February’s usually a long enough month already, but I guess if you’re going to make it longer, this year is an okay one to do it. We’ve had pretty nice weather in the latter part of February, and I’m not especially anxious for the snow that usually hits us in March. I’ll enjoy the extra day this year.
- Turly sent me an email pointing out the Major risk factor for heart attacks . Sounds pretty darned believable to me. [turly]
- State of the Art: After TiVo, Radio Rewound talks about a TiVo-like device for radio, but it sounds as though it’s not really a very good implementation, has crappy sound-quality to boot (32 Kbps mono), and a poor receiver.
- The USENIX Response to SCO Controversy is a good letter, in which they take some direct shots at SCO. I think SCO’s in real trouble in the long-run, but as with so many legal proceedings, they’re managing to make life heck for others in the meantime, and the results aren’t certain. Meanwhile, Judge accepts expanded SCO lawsuit, pushing the damages sought against IBM up to $5 billion. [slashdot]
- In If the meter’s running, Joe Soucheray takes a look at a cab-ride he had from the airport and the lack of service and bad attitude from the driver. My solution to the problem is to not get in the first cab available, but to wait and watch a little to see if there’s either a driver I know in the queue, or at least a cab from a company I know waiting. I’ve had enough bummer cab-rides that there are some companies I’ll just avoid, even if they were to offer a free ride home. [press-patch]
- Eric Raymond writes about The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story involving CUPS and explaining how sticking a pretty graphical interface on something doesn’t necessarily make it user-friendly, and can even make it geek-hostile, by leading knowledgeable folks down wrong paths. [papascott]
- Cops Caught Issuing Tickets As a Contest. At first I thought this was just another abuse-of-power story, but there’s more to it than that. See, the cops were stopping people for valid reasons, and just writing every ticket they could. The mayor said
It is not anything that we as a city support,
but I find myself wondering why all those laws are on the books if the city isn’t going to enforce them.
That leads me to my rant for the day. I’ve been thinking about politics. I just don’t see how anyone can claim that they’re for more personal freedom (and generally line up on the left of the current political spectrum) while still thinking that bigger government and other social programs are a good thing.
As soon as you have government redistributing money, you’ve given up some measure of personal freedom. Take marriage, with the accompanying benefits like health-insurance or different tax rates for couples filing jointly. If it weren’t for government being in the marriage business, same-sex marriages wouldn’t be as big of a deal one way or another.
No Child Left Behind is another example. Cities and states started taking federal money for education (it was about 7% of their budgets in the last numbers I can find), and in exchange, they’re having to face federal intervention in education (even if it claims to offer more local control in the long run).
Remember the 55mph speed limit? Or moving the drinking age to 21 nationwide? Both are cases where the federal government blackmailed states into changing their laws by threatening to withhold highway dollars. As soon as you start to take money or services from the government, you’ve also accepted whatever strings are attached (either now, or in the future) to that money. Once government has power over some portion of your life with laws are on the books, those laws are open to selective enforcement, like the two cops in Georgia in the story I mention above. That’s why I advocate smaller government and fewer laws.
The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.
- John S. Coleman, Address, Detroit Chamber of Commerce, 1956