, of course not - please don't insult my intelligence. <grin>
However, it was *far* less prevalent here in Europe than it's already been
in the US for many years - with a few cases in the UK reaching the news
every couple of years since the late 1980s - and it's certainly very new
for Belgium, and especially at the incredible rate the phenomenon has been
growing over here now.
This year alone there have been several such instances - most of them taking
place on a city bus or train - with a positively fatal ending for most of
the victims, and an ever-dropping age of the perpetrators[1]. Similarly,
we are now also starting to see /gangbangers,/ with the youngest
perpetrators being between 10 and 13, even. And that is certainly new,
yes.
They claim to get their inspiration from gangsta rap videos and porn, and
they even dress like American (and British) /gangsta/ rappers and hang
themselves with jewelry like that. They don't even consider it rape or a
crime. I heard and saw one of those punks - it was in the Netherlands -
say on TV that it's cool to do that, and then "to pass her on to your
homies" - They did use the literal English slang "homies", even in Dutch.
The girls they rape are typically between 10 and 17, but sometimes older
girls fall victim of that too, especially if it's a larger gang with more
older guys. Since it is said by the gang members that it isn't rape and
that it's all "normal", the girls are afraid to tell their parents about it
and see themselves forced to cooperate... :-/
It's a sick world... :-/
*[1]* In many of the cases, the perpetrators are of foreign ethnicity, and
of those, most are East-European - Kosovo, Serbia, Albania et al. These
are the same statistics as for burglaries and
joyriders/carjackers/homejackers. Tiger kidnappings - where a person's
family is held hostage while the subject is forced to withdraw money from
an ATM elsewhere or with the subject being a bank manager or bank employee
forced to open the safe outside of regular office hours - are usually
committed by natives or South-East Europeans (Turkish or Albanian
mobsters), and sometimes by North Africans (Algerians and Moroccans).
bobbie sellers
at 25 Megabytes in ISO.
SliTaz is an acronym of course and think about Small, light and
so forth.
Moved it with my little SD card reader from the Inspiron to the
Dimension and wrote it to a CD. It looks very nice though I couldn't
find instructions on doing dial-up but they have a package I found
when I went to:
http://www.slitaz.org/en/doc/handbook/index.html
This uses Joe's Window Manager and is fast on the old 700 MHz
Inspiron even running from the disk. Look at the handbook
and you will see hacks/options for low memory usage. You will
also see full information on what you might be able to do, and
it will install to hard disk.
later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)
--
bobbie sellers -(Back to Angband)Team *AMIGA & SF-LUG*
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:28:52 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>>> OK, so (like I said), you weren't actually there during the
>>> investigations or the trial, and are relying on "reported" information
>>> to base your conclusions on. Sorry, that doesn't count for much.
>
>> By the same token, witnesses being heard in the courtroom are also
>> "reported information". Still that information is taken for granted, if
>> only because the witness must be sworn in.
>
> Exactly. That's a significant difference. Persons tend to be quite a bit
> more likely to tell the truth when they know that lying can send them to
> jail for perjury. Please don't try to misdirect things with statements
> like that. There is a HUGE difference between *testimony* by sworn
> witnesses, and *reporting* by journalists.
Still, I think with a possible lawsuit on the charges of libel hanging over
a reporter's head if he/she were to twist facts around with regard to what
a judge or DA has said or done, I think most journalists would be quite
cautious about what they write. I may be wrong, but that's how I see it.
>>> ...] and therefore reaching conclusions such as you have stated (like
>>> "must have been manslaughter") is completely baseless.
>
>> I was also including my own evaluation of Hans Reiser's personality as
>> an Aspie, and being one myself, I understand such a person's logic, and
>> knowing myself as well as a number of other Aspies, I know that it would
>> be nearly impossible - note: "/nearly/ impossible", so not /entirely/
>> impossible - for an Aspie to commit a coldblooded murder.
>
> Damn, I just *knew* you'd find a way to inject the Aspie angle into this
> thread, just like you do in pretty much *every* thread you participate in.
That's because (a) Hans Reiser shows all the traits of being an Aspie -
along with some other traits which may be unrelated but nevertheless
psychologically or neurologically place him out of the ordinary - (b) Hans
Reiser was described as being an Aspie by at least one witness and by his
own defense attorney William DuBois - albeit that I have already admitted
to the fact that he had not been officially diagnosed as such - and (c)
whether you like it or not, I *am* an Aspie and this *does* mean that I am
different, that I /think/ differently, that I /react/ differently in direct
communication[1] with anyone else, so there is nothing wrong in my talking
of Aspies in general, or in my reference to my own affliction with Asperger
Syndrome when I believe it is relevant.
It's not just part of my life, it is part of what defines me as a person.
Not my fault. I was born that way.
*[1]* Usenet conversations constitute direct communication in that respect,
as does anything in which there are the two pronouns "you" and "I". If I
am reading or hearing things from a third person perspective, then there is
a 60% chance that I can bypass some of the social limitations imposed upon
me by my condition.
For instance, in a direct communication, I may not be able to see irony or
sarcasm, or a simple pun, while when I am simply monitoring a conversation
between two other people, I might pick up on the pun/sarcasm/irony more
easily.
> It's completely irrelevant to the case, and /please/ don't expect me (or
> anyone else) to think Aspies are so unlikely to commit a murder. They may
> be less likely than other folks (I don't know), but so are nuns, priests,
> grandparents, retards, etc, etc, etc, etc,.... Those subcategories of
> people *DO* in fact occasionally commit such crimes.
I am in this case - and out of a simple compliance with the fact that we are
defining murder here as being "the intentional and premeditated termination
of another person's life" - talking of premeditated murder, and considering
that Aspies are less likely to commit premeditated murder than neurotypical
people, I was stating an assumption.
In the original reply where I vented my opinion, I did use the word
"probably" or "likely", or something of that sort. This means "not with
the utmost certainty, but rather statistically to be likely". I believe I
also vented that it was my (personal) opinion.
>> Besides, Hans Reiser already confessed that he strangled Nina while
>> they were physically fighting, so I see no premeditation in that.
>
> You are very naive.
If I am, then so is the judge (and even certain jury members), because both
the judge and at least one juror have in the meantime - after the trial of
course, but before and after Nina's body was found - already vented that
they believe it was rather a "heat of the moment" kind of crime - and a
crime of passion, for that matter - than premeditated murder.
Judge Larry Goodman has even said that he already believed that it was
indeed a case of voluntary manslaughter rather than of premeditated murder
before the trial started, but given that Reiser refused to accept a deal
with a plea for voluntary manslaughter (and even involuntary manslaughter),
the D.A. decided to prosecute with premeditated murder in mind.
>> Of course, you can now argue that they may have been physically fighting
>> because she was fighting for her life, but then I don't think that
>> Reiser would have opted for strangulation if he really did plan on
>> killing her.
>
> I don't see how you could possible know what Reiser may or may not have
> been thinking, or even speculate on it.
That's because you have no understanding of how someone like that's brain
works, whereas I do. You have already exhibited - and I am *not* saying
this in any blaming, accusing or insulted way, but rather as an observation
- to have a rather paranoid viewpoint with regard to other people's
motives. By definition, this means that you cannot see through someone and
that you therefore take on a defensive stance as a preemptive strategy.
I on the other hand am - as you put it - more naive - and yes, that *is* a
consequence of my condition - and therefore perhaps more prone to being
fooled by someone with bad intentions. Yet I have a very strong
understanding of my own condition and of people with the exact same
condition, and I also spend a lot of time analyzing everything my brain
gets to process, which is something neurotypical people rarely do.
Neurotypicals - "normal" people, if you will - are more easily distracted
and when distracted do not return to what they were originally thinking,
unless it is something of extreme importance. I on the other hand have the
tendency to overprocess and doublecheck everything. I am more meticulous
about just about everything than a Swiss watch maker, so to speak.
And I am *very* good at psychoanalysis, not just because of my scrutiny of
everything, but also because it was part of my education - you may remember
that I've studied a paramedical direction before I got into IT.
>> There would have been lots of other and far less conspicuous ways to
>> kill a person if it was really planned ahead.
>
> Perhaps. Doesn't mean that a LOT of folks aren't killed by strangulation.
> They are.
Killed, yes. Murdered with premeditation, far less likely. If
strangulation is used as the method for premeditated murder, then it is
generally not done with one's hands around the victim's throat, but then
rather from behind, with a piece of string, without that the victim saw the
killer coming.
(Yes, I've put in my military service as well, and we did learn all kinds of
techniques for sending the enemy to the proverbial Netherworld, with or
without weapons. I started off as a Candidate Reserve[1] Petty Officer
with the Infantry Storm Troopers - somewhat comparable to the US Marine
Corps - but ended out as a private in an Administrative Contingent due to
an internal injury during combat training in full packing at -8°C.)
*[1]* The Reserve is similar to the American National Guard. Every draftee
is part of the Reserve until a given amount of time after completing your
draft term, which may vary depending on the administration handling your
file - in my case, I was fully decommissioned at the age of 28, which was
only seven years after my term was up.
Privates were seldom summoned again after their initial draft service, but
petty officers and officers were typically summoned for a one to two week
"camp" once every year or every two years. You could forfeit those camps,
but then you'd have to give up on your rank.
I was supposed to be a sergeant at the end of my term, but due to my injury
and a one month stay at a military hospital, I never got to complete the
tests needed in order to become a corporal first.
When I was stationed at that administrative base later on then, I had to
along on logistics missions to other bases a few times, and I then ran into
three of the guys from my room when we were in training. They had made it
to sergeants, but they were also the only three draftee sergeants on the
base where they were stationed, and so they had a whole weekend of duty
every three weeks. They were far worse off than me, because I had two
guard duties per month (in a heated room, with television in the back) and
two one-week maintenance duties during my whole draft term. <grin>
>>> Well, obviously the evidence *did* stand up in court, enough for a
>>> verdict to be reached.
>
>> The verdict of first degree murder, as purported by the D.A. from day
>> one without that he had a shred of evidence, because Reiser chose to
>> plead not guilty. Like I said, standard procedure.
>
> And your point? There was apparently enough evidence of first degree
> murder for a jury to convict him of it.
Apparently, despite the conviction itself, the judge and D.A. - and at least
one juror, off the record - agree (and already believed before the trial
started) that it was probably not first degree murder. The fact that the
D.A. went for first degree is the consequence of Reiser's refusal to plead
anything but "not guilty".
So it was a legally technical decision to accuse him of first degree murder,
not an assessment of what had really happened, particularly not because
there wasn't even any evidence to indicate what *had* happened at all. It
was all speculation, and a very wild speculation at that.
>> The rest was all a matter of credibly establishing that Nina Reiser was
>> indeed dead and not simply missing, and of convincing the jury. It is
>> my belief that in this particular case, the D.A. simply managed to
>> convince the jury that it all went down as he claimed that it did,
>> because the evidence was circumstantial at the start of the trial and it
>> was still only circumstantial when the judge sent the jury off to
>> deliberate.
>
> That's what good lawyers do. They "convince a jury" that their side is
> correct.
Of course! That's how the system works. But evidence is important, and in
this case, there was _no_ direct evidence whatsoever. There was a
defendant who pleaded not guilty, there was a woman who had disappeared
under suspicious circumstances, there were many other suspicious characters
in the disappeared woman's life at the time of her disappearance, there
were a lot of dubious witnesses, there was an inadequate police survey -
because Reiser managed to lose them for a while - there was inadequate[1]
and inconclusive forensic evidence (as admitted to in court by the
forensics experts) and there was a lot of emotional reaction, both from
Nina's mother and from Paul Hora himself.
Other than that, they had virtually nothing to go on, so whatever verdict
they reached was solely inspired by the pleas of the attorneys, in this
case being District Attorney Paul Hora.
But who is to say that Paul Hora was immune to human failure? It was
basically his plea (with all the audiovisual cues he deployed in the
courtroom) against everything else. And as a prosecutor, it is neither his
place nor his job to back off from his goal. His goal was and still is to
get a conviction, in every case. Nothing less.
Add to that the fact that Reiser didn't make himself very popular with the
jury due to his antics in the courtroom, and you'll see that the impact of
the emotion factor upon the ruling over guilt or innocence of the
individual jury members becomes bigger.
*[1]* Some evidence - notably with regard to the DNA samples taken from the
pillar in Beverly Palmer's home - could not be considered valid because of
a screw-up by the forensics detectives when they were gathering evidence
and running tests.
The sample and the tests could not guarantee that the blood was indeed from
Nina Reiser - and given that the cause of death was strangulation, all DNA
recovered from blood samples in this case is therefore irrelevant - as DNA
from Hans Reiser himself had also been found on the pillar. The other DNA
sample came from blood on a sleeping bag cover and was definitely Nina's,
but could have ended up there in thousands of ways, including menstruation.
This source of the bloodstain could not be established due to its age, as
it appeared to predate Nina's disappearance by quite a few years.
> Sometimes it's easy, and other times it takes more work. As
> previously stated, this is how it works, and it happens every day.
I know how it works. I was just stipulating that this was not quite your
average court case, where either guilt or innocence are very clear, or
where there is at least a shred of conclusive evidence.
If in this case any conclusive evidence was found, then the case would not
have been rejected on the exact grounds *of* inconclusive evidence by at
least one and possibly two other judges before Judge Larry Goodman decided
to accept it, and then such evidence would have had to be presented in
court, which is something that did not happen.
So I was not making any statements on the legal system. I was making
statements per title of my personal opinion *on* *this* *particular*
*trial.*
>>> In case you didn't know, people are convicted *every day* on nothing
>>> more than circumstantial evidence.
>
>> I find *that* hard to believe.
>
> Again, you are very naive. I am referring of course to how things happen
> in the USA, and your lack of understanding may be related to that fact.
Fair enough.
>> I'm pretty convinced that others may be convicted over circumstantial
>> evidence, but certainly not every day - unless you are talking
>> worldwide, of course. If that were the case, then there would be
>> something seriously wrong with the legal system.
>
> I am speaking only of the legal system in the USA. It happens every day,
> and I would guess that it's numbered in the *thousands* of times per day
> across the entire country. This does not indicate anything wrong with the
> legal system, as it is perfectly allowed by the existing laws.
Of course it is allowed by existing laws. I was not suggesting that this
particular trial went against what is legally defined. But that's exactly
the difference between a trial and a law. Laws are (for most part) clear
directives, whereas the outcome of a trial is variable.
>>> It's still just as valid, and the conviction is just as real.
>
>> The conviction is real, yes. It's official, there's no denying that.
>
> Yes. My point was that it's just as real whether the verdict was arrived
> at with circumstantial evidence, or physical/material evidence. Makes no
> difference in the end.
Not to the conviction, no. Any conviction is always final unless there is
an appeal and this appeal is accepted.
On the other hand, I'm not sure as to what happens to the conviction as
noted on the defendant's record when a bargain is reached between the
defendant and the court, as is the case for Reiser now. I believe he
received an offer to a reduced sentence and an alteration of the verdict to
either voluntary or involuntary manslaughter - I am not sure what the exact
deal was - if he gave up the location where he buried Nina's body, which he
eventually did, and which to *me* was undeniably conclusive of his guilt at
the termination of her life.
Yet, while it is now clear to the whole world *that* he killed her, it still
says nothing about *how* or *why* he killed her, and so therefore I was
venting my personal opinion regarding those circumstances, based upon what
I could assess of his personality and the conditions regarding the
relationship between Hans Reiser and his deceased wife.
My opinion was just that: my opinion. It was not intended as something
absolute or even admissible in court. It was - if you will - an "educated
guess", and I am willing to acknowledge this fully, just as I wanted to
point out that the D.A.'s whole plea was nothing other than an educated
guess.
The difference between my guess and his is that his made enough of an
impression on the jury to persuade them into finding the defendant guilty
of premeditated murder. But given the absence of any real evidence, the
poor and inadequate investigation of both leads and forensic evidence in
this particular matter, the dubious and emotional witnesses and the
emotionally manipulative multimedia presentation utilized by D.A. Paul Hora
in the courtroom - both during his opening statements, during his
questioning of the witnesses and during his two end pleas - it still
remained guesswork, despite the verdict.
And as such, I repeat that it was a lucky strike. He was guessing that
Reiser killed Nina, and convinced the jury to rule that Reiser did kill
her. And so now it turns out to be true, but by the same token, Nina could
still have been alive and held hostage by some sicko she met on the
internet.
It was not at all inconceivable, and therefore - in the interest of
preserving Nina's life and liberating her if she were indeed held captive
somewhere - this lead should have been explored just as well. And the fact
that it hadn't been was admitted to by the investigating officers in court,
with only "we were sure the defendant had killed her" (or something of
those likes) as their explanation as to why they hadn't. Apparently the
fact that they were sure without an explanation as to why they *were* so
sure was good enough for Hora.
Defense attorney DuBois didn't know what to make of that either, apparently.
Maybe it was good enough for him too, but if I were on the jury, I would
surely want to know why those police investigators were so sure, because to
my knowledge, it is up to the jury to find the defendant guilty or not
guilty, not up to a police detective, whether this is in the United States
of America or in any other civilized nation.
>>> I don't have enough information to show you that, but then again I am
>>> not the one who is making claims (assertations, really) that the trial
>>> was biased or even corrupted. That's the difference between our
>>> positions.
>
>> Yet you *are* making claims that my two independent sources of
>> information - which I have supplied to you - were biased and were
>> putting a spin on things.
>
> Wrong. Go back and read what I've written again, and show me where I made
> such claims. I simply said that it *may* have been biased, because the
> writers of said information were not present in the investigation rooms,
> courtroom, jury rooms, etc... Only the people present at those places can
> actually *KNOW* what the evidence really was.
They were not in the judge's office, and they were not in the jury's
deliberation room. They were however present in the courtroom, and I have
given you two links to their reports on the case, so you *can* verify for
yourself what they have literally written, if you can find the time and the
place to do it.
> While the justice system in the USA (or anywhere else) is not perfect, it
> is the best that we can do with the existing laws as they are written. I
> do believe that the USA's system is probably the best overall in the world
> as to providing a fair trial to all accused criminals, and protecting
> their rights.
I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between the American system
and that in most European countries, or at least, those part of the EU -
it's one of the preconditions for any member state wishing to join the
European Union.
I do however see room for at least one major improvement in the US courtroom
system, i.e. you guys have to swear on the Bible, which makes the
separation between church and state kind of blurry. What do you do when a
defendant or witness is agnostic, or what do you make them swear on if they
are Muslims or Jews?
> Yes, mistakes are made, but if one cannot have any faith in the system,
> then there is nothing left but anarchy. I think the present
> state of affaires is preferable to that.
Oh, no argue about that from me. I definitely agree with that assessment.
But then again, I was not criticizing the system.
I was stating my personal opinion - for whatever it is worth - about this
one particular trial, and I never even once suggested that it violated any
American laws.
I was merely stipulating that certain leads in the investigation were left
unexplored and when this was noted in court by the defense, no valid
explanation was ever given, and certain statements were even stricken from
the record by direct order of the judge or by request to the judge from
D.A. Paul Hora, which (to me) seemed almost a reference to some covert
operation about which any official debate was strictly forbidden.
(Don't get me wrong (again); I'm not saying that this was the case, I am
saying that it bore resemblance _to_ such a case).
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Aragorn wrote:
>
> [Belgium]
>> The laws generally don't conflict, but there are certain departments that
>> exist on both the regional and federal level, and their ministers may
>> state opposing opinions, which indeed leads to all kinds of trouble.
