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Today’s tirade brought to you by the letters C (Corruption & Congress), L (Lobbyists), B (Bribery) and P (Politics/Politicians). Before I go any farther let me first point out that I have no doubt that there are politicians who genuinely do try to do the right thing. Also I am not a member of any political party. Why you may ask, I quite frankly can’t stand them.

The first problem that needs to be addressed is the Parties (basically the two parties: Democrats & Republicans). Why do these need to be addressed? The very existence of these parties is interfering with any/all decisions/investigations in which either side has a particular view point. As I understand it the parties came about to make it easier to find like minded individuals with certain political viewpoints. But as it has evolved those parties should really be be split into multiple parties from there. There are about 5 different classifications that spring to mind within the Republican party itself. In actuallality it is probably closer to about 15 in each party. Unfortunately the party system has done what all good party systems do. Think back to your high school days, then the parties were much more accurately referred to as cliques. Don’t believe me? Think about it for a sec, the senators/representatives that we have voted to represent us aren’t doing their job at all. Depending on their party affiliation they will most likely vote with their party not in the interest of their constituents. You see it wouldn’t do to have the other party get credit for getting a bill passed that their constituents may want, because then the other party can’t come back and save the day on that issue later when they are in power. Do you see what I mean, it is just like High School, only this time instead of a budget of a few hundred or a few thousand. It is a budget of a few billion or a few trillion.

The second major problem is term limits, for example Strom Thurmond served as a senator for South Caroline for 49 years. I’m not saying he did good or he did bad while he was in office, I’ll leave that to the historians and future generations to decide. But in my opinion serving in a position of power for such a long time will inevitably lead to the taking for granted the powers/responsibilities of that office. In 1951 the 22nd amendment was ratified to limit the number of times that a person could hold the office of President of the United States. Although not officially law most Presidents did not attempt to run for more than two terms before Franklin Delano Roosevelt out of tradition. FDR was elected to 4 terms in office(the last of which he he died a year after being re-elected) which prompted Congress to propose an amendment to ensure an elected president does not become a lifetime benevolent dictator. Unfortunately, Congress has never seen fit and will never see fit to limit their own terms. I believe this is long overdue and much needed to protect the American people much the same way that the 22nd Amendment was adopted to protect the US from creating a dictatorship. In my opinion Congress will never choose to limit itself which leaves the only option for such an amendment to be brought up by at least two-thirds of the states as allowed for in Article Five of the United States Constitution.

All of this may seem a bit drastic, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Consider everything we have seen over the last 20 years or so. From my own state of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch ran on a platform of 18 years is too long to oust he encumbent Frank Moss in 1977, he has now been in office for 29 years. At least every few weeks there are stories of corruption or special treatment in regards to members of Congress for instance William Jefferson just this last week and Patrick Kennedy’s crash a few weeks ago. I’m not picking on just them, but they are the most recent ones that come to mind.

What would I do, since I can can’t do anything about the parties legally I would only try to better educate the people on just what is done and hold the members of Congress accountable. It is being done now, but it needs to be increased. It is unforgivable that so many laws/need/bills/etc are essentially stopped only because one party doesn’t want the other party to succeed. Only to bring up the same thing a few years later because they are in power. Second term limits must be amended to the constitution, specifically the Representatives should be held to a limit of 3 terms of 2 years each. Senators should be held to a limit of 2 terms of 4-6 years each staggered such that there is always at least one experienced senator in office at any given time. 3rd and not major, but necessary, stricter adherence to the Robert’s Rules of Order and other rules governing the conduct and procedures that Congress must follow. For Example it used to be that for a filibuster to continue on and not be defeated the members filibustering were not allowed to leave whatsoever(except for maybe bathroom breaks, but I am not sure). If they did leave their forfeited the filibuster. Unfortunately with the laxness of the rules/conduct currently, a filibuster can last for weeks, but there is no requirement that I have seen that the filibustering members must stay. This would allow for much more to be accomplished and less filibustering for filibusterings sake.

The CVS Cop-out inspired this post regarding some of the possible problems with Open Source. The focus of that article was regarding regarding the classic problem of installing some new software only to find a bug in the portion you needed most. Then when you go looking for support you find that yes they bug has been fixed, but it is in CVS and not released to the main distribution. This of course presents problems for most every day users that don’t know how to get the cvs manually and build the program.

