Re: It isn't over yet
There may be more than a few high level Republicans that are not eager to have email issues in the news.
47 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Dec 2010
Tom Dial: The norm and requirement, however, was and is to use government facilities whenever possible.
Wiki: On April 12, 2007, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that White House staffers were told to use RNC accounts to "err on the side of avoiding violations of the Hatch Act, but they should also retain that information so it can be reviewed for the Presidential Records Act," and that "some employees ... have communicated about official business on those political email accounts."[White House - April 12, 2007 Press Gaggle by Scott Stanzel]
Tom Dial: Clinton's use of personally owned and notably insecure facilities, administered "at her cost" by a former campaign aide hired to the State Department as a Schedule III political appointee, is far worse than Powell, Rice, and perhaps Albright using commercial email services that probably were maintained and secured to a halfway reasonable standard.
me: do you have an opinion about the level of security maintained on the private RNC servers?
Charged with what exactly?
GW Bush created domain gwb43.com for email exclusively. Also used georgewbush.com and rnchq.org.
You say, "powell and rice did occasionally use (and report) their private email address but they also had a .gov address to use for their job."
How would you know? There are supposedly millions of missing emails from the Bush years. The House Oversight Committee said the private RNC servers have 140,216 emails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these emails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official ".gov" email accounts.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued an interim report on June 18, 2007 stating that at least 88 RNC email accounts were issued to Bush Administration officials. These included Karl Rove, Andrew Card (Chief of Staff), Kevin Melham (White House Director of Political Affairs).These email accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies. Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC email accounts, the RNC has preserved no emails for 51 officials.
"The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC email accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements (Presidential Records Act). At this point in the investigation, it is not possible to determine precisely how many presidential records may have been destroyed by the RNC. Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC email accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing emails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."
The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Henry Waxman said "in some instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications."[ The Hill. Waxman wants RNC, Bush campaign to preserve e-mails. 26 March 2007]
BTW, I'm quoting and plagiarizing from the Wikipedia article: 'Bush White House email controversy'
The George W. Bush admin used political email servers setup at the RNC to avoid being in the White House system. The Hatch Act prohibits gov resources being used for political purposes so the Bush admin said they used the RNC servers to be on the safe side. 88 RNC hosted email accounts were given to senior White House Staff. A private domain of gwb43.com was used (george w. bush, 43rd pres). The White House said 5 million emails may have been lost in potential violation of the Presidential Records Act ( mandates the preservation of all presidential records). Karl Rove is said to have used the RNC addresses for 95% of his email.
Yes we don't have a petition to leave the Union, but we did pass Prop 122 (with late ballots) that allows Arizona to restrict state and local governments from using personnel and money to enforce or administer any federal law or program that is “not consistent with the Constitution of the United States.”
And the AZ Legislature regularly crafts Bills (1433, 2368, 2643) to ignore federal laws we don't like.
Nobody wants the bleedin chips except the credit card companies. They are the only ones that benefit. It's purpose is to send fraudulent charges back to the merchant that accepted the card. The card companies are not interested in PINs as that might cause them to take liability.
The chip readers take much more time to process than magnetic swipers and they cost the retailer about $400 apiece. It's a win (credit card merchant) - lose (retailer) - loss (customer) situation. The only possible benefit for the user was that we'd finally have cards we could use at ATMs in Europe. But then they didn't give us PINs.
BTW every time I use a gas pump that asks for a zip code I feel massive empathy for foreign drivers that likely have no idea why the pump has stalled and can't read the f*ing screen in the bright sun even if they did know english.
The shooter was Hispanic and victim east european white. The shooter didn't talk about any racial remarks being exchanged. He just said he was very frightened by the man screaming at him.
The trial took place in Pima County which is one the few DEM counties in AZ. Pima County is about 40% Hispanic. There was no jury nullification thing going on.
In Arizona we recently had a road rage incident with two drivers shouting at each other and one of them bent over to reach for something. The other driver fearing he was reaching for a gun, got his own gun from the glove box and shot and killed the guy (who had no weapon). The prosecuting attorney reminded the jury that you do not have the right to shoot someone because they are shouting at you. The jury disagreed and acquitted the shooter of all charges.