>
> Here, there's a definite hierarchy, though there are often similar
> departments. Federal, state, county, municipality... they may not like
> the regulations passed higher up, but have to comply. Or, as I said,
> they can pass more restrictive regulations.
Municipalities form the lowest level. They are run by a Mayor - who is
elected to his function by the Town Council, based upon the number of votes
he got per personal title and the number of votes his political party got -
and by a College of officials, which are the equivalent of a Government.
The Town Council is the equivalent of a Parliament, or Congress in US
Speak. ;-)
Next, there is the Province, governed by a Province Council and a Governor.
They generally have less of an impact on everyday life. And then next up,
there is the Regional Government. There are three Regional Governments in
Belgium: the Flemish Regional Government, the Brussels Capitol Regional
Government and the Wallonian Regional Government.
The Flemish Region geographically corresponds with the location of the
Flemish Community. The Brussels Capitol Region forms an enclave within the
Flemish Region and is thus officially Flemish, but in practice mainly
French-spoken. The Wallonian Region corresponds with both the
French-speaking Community and the German-speaking Community. The latter
are a minority group, living in the three so-called East Kantons, three
cities near the German border.
The Regional Governments have equal importance within the Belgian Federal
State as the Federal Government does, and a lot of authority has already
been transfered from the Federal level to the Regional level, but not
enough yet, and some authorities exist on both the Federal and Regional
levels, which may lead to conflicts - especially if the Cabinet Minister
assigned to this specific department is from another political party in the
Regional Government than his Federal colleague. <grin>
>> Well, in my opinion, ideally, Belgium would cease to exist and the
>> regions become independent nations.
>
> That sounds like a pretty radical change! (Although it did happen with
> the Soviet Union.)
And with former Yugoslavia - albeit in a very bloody way - as well as with
former Czechoslowakia. Similar scenarios are still taking place within the
Russion Federation, with certain states seeking a more pro-Western
government, whereas others prefer to rather align themselves with
traditional nationalistic Russian politics. Yet more others would rather
have a Muslim-friendly regime, and so on.
Here in the Flanders, there are Flemish-nationalists, but I am not one of
them. There are currently four large parties that strive for "some form
of" Flemish independence.
There is the rightwing extremist "Vlaams Belang" (Flemish Interests), who
were formerly called "Vlaams Blok" but were convicted of racism and had to
reform their party, with a new name as the result. They do however retain
their hard line approach from before, and as a result, all other Flemish
parties have signed an agreement with a French name, called "Cordon
Sanitaire" - I think you can make up what that means for yourself :p -
which stipulates that no matter what the election results may be, none of
those parties will enter a coalition with "Vlaams Belang" - at least
"LDD" (see below), one of the newer parties, has in the meantime stated not
to take part in the Cordon Sanitaire. "Vlaams Belang" are separatists and
want the Flanders to become an independent republic.
Next is "LDD", which is short for "Lijst Dedecker" (the List of (Jean-Marie)
Dedecker). This is a continentally liberal party - which means that they
are rightwing liberals, or perhaps libertarians if you will - and next to
their economic interests, they also strive for a reformation of Belgium
into a Confederal State construct.
Then, there is N-VA, or "Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie" (New-Flemish Alliance).
They are a small party like "LDD", but they are in an electoral cartel -
i.e. they share the same election list and the same program for this
legislation - with CD&V, the Christian-Democrats, who have now supplied
Belgium with its Prime Minister, Yves Leterme. N-VA is considered
Flemish-nationalist and ethically and economically very moderately
rightwinged. They will accept any further state reform leading to more
authority for the regions, but they do believe that ultimately, the
Flanders will become an independent state.
Lastly, there is "Vlaamse Progressieven" (Flemish Progressives, formerly
known under the backronym S.P.I.R.I.T. - the party changed name only a few
months ago). These are the leftwing liberals, and just like N-VA with
CD&V, they are in an electoral cartel with SP.A, the Social-Democrats.
Like N-VA, they originally strived for Flemish independence, but not out of
being Flemish-nationalists; simply out of a wish to get rid of the
community-related problems, which themselves have less to do with the
actual Flemish and French-speaking communities rather than with the
politicians from both sides. "Vlaamse Progressieven" will however accept
any deal leading to more authority for the regional governments.
I myself am leftwinged, but rather aligned with the "Vlaamse Progressieven"
than with the Social-Democrats, because the latter are still too
patronizing - they are after all the former Socialists. I have nothing
against the French-speaking population of Belgium - on the contrary, I used
to have many friends from across the linguistic border and I enjoyed
speaking French with them - but I do have quite a grudge against the
French-speaking politicians who have been violating the constitution for
many years now by insisting on a revision of the language border between
the Flanders and Wallonia and an extension of the Brussels Capitol Region
with cities and towns that by constitution are part of the Flemish Region.
Unfortunately, and as I have written before elsewhere in this thread, to the
French-speaking community, it would appear as if the Flanders are trying to
push or even enforce a unilateral declaration of independence from Belgium,
and as if we are all rightwing extremists who hate the French-speaking
people, because of a hate campaign by the Wallonian newspapers and even
their television news broadcasts.
And just as unfortunately, most foreign journalists in Belgium who are here
to report on Belgian politics only speak French themselves and thus only
get to hear that one side of the story, which is a very distorted side, up
to the level of libel and slander - the chairman of N-VA has already filed
an official complaint with the Center for Equal Chances and the Fighting of
Racism, but - typically - they ruled themselves unequipped to handle that
complaint, since there is no "racism" involved as the Flemish and Wallonian
people involved are all Caucasian. (Duh! :p)
A survey conducted by the Flemish news broadcasting service - which itself
is also not always free of propagandizing, but this really depends upon a
single journalist in person - has shown that to foreign journalists who are
here to report on Belgian politics, it would appear as if there is an
ethnic struggle going on, and as if a civil war might break out. This is
however quite over the top, as this conflict has already been going on
since - I mentioned it before - at least the middle ages, and it's really
only bickering between politicians and the media. The Flemish people and
the Wallonian people have no problem with eachother. ;-)
> The map of Europe has changed so much in the past two decades that I can't
> even keep track of it. I admit I don't follow European politics that
> closely, but isn't the trend toward unification these days instead of the
> opposite, what with the EU and all?
Indeed it is, so why would there still be a need for an expensive and
inadequate bureaucratic system that doesn't work, when there is already a
level above the national one?
It would be far simpler to replace the current federal construct by at least
a confederal one, or to simply declare all regions fully autonomous
nations. With regard to the military stuff, all parties more or less agree
that the Belgian Military should become absorbed in a unified European
Military anyway; currently, all of our military missions are already under
either a NATO or UN flag.
>> And of course, the King is totally against the division of the country.
>
> Somehow monarchy usually likes to keep the status quo.
Especially if you see the amount of money they get every year. Of course,
the King and Queen have to pay all of their expenses - such as the payment
of their Palace Staff, their travel expenses even if they go abroad on an
official journey - off of that money. The same thing applies to the
Princes, but according to the Belgian Constitution, only the King and Queen
and the Crown Prince may receive such funds.
Yet strangely enough, *all* members of the Royalty here - the King has three
official children (and one daughter out of wedlock, whom he refuses to
recognize) and all three receive such an "allowance", on the premise that
they have no other income. If they were to get an income from - say -
running a business, then they'll have to forfeit their allowance. And this
too is somewhat of a debate, considering the activities of Prince Laurent.
Laurent is the youngest son of the King and Queen. He's about my age, and
he's always been a rebel, a womanizer and a collector of very expensive
luxury sports cars. Yet, as with all of the King's children, at one stage
the Court felt that it was time for him to get married, and so they found
him a "nice and respectable" bride, with whom he now has three children -
two of them are twins.
Laurent is involved with a number of not-for-profit organizations regarding
the environment and animal protection, but recently he's been mentioned in
an investigation regarding the buying, selling and renting of real estate
abroad, which could be an indication that he's earning money from doing
business, and that would make him lose his allowance (which comprises of 4
million Euro per year). And last year, he was mentioned in a corruption
scandal in which money from the Navy was used for conducting restoration
works to one of his personal properties.
The former Navy officers were all convicted, but the Prince walked, of
course. It was not clear whether he was actually aware of the
irregularities taking place with regard to the law, but either way it was
clear that he was being protected quite vehemently from "some force higher
up the food chain", just like his marriage and that of his brother, Crown
Prince Filip, were pre-arranged by some hidden forces at the Palace and
possibly within the more conservative ranks of CD&V and the Catholic Churc
- the Royalty is strictly Catholic and under strong influence from the
Vatican (and its deputies) over here.
>> You know, this struggle isn't new, and dates back to long before Belgium
>> even existed as a nation.
>
> I was surprised to discover that happened as recently as 1830.
The Belgian Revolution which led to Belgium becoming an independent nation,
yes. However, the first real clash with the French-speaking - who *were*
actually "the" French - was in 1302, in a battle known as "de Gulden
Sporenslag" (or Battle of the Golden Spurs). That's when, under oppressive
and enslaving rule by French nobility, the Flemish people, lead by a man
named Pieter De Coninck, decided to pick up the weapons and fight back, in
a very, very bloody war.
The story was told so heroicly by many historians and other writers that
just about every young Flemish boy of my generation (and before) - myself
included - re-enacted the battle on summer holidays, armed with wooden
swords (made by our grandfathers :p) and improvised "shields" - read: tin
trashcan lids. :p There is even a depiction of such a boy and his heroic
re-enacting of the historic battle in the years between the two World Wars
in a book by Ernest Claes, which was put into play on television via a
chronicle series and at least one movie. :-)
>> Flemish - which itself is a dialect of Dutch
>
> To my wholly untrained ear, Dutch sounds a little like German to me,
> though of course they look quite different in writing. (After all,
> Dutch, German, and English are all Germanic languages.)
It sounds somewhat similar to German if the person you hear speaking is a
real Dutchman, i.e. from The Netherlands. They use a rather German-like
pronunciation of many vowels.
In the Flanders however, the official language is Southern Dutch and is
spoken with less of an accent. Or at least, that's how it should be,
because most of the Flemish people speak a dialect, and the accent of that
dialect often undeniably spills over when they try to speak official Dutch.
Many, especially those with lower education levels, cannot even speak
official Dutch properly.
I come from a local region where there is little to no accent in the
dialect, albeit that this is not where I live now. The town that I
currently reside in is also the town in which I was born, and the people
here do have a very specific accent, especially the elder people.
People from Antwerp then can never hide their origins - especially not those
from Antwerp city - and neither can those from West-Vlaanderen, which is
the most Western province. I live in Oost-Vlaanderen (East Flandria or
East Flanders), which is just to the right of West-Vlaanderen, and to the
left of the province of Antwerp, but I live only a few kilometers of the
border with the province of Antwerp. And finally, there is the province of
Limburg, which is the most Eastern province of the Flanders, and then
Flemish-Brabant, which lies South of Oost-Vlaanderen and Antwerp.
People from West-Vlaanderen have a tendency to use an "h" instead of a "g"
and vice versa, and they use quite different vowels too. Even though they
are generally nice people, their accents sounds very throaty and requires
subtitles for those who don't live there. Oost-Vlaanderen is rather
neutral and leans closely onto official Dutch, albeit that we still do use
some archaic pronouns.
Those from Antwerp have a very strong accent but are generally
well-understood throughout the whole of the Flanders, and even in The
Netherlands. Those from Limburg are also quite well-understood, but if
they speak in their native dialect, there are a lot of German and
German-like words, and it becomes quite unclear what they're talking of.
They also have a rather singing tone - somewhat like the Scottish - and
they speak quite slowly, in a somewhat "stretched-out" manner.
Those of Flemish Brabant lastly have some of the sounds of East Flemish and
Antwerpian in their dialect, but the closer you come to Brussels, the more
it starts sounding like a mixture of Dutch and French, with some very weird
vowels and verbs. ;-)
In general and compared to Northern Dutch as spoken in The Netherlands,
there is a lot more French in our dialects, as leftovers from the double
French occupation. ;-)
>>> (I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion here, though.)
>>
>> A pity, because aside from the fact that more philosophy is needed in
>> this world, I personally also enjoy philosophizing. :p
>
> I'm thinking this is a newsgroup for Mandriva Linux, after all.
So do most other readers, I'm sure. ;-)
> I did have one semester of college-level philosophy, in an attempt to find
> answers to the BIG questions in life, or at least figure out what the
> questions were, but I don't think I found any.
Well, there's no need to look for the big question. The answer is 42
anyway. :pp
>> I would never use a distribution whose makers have signed the same
>> villainous and poisonous FUD patent deals with Microsoft as so many
>> already have.
>
> I have a hypothetical question for you. What if you needed a complex
> specialized application, and the only one available was from a company
> you disagreed with, but the app itself was ideal for your purposes,
> well-written, well supported, and inexpensive? (And, hypothetically,
> there was no other program available that even attempted this task.)
This is indeed a difficult question, but all I can say is that if the
software or appliance in question was something that violated my
principles, I would rather not use it and thus forfeit my chances of
fulfilling my task.
At least, if this is a decision that falls under my own responsibility. For
instance, I refuse to install Windows on any of my own computers which are
intended to be used *by* *myself.*
I will install Windows on machines destined for other people if that is what
they really really really want - albeit that the last such Windows I've
installed was Windows 98, so I've never installed anything newer from
Microsoft.
If my condition were to still allow me to do a normal daytime job and if I
were then required to use a computer with Windows at work, then I would of
course do so. If however my boss wanted me to do work from home, then I
would tell him that I principally object to using Windows and that I refuse
to install it on any of my systems, so he would have to give me a computer
with Windows for use from home.
If Windows were the only still legally allowed operating system in the world
and everything else - from GNU/Linux over the various *BSDs down to
Solaris, AIX, IRIX, HP/UX and whatever other UNIX system - were outlawed
and no longer available, not even via some on the black market, then I
would toss my computer out of the window and stick up my middle finger. :p
I'm a man with strong ethics. I'm not infallible, but I stick to my
principles, even if that means that I have to pay a price in order to do
that. Whenever I do something for someone, I do it in order to help them,
and I normally tell them in advance that I'm not doing it for money.
Should my services however be valued as being worth a lot of money - e.g.
as in a monthly salary for a regular job - and if the other party can
easily afford it, then I will accept it. If they can't afford it, I'll
simply do what I can at no cost, even if I were to need the money myself.
Principles can be very complicated, and mine are. But I try sticking to
them for as long as I am still within possession of my mental
abilities. :-)
If the above does not satisfy your inquiry, then you should a "the end
*usually* justifies the means" point of view. I see whether the end does
indeed justify the means or not, but under certain conditions, the ethical
contexts of the means may be so corrupted that their use is no longer
justified, or at least not for as far as I myself am concerned.
I hope I've made myself clear enough, but I'm afraid that I failed even
that... :p
> [Ubuntu]
>> Yet, they are giving their distribution away for free, so they do need to
>> get their corporate income elsewhere. It's no different from what
>> RedHat, Novell/SuSE or Mandriva do.
>
> But Ubuntu seems to be the only distribution with a sort of world
> philosophy and ideals. All the others seem to be just software.
Hmm... No, Debian - upon which Ubuntu was based - and Gentoo also have a
philosophy - albeit that in Gentoo's case, their philosophy is recently
becoming more and more overshadowed by ego manifestations. I'm sure there
still are others as well.
I don't quite happen to like Mandriva as a company - although I do like
their distribution - but I do respect that they have openly declared never
to get into one of those traitorous deals with Microsoft like Novell/SuSE,
Xandros, Linspire and TurboLinux have gotten themselves into. And that is
indeed a wise decision, because such a deal is poison to the community,
intended to spread more M$ FUD.
>> And speaking of the house distribution to this newsgroup, I've already
>> said it a long time ago and I've been saying it ever since: Mandriva is
>> suffering from a severe degree of corporatitis.
>
> I'll have to take your word for it. I've really never dealt with them
> directly, just downloaded the OS and run it.
I've been using Mandrake Linux (or /Linux-Mandrake/ as it used to be called)
since 1999, and I've always bought PowerPacks, with the exception of one
Standard Edition Pack - because a PowerPack was not available at the shop -
and one release that I've downloaded and burned to disk myself; that was
7.2.
The last two releases I got from them were the 9.2 and 10.0 PowerPacks, and
on both accounts they waited for several months (and several complaints by
me) before they contacted me, and then on both occasions, they seemed to
have missed my payment. Eventually they "discovered their error" and
promised to send me the DVDs as soon as possible <quote> "with some extra
goodies" </quote>, which I interpret as something like a mug, a beanie, a
T-shirt or something of the likes.
Yet I've never seen any "goodies" , and when the DVDs finally did arrive at
my snail mailbox, there was already a beta or release candidate out for the
next version. So twice, I got a brandnew DVD with an old distro on it, and
I had to nag very hard to get it.
Another thing is their newsletters. They are not newsletters at all, except
if you consider commercial offers to be news. There is nothing in them
with regard to the distribution itself - e.g. resolved bugs, new features,
et al. And the sad thing is that there *used* to be.
> I'm not really familiar with any other distro, so I'm not even sure what's
> Linux, and what's just Mandriva's way of doing things.
Well, the packages are all GNU/Linux, but you can tell by the version
numbers that they have been patched by Mandriva - sometimes with patches
that they themselves wrote, and sometimes with patches that others have
written. The way the distribution comes together when it's installed,
that's their doing as well, just as the Mandriva-specific tools - with
names that typically have *drake* in them - and the installer. The Galaxy
theme for both KDE and Gnome is Mandriva's work too, and so is the
customization of the display manager - i.e. the GUI login screen.
> I'm a pragmatist (in the more general sense), so I'll probably stick with
> it until I see sufficient reason to change.
Mandriva is a very good distribution. It's quite userfriendly and still
offers enough of features for the more seasoned user. It's a relatively
complete distribution, and it's quite reliable for corporate use.
On technical grounds, I do still recommend it. On ethical grounds, they
have committed some sins which I still remember but which may be irrelevant
to new users because they happened before their time.
One of their sins is that their current CEO François Bancilhon decided to
fire Mandriva's original creator and developer Gaël Duval. Duval was one
of the people who put the distribution together and set up various scripts.
Bancilhon on the other hand is a businessman, and although he uses
GNU/Linux, he's not a developer and he's probably no more proficient at
using Mandriva Linux than the majority of people subscribed to this
newsgroup are. He's one of the GNU/Linux notables who speaks up loud
against Microsoft - in a sometimes rather embarrassing way, as via his
"open letter to Steve Ballmer" - but one does not kick out the founder and
principle architect of your distribution.
That is something you simply don't do. And he did it. And I will hold it
against him for many more years to come, because it doesn't look like he's
going to make amends for that anytime soon.
(Of course, who am I, and why the hell should François Bancilhon care one
bit about what I think of him? Well, I for one couldn't care less whether
he even knows that I exist or not, but those are my principles and that is
my sense of ethics, and to have them and act upon them is my
prerogative. ;-))
By the way, I do intend to give the new Mandriva release a go on this
machine here, but for my main machine - which I am yet to set up properly -
I have opted for Gentoo. I know, I know, I don't like the way things are
going over at the Gentoo Foundation either, but at least the betrayal
factor there is not as big, and Gentoo is one of the very few distributions
that allow me to set that machine up the way I want to.
The other one would be Linux From Scratch, and that is neither up to date,
nor easy to pull off, not even with my current level of expertise. I've
been using GNU/Linux exclusively since January 1, 2000 and I'm quite
experienced in number of things, but it takes far more knowledgeable people
than myself to bring an LFS installation to a good end. :-)
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Moe Trin wrote:
>>> BTW, does anyone here know what would happen if a crime
>>> were committed in a place like that?
