It's official...

The U.S. Senate voted 96-1 to approve, with no changes, the "Uniting and Strengthening America" Act, which expands the government's police surveillance powers to combat terrorism. According to news reports, aides for Senators Leahy and Hatch say the USA Act is a welcome improvement over what President Bush originally suggested, but it was not enough of an improvement for Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), who attempted to introduce three amendments, which were tabled by his colleagues prior to the vote. Feingold's was the lone Senator to vote against the legislation.

According to an article at wired.com, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) described Feingold's amendments as "outdated and nonsensical." Hatch said "current law perversely gives the terrorist privacy rights.... We should not tie the hands of our law enforcement and help hackers and cyber-terrorists to get away."

In the curious logic of politicians, it would appear that wanting to restrict the expansion of police powers is the same as wanting to restrict police powers, period. (This is entirely consistent with the phenomenon where wanting to reduce an increase in spending is described as wanting to simply "reduce spending.")

Hatch's "current law perversely gives the terrorist privacy rights" is pretty scary, too. Gee, at what point in the process is a person a terrorist? If it's before trial and conviction, then the person's not a "terrorist" yet, right? So it would appear that Hatch is really saying: "it's stupid that current law is set up to secure privacy rights for individuals suspected of being terrorists." (I've taken the liberty of correcting what is an all-too-common misconception among politicians, i.e., that their laws "give" us rights.)

Now, if your mental picture of a "suspected terrorist" is of someone who just blew up a schoolbus full of kids, you might not quibble too much with my reinterpretation of Hatch's unfortunate remark. On the other hand if you end up being a "suspected terrorist" because something you said while in line at the supermarket was misinterpreted by the jackass behind you and reported to the cops, it's a whole different ball game, isn't it? (It can't happen here? I hope you're right.)

The astute reader will also note that the good Senator lumps "hackers" (which encompasses a broad range of activities) together with people who drive airliners into buildings. You gotta admire this guy.

( Read more... )

Feeling burned out...

Being here in Houston, in an environment where I'm basically shuttling between home - where I sleep during the day - and work, I find it's way too easy to immerse myself in LiveJournaling. If I'm not writing something, I seem to be wandering about this huge community, checking the known haunts (my friends) as well as some random journals. I'm commenting more, too.

Per se, there's nothing wrong with that. But I'm feeling a bit burnt out with all the posts and comments. I notice I'm pouring more effort into some of my recent thoughts, and there is a certain strident tone in some of them that I don't particularly like. As I look at them, I wonder: At some future date, looking back on the posts of the past week, will I be better able to understand myself, where I was, what I was thinking?

With my eyeballs locked onto one computer screen or another over the past week, often looking at LJ, I feel a little the way I imagine an addict must feel. I feel a need to back off.

Or maybe I'm just feeling the oh-dark-thirty blues.

Cheers...

Community involvement...

In a comment to my previous post, fellow LJer rillifane notes, "This isn't the first cyber community I have been involved in. I eventually wander off and the consideration you reference is the reason."

Same here. Of a number of cyber communities I've been involved with, perhaps the most memorable was the Byte Information Exchange (BIX), which I helped beta test and where I moderated a couple of conferences. My participation there lasted about 4 years and then started to drift off, ending shortly after taking a job at Borland.

The common factor in all those "other" communities was that pretty much everything said/posted in a forum was forced down the throat of everyone else in that forum. This led to a number of flame wars that, if you're into that kind of thing, made for some pretty confrontational involvement. It was hard to go off into a "corner" of a forum to socialize or talk about something quietly, because you'd have to wade through everyone else's conversations (and flames) to read what your interlocutor(s) were saying.

The same is largely true for Lantra-L, a translator's mailing list that, in my opinion, has been sidetracked from its original mission of being a resource for translators, instead becoming - the last time I was joined - a vehicle for flame wars, most of them political. (In the end, boring as well.)

What immediately attracted me to LJ - past the ability to simply muse and not necessarily have to engage anyone else in the community in a dialog - was the ability to create your own community of friends and to be included in the communities of others. If you find, after some time, that someone on your friends list is becoming too argumentative (or a pain in the neck for some other reason), you can drop that person from your list and go on largely intact. If you look at the friends of your friends, it is likely you will find others to add to your own community. Being able to post privately or for friends only is icing on the cake.

As a result, this organism called LJ has its own self-stabilizing environment that can be very conducive to stress-free participation. The key part of the previous sentence is "can be." No rule says you can't bust out like Ethel Merman and carry on good old-fashioned flame wars that require industrial grade asbestos suits to withstand.

I just need to back off on the accelerator pedal. I'll be fine.

* * *It's about a quarter after 2 in the afternoon. I've had about 3.5 hours sleep since coming home at 9 or so. I need to verify I've done everything properly on my taxes (since I won't have any opportunity to work on them tomorrow, and it's best not to wait until Monday for this crucial step).

I then plan to hit the sack again around 7 or 7:30, in order to sleep until 10, at which point I'll be refreshed to face the schedule I mentioned yesterday.

Cheers...

Buy that man a drink!

About the only piece of information one can get on the Web about one F. J. Raymond (at least, without my going into my hunker-down-and-get-tough mode) is that he once said/wrote/semaphored:

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.

After having gone through the numbers, there is nothing more I can do today. The way I see it, I have one or two phone calls to make on Monday morning to clarify a figure, and then I can finish and send off my return... and wait for my, uh, refund. Raymond spoke the truth.

I am about two hours ahead of my timeline. I think I will go celebrate with a little Chianti, and maybe engage in a little carpe diem and read a book I've had my eye on for a while (Rex Stout's Triple Jeopardy. It's always fun to read about Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.). My goals on the carpe are modest, at least for this diem.

Time is a-wastin'...

Cheers...