A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, "Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5 pm for 20 cents. I continued this system for a month, by the end of which I'd accumulated a fortune of $1.37. Then my wife's father died and left us two million dollars."
from materialism by Philip Greenspun:
Mississippi public officials are ranked by reporters to be 7th most corrupt in the US. Mississippi ranks 2nd in convictions of public officials per capita (fivethirtyeight.com). If there's specific evidence that the Miss. Attorney General is being bribed by MPAA, I'm likely to consider it possible. In what way have the citizens of Mississippi been financially damaged by Google that their AG would get involved to this degree? In the case of Microsoft, damage was easy to answer - the cost of a Windows license added to a pc. That's what the states sued for.
An alternative view, backed by leaked Sony email, is that MPAA and major Hollywood studios have directly funded some State Attorney Generals (esp Jim Hood) to investigate and disparage Google.
According to Techdirt.com, The Verge summarized a key email as:
May 8, 2014: Fabrizio to group. "We’ve had success to date in motivating the AGs; however as they approach the CID phase, the AGs will need greater levels of legal support." He outlines two options, ranging from $585,000 to $1.175 million, which includes legal support for AGs (through Jenner) and optional investigation and analysis of ("ammunition / evidence against") Goliath. Both options include at least $85,000 for communication (e.g. "Respond to / rebut Goliath's public advocacy, amplify negative Goliath news, [and] seed media stories based on investigation and AG actions.").
Fabrizio is MPAA's General Counsel. CID stands for civil investigative demand. Goliath is code for Google.
One evening I opened my front door to find three police who said they were responding to a 911 hangup call. 'Not from here' I said, 'my wife and I have been preparing dinner and neither of us have touched the phone.' Nonetheless said the policeman, we must enter and examine the premise. I asked what would happen if they noticed a small pile of drugs while they were searching for a victim. The policeman said they would ignore it as that wasn't the purpose of the visit. 'Right', I thought, as I stepped aside. They entered, searched, and left.
Hmm. Check out "America's 100 Deadliest Highways" at thedailybeast. Ranked by number of fatal accidents per in-state miles, sunny California came in #4 (Interstate-15), #5 (I-10), #16 (I-80), #32 (I-5), #40 (I-8), and #79 for I-40. The California freeway system is high risk.
A dated study (2002) titled An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model did find that the category 'Imported Luxury Cars' (ex: BMW 3-5 series, Mercedes C and E, Infiniti) had the lowest combined risk for fatal highway crash. I suppose that's the category most applicable for the Tesla S.
If someone wants to dig deeper look at the Fatality Analysis Reporting System at http://www.nhtsa.gov/FARS
The IRS budget has been hammered the last four years by the GOP dominated House in what seems to be a classic case of political payback for the IRS targeting political 501 (c)(4)s.
501(c)(4)s are typically social welfare non-profits, but the 2010 Supreme Court 'Citizens United' ruling cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited money influencing elections and file for tax exempt status as a 501(c)(4). A major benefit being that donors need not be disclosed as they are in SuperPACs. 501(c) applications more than doubled after Citizens United.
I believe your understanding is spot on. At some point in the past, the FCC chose not to classify ISPs as common carriers and then proceeded to regulate them with common carrier rules. This court ruling says they can't do that. The FCC can now either reclassify broadband companies as common carriers or change the net neutrality terminology to be different from that of common carriers. Or they could sit on their hands.
Putin looks for reasons to poke Obama in the eye. He openly despises Obama. See their June meeting in Ireland. Snowden (folk hero or not) is just the latest opportunity. Obama worked well with Putin's 2008 successor, Dmitry Medvedev, but Putin seems to want the U.S. positioned as an enemy.
As a U.S. citizen I'd much prefer Obama spending his time dealing with the forthcoming threatened shutdown of the US government by the GOP. This summit flap will hopefully have no more gravity than Putin's cancellation of a meeting with Obama at Camp David in 2012.
Obama plans to attend a Group of 20 meeting in early Sept that Putin is hosting in St Petersburg so what's the point of a Moscow meeting immediately after? Putin is showing more interest in playing Obama than negotiating on meaningful issues (Syria and Iran). PRwise, Obama can't win. If he goes to Moscow he's a tool and if he cancels (as he has), he's a drama queen. I just hope there's some good cartoons that come from this.