>>
>> Depends - you would _probably_ be subjected to tribal law
>
> But what would happen if a crime were committed, say, halfway across the
> Atlantic on a ship or plane? Who's in charge there?
As I understand it, the Captain then represents the Law of the country whose
flag the ships sails (or plane flies) under.
>> [price of ciggies]
>>
>> I think it's
>> already been mentioned that most governments see tobacco and booze are
>> an unlimited source of tax revenue, and it's "what the sheep will pay"
>> for limits.
>
> I just bought gasoline today (July 12 2008, Hyde Park, NY, USA,
> $4.279/gallon which is I think about 0.714 Euros per liter),
1.55 Euro per liter over here. I've just filled my tank last night. ;-)
> and the signs there for cigarettes ranged from $4.77 for obscure brands up
> to $5.70 for Marlboros (packs of 20).
It's been a while since I've smoked a brand that came in packs of 20, but my
current brand is Belga Filter King Size - they are the length of Marlboros,
versus their shorter "normal" siblings - and they are 5.30 Euro per pack.
> I think the state cigarette tax is again the highest in the country.
In Belgium taxes on cigarettes are very high, but in the Scandinavian
countries they are outrageous. 8-/
> I agree with you about tobacco and liquor taxes being practically
> unlimited.
In The Netherlands, the car is called "the Holy Cow". Probably because over
here in Europe, the owners are milked dry. :p
Moe Trin
<g5bjvs$922$2...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>> I've seen some horror stories in other newsgroups. It _shouldn't_
>> be that big of a deal.
>
>I'm not even sure whom I should switch to. Somehow almost everybody
>claims that their own ISP is the absolute worst.
Nah, that can't be - _my_ ISP... ;-) A lot of it is personal
opinion, just as which is the best/worst distribution/beer/icecream/
what-ever.
>> I've also heard stories that the original anonymous complaints to
>> the A/G may have been from one or more of the ISPs as a way to get
>> out of a service that was not well used.
>
>That's possible... but what would that have gotten them? I don't think
>the ISPs came off any better because of that "reason".
The reasons I've seen proposed are pretty weak - bandwidth (should be a
drop in the bucket compared to file-sharing/bit-torrent/what-ever) or
costs of the hardware (a couple of servers with terabyte disks?) or
costs of support (but the Internet is b0rken). It's probably an easy
service to drop, because not that many customers are even aware of it
and therefore the waves generated won't be that large. The waves would
be even less because the ISPs can point at Cuomo and say "that's the
bad guy who forced us to drop this service - blame him!!!".
>>> alt.binaries.multimedia.watchingpaintdry,
>>
>> Hmmm - that one isn't on giganews
>
>Probably bandwidth. Some of the videos there are several days long,
>especially the ones of enamel house paint.
You'd think that with data compression, this wouldn't be a problem. (In
the mid-1970s, I worked at a flight test facility, and we had television
cameras mounted on the tracking radars. The video was sent to a control
site fifty miles away over ordinary 2400 BPS modems - the data converter
only sent "changed" pixels, and the receiving end reconstituted the
picture back to standard NTSB.)
>> Looking at the list of groups I'm following and the rough bandwidth
>> figures, I've got 27 alt.* groups (no alt.b*), and 34 comp.* groups,
>> and the alt.* needs twice the bandwidth.
>
>Well, I'm basically using as much bandwidth for newsgroups as before,
>only now almost all of it requires VZ to get it thru the 'net from other
>newsservers.
These are all text groups - and it seems that the alt.* groups are just
more wordy (and more active) than the comp.* groups.
>[DTV converter]
>> I haven't gotten the coupons yet, and my local Wal-Mart is a mess
>
>My letter listed RadioShack, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Wal-Mart
>stores, all within a half hour's drive from my home. The coupons are
>only good for 90 days after being issued. Most converters block any
>analog signals; look for one with "analog pass-through" (I think that's
>what it's called) if that's important to you.
Thanks for the heads-up. There are six TVs in the house, and in the
1970s to early 1990s, we used to watch a fair amount of TV. Today,
they're more likely to be used to view tapes/DVDs than anything else.
[extra computer - uses]
>Yep, I think it would be overkill for me. I'm not running any kind of
>server, and my main system handles print spooling well enough.
Did you ever get that LazyJet working over the network?
>And I don't want to buy any more drives for the old box when I'd be
>better off buying drives for the new one.
Drives are _comparatively_ cheap, and the idea might be to use the
drives on the ancient system as a backup and/or long term storage.
"man rsync" What you are doing is avoiding a "single point of
failure" - such as the power supply or drive controller.
>> Valley fever is, as it's not uncommon here and can be fatal. But
>> I've got enough other things wrong that it's the least of the
>> problems. They yanked a benign tumor out of me earlier, and there
>> is something else screwing with my blood work that they haven't
>> found yet. Apparently> not critical/fatal, but they're looking.
>
>Oh dear! It always seems to be something, doesn't it? When things
>go too smoothly, I'm now suspicious.
Going smoothly? When I've got six '*ologists' of various kinds that
I'm seeing on some form of schedule? At the moment, they're doing
blood work quarterly, and four of the specialists (and the Primary
Care guy) are all following things closely. The only one who isn't
doing so is the derma... make that seven '*ologists'. (Skin
cancer is moderately common here in "The Valley of the Sun", but if
caught early is trivial to fix - a quick burst of liquid nitrogen from
a "freeze-bomb" burns the individual problem away. Filling out the
normal paperwork takes far longer than the time actually spent with
the dermatologist.)
See your medical provider[s] on a regular basis. My commercial pilots
license requires an annual physical from an approved doctor, and this
guy ran tests beyond the 14CFR67 requirements. He never actually
found anything - but he found warning signs and directed me to see my
Primary Care, who referred me to... who then did... and referred me
to... you get the idea.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g5bk03$922$3...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>>> BTW, does anyone here know what would happen if a crime
>>> were committed in a place like that?
>>
>> Depends - you would _probably_ be subjected to tribal law
>
>But what would happen if a crime were committed, say, halfway across
>the Atlantic on a ship or plane? Who's in charge there?
Why, the captain of the ship, or the pilot of the plane of course. If
[s]he needs assistance, he may call on any man-of-war for such. Beyond
that, the laws of the country of registration of the vessel/plane or
the country of ownership of the vessel/plane, or the country of the
company operating the vessel/plane, any international laws, regulations,
or customary rules (for air, that would be ICAO), and if all else fails,
the laws of the country of departure/arrival.
[price of fuel/ciggies]
>> I think it's already been mentioned that most governments see tobacco
motor fuels,
>> and booze are an unlimited source of tax revenue, and it's "what the
>> sheep will pay" for limits.
>I just bought gasoline today (July 12 2008, Hyde Park, NY, USA,
>$4.279/gallon
Arizona is cheap - $4.139 at the station on the corner - $4.179 at the
convenience store and the car wash around the same intersection.
>and the signs there for cigarettes ranged from $4.77 for obscure brands
>up to $5.70 for Marlboros (packs of 20). I think the state cigarette
>tax is again the highest in the country.
$5.59 for GPC, $6.14 for "national" brands, which should include Marlboro.
Your state cigarette tax (a quick google search says NY is 37% of the
wholesale price) may be first, but the state taxes aren't the only ones.
Cities and counties also pile it on... SWEET MOTHER OF... New York City
gets $2.00 a pack.
>I agree with you about tobacco and liquor taxes being practically
>unlimited.
The latest tax added here, I seem to think it was 5 or 10 cents more PER
cigarette - $1 or $2 a pack (can't remember which, and seeing as how I
quit ten years ago, no longer worry about it) was added to pay for
some additional health costs, as well as an increased advertising
budget for anti-smoking ads. People do tend to forget that the
higher taxes effect all users of the products, because of the extra
work/costs to the manufacturer and distributor for security and law
enforcement. The fines for selling ciggies/booze to underaged do not
pay for the cost of law enforcement, courts, and any incarceration.
Those costs come from the general public even if they don't use the
product in question.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<Imeek.143610$Kb.1...@newsfe29.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>> In that state (Connecticut), the warning carried 3 points, and if
>> you got 10 points in any 12 month period, you lost your license
>> (1st time one year, second time 3 years, third time permanent, but
>> as noted this varies by state).
California was also 10 points, Arizona is 8.
>There was talk of a system with driver's licenses that have points.
>I believe a new driver's license was to get six points, and you could
>lose those points - one at a time or up to three at a time - if you
>get caught breaking traffic law.
That's similar in concept - the idea is to provide a means to punish
those who are screwing up, even if they find a different way to do so
each month to avoid repeating previous offenses.
>However, that system was in the freezer for a long time and when it
>resurfaced a few months ago, the current administration felt it needed
>more research on its viability, while others were totally against it.
>So far, it hasn't happened yet, but I know of some European countries
>that have such a system.
This has been in place here for at least fifty years. Does it work? I
have no idea.
>Similarly, the whole taxing on transport is under revision now, with
>various alternatives being on the table. The current system is as it
>has been for many decades already, i.e. a car is rated to have a
>certain "fiscal horsepower", which has nothing whatsoever to do with
>the engine's power or the type of fuel used. One fiscal horsepower
>equals 200 cc of volumentric displacement, and so the bigger your
>engine - whether it has more or less brake horsepower than another
>engine - the more you pay.
Here, most states (and other taxing entities below that) base the
taxes on the price of the vehicle. Crudely speaking, you get hit with
a standard sales tax (with varies by state/county/city/other-entities)
on the _actual_ price of the car. The vehicle registration fee may
include a tax based on the suggested retail price and the age of the
car (or it may be included in general property tax - same basic rules).
So if you buy a $5999 super-econobox for $5990 (such a deal!), you'll
pay less than the idiot buying that $73000 Hummer for $68500 (which
includes $3000 cash back / rebate from the manufacturer!!!). I just
paid the license renewal on my wife's car - $8.25 for the registration,
$3 for air quality stuff, and $587.07 license tax (based on a $22000
suggested list price last year). The vehicle insurance is also based
on this price, as well as the driver record[s] and loss history of
this model/year. Because it's only a year old, it didn't need the
$23 exhaust emissions testing.
Basing the taxes on the suggested list price is a simplification
even though no one ever pays list, and the manufacturer may even give
the buyer some significant amount of cash back (rather than reducing
the suggested list price to something honest). But the tax collector
is starving, and...
>Insurance is mandatory here, and the tariff also depends on age and
>prior driving record, albeit not in terms of traffic violations but in
>terms of accidents caused by you.
Of the states I'm aware of, the _moving_ violations count, but not the
"parking" or equipment (burnt out light-bulb) violations.
>It's a bonus-malus system, i.e. you cause no accidents for a year, and
>you go down one step on the scale [...] and when you cause an accident,
>you go up two steps, or five steps if you cause a second accident
>within the same year.
Same here - and to that, the loss record of the vehicle. Your 8 year
old Toyota or Honda is going to have a premium similar to a 1 year
old Pontiac, because people are stealing those Toyotas and Hondas to
strip them for parts which can be resold on the gr[ae]y market. In
the same manner, that fiberglass bodied Corvette is going to cost you a
ton because the body is extremely expensive to repair, and the owners
of such vehicles tend to be more aggressive/risk-takers. The concept
is that you _should_ pay based on what the insurance company has to pay
out in damages/repairs. Shop around, as the regulation isn't that
tight, and the rates/service from different companies varies a lot.
>Low-security facilities offer penitentiary leave - i.e. the inmate is
>allowed to go home for the weekend
Rare here
>and also offer community service doing what you describe.
Some of the wildfire fighters are prisoners from such facilities, and
this _can_ earn them reduction in sentence/early release.
>High-security facilities offer no such thing - although there are
>"internal" jobs the inmates can do,
Same here
>I guess it's all a slow process towards a "United States of Europe",
>although we're not quite there yet, and I'm not even so sure that it
>would be a good idea, given the large amount of attention to a free
>market economy and the small amount of attention towards other affairs
>in the European Constitution.
I suspect you've still got a long way to go - even though the ECSC goes
back to 1951, and the Treaty of Rome to 1957. You've still got a very
vocal community of individual nations which means a lot of "my country
first" ideas.
>Did your bureaucrats take lessons over here, or is the USA simply the
>place where Belgium ships all of its worn-out red tape to? :p
I think this is one example of a working Free Trade Area - where bad
ideas and red tape are shipped across boundaries with no delay or cost.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<jSeek.143611$Kb.5...@newsfe29.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>> Weigh stations (generally near state borders, but some states have
>> them all over the place) and portable scales.
>It's the same here, with one big difference: the stations are not
>always manned, and such weighing and checking are actually only done
>through special actions from the police, and at given locations.
Definitely not the case here, but it does vary by state. The fines
tend to be pretty stiff, and this means the state finds it as a source
of income as well as a safety thing.
>Same as the above. It is usually counted on by the truckers or their
>expedition companies that the chances of being pulled over for such a
>checkup are quite small, and they don't mind paying the fines since
>they make far more money by overloading the trucks on the days that
>there is no checkup. They consider it a small price to pay for more
>profit.
A nephew was an interstate truck driver (he was national, and now is
mainly in Southern California), and reports that the checks are quite
random - but frequent. As you pull up to the scales, a state police
individual may knock on the driver's door for a quicky log book check.
As the book is supposed to be immediately available to the driver, the
check should only take a few seconds - unless the log doesn't look
right, or is incomplete, or missing. No one may "expect the Spanish
Inquisition", but the drivers sure expect to have their logs inspected
(along with the vehicle).
>> Did I mention that police vehicles don't have to be marked as such?
>
>Well, I do know that from loads of US-made movies. :-)
It depends on state and local rules
>Concealed police vehicles are used here mainly by undercover police
>officers, but traffic police only deploys them for catching people who
>break the speed limits. They are often deployed in a concealed manner.
Thinking back, the California Highway Patrol doesn't use unmarked cars
generally - the main concealment is lack of a bubblegum machine/lights
on the roof, and perhaps lack of white doors. Arizona is similar.
Connecticut seems to use minimally marked vehicles quite extensively.
For the most part, there is no need for concealment - the idiot drivers
are rarely looking at anything other than the road directly ahead.
>I've even seen a picture once - albeit that I don't remember whether
>this was in Belgium; it was surely in Europe, judging by the type and
>brand of car - where such a car was actually hidden underneath a bunch
>of branches and leaves, with only the windshield and the camera flash
>exposed.
Speed traps? Can be as simple as a car (often with radar or ladar)
parked on the side of the road, or may be as nasty as a light plane
circling 300-1200 meters above the road, with marks on the road a
known distance apart. There will be a crew of pursuit cars about
350 to 500 meters down the road, and maybe a "stopper" 2 KM further.
At one time in the 1960s, Connecticut used to have this form of trap,
and the crew of pursuit cars were at a roadside rest area, along with
a bus fitted out as a courtroom with presiding judge - for the
speeder's convenience, of course. I think that's now gone away, as
the last three times I went past that haunt, there was just the normal
radar car and three pursuit cars.
Old guy
Dan C
<BIG snip of all 410 lines>
Sorry, your verbosity prevents me from bothering to reply. I don't know
if the reading of it just wore me down, or simply removed my motivation to
bother any more. Either way, it's just too much work.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> <BIG snip of all 410 lines>
>
> Sorry, your verbosity prevents me from bothering to reply. I don't know
> if the reading of it just wore me down, or simply removed my motivation to
> bother any more. Either way, it's just too much work.
Doesn't matter. I simply stated my opinion and you decided to criticize me
on it under the assumption that I had no valid grounds to such an opinion.
I have then stated my reasons, and so for me the case is closed.
Besides, neither of us is going to bring Nina Reiser back to life or change
what happens to Hans Reiser himself from here on.
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> A nephew was an interstate truck driver (he was national, and now is
> mainly in Southern California), and reports that the checks are quite
> random - but frequent. As you pull up to the scales, a state police
> individual may knock on the driver's door for a quicky log book check.
> As the book is supposed to be immediately available to the driver, the
> check should only take a few seconds - unless the log doesn't look
> right, or is incomplete, or missing. No one may "expect the Spanish
> Inquisition", but the drivers sure expect to have their logs inspected
> (along with the vehicle).
They're starting to work on more frequent checks here now. I guess the main
reason as to why they hadn't yet was the lack of staff, because trucks have
been overloaded for many years now, and the amount of trucks on the roads
has also dramatically increased.
As a result, our highways are getting severely damaged by all the
(literally) heavy traffic, with trackforming in the asphalt. This is less
of a problem in Germany, where the quality and thickness of the asphalt
layers is much better than here.
You will now see heavy trucks around the clock here in Belgium, albeit that
there still are less of them between midnight and about 4h00 AM. And then
that's when the frenzy starts.
>> I've even seen a picture once - albeit that I don't remember whether
>> this was in Belgium; it was surely in Europe, judging by the type and
>> brand of car - where such a car was actually hidden underneath a bunch
>> of branches and leaves, with only the windshield and the camera flash
>> exposed.
>
> Speed traps? Can be as simple as a car (often with radar or ladar)
> parked on the side of the road, or may be as nasty as a light plane
> circling 300-1200 meters above the road, with marks on the road a
> known distance apart.
The parked unmarked cars are quite common. Other than that, there are fixed
camera housings at most of the traffic lights and often at other points
next to the road. Not all of those contain a camera, as those cameras are
quite expensive and are thus rotated between locations, but even if there
isn't a camera in them, the flash still works, which has a preventive
effect. After all, you never know in advance whether you've actually had
your picture taken while breaking the law.
> There will be a crew of pursuit cars about 350 to 500 meters down the
> road, and maybe a "stopper" 2 KM further.
In some cases that applies here as well, but not in general.
> At one time in the 1960s, Connecticut used to have this form of trap,
> and the crew of pursuit cars were at a roadside rest area, along with
> a bus fitted out as a courtroom with presiding judge - for the
> speeder's convenience, of course.
Cool, a judgemobile... :p Court on wheels. :p
> I think that's now gone away, as the last three times I went past that
> haunt, there was just the normal radar car and three pursuit cars.
One of the most spectacular speed violations here was back in the
mid-eighties. A guy driving a BMW was signalled to be speeding from the
direction of The Netherlands towards France, doing 225 km/h on the highway.
The Antwerp "Rijkswacht" corps went in pursuit in their (now decommissioned)
Porsche 911, which had a 2.7 liter boxer engine. They couldn't catch up
with the guy, and somewhere in the vicinity of Ghent, they blew up their
engine - Porsche 911s have an aircooled 6-cylinder boxer. So they notified
the Ghent patrol, and they went in pursuit with their Saab 900 Turbo, but
they were unable to catch up with the guy before he crossed the French
border. ;-)
Meanwhile such a situation would of course no longer be possible through the
Schengen Treaty, which allows close cooperation between the law enforcement
agencies of the countries that signed the treaty, so that their police
officers may continue pursuit across the border if necessary. ;-)
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Sun, 13 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <Imeek.143610$Kb.1...@newsfe29.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Similarly, the whole taxing on transport is under revision now, with
>> various alternatives being on the table. The current system is as it
>> has been for many decades already, i.e. a car is rated to have a
>> certain "fiscal horsepower", which has nothing whatsoever to do with
>> the engine's power or the type of fuel used. One fiscal horsepower
>> equals 200 cc of volumentric displacement, and so the bigger your
>> engine - whether it has more or less brake horsepower than another
>> engine - the more you pay.
>
> [...] The vehicle registration fee may include a tax based on the
> suggested retail price and the age of the car (or it may be included in
> general property tax - same basic rules).
The age of the car is also kept into account with regard to registration
taxing and insurance premiums over here. The former goes down and the
latter go up with the age of the car.
> So if you buy a $5999 super-econobox for $5990 (such a deal!), you'll
> pay less than the idiot buying that $73000 Hummer for $68500 (which
> includes $3000 cash back / rebate from the manufacturer!!!). I just
> paid the license renewal on my wife's car - $8.25 for the registration,
> $3 for air quality stuff, and $587.07 license tax (based on a $22000
> suggested list price last year). The vehicle insurance is also based
> on this price, as well as the driver record[s] and loss history of
> this model/year. Because it's only a year old, it didn't need the
> $23 exhaust emissions testing.
Something I've also noticed that is different here from the US or even the
UK and possibly other European countries is that when you guys sell your
car on to someone else, the registration plate stays with the car. In
Belgium, the registration plate stays with the owner.
Another thing that's also mandatory here is that every new car registered
for personal use must have an annual checkup at a legally established
validation center for defects as of the time it is four years old. Trucks,
company vehicles and secondhand cars are required to be checked every year,
regardless of their age.
The validation center then gives you a certificate valid for one year if the
car passes the tests, or a certificate valid for only two weeks if it
doesn't, so that you can have it fixed and checked again.
They don't do repairs. ;-) They just check the car in terms of matching
engine and chassis numbers, emissions, noise levels, condition and pressure
of the tires, condition of the brakes and suspension, integrity of the
chassis, functioning and alignment of the (head)lights, brake lights, turn
signals, windshield wipers, etc.
> Basing the taxes on the suggested list price is a simplification
> even though no one ever pays list, and the manufacturer may even give
> the buyer some significant amount of cash back (rather than reducing
> the suggested list price to something honest). But the tax collector
> is starving, and...
Aren't they always? :-)
>> It's a bonus-malus system, i.e. you cause no accidents for a year, and
>> you go down one step on the scale [...] and when you cause an accident,
>> you go up two steps, or five steps if you cause a second accident
>> within the same year.
>
> Same here - and to that, the loss record of the vehicle. Your 8 year
> old Toyota or Honda is going to have a premium similar to a 1 year
> old Pontiac, because people are stealing those Toyotas and Hondas to
> strip them for parts which can be resold on the gr[ae]y market. In
> the same manner, that fiberglass bodied Corvette is going to cost you a
> ton because the body is extremely expensive to repair, and the owners
> of such vehicles tend to be more aggressive/risk-takers. The concept
> is that you _should_ pay based on what the insurance company has to pay
> out in damages/repairs. Shop around, as the regulation isn't that
> tight, and the rates/service from different companies varies a lot.
Well, now that the insurance market has been liberated across Europe,
insurance companies can impose their own criteria for determining the
factors of risk on a vehicle.
Aside from what I've already mentioned before, some insurance companies rate
red cars to be more of a security hazard - supposedly because the buyers of
red cars would be more aggressive drivers; which is nonsensical, of course.
With regard to theft, some insurance companies will rate brands that are
popular with car thieves at a higher premium, but none of them will ever
issue a car theft insurance if your car does not have an alarm system with
starter disconnection installed.
>> I guess it's all a slow process towards a "United States of Europe",
>> although we're not quite there yet, and I'm not even so sure that it
>> would be a good idea, given the large amount of attention to a free
>> market economy and the small amount of attention towards other affairs
>> in the European Constitution.
>
> I suspect you've still got a long way to go - even though the ECSC goes
> back to 1951, and the Treaty of Rome to 1957. You've still got a very
> vocal community of individual nations which means a lot of "my country
> first" ideas.
True, and there are some countries that are highly in favor of further
European integration based upon the current European Constitution - e.g.
France, Germany, United Kingdom and also Belgium - while other countries
are still not satisfied with the current state of affairs.
I too personally feel that the current system isn't what it should be, but
in Belgium the decision was made by the government and not by the people -
probably because they knew in advance that if the people were given the
choice via a referendum, they would have objected. A referendum is also
not legally binding here in Belgium - it is in The Netherlands, and as
we've seen just recently, in Ireland.
Moe Trin
<9nzek.156400$ft1....@newsfe14.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>> The vehicle registration fee may include a tax based on the suggested
>> retail price and the age of the car
>The age of the car is also kept into account with regard to registration
>taxing and insurance premiums over here. The former goes down and the
>latter go up with the age of the car.
Now that seems unusual. Both taxing and insurance go down here because
the vehicle is worth less. The only time the _insurance_ goes up
(assuming no other changes) is when the car is old enough to be a
classic or collector's item. The insurance on my neighbor's 1948
Chevrolet is more per year than he paid for the car when he bought it
new, but that's because it is quite rare now.
>Something I've also noticed that is different here from the US or even
>the UK and possibly other European countries is that when you guys sell
>your car on to someone else, the registration plate stays with the car.
>In Belgium, the registration plate stays with the owner.
Again - that depends on the state. Arizona and Connecticut both stay
with the owner - California stays with the car (unless they are special
"vanity" plates).
>Another thing that's also mandatory here is that every new car
>registered for personal use must have an annual checkup at a legally
>established validation center for defects as of the time it is four
>years old. Trucks, company vehicles and secondhand cars are required
>to be checked every year, regardless of their age.
Again - that depends on the state. I believe all states have emissions
testing, but a number also have testing for defects.
>Aside from what I've already mentioned before, some insurance companies
>rate red cars to be more of a security hazard - supposedly because the
>buyers of red cars would be more aggressive drivers; which is
>nonsensical, of course.
I dunno - I seem to remember seeing a long thread in another Usenet
newsgroup where the loss tables were discussed. The actuarial tables
shown backed up claims about different car colors being more or less
risky for the insurer. I don't know how many insurers use this criteria
as the risk ratings are not obvious on the insurance bills/statements.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<9%yek.136333$AH5....@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>As a result, our highways are getting severely damaged by all the
>(literally) heavy traffic, with trackforming in the asphalt. This is
>less of a problem in Germany, where the quality and thickness of the
>asphalt layers is much better than here.
If you consult a civil engineering textbook, you'll find that the
asphalt (macadam, blacktop, road-oil, what-ever) is not meant to be a
structural layer, but is meant to weatherproof the layers underneath
which is actually where the strength lies, and to provide a wearing
surface. "California Bearing Ratio" is one term referring to testing
the underlay or foundation of the road itself.
>The parked unmarked cars are quite common. Other than that, there are
>fixed camera housings at most of the traffic lights and often at other
>points next to the road. Not all of those contain a camera, as those
>cameras are quite expensive and are thus rotated between locations,
>but even if there isn't a camera in them, the flash still works, which
>has a preventive effect.
Cameras here tend to be owned by a separate company, and operated for
the city/county/state governments. In many cases, the company gets a
percentage of the "take" which angers many drivers/voters. But then, a
lot of people feel that ALL traffic enforcement is merely a revenue
source.
>> There will be a crew of pursuit cars about 350 to 500 meters down
>> the road, and maybe a "stopper" 2 KM further.
>
>In some cases that applies here as well, but not in general.
The idea is that the radar/ladar is to busy spotting speeders to have
them pursue anyone. The operator merely radios "the red Mercedes - 82
MPH" and "witnesses" that the pursuit cars go after the right vehicle.
If the speeder doesn't stop, then we have a second offense, much more
serious, and the pursuit cars go after them - with the stopper ready
to block the road if needed.
>One of the most spectacular speed violations here was back in the
>mid-eighties. A guy driving a BMW was signalled to be speeding from
>the direction of The Netherlands towards France, doing 225 km/h on the
>highway.
You may be fast, but you aren't faster than radio. "299792458 meters
per second isn't just a good idea, it's a law!"
>The Antwerp "Rijkswacht" corps went in pursuit in their (now
>decommissioned) Porsche 911, which had a 2.7 liter boxer engine. They
>couldn't catch up with the guy, and somewhere in the vicinity of
>Ghent, they blew up their engine
The radios used in US Army tanks in 1940 were ruggedized versions of
radios used in (state) police cars. In some cases, they were actually
the same make/model radio as used by the police. Is this klown
out-running you? No problem - radio ahead, and follow at a safe (but
high) speed with your lights on. In larger metropolitan areas, one of
the "police vehicles" that may join the chase is a helicopter - are you
faster than 325 KM/H? Actually it's not unusual to also have civilian
news aircraft get involved as well. About 6-9 months ago we had a
mid-air collision between two news helicopters that were televising a
police chase. (There was a single police 'copter, 3 news copters, and
two news planes all following some idiot. Such pursuits happen with
some regularity, which can make like more difficult for the prosecutor
trying to find jurors who didn't see the television coverage. Witnesses?
How many do you need - we've even got it on film (tape).
>Meanwhile such a situation would of course no longer be possible
>through the Schengen Treaty, which allows close cooperation between
>the law enforcement agencies of the countries that signed the treaty,
>so that their police officers may continue pursuit across the border
>if necessary. ;-)
We only have such borders with Canada and Mexico, and they are not all
that open (there are often customs/immigration posts at the borders).
But at the state level there is no artificial blocks, and anyone may
freely drive into the next state. "Hot Pursuit" rules have existed for
longer than motor vehicles. A law enforcement officer in pursuit of an
offender may cross city/county/state borders while trying to apprehend
a violator. If they can stop the violator, they hold them until a local
cop arrives, who then arrests the violator for "fleeing justice" and
effectively turns them over to the pursuing officer. But again, radio
is faster than any car, and the police of the next jurisdiction may be
waiting for the offender.
Old guy
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <9nzek.156400$ft1....@newsfe14.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>>*Moe Trin* wrote
>
>>> The vehicle registration fee may include a tax based on the suggested
>>> retail price and the age of the car
>
>> The age of the car is also kept into account with regard to registration
>> taxing and insurance premiums over here. The former goes down and the
>> latter go up with the age of the car.
>
> Now that seems unusual. Both taxing and insurance go down here because
> the vehicle is worth less. The only time the _insurance_ goes up
> (assuming no other changes) is when the car is old enough to be a
> classic or collector's item. The insurance on my neighbor's 1948
> Chevrolet is more per year than he paid for the car when he bought it
> new, but that's because it is quite rare now.
Yes, but this is mainly because a standard insurance does not cover any
damages to your own car or to yourself. It only covers damages to other
people's cars that were caused by you, and to the passengers of your own
car under the same circumstances.
As such, a car that's older is considered more liable to have defects which
may involve it into accidents that could have been avoided if you had
driven a newer and safer car.
Of course, things will be quite different if you opt for an all-in insurance
which covers all damages to your car and yourself, regardless of who's
responsible for the accident. In that case, a new and expensive car will
of course yield a higher insurance premium, but typically the engine and
category of the car - i.e. is it a sports car, is it an SUV? - are taken
into account then as the main criteria.
>> Something I've also noticed that is different here from the US or even
>> the UK and possibly other European countries is that when you guys sell
>> your car on to someone else, the registration plate stays with the car.
>> In Belgium, the registration plate stays with the owner.
>
> Again - that depends on the state. Arizona and Connecticut both stay
> with the owner - California stays with the car (unless they are special
> "vanity" plates).
Vanity plates do exist here, but with less room for imagination than in the
US. ;-) A Belgian license plate has to be comprised of three alphabetic
characters, a dash and three numbers. The only exception to this is for
cars belonging to members of the Royalty. I believe their license plates
are composed of numbers only and are graced with the Belgian three-colored
flag.
For a special premium, you can register a plate with a particular
combination of alphabetic characters, although some combinations are
reserved - e.g. ABL is reserved for the military and ABB for city buses -
or forbidden - e.g. certain three-letter words that could be considered
obscene.
If you want a fully custom license plate - within the established rules of
three alphabetic and three numeric characters - then this is possible
(unless the combination is already taken) but that will cost you a whole
shedload of money. ;-)
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <9%yek.136333$AH5....@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>
>>As a result, our highways are getting severely damaged by all the
>>(literally) heavy traffic, with trackforming in the asphalt. This is
>>less of a problem in Germany, where the quality and thickness of the
>>asphalt layers is much better than here.
>
> If you consult a civil engineering textbook, you'll find that the
> asphalt (macadam, blacktop, road-oil, what-ever) is not meant to be a
> structural layer, but is meant to weatherproof the layers underneath
> which is actually where the strength lies, and to provide a wearing
> surface. "California Bearing Ratio" is one term referring to testing
> the underlay or foundation of the road itself.
Well, okay... I'm not an engineer. :-) Either way, our roads are not as
strong as the German roads, and our politicians know about it, but the
whole world of government-issued contracts is - again - a world of its own,
where sanity has to step aside for "good friends" and "lowest bidders".
>>> There will be a crew of pursuit cars about 350 to 500 meters down
>>> the road, and maybe a "stopper" 2 KM further.
>>
>>In some cases that applies here as well, but not in general.
>
> The idea is that the radar/ladar is to busy spotting speeders to have
> them pursue anyone. The operator merely radios "the red Mercedes - 82
> MPH" and "witnesses" that the pursuit cars go after the right vehicle.
> If the speeder doesn't stop, then we have a second offense, much more
> serious, and the pursuit cars go after them - with the stopper ready
> to block the road if needed.
If they have the manpower, then this kind of operation will be set up.
However, they are usually too tied up in other affairs to do it that way.
>> One of the most spectacular speed violations here was back in the
>> mid-eighties. A guy driving a BMW was signalled to be speeding from
>> the direction of The Netherlands towards France, doing 225 km/h on the
>> highway.
>
> You may be fast, but you aren't faster than radio. "299792458 meters
> per second isn't just a good idea, it's a law!"
Sure, but it's the time expired between the reception of the message and the
getting to a viable interception point that matters. :-) And you can't
just simply go and block the entire width of an important highway like that
either. :-)
> [...] About 6-9 months ago we had a mid-air collision between two news
> helicopters that were televising a police chase. (There was a single
> police 'copter, 3 news copters, and two news planes all following some
> idiot.
Our news services rarely use a helicopter, if at all. I guess they don't
have the funds for that.
> Such pursuits happen with some regularity, which can make like more
> difficult for the prosecutor trying to find jurors who didn't see the
> television coverage. Witnesses? How many do you need - we've even got it
> on film (tape).
I can see the difficulty in finding neutral jurors in a case like that, yes.
As for the witnesses, at least then the anecdote of "twenty people standing
around and none of them having seen a damn thing" won't count anymore. ;-)
Moe Trin
<saRek.136856$AH5.1...@newsfe09.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>*Moe Trin* wrote
>Yes, but this is mainly because a standard insurance does not cover
>any damages to your own car or to yourself. It only covers damages
>to other people's cars that were caused by you, and to the passengers
>of your own car under the same circumstances.
>
>As such, a car that's older is considered more liable to have defects
>which may involve it into accidents that could have been avoided if
>you had driven a newer and safer car.
The legal requirements vary by state (I keep saying that, don't I) but
most have very outdated "minimums". In Arizona, you are required to
have insurance that will pay $15000 bodily injury liability for one
person and $30000 for two or more, and $10000 property damage. You'd
better hope that you don't injure some one seriously enough for them
to be hospitalized (the last hospital stay I had was _billed_ at
$22000 per day[1] average - and that doesn't include the doctor), or
that you hit a "new" car (which may retail at up to $100000 or more).
Also, unless the car is paid off, the bank that loaned you the money
wants it's own minimum insurance coverage to protect their investment.
What this boils down to is that most sane people carry a lot more
insurance.
>Of course, things will be quite different if you opt for an all-in
>insurance which covers all damages to your car and yourself,
>regardless of who's responsible for the accident.
In some states, there is "no-fault" insurance rules (they pay "your"
bills, and you may be shielded from the bills of others), as well as
"uninsured motorist" coverage (in case the other guy has no insurance
in violation of the law, or doesn't have enough). The 'not-at-fault'
driver's insurance company may sue the 'at-fault' driver, but if all
they have is a $50 car (before the accident), and are unemployed and
own nothing, there's not a whole lot that's going to be recovered.
>If you want a fully custom license plate - within the established
>rules of three alphabetic and three numeric characters - then this is
>possible (unless the combination is already taken) but that will cost
>you a whole shedload of money. ;-)
How 'bout "BOLLIX"? "No, officer, it's the Unix clone we use at work."
Yeah, we have the same law/requirements, although the cost is somewhat
less, and the combination is something like (up to) 8 characters from
[A-Z0-9\-\._ ] and that lets people get _very_ creative. The license
plate itself may be selected (subject to some special requirements)
from over 25 designs (Radio amateur, "classic car" - which means more
than 25 years old, "horseless carriage" or "historic vehicle", one of
four university plates, at least three different military medal, and
three military status[2] specific plates - see www.azdot.gov for more
information). Other states, other rules, other offers.
Old guy
[1] Billed verses what they actually will accept from the health
insurance is usually about 3:1 different. Just like car dealers, they
lie about how much money they'll accept as "payment in full".
[2] Yes, I still see a few "Pearl Harbor Survivor" plates - meaning
they were in the military there in 1941.
Adam
> Might want to try SliTaz 1.0 which is quite small
> at 25 Megabytes in ISO.
>
> http://www.slitaz.org.
Thanks, bobbie! I downloaded the .iso, and I'll see if I can get it to
run on the old system. That system's so old that it won't boot from a
CD, just from a floppy or the HD. DamnSmallLinux had a way to boot from
a floppy, but that didn't work the first time I tried it.
Adam
Adam
took up most of the weekend, and then some.
Aragorn wrote:
> CD&V, the Christian-Democrats, who have now supplied
> Belgium with its Prime Minister, Yves Leterme.
Apparently now former PM.
I hadn't realized the movement for regional authority, or even
independence, was that strong.
> to foreign journalists who are
> here to report on Belgian politics, it would appear as if there is an
> ethnic struggle going on, and as if a civil war might break out. This is
> however quite over the top, as this conflict has already been going on
> since - I mentioned it before - at least the middle ages, and it's really
> only bickering between politicians and the media.
Does this mean that everything isn't likely to have much effect?
>> Somehow monarchy usually likes to keep the status quo.
>
> Especially if you see the amount of money they get every year.
Well, I was raised to believe that our (U.S.) system is the best one,
and the concept of a hereditary monarchy is alien to me. Every
legislator, president, governor, county executive, town supervisor, etc.
both wanted the job, and got at least a relatively large number of votes.
>> To my wholly untrained ear, Dutch sounds a little like German to me,
>> though of course they look quite different in writing. (After all,
>> Dutch, German, and English are all Germanic languages.)
>
> It sounds somewhat similar to German if the person you hear speaking is a
> real Dutchman, i.e. from The Netherlands. They use a rather German-like
> pronunciation of many vowels.
I couldn't say where those people were from. The only actual Dutch
writing I have (but haven't heard) happens to be the script of the
musical "My Fair Lady," where poor lower-class Eliza Doolittle's
attempts at sounding upper-class come out as "Het Spoanse groan heeft de
orkoan doorstoan" and "In Vrankrijk, Vriesland en Vinland friest het
freselijk finnig." (I'm aware she's mispronouncing them.) In fact,
I've heard there's some problem doing that show, or the play "Pygmalion"
it's based on, in other languages, because its point is that in England,
accent and social class are related.
> I come from a local region where there is little to no accent in the
> dialect
I suppose that's all relative. I don't think I have an accent, but I
still remember how surprised I was when I talking to strangers near
Baltimore (250 miles away), and one asked, "You're not from around here,
are you?" Part accent and part idiom, I'd guess.
> the people
> here do have a very specific accent, especially the elder people.
I think that before radio, people heard mainly their own local
pronunciation. Now it's common to hear speakers from all over the
country, indeed the world.