If you are a nonprofit in the US with a 501(3)(c) check out techsoup.org for charitable pricing of software and some hardware. Techsoup partners with some 57 technology companies that provide greatly reduced pricing for those that are eligible. Microsoft, Citrix, and Cisco are among the partners.
FWIW, I am the volunteer IT dept of a small nonprofit (25 desktops, a NAS, and a point of sale system) and I whole heartedly agree with those above that eschew complexity.
Old IBM had a no layoff policy. Imagine the glut of employees with no real job to do. That changed by necessity in the early 1990's and a Tucson storage division was one of the first to get trimmed. I don't know specifics but IBM gave low level employees a year and a half salary as a parachute. Pretty nice offer for both employees and the local economy.
Most NAS devices use linux & samba and many organizations use one or more NAS as file server(s) without additional administrative overhead. It's efficient and inexpensive and probably causes Microsoft to lower the price of entry versions of Windows Server. An improved Samba is all win for everyone. Samba.org shows quite a few vendors that use Samba as part of a greater product.
MS marketing was it's criminal best in the OS/2 days. U.S. antitrust was first attracted to the plans IBM and MS made to divy up the planned OS/2 market (IBM - business; MS -retail) and what they found led them to clear IBM but stick to MS for the remainder of the decade. Anyone remember when MS threatened to withhold Windows from IBM if IBM bundled OS/2 exclusively on any their PCs? IBM previously had a dual boot arrangement which required them to pay a Windows license twice. With other OEMs, MS demanded a Windows license for every box sold whether is shipped with Windows or not. Remember Win 3.11, which was 3.1 with a few line changes to break compatibility with OS/2? On and on.
Anyway this was a wonderful unexpected article & comment section.
Why has a price fixing charge against an oligarchy of Publishers turned into an Amazon bash fest?
People seem afraid that Amazon will either drive out content with low prices or use predatory pricing now only to raise prices later. Instead of future fantasy, what about the present reality where the price of electronic books is already too high and paper is out of reach (for a middle class guy like me). Libraries are being defunded across the country.
What's the reality that Amazon is a monopsony ( Publishers must sell to Amazon) in the age of the Internet? Publishers can't create their own retail websites?
And this article - implying that anti-competition prosecution is ineffectual because the Microsoft breakup order was reversed on appeal. Com' on. Apples and oranges.
"Aren’t monopoly watchdogs supposed to bust monopolies"
No, they're supposed to bust abusive monopolies and those that commit anti-competitive practices in violation of anti-trust laws. In this case, that's exactly what they did.
Oh and MS DOS became cheap when MS illegally required PC OEMs to pay MS a vig for every box shipped regardless of what os was on it. It dispatched with DR DOS by throwing up phony error messages when MS Office discovered it was running. IF Amazon becomes an abusive monopoly, it too will become a DOJ target.
BTW, what's the cost of entry for a publisher to throw up their own e-book website and then cease to deal with Amazon?
It seems to be an accepted assumption that Amazon is selling the Fire at or below cost. Then along comes a company (Ainovo) shipping a decent looking 7" Android 4 (dual camera, 1080p, capacitive screen) for $100 less. Sold out the first day. If it's mostly about price, then it's too early to call the game.
Roads, bridges, fire protection, police, education. Yes I would. Basic research, national weather, Center for Disease Control. Yep. Military protection, legal protection, environmental protection. Yes again. What I haven't spent a penny on despite being in the pc business since the early 1980s, is an Apple product. I've often recommended Apple to people, but I usually warn them they'll get ripped on the price.
You say, "Verifone, the industry leader ... long ago stopped selling anything without NFC hardware, so proximity payments will come though the usual equipment cycle even if retailers aren't particularly interested."
And that "millions of credit cards already have the technology embedded"
So it sounds like the competition has more than a foothold. T
Does Google have a monopoly in search that makes these hearings relevant? Right now this looks like watchdog agencies sniffing and growling at the behest of Google's competitors. Maybe not such a bad thing, but if Google is declared to be a monopoly, I think that would be an injustice.