> In general and compared to Northern Dutch as spoken in The Netherlands,
> there is a lot more French in our dialects, as leftovers from the double
> French occupation. ;-)
(I'm getting a little out of my depth, but:) The English language
acquired many French words from the Norman occupation of Britain in the
11th century. For example, we tend to use the Anglo-Saxon word for the
animal, but the Norman word for the meat, e.g. cow/beef, calf/veal,
sheep/mutton, pig/pork, etc.
> I've been using Mandrake Linux (or /Linux-Mandrake/ as it used to be called)
> since 1999, and I've always bought PowerPacks, with the exception of one
I've always downloaded and burned them myself, or had someone else do
that before I got broadband. I'd bought Red Hat 7.2 retail a few years
before, but never did much with it.
Adam
Adam
> (In
> the mid-1970s, I worked at a flight test facility, and we had television
> cameras mounted on the tracking radars. The video was sent to a control
> site fifty miles away over ordinary 2400 BPS modems - the data converter
> only sent "changed" pixels, and the receiving end reconstituted the
> picture back to standard NTSB.)
NTSB or NTSC? ;-)
> These are all text groups - and it seems that the alt.* groups are just
> more wordy (and more active) than the comp.* groups.
I'd agree. Does anybody have a chart listing the most active newsgroups
in each hierarchy?
>> Most [DTV] converters block any
>> analog signals; look for one with "analog pass-through" (I think that's
>> what it's called) if that's important to you.
>
> Thanks for the heads-up.
The RadioShack ad in this past Sunday's paper advertised a model of DTV
converter (
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3150939 ) where
the copy explicitly stated that it had analog pass-through, so you could
continue to watch low-power analog stations. $60 + tax - $40 coupon.
> Did you ever get that LazyJet working over the network?
Good memory! Yep, bought a straight-through (not crossover) cable and
connected the printer to my DSL modem/router. I had to use ftp to set
up the printer, my router's config screen to set up the router, and MCC
to set up Mandriva, but I got it working. It takes a while to warm up,
draws 30W in "power saver" mode (and 1W when switched off!), is decently
fast in "draft grayscale" but slow in color, but the price was right.
Even with an occasional replacement part (from normal usage), I still
think it costs less per page than my inkjet.
Two minor problems, though. One, "normal grayscale" and "high quality"
come out squished to half-height, so I just use "draft grayscale" and
"normal," and use the inkjet when higher quality is needed, which isn't
often. Also, occasionally the printer "moves" -- I set it up as
192.168.1.47, but one day it had become 192.168.1.45. If that happens
enough to be a problem, I'll look into it. It took me a while to
realize that I actually had a LAN, albeit a small one: computer,
printer, router.
When I bought this box in December, it came with a "free" printer, HP
DeskJet D1430, but I haven't even opened that box yet.
> Drives are _comparatively_ cheap, and the idea might be to use the
> drives on the ancient system as a backup and/or long term storage.
> "man rsync" What you are doing is avoiding a "single point of
> failure" - such as the power supply or drive controller.
My current backup system involves burning a DVD-RW with selected
directories (/home, /etc, /usr/local, /boot, /root) every Sunday. When
the prices drop some more (like down to $100), I'm planning to get a 1
TB external USB HD (if I can find one that is both reliable and quiet),
and back up the entire internal HD every night. I think even my current
method is good enough to survive anything except a direct lightning
strike, fire, flood, earthquake, or theft. I'm planning to implement an
off-site backup strategy by occasionally putting copies of my backup DVD
in my car and my parents' house. Do you (or anybody!) have any
suggestions for a better way to manage backups on a low budget, bearing
in mind that I'm not doing anything critical?
> Going smoothly? When I've got six '*ologists' of various kinds that
> I'm seeing on some form of schedule?
And of course anything that one suggests has to be cleared with all of
the others. I have, I think, four specialists that I see on some
regular basis. I was in a minor car accident and couldn't drive my car
any more than a bare minimum until this week, so I'd been postponing the
ophthalmologist and optician, which is 100 miles right there (two round
trips, 25 miles each way, to the one optician in the county that takes
my insurance).
> See your medical provider[s] on a regular basis.
Excellent idea... if I'd done that all along, things probably wouldn't
have gotten to where they are now.
Adam
Adam
> Your state cigarette tax (a quick google search says NY is 37% of the
> wholesale price) may be first, but the state taxes aren't the only ones.
> Cities and counties also pile it on... SWEET MOTHER OF... New York City
> gets $2.00 a pack.
Years ago I had to buy a pack in NYC and was astounded by the price. It
would be easy enough to leave NYC (to Westchester or Nassau County or
New Jersey or even Connecticut) on a "cigarette run".
> The fines for selling ciggies/booze to underaged do not
> pay for the cost of law enforcement, courts, and any incarceration.
> Those costs come from the general public even if they don't use the
> product in question.
True, but then there are many things I pay for that don't affect me.
Much of the time, "my" legislators are doing things for other
states/counties/municipalities that I don't live in. I'm paying for
interstate, state, county, and town roads that I'll never drive on. I'm
paying for prisons although I haven't committed any crimes. I can't
think of any improvement to this system, though.
Adam
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> I'm sorry about the delay in replying, but getting my car somewhat fixed
> took up most of the weekend, and then some.
No problem at all. ;-)
> Aragorn wrote:
>> CD&V, the Christian-Democrats, who have now supplied
>> Belgium with its Prime Minister, Yves Leterme.
>
> Apparently now former PM.
Well, officially his still is the prime minister, until the King accepts his
resignation, /if/ he even does.
Due to this political crisis - which I think has shocked just about everyone
in the country far more than any other political crisis in the last thirty
years or so - I have now also joined /be.politics,/ and that group appears
to receive an incredibly high traffic.
Most of it does of course come from rightwing extremists who are screaming
for in immediate secession of the Flemish region from Belgium - now more
than ever - and of course all with the expected rightwing extremist
propaganda and slogans, and an inability to think in nuances.
Much to my surprise, apparently my joining there - and perhaps I have sinned
against Netiquette as I immediately started replying to some posts right
away without respecting the typical one month of lurking - is highly
welcomed by those who can think more sanely and have been trying to refute
the black & white rightwing propaganda. :p
Anyway, to shed a little light on what's going on in Belgium right now for
those of you who are less familiar with the situation, our prime minister
Yves Leterme has gone to the Palace late Monday evening to offer "the King
his resignation".
This is standard procedure and also the designated nomenclature for a
situation in which the national/federal government fails to perform its
governing duties any longer. The King can then accept the failure and
assign a particular politician to either pave the way for the formation of
a new government or form a new government already, depending on the
situation. This does not imply that the person forming the government will
effectively become the new prime minister, because that is something
decided among the parties involved.
The current crisis has in fact already started on June 13th 2007, with the
negotiations about and formation of the current government. Before the
elections, Yves Leterme was the president of the Flemish regional
government and was relatively unknown at the federal level - read: by the
French-speaking parties.
In addition, the Flanders already had a bad reputation with most of the
Wallonian parties (and people!) because of some very misleading propaganda
in the French-spoken press, depicting all Flemish people as being
nationalists and separatists, and with liberally billions of Flemish tax
money going to the Wallonian region every year by means of the federal
construct - and as needed by the incompetence and corruption at the level
of those Wallonian parties - they were thus highly alarmed and paranoid
about this unknown new prime minister who used to be in the Flemish
regional government, especially with his own political party having formed
an electoral cartel with N-VA, a democratic party that does strive for
Flemish independence - as opposed to VB, which is not really a democratic
party and covertly plays with some fascism-inspired ideas; covertly because
under their previous party name, they have already been found guilty and
convicted of racism and discrimination.
With the above in mind, the French-speaking parties were giving Leterme a
hard time from the very beginning, making it impossible for him to
initially form a new government. The Wallonian parties kept on
stonewalling the formation of a new government for about eight months, with
as a result that prices started going up with that anyone took measures to
increase the consumption power of the citizens, running affairs were not
handled, etc.
So eventually, the King gave Guy Verhofstadt - the prime minister of the
previous two legislations - the assignment of forming a temporary
transitional government that would take care of the ongoing affairs left
behind by the previous government, while Leterme would in the meantime form
a government that was to take over from this transitional government after
three months.
And so it was said and done, but apart from the French-speaking parties
giving Leterme a hard time, they were also bickering among themselves and
playing childish games with regard to their participation in the
government, kind of like "If those people or that person is in the
government, then I won't be".
But so now, as of March, Leterme finally had his government, but it never
really managed to do anything concrete because the same thing started all
over again. The Flanders wanted more autonomy and a modernization of the
Belgian Federal State - we weren't even asking for a transition to a
confederation instead - and the French-speaking parties just kept on saying
"no" to just about every proposition, making it all too clear that a state
reform with redistributed responsibilities and autonomy was actually
already needed beforehand in order to get such a debate going in the first
place.
Under the influence of Olivier Maingain of the FDF - a party that strives
for the expansion of the French-speaking region and who are also
fanatically Francophone - the Wallonian parties started making demands in
the form of a revision of the language border, expansion of the Brussels
Capitol Region with several towns and cities of the Flemish region - you
may remember me saying that the Brussels CR is an enclave within the
Flemish region - and "a corridor through Flemish territory from the
Brussels Capitol Region to the Wallonian region".
Add to this all the fact that the splitting of a certain electoral district
that should be constitution be split up had been stonewalled for many other
years by the rolling over of the Flemish parties in the previous two
federal legislations, and in which as such French-speaking mayors had been
elected who refuse to speak Flemish while their municipality *is* Flemish,
and some pedanticism in the sale of fairly priced land for housing on the
condition that the buyer speaks fluent Dutch, plus the libelous campaigns
against Leterme's kartel and anything Flemish in the French-speaking media
- notably the paper Le Soir - and you've got all the ingredients for an
explosion. And this explosion has now occurred.
Technically, there could be new elections if the King decides to accept
Leterme's resignation. But they would not be legal, because the
abovementioned electoral district (Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde) has not been
split up yet. Certain parties - notably those from the opposition - do
request or even demand new elections, but I don't think the King will
accept that. It is however not inconceivable that he'll appoint someone
else to form a new government again and to eventually become the prime
minister if Leterme does not return.
For Leterme personally, it's all a difficult affair. Already has the
difficulty of the negotiations with the simple regard to forming this
current administration in the first place make him end up in hospital
earlier this year, and in addition he's also a technocrat and a man of his
word. He's not like his predecessors who squirmed themselves around any
deal and broke their promises to the voters. He's too honorable and too
sincere to be a politician.
I admit that I would be saddened if we were indeed to decide splitting up
the country - not that I believe that this could easily be achieved, as
neither the King nor the royalists and unitarians would allow it - because
I personally have no problem whatsoever with the people on the other side
of the language border - on the contrary, I've had many friends there - but
it is now more clear than ever that we cannot go on like this.
Most Flemish parties now agree that we must change the current federal
construct into a confederal construct. But again, this means changing the
constitution and for that you need the cooperation of the Wallonian
parties. And so we're back to square one, because they have no interest
whatsoever in changing anything. They like it just as it is, because it
allows them to continue with their hypocrisie and pretend toward the
Wallonian people that things are going smoothly and that there isn't any
problem, while they can remain incompetent and corrupt, and simply rely on
the drain of Flemish funds to Wallonia to run their affairs.
> I hadn't realized the movement for regional authority, or even
> independence, was that strong.
Oh, like I said, this is something that's already many hundreds of years
old. The Flemish have always had to fight very hard for their rights, even
from before Belgium came to its existence as a nation.
>> to foreign journalists who are here to report on Belgian politics, it
>> would appear as if there is an ethnic struggle going on, and as if a
>> civil war might break out. This is however quite over the top, as this
>> conflict has already been going on since - I mentioned it before - at
>> least the middle ages, and it's really only bickering between politicians
>> and the media.
>
> Does this mean that everything isn't likely to have much effect?
I don't think so. Not this time. It has now become abundantly clear that
the current construct no longer works, and that if we do want to keep this
country together, things will simply have to change.
I don't know exactly what they're going to do or how they're going to do it,
but they *are* going to do something now. They no longer have the option
of declining or putting things in the freezer for another couple of years.
The people won't stand for it anymore, because this political crisis is
also becoming an economic crisis, with the current rate of inflation.
>>> Somehow monarchy usually likes to keep the status quo.
>>
>> Especially if you see the amount of money they get every year.
>
> Well, I was raised to believe that our (U.S.) system is the best one,
> and the concept of a hereditary monarchy is alien to me. Every
> legislator, president, governor, county executive, town supervisor, etc.
> both wanted the job, and got at least a relatively large number of votes.
Well, in practice the prime minister runs the country at the federal level
and the regional presidents at the regional level, but this is still
relatively recent in comparison to how it used to be throughout most of the
country's existence. Before the current situation of a federal construct,
there was simply a Belgian national government and that was it.
Yet, in both models of governing so far, the prime minister is the country's
CEO. He acts in name of the King, and the King simply signs the laws that
are made. However, in between legislations, the King also assigns
informers and formation officers.
The informer has to pave the way for the formation officer. An informer has
preliminary talks with the political parties regarding whether they want to
participate in a government, what their demands are, what their offer is.
He then takes this information back to the King, and the King assigns a
formation officer, who has to bring a number of parties together and work
out an agreement on paper, signed by all parties involved, regarding a
program the legislation will carry out. And most of the time, this
formation officer will then also become the prime minister for that
legislation, although this is not guaranteed.
>>> To my wholly untrained ear, Dutch sounds a little like German to me,
>>> though of course they look quite different in writing. (After all,
>>> Dutch, German, and English are all Germanic languages.)
>>
>> It sounds somewhat similar to German if the person you hear speaking is a
>> real Dutchman, i.e. from The Netherlands. They use a rather German-like
>> pronunciation of many vowels.
>
> I couldn't say where those people were from. The only actual Dutch
> writing I have (but haven't heard) happens to be the script of the
> musical "My Fair Lady," where poor lower-class Eliza Doolittle's
> attempts at sounding upper-class come out as "Het Spoanse groan heeft de
> orkoan doorstoan" [...
<lol> I remember that. :-)
> and "In Vrankrijk, Vriesland en Vinland friest het freselijk
> finnig." (I'm aware she's mispronouncing them.) In fact, I've heard
> there's some problem doing that show, or the play "Pygmalion" it's based
> on, in other languages, because its point is that in England, accent and
> social class are related.
Not just in England. I think it's rather common to the whole world that
those with lower education speak in dialects whereas those with higher
education speak "the proper language". ;-)
>
>> I come from a local region where there is little to no accent in the
>> dialect
>
> I suppose that's all relative. I don't think I have an accent, but I
> still remember how surprised I was when I talking to strangers near
> Baltimore (250 miles away), and one asked, "You're not from around here,
> are you?" Part accent and part idiom, I'd guess.
Possibly, yes. :-)
>> the people here do have a very specific accent, especially the elder
>> people.
>
> I think that before radio, people heard mainly their own local
> pronunciation. Now it's common to hear speakers from all over the
> country, indeed the world.
I agree. But there will always be puricists who refuse to adopt anything
other than hey know.
>> In general and compared to Northern Dutch as spoken in The Netherlands,
>> there is a lot more French in our dialects, as leftovers from the double
>> French occupation. ;-)
>
> (I'm getting a little out of my depth, but:) The English language
> acquired many French words from the Norman occupation of Britain in the
> 11th century. For example, we tend to use the Anglo-Saxon word for the
> animal, but the Norman word for the meat, e.g. cow/beef, calf/veal,
> sheep/mutton, pig/pork, etc.
True. English as it exists today already has a lot of words or word roots
from French in it.
>> I've been using Mandrake Linux (or /Linux-Mandrake/ as it used to be
>> called) since 1999, and I've always bought PowerPacks, with the exception
>> of one
>
> I've always downloaded and burned them myself, or had someone else do
> that before I got broadband. I'd bought Red Hat 7.2 retail a few years
> before, but never did much with it.
Well, my decision to buy them was rather political, i.e. I wanted to
contribute to the community, and considering the fairly and relatively low
retail price of such an elaborate PowerPack, I was still cheaper off than
anyone using Windows while supporting a good cause. ;-)
Moe Trin
<g5lnnp$1e0$2...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>I'm sorry about the delay in replying, but getting my car somewhat fixed
>took up most of the weekend, and then some.
If it ain't one thing...
>Aragorn wrote:
>>> Somehow monarchy usually likes to keep the status quo.
>>
>> Especially if you see the amount of money they get every year.
>
>Well, I was raised to believe that our (U.S.) system is the best one,
Have you not traveled overseas? Without trying to wave flags and make
useless noise, I'll only state that even visiting overseas (better,
working/living there for an extended period) does wonders to open your
own eyes. Dorothy said "there's no place like home", and being able to
see how others live gives you a better understanding of your own lands.
>and the concept of a hereditary monarchy is alien to me. Every
>legislator, president, governor, county executive, town supervisor,
>etc. both wanted the job, and got at least a relatively large number
>of votes.
"Politicians, like diapers, have to be changed frequently - and for the
very same reason." --Anonymous
"There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse."
-- Thomas Sowell
And I believe it was Will Rogers who said something to the effect of
"who needs writers when you have politicians". However, it seems the
same rules apply in other countries and other political systems.
>> I come from a local region where there is little to no accent in the
>> dialect
>
>I suppose that's all relative. I don't think I have an accent, but I
>still remember how surprised I was when I talking to strangers near
>Baltimore (250 miles away), and one asked, "You're not from around here,
>are you?" Part accent and part idiom, I'd guess.
Both - but accents exist everywhere. The "local" accent is not noticed
because you hear it all the time - but go elsewhere, and your accent
sticks out like a giant flag/banner which reads "I'm from $OTHER_PLACE".
Your accent is just as noticeable to them as theirs is to you, for the
same reason - it's different.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g5lno1$1e0$3...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
Moe Trin wrote:
>> the receiving end reconstituted the picture back to standard NTSB.)
>
>NTSB or NTSC? ;-)
National Transportation and Safety Board. or Never The Same Color?
>I'd agree. Does anybody have a chart listing the most active newsgroups
>in each hierarchy?
Which hierarchies?
[compton ~]$ cut -d'.' -f1 .newsrc | sort -u | wc -l
4280
[compton ~]$
Or do you mean just the 'big eight' plus 'alt.'?
>> Did you ever get that LazyJet working over the network?
>
>Good memory! Yep, bought a straight-through (not crossover) cable and
>connected the printer to my DSL modem/router. I had to use ftp to set
>up the printer, my router's config screen to set up the router, and MCC
>to set up Mandriva, but I got it working.
My turn - "ftp" or "telnet"?
>Even with an occasional replacement part (from normal usage), I still
>think it costs less per page than my inkjet.
Well, they are built pretty solid, and shouldn't need much for parts.
>Two minor problems, though. One, "normal grayscale" and "high quality"
>come out squished to half-height, so I just use "draft grayscale" and
>"normal," and use the inkjet when higher quality is needed, which isn't
>often.
comp.laser-printers
comp.periphs.printer
comp.periphs.printers
The last one is the official group - the others _might_ be helpful. That
problem vaguely rings a bell... memory or memory setup?
>Also, occasionally the printer "moves" -- I set it up as 192.168.1.47
>but one day it had become 192.168.1.45. If that happens enough to be
>a problem, I'll look into it.
That shouldn't happen. Does this turkey have a battery for CMOS RAM?
>It took me a while to realize that I actually had a LAN, albeit a small
>one: computer, printer, router.
Well, it's in your house, so it's a Local Area, and it is Ethernet, so
that does make it a Network. ;-)
>My current backup system involves burning a DVD-RW with selected
>directories (/home, /etc, /usr/local, /boot, /root) every Sunday.
OK
>When the prices drop some more (like down to $100), I'm planning to
>get a 1 TB external USB HD (if I can find one that is both reliable
>and quiet), and back up the entire internal HD every night. I think
>even my current method is good enough to survive anything except a
>direct lightning strike, fire, flood, earthquake, or theft.
The only reason I was suggesting a separate computer is speed. You
could boot the sucker Sunday evening, mirror your existing stuff over
the LAN, and shut her down when done. It's one less common failure
point. Physical space might be an issue, but that's about it.
>I'm planning to implement an off-site backup strategy by occasionally
>putting copies of my backup DVD in my car and my parents' house. Do
>you (or anybody!) have any suggestions for a better way to manage
>backups on a low budget, bearing in mind that I'm not doing anything
>critical?
Parent's house is good - I would NOT use the car for several reasons.
In my case, daytime temps in the car are excessive in summer, and the
garage is attached to the house. I'm backing "critical" stuff to a
CD which goes into the safe, a monthly copy goes to the box in the
bank, and nightly I'm mirroring to my sister's server in Connecticut.
I provide the same backup service to her. With 'rsync' it's not a big
bandwidth deal.
>> Going smoothly? When I've got six '*ologists' of various kinds that
>> I'm seeing on some form of schedule?
>And of course anything that one suggests has to be cleared with all of
>the others. I have, I think, four specialists that I see on some
>regular basis. I was in a minor car accident and couldn't drive my car
>any more than a bare minimum until this week, so I'd been postponing the
>ophthalmologist and optician, which is 100 miles right there (two round
>trips, 25 miles each way, to the one optician in the county that takes
>my insurance).
Oh, you betcha! And $DEITY help you if you need surgery, as you have to
get releases from all, in addition to the primary care guy and the
insurance carrier. When I see any one, I also require copies of any
lab results, so I can share the information with everyone else.
>> See your medical provider[s] on a regular basis.
>
>Excellent idea... if I'd done that all along, things probably wouldn't
>have gotten to where they are now.
My remaining sister has had most of the problems I'm having, and even
takes nearly identical medications - and she's passing the words along
to her kids as well as the kids and grandkids of my other (late) sister.
"How about that - you've got $PROBLEM now as well".
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g5lno8$1e0$4...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>> Cities and counties also pile it on... SWEET MOTHER OF... New York
>> City gets $2.00 a pack.
>
>Years ago I had to buy a pack in NYC and was astounded by the price.
Normally, I would only buy by the carton - except when I ran out in
a place like that.
>It would be easy enough to leave NYC (to Westchester or Nassau County
>or New Jersey or even Connecticut) on a "cigarette run".
When I was working on the North side of the Boston metro area (and
officially living in Connecticut - how's that for a commute), we'd
make a "sin run" up to the New Hampshire state line - buying booze and
ciggies in a one-month supply range. It made a difference enough to
pay for the gas on the 64 Pontiac (with 389 and _dual_ four barrel).
But then, you also knew to buy gas just outside of Hartford because of
the perpetual gas war there (25 gallon tank at $0.159 per... yeah, I
remember the "good ole days").
It was even worse when working overseas, if I had (limited) access to
the PX/BX (US Military "general store"). We learned to buy one - one
carton, or one bottle - because of the risk to being labeled smugglers
if you took the stuff down town (where I was usually living).
>> The fines for selling ciggies/booze to underaged do not pay for the
>> cost of law enforcement, courts, and any incarceration. Those costs
>> come from the general public even if they don't use the product in
>> question.
>
>True, but then there are many things I pay for that don't affect me.
Yes, but in the case of selling to underaged, the retailer _USUALLY_
is aware that they're breaking the law, and are profiting from it.
The legit retailer has an easy remedy - card everyone. (Remember
Mayor Koch? I come very close to sharing his 1990 hairline and even so,
I get carded every time I try to buy booze.) I think the law says to
card 'under 25' but the retailer just cards everyone to avoid
discrimination.
>Much of the time, "my" legislators are doing things for other
>states/counties/municipalities that I don't live in.
"Your" legislators??? How much did you pay for them ? Do you get a
volume discount for owning more than one ? ;-)
>I'm paying for interstate, state, county, and town roads that I'll
>never drive on. I'm paying for prisons although I haven't committed
>any crimes.
Agreed - those are for the "common good". You may not drive on those
roads, but your life would be quite different if they didn't exist or
were not maintained. Same with the prisons - we can't shoot everyone
who commits a crime.
>I can't think of any improvement to this system, though.
Gimme a couple of beers, and I'm sure we can come up with something ;-)
Old guy
Adam
[Belgium]
> Due to this political crisis - which I think has shocked just about everyone
> in the country far more than any other political crisis in the last thirty
> years or so - I have now also joined /be.politics,/ and that group appears
> to receive an incredibly high traffic.
I think its merely being in (I assume) Flemish instead of French or a
mixture says something about which side dominates there.
> Much to my surprise, apparently my joining there - and perhaps I have sinned
> against Netiquette as I immediately started replying to some posts right
> away without respecting the typical one month of lurking - is highly
> welcomed by those who can think more sanely
Since you've been keeping up with the news and public opinion, you were
probably already up to date on the topics.
> It has now become abundantly clear that
> the current construct no longer works, and that if we do want to keep
> this country together, things will simply have to change.
I've never studied European history, but with all the changes in
European boundaries in the past 20 years (many nations splitting, and
one combining), I'd guess major changes would be more acceptable now
than several decades ago.
> Yet, in both models of governing so far, the prime minister is the country's
> CEO. He acts in name of the King, and the King simply signs the laws that
> are made. However, in between legislations, the King also assigns
> informers and formation officers.
I understand what you're saying, but I think that in the U.S., the term
"informer" has a different connotation. It usually (at least to me)
implies someone who betrays others, such as a gang member telling the
police about his gang's (or others') activities in hopes of a lesser
sentence. I think a clearer term to Americans might be "liason."
>> In fact, I've heard there's
>> some problem doing ["My Fair Lady"], or the play "Pygmalion" it's based
>> on, in other languages, because its point is that in England, accent and
>> social class are related.
>
> Not just in England. I think it's rather common to the whole world that
> those with lower education speak in dialects whereas those with higher
> education speak "the proper language". ;-)
I think it may have been the Swedish production in particular... is
anyone here familiar enough to know whether upper- and lower-class
Swedes have similar, or different, accents?
>> I think that before radio, people heard mainly their own local
>> pronunciation. Now it's common to hear speakers from all over the
>> country, indeed the world.
>
> I agree. But there will always be puricists who refuse to adopt anything
> other than [t]hey know.
One of my college classmates told us how the German Gymnasiums
(secondary schools) tried to teach the "correct" accent. And I believe
France has an actual government department that rules on the language.
> Well, my decision to buy [Mandrake] was rather political, i.e. I wanted to
> contribute to the community, and considering the fairly and relatively low
> retail price of such an elaborate PowerPack, I was still cheaper off than
> anyone using Windows while supporting a good cause. ;-)
Well, some people embrace GNU/Linux and FOSS out of their convictions,
and others for technical reasons, and probably most for a combination of
those. In my case, it's more for technical reasons -- I like the
feeling that I'm running the computer, instead of the other way around.
Adam
Adam
>> Does anybody have a chart listing the most active newsgroups
>> in each hierarchy?
>
> Which hierarchies?
>
> [compton ~]$ cut -d'.' -f1 .newsrc | sort -u | wc -l
> 4280
> [compton ~]$
>
> Or do you mean just the 'big eight' plus 'alt.'?
I was wondering which was the single most active (non-binary) newsgroup
out of all the hierarchies, to use as a reference for how active other
groups are. I think number of posts daily would be much better than
size of all posts. Number of on-topic posts would be even better, but
logistically nearly impossible.
And why 'compton'? After the SoCal city? This box is 'eris', after the
Greek goddess of dischord. You know, the one who offered the golden
apple "to the fairest".
>>> Did you ever get that LazyJet working over the network?
>> Good memory! Yep, bought a straight-through (not crossover) cable and
>> connected the printer to my DSL modem/router. I had to use ftp to set
>> up the printer, my router's config screen to set up the router, and MCC
>> to set up Mandriva, but I got it working.
>
> My turn - "ftp" or "telnet"?
You're right, I had to telnet into the printer. Nowadays I use telnet
so seldom that I forgot.
>> Two minor problems, though. One, "normal grayscale" and "high quality"
>> come out squished to half-height, so I just use "draft grayscale" and
>> "normal," and use the inkjet when higher quality is needed, which isn't
>> often.
>
> comp.laser-printers
> comp.periphs.printer
> comp.periphs.printers
>
> The last one is the official group - the others _might_ be helpful. That
> problem vaguely rings a bell... memory or memory setup?
Thanks, I'll look into it!
>> Also, occasionally the printer "moves" -- I set it up as 192.168.1.47
>> but one day it had become 192.168.1.45.
>
> That shouldn't happen. Does this turkey have a battery for CMOS RAM?
I took someone else's advice, and (using telnet) changed printer config
from DHCP to USER SPECIFIED. I hope that does it.
>> When the prices drop some more (like down to $100), I'm planning to
>> get a 1 TB external USB HD (if I can find one that is both reliable
>> and quiet), and back up the entire internal HD every night.
>
> The only reason I was suggesting a separate computer is speed.
I don't think the old box is fast enough, and I'm SURE its BIOS couldn't
handle a HD large enough. At USB 2.0 high speed, I should be able to
back up my internal HD in under an hour, sometime during the night with
a cron script.
BTW I haven't found any ideas for that old box that I liked enough, and
I couldn't get Damn Small Linux onto it anyway, so I'm thinking I'll
scrap it. Unless anyone wants a 100 MHz 486 with 48 MB RAM and a 420 MB HD.
>> I'm planning to implement an off-site backup strategy by occasionally
>> putting copies of my backup DVD in my car and my parents' house.
>
> Parent's house is good - I would NOT use the car for several reasons.
> In my case, daytime temps in the car are excessive in summer
Well, so far none of the audio CDs in my car seem to have gotten
damaged. Blank DVDs are cheap enough so that I might as well put copies
in both places.
> My remaining sister has had most of the [medical] problems I'm having
I seem to have inherited almost all the negative things from both sides
of my family, so I guess I should consider myself forewarned. And now
maybe early stages of carpal tunnel, so maybe I need a more ergonomic
computer setup.
Thanks again for all your help with everything!
Adam
Adam
>> Years ago I had to buy a pack in NYC and was astounded by the price.
>
> Normally, I would only buy by the carton - except when I ran out in
> a place like that.
Me too, but IIRC I'd suddenly decided to stay overnight and I was afraid
I'd run out. I can't believe the energy I used to put into worrying
about running out, even though I don't think I ever did.
> When I was working on the North side of the Boston metro area [...] we'd
> make a "sin run" up to the New Hampshire state line - buying booze and
> ciggies in a one-month supply range.
I would have gone to CT if cigs had been any cheaper there. I checked.
> But then, you also knew to buy gas just outside of Hartford because of
> the perpetual gas war there (25 gallon tank at $0.159 per... yeah, I
> remember the "good ole days").
I can remember (early '70s) when cheap local stations were
$0.299/gallon, but that was years before I was old enough to drive.
> The legit retailer has an easy remedy - card everyone. (Remember
> Mayor Koch? I come very close to sharing his 1990 hairline and even so,
> I get carded every time I try to buy booze.) I think the law says to
> card 'under 25' but the retailer just cards everyone to avoid
> discrimination.
IIRC I only got carded once, and I actually was underage then. Nobody's
carded me since, and now I definitely look "well over 30." (2002 photo
at http://www.quitbuddies.org/Buddies26.html#anchor6696 ; one point for
anyone who knows where it was taken!)
>> Much of the time, "my" legislators are doing things for other
>> states/counties/municipalities that I don't live in.
>
> "Your" legislators??? How much did you pay for them ?
Their salaries come from, in part, my taxes. Every once in a while,
it's actually somebody I voted for.
>> I can't think of any improvement to this system, though.
>
> Gimme a couple of beers, and I'm sure we can come up with something ;-)
Only if you can prove you're over 21! :-)
Adam
Adam
>> Well, I was raised to believe that our (U.S.) system is the best one,
>
> Have you not traveled overseas?
Not much. Mainly several weeks in Israel long ago, right after the
successful raid on Entebbe when national pride was high.
> "There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse."
> -- Thomas Sowell
>
> And I believe it was Will Rogers who said something to the effect of
> "who needs writers when you have politicians". However, it seems the
> same rules apply in other countries and other political systems.
George Carlin asked (to paraphrase), "Where are all those honest,
idealistic people everyone talks about who ought to be running our
country? It looks like our current politicians are the best we can do."
Adam
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Aragorn wrote:
> [Belgium]
>> Due to this political crisis - which I think has shocked just about
>> everyone in the country far more than any other political crisis in the
>> last thirty years or so - I have now also joined /be.politics,/ and that
>> group appears to receive an incredibly high traffic.
>
> I think its merely being in (I assume) Flemish instead of French or a
> mixture says something about which side dominates there.
It is predominantly Dutch-spoken - and sometimes Flemish dialect, depending
on who posts - but there are also a few posts in English and German, and
some are translated via Google, I believe. Some are posts pertaining to
the USA or the UK, or other countries, and are often mainly anti-Islamic or
anti-Jewish in nature.
The bulk of the posting also comprises of - and why does that not surprise
me - rightwing extremist stuff and ditto copy/pastes of propaganda
articles.
>> Much to my surprise, apparently my joining there - and perhaps I have
>> sinned against Netiquette as I immediately started replying to some posts
>> right away without respecting the typical one month of lurking - is
>> highly welcomed by those who can think more sanely
>
> Since you've been keeping up with the news and public opinion, you were
> probably already up to date on the topics.
Indeed so, but it is incredibly astounding how the extremists simply can't
seem to grasp what you're saying, keep putting words in your mouth and skip
just about anything you say to refute their allegations beyond three lines
of text.
And, typically of course, if they don't understand what you're talking about
or if you refuse to swallow their propaganda, they will attack you on your
personality and will attempt to label you with something.
>> It has now become abundantly clear that the current construct no longer
>> works, and that if we do want to keep this country together, things will
>> simply have to change.
>
> I've never studied European history, but with all the changes in
> European boundaries in the past 20 years (many nations splitting, and
> one combining), I'd guess major changes would be more acceptable now
> than several decades ago.
I'm not so sure about that yet. Europe doesn't quite seem to like the idea
that the Flemish are fighting for their rights to a fair redistribution of
responsibilities.
It also doesn't look like the crisis will be dealt with soon, because the
King has his own agenda and has already repeatedly refused to meet with the
representatives of political parties that strive for an abolition of the
monarchy, even if those parties wish to do so within the context of what is
legally allowed, and if they are willing to accept compromises.
The King also seems to favor the French-speaking political parties, but has
now assigned three representatives who have to pave the way for new
negotiations. The government and Yves Leterme will stay on in the meantime
because the King has refused to accept Leterme's resignation.
>> Yet, in both models of governing so far, the prime minister is the
>> country's CEO. He acts in name of the King, and the King simply signs
>> the laws that are made. However, in between legislations, the King also
>> assigns informers and formation officers.
>
> I understand what you're saying, but I think that in the U.S., the term
> "informer" has a different connotation. It usually (at least to me)
> implies someone who betrays others, such as a gang member telling the
> police about his gang's (or others') activities in hopes of a lesser
> sentence. I think a clearer term to Americans might be "liason."
I know the American meaning of the word, but it is quite difficult to find a
proper translation for such archaic terms in our language, which are all
imbued heavily with originally French semantics. The words for the
information officer and the formation officer even as used in Dutch are
actually French words that got adopted into the Belgian variant of Dutch.
>>> In fact, I've heard there's some problem doing ["My Fair Lady"], or the
>>> play "Pygmalion" it's based on, in other languages, because its point is
>>> that in England, accent and social class are related.
>>
>> Not just in England. I think it's rather common to the whole world that
>> those with lower education speak in dialects whereas those with higher
>> education speak "the proper language". ;-)
>
> I think it may have been the Swedish production in particular... is
> anyone here familiar enough to know whether upper- and lower-class
> Swedes have similar, or different, accents?
That I cannot say, but you will typically find less heavy accents here with
the higher educated, and a general tendency to speak more "civilized" Dutch
rather than dialects.
>>> I think that before radio, people heard mainly their own local
>>> pronunciation. Now it's common to hear speakers from all over the
>>> country, indeed the world.
>>
>> I agree. But there will always be puricists who refuse to adopt anything
>> other than [t]hey know.
>
> One of my college classmates told us how the German Gymnasiums
> (secondary schools) tried to teach the "correct" accent. And I believe
> France has an actual government department that rules on the language.
It's actually surprising how poor the Dutch of the Flemish rightwing
extremists is - notably in spelling and grammar - and they are the ones who
supposedly fight for the preservation of our language in the bilingual
regions.
>> Well, my decision to buy [Mandrake] was rather political, i.e. I wanted
>> to contribute to the community, and considering the fairly and relatively
>> low retail price of such an elaborate PowerPack, I was still cheaper off
>> than anyone using Windows while supporting a good cause. ;-)
>
> Well, some people embrace GNU/Linux and FOSS out of their convictions,
> and others for technical reasons, and probably most for a combination of
> those. In my case, it's more for technical reasons -- I like the
> feeling that I'm running the computer, instead of the other way around.
I got into it for technical reasons, i.e. I was interested in GNU/Linux as a
UNIX-style operating system. It was then soon after I had installed it and
looked around through the on-disk documentation that I got to learn more
about what FOSS really is and about the GPL, and then I was absolutely
convinced that this was the right operating system choice for me. :-)
Moe Trin
<g5qq80$ocb$2...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>> Or do you mean just the 'big eight' plus 'alt.'?
>
>I was wondering which was the single most active (non-binary) newsgroup
>out of all the hierarchies, to use as a reference for how active other
>groups are. I think number of posts daily would be much better than
>size of all posts. Number of on-topic posts would be even better, but
>logistically nearly impossible.
Assuming you are speaking about Linux news groups...
[compton ~]$ grep linux .newsrc | sort -u | wc -l
209
[compton ~]$
Hmmm... that's out of about 1200 groups with the string 'linux' in the
name. I'm only trying to scan about 40 such groups, and of those, it
looks like
alt.os.linux.ubuntu
comp.os.linux.misc
alt.os.linux.suse
alt.os.linux.mandriva
alt.os.linux
comp.os.linux
uk.comp.os.linux
comp.os.linux.networking
comp.os.linux.setup
comp.os.linux.hardware
for the top ten in that order. a.o.l.u is being targeted by wintrolls,
and c.o.l.m is hit pretty hard by spammers, but the rankings still are
the same after pretty harsh killfiles.
>And why 'compton'? After the SoCal city?
Nope. 'compton' was the NASA Gamma Ray Observatory. The systems in
my department at work (as well as those at home) are all named after
various satellites - NASA and otherwise.
>>> Also, occasionally the printer "moves" -- I set it up as 192.168.1.47
>>> but one day it had become 192.168.1.45.
>>
>> That shouldn't happen. Does this turkey have a battery for CMOS RAM?
>
>I took someone else's advice, and (using telnet) changed printer config
>from DHCP to USER SPECIFIED. I hope that does it.
None of the systems at work or at home go for walkies, so I've always
used static addresses. It avoids a lot of needless confusion, and takes
only a few seconds longer to initially configure.
>> The only reason I was suggesting a separate computer is speed.
>
>I don't think the old box is fast enough, and I'm SURE its BIOS couldn't
>handle a HD large enough. At USB 2.0 high speed, I should be able to
>back up my internal HD in under an hour, sometime during the night with
>a cron script.
If it's an ISA bus, it's going to peak out at around 10 MegaBytes per
second - higher if MCA, EISA, or VESA. The PCI bus is substantially
faster - but how fast is your network? A full-duplex 100 MegaBIT
Ethernet can almost be stuffed by a 16 bit ISA card, while MCA, EISA,
VESA, or PCI can over-stuff any 100BaseT without breathing hard. Are
you running a local Gigabit LAN?
>BTW I haven't found any ideas for that old box that I liked enough,
>and I couldn't get Damn Small Linux onto it anyway, so I'm thinking
>I'll scrap it. Unless anyone wants a 100 MHz 486 with 48 MB RAM and
>a 420 MB HD.
48 Megs makes it tough if you are using X - and 420 is to small for any
thing modern. I'm using a 520 Meg boot drive on two of the 486s, but
everything is on a separate set of SCSIs. But then, the firewall box
is what's left of a 386SX-16 with 16 Megs of RAM and a 345 MB drive -
no users need apply.
>> In my case, daytime temps in the car are excessive in summer
>
>Well, so far none of the audio CDs in my car seem to have gotten
>damaged. Blank DVDs are cheap enough so that I might as well put
>copies in both places.
It's something to be aware of - if it's cool enough, go for it.
>> My remaining sister has had most of the [medical] problems I'm having
>
>I seem to have inherited almost all the negative things from both sides
>of my family, so I guess I should consider myself forewarned. And now
>maybe early stages of carpal tunnel, so maybe I need a more ergonomic
>computer setup.
The ergonomic setup is a great idea. Talk to your primary-care, and
see if [s]he has any recommendations. Arm-rests on the chair, keyboard
tray beneath the desk surface, and so on.
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g5qq88$ocb$3...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
Moe Trin wrote:
>> Have you not traveled overseas?
>
>Not much. Mainly several weeks in Israel long ago, right after the
>successful raid on Entebbe when national pride was high.
When I got out of high school, it was a given that you had a pretty
high chance of getting drafted, and if you did, it was going to be
the Army and stationed at Camp Swampy at best. About a quarter of
my class volunteered for other branches - I went into the Air Farce
where I spent 3 of 4 years in Europe. After I got out, I got the
usual humdrum job at the local slave shop. I stayed there for 15
months before going up to Boston to get a job that would send me back
overseas. A month later, I'm helping to rebuild a radar at El Dorado
airport in Bogota, Columbia, two months later doing the same thing in
N'Djamena in Chad, and so on. About a year later, I'm on my first stint
in SEA. I've worked overseas about a quarter of my working life, and
would do it the same way if the chance came. It was enjoyable and
interesting.
>George Carlin asked (to paraphrase), "Where are all those honest,
>idealistic people everyone talks about who ought to be running our
>country? It looks like our current politicians are the best we can do."
Some one else said "If $DEITY wanted us to vote, [s]he would have given
us a choice of useful candidates!".
Old guy
Moe Trin
<g5qq8d$ocb$4...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>Moe Trin wrote:
>> Normally, I would only buy by the carton - except when I ran out in
>> a place like that.
>
>Me too, but IIRC I'd suddenly decided to stay overnight and I was
>afraid I'd run out. I can't believe the energy I used to put into
>worrying about running out, even though I don't think I ever did.
I'm moonlighting - trying to get enough money to pay for new tires on
the Pontiac. I'm working the night shift at a local AM radio transmitter
and one of the things we had to do was go out to the base of the towers
and read a meter there, for comparison with a remote (in the transmitter
building) meter. It's raining like it's going out of style, so I RUN
out to each (of three) towers, note the readings, and run back to put
the readings into the log. I get back inside, and realize I'm soaked,
AND THE PACK OF CIGARETTES IN MY SHIRT POCKET IS SOAKED TOO!!! And I
don't get off duty for almost two hours... and I'm DYING FOR A SMOKE!
(I had just finished one before going out to check the meters, but that
was centuries ago.) AH-AH!!! Air cooled transmitter - but it's so old
(serial number 4, built in 1934) that the cooling fans are shot, and no
longer available, so chief engineer has put two standard 20" box fans
behind the transmitter and opened the doors (putting a piece of plastic
in the interlocks that would short the high voltage to ground as a
protective measure when you open the doors) and is cooling things that
way. Carefully open the soggy pack (don't want to damage the wet
ciggies), and put them on the chassis of the transmitter, right next to
the RF amplifier tubes (glass balls about the size of a 1 pound loaf of
bread) - they're nice and warm (100 Watt filaments, pumping out a
kilowatt of RF at ~70% efficiency)... $DEITY, I need a smoke!!! Reach
in to grab one - you know how you've got the shakes at this point - and
accidentally get to close to that metal contact on the tube...
ZOT!!! YEOW!!! Bounce! (as my elbow goes into the wall behind me).
2600 VDC, plus 4000 volts of 1 MHz RF - and I still didn't give up
smoking for ~40 years more. I did learn to put a spare pack in the
car at least.
>> we'd make a "sin run" up to the New Hampshire state line
>I would have gone to CT if cigs had been any cheaper there. I checked.
That was why I was buying them in NH.
>> just outside of Hartford because of the perpetual gas war there
>I can remember (early '70s) when cheap local stations were
>$0.299/gallon, but that was years before I was old enough to drive.
The normal prices were in the range $0.259 to $0.309 in the '50s and
'60s, but you got Green Stamps with that, and maybe a glass or a plate
or similar as a "thank you" gift with a fill-up. A neighbor here tells
of similar gas wars in NM, with prices as low as $0.129 in the '50s.
>> The legit retailer has an easy remedy - card everyone. (Remember
>> Mayor Koch? I come very close to sharing his 1990 hairline and even
>> so, I get carded every time I try to buy booze.) I think the law
>> says to card 'under 25' but the retailer just cards everyone to
>> avoid discrimination.
>
>IIRC I only got carded once, and I actually was underage then.
I got carded last night - I'm well over 40 in hexadecimal!!!
>Nobody's carded me since, and now I definitely look "well over 30."
Most retailers here card everyone (signs all over the store reminding
people of this) because it eliminates the problem for the clerk trying
to guess the age. For the brane-ded clerks who can't figure out the
math, there are even signs saying you have to be born before $TODAY
in 1990 (or 1987 - depending) to purchase.
>> "Your" legislators??? How much did you pay for them ?
>
>Their salaries come from, in part, my taxes. Every once in a while,
>it's actually somebody I voted for.
You ducked that one nicely ;-)
>> Gimme a couple of beers, and I'm sure we can come up with something ;-)
>
>Only if you can prove you're over 21! :-)
DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS to get a decent fake ID down town?
Old guy
Blinky the Shark
> The normal prices were in the range $0.259 to $0.309 in the '50s and
> '60s, but you got Green Stamps with that, and maybe a glass or a plate
> or similar as a "thank you" gift with a fill-up. A neighbor here tells
> of similar gas wars in NM, with prices as low as $0.129 in the '50s.
Here's a frame I grabbed when I was watching 1971's "Two-Lane Blacktop" a
few months ago. Look at the price - 16.9. :)
http://blinkynet.net/stuff/two-lane_gas.jpg
--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Need a new news feed? http://blinkynet.net/comp/newfeed.html
Jim Beard
> Moe Trin wrote:
>
>> The normal prices were in the range $0.259 to $0.309 in the '50s and
>> '60s, but you got Green Stamps with that, and maybe a glass or a plate
>> or similar as a "thank you" gift with a fill-up. A neighbor here tells
>> of similar gas wars in NM, with prices as low as $0.129 in the '50s.
>
> Here's a frame I grabbed when I was watching 1971's "Two-Lane Blacktop" a
> few months ago. Look at the price - 16.9. :)
>
> http://blinkynet.net/stuff/two-lane_gas.jpg
That had to be when there was a price war going on. Too much
gasoline produced and everybody trying to move the excess and maybe
gain a few new customers in the process. I have seen gasoline as low
as 12.9 cents a gallon in such times, even when the ordinary price
was in the 25 to 30 cent range. Of course, at those prices there
would be an attendant to pump the gas for you, clean the windshield,
and check the oil, water, and air pressure in the tires.
When the price went below 15.9 cents, famers were buying tanks that
would hold up to a few hundred gallons (if they could find them to
buy) and filling them up for use in the months ahead.
Cheers!
jim b.
--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.
William Bagwell
>Blinky the Shark wrote:
>> Here's a frame I grabbed when I was watching 1971's "Two-Lane Blacktop" a
>> few months ago. Look at the price - 16.9. :)
>>
>> http://blinkynet.net/stuff/two-lane_gas.jpg
>
>That had to be when there was a price war going on.
>snip
Also, I don't think that car had a 30+ gallon gas tank.
BTW, I have enjoyed this rambling, if some what off topic, thread!
William
Moe Trin
<04OdnRtyNOKA2h7V...@posted.lerostechnologies>, Jim Beard wrote:
>Blinky the Shark wrote:
>> Moe Trin wrote:
>>> The normal prices were in the range $0.259 to $0.309 in the '50s and
>>> '60s, but you got Green Stamps with that, and maybe a glass or a plate
>>> or similar as a "thank you" gift with a fill-up. A neighbor here tells
>>> of similar gas wars in NM, with prices as low as $0.129 in the '50s.
>>
>> Here's a frame I grabbed when I was watching 1971's "Two-Lane Blacktop" a
>> few months ago. Look at the price - 16.9. :)
1971... I think that was about the end of the era.
>That had to be when there was a price war going on. Too much
>gasoline produced and everybody trying to move the excess and maybe
>gain a few new customers in the process.
Yes and no - mentioned up-thread, there was a perpetual gas war on a
stretch of US-5 just Southeast of Hartford, Connecticut in the '50s
and '60s. It may have been there in the late '40s - but I didn't get up
there that often, and wasn't yet driving.
>I have seen gasoline as low as 12.9 cents a gallon in such times, even
>when the ordinary price was in the 25 to 30 cent range.
But how much were you earning then? My first job after I got out of the
service was paying $2.33/hour, and that was pretty good coin.
By the late 1950s, the gas war near Hartford had stabilized within about
a half cent of $0.159, but this was going on for at least 10-15 years.
>Of course, at those prices there would be an attendant to pump the gas
>for you, clean the windshield, and check the oil, water, and air
>pressure in the tires.
While you hit the rest-rooms, which were clean and had hot water, two
kinds of soap (soft soap from a pump dispenser, and a gritty hand
cleaner from a tubular container) and towels. Did you need some maps,
or directions - and don't forget "Mechanic On Duty".
>When the price went below 15.9 cents, famers were buying tanks that
>would hold up to a few hundred gallons (if they could find them to
>buy) and filling them up for use in the months ahead.
I remember it mostly as 50 gallon drums - maybe three of them in the
bed of a pickup, because that was about a half ton, and was going to be
a bear to move around anyway.
Old guy
Blinky the Shark
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:09:31 -0400, Jim Beard > wrote:
>
>>Blinky the Shark wrote:
>
>>> Here's a frame I grabbed when I was watching 1971's "Two-Lane Blacktop" a
>>> few months ago. Look at the price - 16.9. :)
>>>
>>> http://blinkynet.net/stuff/two-lane_gas.jpg
>>
>>That had to be when there was a price war going on.
>>snip
>
> Also, I don't think that car had a 30+ gallon gas tank.
Who said that that car had just filled up at that pump? I don't recall
late sixties muscle cars with fillers in front fenders. And when you *do*
pull up to an appropriate pump, what's in the windows is the *last*
vehicle's purchase, not an anticipatory read out of what you might need.
Jim Beard
> I remember it mostly as 50 gallon drums - maybe three of them in the
> bed of a pickup, because that was about a half ton, and was going to be
> a bear to move around anyway.
Where I was (Oklahoma), the tanks were on stilts high enough that you
could drive a tractor up beside and gravity would provide the power
to fill the tank, i.e. 6 feet or higher to the bottom of the tank.
They generally held 300 to 500 gallons, though I have seen a very few
that I think held more.
And the gasoline distributor would send a distribution truck to the
farm to fill up your tank, none of this "go to the filling station
and fill up the drum." The distribution tankers were smaller in
those days, though. Today, I doubt a tanker would be sent to fill a
300-gallon tank on a farm.
Blinky the Shark
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:49:43 -0700, Blinky the Shark > wrote:
>
>>William Bagwell wrote:
>
>>> Also, I don't think that car had a 30+ gallon gas tank.
>>
>>Who said that that car had just filled up at that pump? I don't recall
>>late sixties muscle cars with fillers in front fenders. And when you *do*
>>pull up to an appropriate pump, what's in the windows is the *last*
>>vehicle's purchase, not an anticipatory read out of what you might need.
>
> You got me! On further reflection it is the wrong side of the pump to
> boot.
My work here is done. :)
Adam
[newsgroup be.politics]
>> Since you've been keeping up with the news and public opinion, you were
>> probably already up to date on the topics.
>
> Indeed so, but it is incredibly astounding how the extremists simply can't
> seem to grasp what you're saying, keep putting words in your mouth and skip
> just about anything you say to refute their allegations beyond three lines
> of text.
>
> And, typically of course, if they don't understand what you're talking about
> or if you refuse to swallow their propaganda, they will attack you on your
> personality and will attempt to label you with something.
I don't think that's unique to Belgium! I suspect that if I hadn't
identified the NG, there would have been a LOT of assumptions about
where it referred to, many of them the reader's own locale.
> the King has his own agenda and has already repeatedly refused to meet
> with the representatives of political parties that strive for an abolition
> of the monarchy
I think anyone in power is like that! When my state was debating
acceptance of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, one of the leaders on the
Anti-Federalist side (i.e. stronger state government) was of course the
current governor.
> It's actually surprising how poor the Dutch of the Flemish rightwing
> extremists is - notably in spelling and grammar - and they are the ones who
> supposedly fight for the preservation of our language in the bilingual
> regions.
Is Dutch spelling "simple" (one sound always same letter(s) and vice
versa) or "difficult" (e.g. English, where "-ough" can be almost
anything)? I forget, do schools there teach in Flemish/Dutch, and
presumably teach its spelling and grammar?
>> Well, some people embrace GNU/Linux and FOSS out of their convictions,
>> and others for technical reasons, and probably most for a combination
>
> I got into it for technical reasons
I'm glad this NG is more technical. I just assume anyone here has some
reason to use (or consider) Mandriva, and leave the political aspects to
others.
Adam
Adam
Hans, the police, or Nina. Anyone is welcome to reply to any part of this.]
Moe Trin wrote:
>> I was wondering which was the single most active (non-binary) newsgroup
>> out of all the hierarchies, to use as a reference for how active other
>> groups are.
>
> out of about 1200 groups with the string 'linux' in the
> name. I'm only trying to scan about 40 such groups, and of those, it
> looks like
>
> alt.os.linux.ubuntu
> comp.os.linux.misc
> alt.os.linux.suse
> alt.os.linux.mandriva
> alt.os.linux
> comp.os.linux
> uk.comp.os.linux
> comp.os.linux.networking
> comp.os.linux.setup
> comp.os.linux.hardware
>
> for the top ten in that order. a.o.l.u is being targeted by wintrolls,
> and c.o.l.m is hit pretty hard by spammers, but the rankings still are
> the same after pretty harsh killfiles.
Do you have a rough figure for posts per day? Does anybody have a guess
for the most active NG out of ALL of them on any topic?
>> And why 'compton'? After the SoCal city?
>
> Nope. 'compton' was the NASA Gamma Ray Observatory. The systems in
> my department at work (as well as those at home) are all named after
> various satellites - NASA and otherwise.
What are some of the others? It's sort of interesting to see what
patterns get used for naming systems. Since I only have one at a time,
I have no pattern. This box is 'eris.pantheon.invalid', which won out
over 'circe'. Previous ones were Ozymandias, Univac, and Alfred.
>> At USB 2.0 high speed, I should be able to
>> back up my internal HD in under an hour, sometime during the night with
>> a cron script.
>
> If it's an ISA bus, it's going to peak out at around 10 MegaBytes per
> second - higher if MCA, EISA, or VESA. The PCI bus is substantially
> faster - but how fast is your network? A full-duplex 100 MegaBIT
> Ethernet can almost be stuffed by a 16 bit ISA card, while MCA, EISA,
> VESA, or PCI can over-stuff any 100BaseT without breathing hard. Are
> you running a local Gigabit LAN?
I thought a USB HD was a local device, since I've only got the one box
anyway. I bought it new late last year, so I'd assume "USB 2.0 High
Speed" would be 480 Mbps/60 MBps (or whatever the drive could handle),
and 120 GB / 60 MBps is about 35 minutes. BTW this box has a "RTL8101E
PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller" but I don't know offhand just how
fast that is.
>> maybe early stages of carpal tunnel, so maybe I need a more ergonomic
>> computer setup.
>
> The ergonomic setup is a great idea. Talk to your primary-care, and
> see if [s]he has any recommendations. Arm-rests on the chair, keyboard
> tray beneath the desk surface, and so on.
I'll ask, and look for more info online and elsewhere. A few years ago
I attended the local Windows User Group's presentation on computer
ergonomics, given by a local physical therapist. FWIW my computer
"desk" is actually a door (stained and varnished) supported by two
two-drawer file cabinets. Lots of space (80"x30", all usable) plus four
file drawers for storage; height ended up 30 1/8". (That's roughly 203
cm W, 76 D, 76.5 H for you metric types.)
> I've worked overseas about a quarter of my working life, and
> would do it the same way if the chance came. It was enjoyable and
> interesting.
I like traveling, but apart from visiting, I've only spent three years
living outside of this county, both times at universities elsewhere in
the U.S.
> $DEITY, I need a smoke!!! Reach in to grab
> one - you know how you've got the shakes at this point - and
> accidentally get to close to that metal contact on the tube...
>
> ZOT!!! YEOW!!! Bounce! (as my elbow goes into the wall behind me).
>
> 2600 VDC, plus 4000 volts of 1 MHz RF
I think anyone who's smoked for a while has stories of desperation. My
worst wasn't as bad as that, though.
A few years after I quit, I put on a coat I hardly ever wore, and found
a still-sealed pack (several years old, of course) in a pocket. I
decided to leave it along the sidewalk, so somebody would come across
it, assume it was a fresh pack, and light one. <evil grin>
[gasoline prices]
> The normal prices were in the range $0.259 to $0.309 in the '50s and
> '60s, but you got Green Stamps with that, and maybe a glass or a plate
> or similar as a "thank you" gift with a fill-up.
I remember Green Stamps, and Plaid Stamps, and Blue (?) Stamps, and
going with Mom to pick up the "free gift." And I've heard of families
accumulating entire sets of dishes and flatware from gas stations or,
before my time, from movie theaters on "dish night".
> Most retailers here card everyone (signs all over the store reminding
> people of this) because it eliminates the problem for the clerk trying
> to guess the age. For the brane-ded clerks who can't figure out the
> math, there are even signs saying you have to be born before $TODAY
> in 1990 (or 1987 - depending) to purchase.
I've seen those signs, mainly in convenience stores (7-11 or similar),
with both years, age 18 for cigarettes, age 21 for any kind of booze,
although anything stronger than beer has to be bought at a
privately-owned state-licensed liquor store. That's New York State;
other states have different rules. I was really surprised to see
store-brand hard liquor in California supermarkets. I don't think I've
ever been carded since I was 18, though nowadays I don't buy cigs and
rarely even buy beer.
>>> "Your" legislators??? How much did you pay for them ?
>> Their salaries come from, in part, my taxes. Every once in a while,
>> it's actually somebody I voted for.
>
> You ducked that one nicely ;-)
That's how I look at life in a republic. Instead of spending my time
learning about all the issues and having to make decisions, I and the
other residents are paying someone to do that through our taxes. I try
to make it someone who'd decide the way I would have, or at least decide
in line with my beliefs, but things don't always work out that way.
> DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS to get a decent fake ID down town?
Nope, never had to get one. I'm aware you can get almost anything,
legal or otherwise, downtown, especially where I used to live. When I
check "Police Blotter" in the local weekly, there's about a 50-50 chance
that there'll be someone either from or arrested in my old neighborhood.
Adam
Aragorn
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
> Aragorn wrote:
> [newsgroup be.politics]
>>> Since you've been keeping up with the news and public opinion, you were
>>> probably already up to date on the topics.
>>
>> Indeed so, but it is incredibly astounding how the extremists simply
>> can't seem to grasp what you're saying, keep putting words in your mouth
>> and skip just about anything you say to refute their allegations beyond
>> three lines of text.
>>
>> And, typically of course, if they don't understand what you're talking
>> about or if you refuse to swallow their propaganda, they will attack you
>> on your personality and will attempt to label you with something.
>
> I don't think that's unique to Belgium! I suspect that if I hadn't
> identified the NG, there would have been a LOT of assumptions about
> where it referred to, many of them the reader's own locale.
True, I guess. Just the less intelligent always trying to overcome the more
intelligent because our intellect scares and frustrates them.
>> It's actually surprising how poor the Dutch of the Flemish rightwing
>> extremists is - notably in spelling and grammar - and they are the ones
>> who supposedly fight for the preservation of our language in the
>> bilingual regions.
>
> Is Dutch spelling "simple" (one sound always same letter(s) and vice
> versa) or "difficult" (e.g. English, where "-ough" can be almost
> anything)? I forget, do schools there teach in Flemish/Dutch, and
> presumably teach its spelling and grammar?
There are differences, so it would be "difficult" then. There are also
differences in the pronunciation of some words between Northern Dutch and
Southern Dutch. For instance, the Dutch word for "police" is spelled
"politie". The Flemish pronounce that as "polisie" - which is also how it
is pronounced (and written) in Afrikaans. The Dutch however pronounce it
as "politsie".
There is also a difference in pronunciation of vowels depending on whether
they are followed by a single consonant plus another vowel or not. It is
hard to explain that to English-speakers, though, given that our vowels are
not pronounced the same way as in English.
>>> Well, some people embrace GNU/Linux and FOSS out of their convictions,
>>> and others for technical reasons, and probably most for a combination
>>
>> I got into it for technical reasons
>
> I'm glad this NG is more technical. I just assume anyone here has some
> reason to use (or consider) Mandriva, and leave the political aspects to
> others.
Some of them do tend to surface every once in a while, though. It's
inherent to human communication. A new thread starts, and three follow-ups
to it later the topic has already changed, even if the subject line is left
unaltered.
And then you can go drift off into many directions... :-)
Moe Trin
<g62dfp$c9m$2...@registered.motzarella.org>, Adam wrote:
>[I'm combining your three posts into one reply, since none deals with
>Hans, the police, or Nina. Anyone is welcome to reply to any part of this.]
Fine - I'll add the '[O/T]' to the header
>Moe Trin wrote:
>> for the top ten in that order. a.o.l.u is being targeted by wintrolls,
>> and c.o.l.m is hit pretty hard by spammers, but the rankings still are
>> the same after pretty harsh killfiles.
>
>Do you have a rough figure for posts per day?
2005 2006 2007 1-6/2008
alt.os.linux.ubuntu 28/460 480/7196 2877/40401 9737/21843
comp.os.linux.misc 7898/33645 7961/32415 12638/30140 7759/11502
alt.os.linux.suse 3482/40869 3799/31186 1061/15702 592/5371
alt.os.linux.mandriva 83/3181 1716/15833 543/10877 359/5739
alt.os.linux 4524/17502 1667/9758 1739/10200 1390/4065
comp.os.linux 819/13817 726/7854 441/6700 322/3061
uk.comp.os.linux 520/10629 601/6693 320/6010 188/2676
comp.os.linux.networking 1918/12896 300/8826 559/6114 284/2530
comp.os.linux.setup 942/8849 378/6136 379/3768 498/1842
comp.os.linux.hardware 496/7230 425/6733 756/5056 289/1784
NOTE 1: a.o.l.ubuntu created 11/2005, a.o.l.mandriva created 8/2005.
NOTE 2: Figures are killed/total_offered. The 'kills' represent one
persons opinion and may not match your opinion.
NOTE 3: 1-6/2008 represents postings to 6/30/2008:1400 UTC.
>Does anybody have a guess for the most active NG out of ALL of them on
>any topic?
Impossible to say - the "official" list of Big-Eight groups is 2290
groups, but most servers carry more (giganews has 4694 in those same
eight hierarchies), and then you add in "the rest" which (according to
an unverified web page at http://www.geocities.com/freefreenews/) varies
to make totals ranging from 11156 to 170313 newsgroups. How many groups
may be active (never mind "useful") is subject to speculation.
>> Nope. 'compton' was the NASA Gamma Ray Observatory. The systems in
>> my department at work (as well as those at home) are all named after
>> various satellites - NASA and otherwise.
>
>What are some of the others?
Home systems - because work is under NDA:
columbia, enterprise (ncc-1701), atlantis, spitzer, hubble, challanger,
endeavour, discovery, galileo, compton, pathfinder, chandra
>It's sort of interesting to see what patterns get used for naming
>systems. Since I only have one at a time, I have no pattern. This
>box is 'eris.pantheon.invalid', which won out over 'circe'. Previous
>ones were Ozymandias, Univac, and Alfred.
Naming schemes can be a lot of fun/frustration (frustrating, because
you work your bootie to the nubbins trying to come up with a great
name that meets RFC950 {case-less, begins with a letter, letters,
numbers and hyphen _only_}, not likely to be confused with an
existing name, not "politically incorrect" - only to discover the guy
in the next office had put in a request for that name yesterday). This
gets really bad when you've got several thousand computers in "this"
naming domain. The normal solution is to use a naming scheme, such as:
Cars Beers Navel vessels Battles
Countries Animals Film/Stage/TV Stars Fruit/Vegetables
Stars/Planets Flowers Athletes Sports Teams
Chemicals/Elements Newspapers Magazines Publishers
States/Provinces Oceans/Seas Diseases Mythical Names
Cities Firearms Satellites Kings/Queens/Presidents
Cartoon Characters Pasta Wines Disasters
Painters Zodiac Currencies/Coins Scientists
but even that runs into problems - is 'compton' a person, place, or
thing (yes to all three).
>I thought a USB HD was a local device, since I've only got the one box
>anyway. I bought it new late last year, so I'd assume "USB 2.0 High
>Speed" would be 480 Mbps/60 MBps (or whatever the drive could handle),
>and 120 GB / 60 MBps is about 35 minutes.
I don't have experience there, but I expect your numbers might be
optimistic, based on the fact that you are reading data from one source
(a SATA hard drive for example), and this has to get transfered over
the river and through the wo^W^W^W^W^W^Wto the USB controller and
thence to the external drive. Another question would be "are you making
an image backup, or backing up individual files" which brings up more
overhead.
>BTW this box has a "RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller" but
>I don't know offhand just how fast that is.
10/100 MegaBit - depending on what else is on the wire.
>FWIW my computer "desk" is actually a door (stained and varnished)
>supported by two two-drawer file cabinets. Lots of space (80"x30", all
>usable) plus four file drawers for storage; height ended up 30 1/8".
Obviously, it's going to depend on how high the chair is (a whole
'nother problem area), but that sounds high. My chair puts my butt at
20 inches and the arm-rests at 28 inches, and the keyboard and mouse
are at 25 inches (eyes ~44 inches, center of monitor ~38 inches).
>> I've worked overseas about a quarter of my working life
>I like traveling, but apart from visiting, I've only spent three years
>living outside of this county, both times at universities elsewhere in
>the U.S.
"It's different [out|over] there." Of course, I also wasn't married
and the company I was working for kept finding new and exciting places
to send me, and they were paying travel/lodging/meals.
>> ZOT!!! YEOW!!! Bounce! (as my elbow goes into the wall behind me).
>>
>> 2600 VDC, plus 4000 volts of 1 MHz RF
>
>I think anyone who's smoked for a while has stories of desperation.
"my elbow goes into the wall" - literally, into the plaster wall. The
transmitter building was a dilapidated old house. I had to come in later
and "patch" the hole. As the place probably was last painted in the
early 1930s, I faked it by using whitewash tinted with Rit clothing dye.
>My worst wasn't as bad as that, though.
>
>A few years after I quit, I put on a coat I hardly ever wore, and found
>a still-sealed pack (several years old, of course) in a pocket.
Oh, I quit often enough over the years that I knew to go through every
possible hiding place and get rid of the un-opened packs to lessen the
possible temptation. And then buy a fresh carton a week or two later
when I restarted. When we finally quit in 1997, my wife stopped about
three hours before I did, because I was using up the last pack and it
took longer than her. I had to go outside to smoke those.
>I decided to leave it along the sidewalk, so somebody would come across
>it, assume it was a fresh pack, and light one. <evil grin>
That's how we get rid of stuff that even the recycling services won't
take. Put it out next to the curb with a yellow pickup sticker from
$CHARITABLE.ORG on it - and someone will cruise by, spot it, and
recycle it for me. Works even with stuff $CHARITABLE.ORG won't take
even if there are a couple of $10 bills stapled to it.
>I remember Green Stamps, and Plaid Stamps, and Blue (?) Stamps, and
>going with Mom to pick up the "free gift." And I've heard of families
>accumulating entire sets of dishes and flatware from gas stations or,
>before my time, from movie theaters on "dish night".
We mentioned this one in the thread... "[OT] Gasoline" a year ago.
>> For the brane-ded clerks who can't figure out the math, there are
>> even signs saying you have to be born before $TODAY in 1990 (or 1987
>> - depending) to purchase.
>
>I've seen those signs, mainly in convenience stores (7-11 or similar),
>with both years, age 18 for cigarettes, age 21 for any kind of booze,
Yup - that's the signs!
>although anything stronger than beer has to be bought at a
>privately-owned state-licensed liquor store. That's New York State;
>other states have different rules. I was really surprised to see
>store-brand hard liquor in California supermarkets.
A lot of states allow that, just as a few states only allow booze sales
_only_ from a state owned/run store. I haven't looked lately, but
Arizona and California grocery chains were getting the stuff from
"bottlers" in San Jose and Ontario. I've no idea where those bottlers
were getting the crap - some of it was pretty awful. Scotch, Rye,
and Bourbon I can see, but how do you screw up Vodka? They manage.
>>>> "Your" legislators??? How much did you pay for them ?
>>> Their salaries come from, in part, my taxes. Every once in a while,
>>> it's actually somebody I voted for.
>>
>> You ducked that one nicely ;-)
>
>That's how I look at life in a republic.
Yabut you're in New York...
>Instead of spending my time learning about all the issues and having
>to make decisions, I and the other residents are paying someone to do
>that through our taxes. I try to make it someone who'd decide the way
>I would have, or at least decide in line with my beliefs, but things
>don't always work out that way.
But that still means learning about the issues - of course, every once
in a while, they say one thing, and vote another. But that's life.
>> DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS to get a decent fake ID down town?
>
>Nope, never had to get one. I'm aware you can get almost anything,
>legal or otherwise, downtown, especially where I used to live.
One of the evening news "investigative reporters" (hah!) here did a
piece on fake IDs last year. Most of the product will stand a
casual look by Joe Public and was RELATIVELY cheap (SS card and
drivers license for under $100. Won't fool anyone who is used to
looking at them for a living.
>When I check "Police Blotter" in the local weekly, there's about a
>50-50 chance that there'll be someone either from or arrested in my
>old neighborhood.
The local rag only prints the crime reports half - if anyone got busted
for something, it will only be mentioned as "A suspect has been
arrested" or similar. Names only pop up when the cops have a confession
or similar.
Old guy
Adam
>> I suspect that if I hadn't
>> identified the NG, there would have been a LOT of assumptions about
>> where it referred to, many of them the reader's own locale.
>
> True, I guess. Just the less intelligent always trying to overcome the more
> intelligent because our intellect scares and frustrates them.
For a while I was subscribed to a gt-adults mailing list. You might
find it interesting.
>> Is Dutch spelling "simple" (one sound always same letter(s) and vice
>> versa) or "difficult" (e.g. English, where "-ough" can be almost
>> anything)?
>
> There are differences, so it would be "difficult" then.
[snip]
> There is also a difference in pronunciation of vowels depending on whether
> they are followed by a single consonant plus another vowel or not. It is
> hard to explain that to English-speakers, though, given that our vowels are
> not pronounced the same way as in English.
At least there are rules! In English, words like "entrance", "rebel",
and "read" even have pronunciation dependent on usage and context.
>> I'm glad this NG is more technical. I just assume anyone here has some
>> reason to use (or consider) Mandriva, and leave the political aspects to
>> others.
>
> Some of them do tend to surface every once in a while, though.
True, but lately this NG has been more focused, which I like. Most
threads are, or at least start as, something related to Mandriva or
Linux, and the only prolonged disagreements I've seen have been over
ways to accomplish something with Mandriva.
Adam
Adam
>> Do you have a rough figure for posts per day?
>
> 2005 2006 2007 1-6/2008
> alt.os.linux.ubuntu 28/460 480/7196 2877/40401 9737/21843
> comp.os.linux.misc 7898/33645 7961/32415 12638/30140 7759/11502
> alt.os.linux.suse 3482/40869 3799/31186 1061/15702 592/5371
> alt.os.linux.mandriva 83/3181 1716/15833 543/10877 359/5739
Thanks! That means about 120 posts/day (66 not killed) on a.o.l.u, and
31 (29 not killed) here. I generally consider both the volume of posts
and s/n ration when deciding which groups to follow. Lately the s/n
ration in this group has been quite high.
>> Does anybody have a guess for the most active NG out of ALL of them on
>> any topic?
>
> How many groups
> may be active (never mind "useful") is subject to speculation.
Could be one of the 'test' groups, where anything would be on topic.
The busiest one I ever followed (not 'test') averaged over 100
posts/day, and I just skipped most of the them.
> Home systems - because work is under NDA:
>
> columbia, enterprise (ncc-1701), atlantis, spitzer, hubble, challanger,
> endeavour, discovery, galileo, compton, pathfinder, chandra
I didn't expect anybody to have twelve home systems!
>> I thought a USB HD was a local device, since I've only got the one box
>> anyway. I bought it new late last year, so I'd assume "USB 2.0 High
>> Speed" would be 480 Mbps/60 MBps (or whatever the drive could handle),
>> and 120 GB / 60 MBps is about 35 minutes.
>
> I don't have experience there, but I expect your numbers might be
> optimistic, based on the fact that you are reading data from one source
> (a SATA hard drive for example), and this has to get transfered over
> the river and through the wo^W^W^W^W^W^Wto the USB controller and
> thence to the external drive.
Does anybody have an actual transfer speed for an SATA HD to a USB 2.0
external HD?
> Another question would be "are you making
> an image backup, or backing up individual files" which brings up more
> overhead.
Individual files. I know there's more overhead, but so far I've only
needed specific files. Also, I may be reading my backup DVDs or
external HD on someone else's system, where I can't overwrite everything
with my image.
>> BTW this box has a "RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller" but
>> I don't know offhand just how fast that is.
>
> 10/100 MegaBit - depending on what else is on the wire.
Does that mean the box's Ethernet port can handle 100 Mb/second, if
nothing else is using the internal buses? Could my DSL modem/router
handle that speed, if the things connected to it want to transfer that
much? (I realize any connection is limited by the slowest link.) It
sounds like, in theory, a local USB 2.0 connection would be 4.8x faster.
>> FWIW my computer "desk" is actually a door (stained and varnished)
>> supported by two two-drawer file cabinets. Lots of space (80"x30", all
>> usable) plus four file drawers for storage; height ended up 30 1/8".
>
> Obviously, it's going to depend on how high the chair is (a whole
> 'nother problem area), but that sounds high. My chair puts my butt at
> 20 inches and the arm-rests at 28 inches, and the keyboard and mouse
> are at 25 inches (eyes ~44 inches, center of monitor ~38 inches).
Time for me to do some measurement, research, and possibly purchases and
modifications. Now that my car's drivable again, I can get new
eyeglasses, probably my first bifocals, so that's a good time to
re-think the whole setup ergonomically. I /know/ there's lots of
information available!
>> apart from visiting, I've only spent three years
>> living outside of this county
>
> "It's different [out|over] there." Of course, I also wasn't married
> and the company I was working for kept finding new and exciting places
> to send me, and they were paying travel/lodging/meals.
Only once did I ever have what might remotely resemble a "business
trip"... I was a grad student and went to a professional convention, at
my own expense. I spent relatively little time at the convention, but
got to see some of Chicago. I even got to the tail end of a CACHE (user
group) meeting.
> As the place probably was last painted in the
> early 1930s, I faked it by using whitewash tinted with Rit clothing dye.
Whitewash is one of those things I've only heard about, but never seen.
It always makes me think of Tom Sawyer and the fence.
> That's how we get rid of stuff that even the recycling services won't
> take. Put it out next to the curb with a yellow pickup sticker from
> $CHARITABLE.ORG on it - and someone will cruise by, spot it, and
> recycle it for me.
I just pitch it in the dumpster. I have, I think, a dead lead-acid
battery that I may even do that to.
>> families
>> accumulating entire sets of dishes and flatware from gas stations
>
> We mentioned this one in the thread... "[OT] Gasoline" a year ago.
Sorry! I don't think I was involved much in that part of that thread.
BTW a year ago this week, I paid $3.08/gallon. It was down to $2.84 by
early October.
>> although anything stronger than beer has to be bought at a
>> privately-owned state-licensed liquor store. That's New York State;
>> other states have different rules. I was really surprised to see
>> store-brand hard liquor in California supermarkets.
>
> A lot of states allow that, just as a few states only allow booze sales
> _only_ from a state owned/run store.
I think Vermont only allows state-run stores. That was the easiest way
to tell I'd driven out of Massachusetts.
At one point my ex-wife was actually drinking Listerine. It's 56 proof
and can be bought at any supermarket or drugstore without any proof of
age, and with a lot less suspicion too.
>>>>> "Your" legislators??? How much did you pay for them ?
>>>> Their salaries come from, in part, my taxes. Every once in a while,
>>>> it's actually somebody I voted for.
>>> You ducked that one nicely ;-)
>> That's how I look at life in a republic.
>
> Yabut you're in New York...
How does that make any difference?
>> When I check "Police Blotter" in the local weekly, there's about a
>> 50-50 chance that there'll be someone either from or arrested in my
>> old neighborhood.
>
> The local rag only prints the crime reports half - if anyone got busted
> for something, it will only be mentioned as "A suspect has been
> arrested" or similar. Names only pop up when the cops have a confession
> or similar.
The local daily only writes up serious arrests over several counties.
The weekly covers a much smaller area but lists name (unless underage),
age, residence, where arrested, and the charge(s). The headline on
today's daily was about a suspect in a murder last year about two blocks
from where I used to live.
Adam