But of course I have gotten way off of my intended subject. A problem I ran into this last week that has driven me absolutely batty, I attempted to insall and use Openswan. Openswan is a kernel based Ipsec software, to create essentially very secure tunnels between seperate networks or between a user and network. From all of my research it looked as if Openswan was the best and most reliable choice to use. I couldn’t have been more wrong!! For 4 days of HELL I attempted and attempted to get it too work. I check the mailing lists, the user groups and IRC. Usually the answer I got was RTFM, which I wouldn’t mind so much if I hadn’t read the manual checked the user groups before I tried to ask questions. But I tried unsuccessfully for a few days before I tried to ask questions.

It’s not like I was just trying to suck as much information out of someone, in fact after not being able to get anyone else’s help I was in IRC hoping for someone more helpful to show up. And surprise surprise all of my reading helped me to solve their problem when I couldn’t solve my own. Maybe the user community will be more helpful in the future, but at least I won’t have to worry about it.

Hi, remember me/us, you know the little people. The ones that you need in order to survive, the ones you need to buy your products and subscribe to your services. I have a little bit of FREE advice. Are you ready for it? Here it is:

WE, YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE NOT MADE OF MONEY!$!$!

I can’t speak for everyone else in the world, but I am getting just a little bit tired of being gouged to death for everything. But what has really set me off this week is Sony’s announcements about the Playstation 3 prices. I’ve come to expect this sort of thing from Microsoft so the new Xbox 360’s prices were no big surprise. If your not sure what I am talking about here are a few links to refresh your memory:

• “I don’t think it’s an expensive machine…” regarding Sony’s announcement of the PS3 being £425 (approx $800 USD at current exchange rates)
• “Frankly, I’m amazed that we can [sell the PS3] so cheaply.” on the announcements of PS3 prices in the US of $500-$600.
• “Sony has clearly hamstrung itself with a box that is expensive to manufacture…” - No Explanation needed!
• A very smart guy that made graphs detailing inflation adjusted prices of the major consoles since the Atari 2600

So congratulations Sony I have owned a Playstation and a Playstation 2 for the sole purpose of playing games from the Final Fantasy series. This invariably has led to buying other games for those consoles. But I will no longer be buying any of the playstation consoles or games. The next console I buy will probably be a Wii at least so far they haven’t shot themselves in the foot.

Go to any major city and whenever there is an accident as much as possible traffic still moves smoothly. Not that I don’t feel bad for those that are in an accident. BUT, there is no reason that an accident that has been fully moved into the shoulder of the freeway should still cause FIVE lanes of traffic to come to a standstill.

In Utah right now we have an epidemic of rubber-neckers! For each and every accident, no matter how small expect traffic on I-15 to slow to a crawl. Once for all thr rubber-neckers that must slow down to get a full view of the accident. Second they just caused another accident because they were paying attention to the accident and not the car in front of them that decided to stop.

I promise to find something other than Utah drivers to write about for my next post!

Anyone from Utah will surely know what a MAV is, but for those that don’t:

Another term for a station wagon, mini-van, or any other kind of vehicle that is targeted at the “family” demographic(also M.A.V.) and Any vehicle whose express purpose is carrying 8 or more children at the same time, with groceries.

Many Utahns have large families or are planning on large families so they have acquired these large vehicles, which I can fully understand. What I can’t understand is why they can’t learn to drive them accordingly. They still think they are driving their old beat-up little Civic, Corolla, Focus and Metro.

What does that mean to the rest of us? Expect close encounters when you are in the right lane and a MAV come barrelling in from the side along the shoulder to turn right. This may have been okay when they were driving a Small car that could fight almost anywhere, but now they have the ability to take out all the smaller cars without even noticing it. Be wary of shopping centers that have small parking places, because if you park in a spot where your small car can fit, but just barely. There is a good chance when you get back you will have at least one MAV wedged in next to your car. If you know gymnastics or yoga be prepared to use it in order to gain access to your car.

If your car is a MAV please, please forget about parallel parking. Unless there is room for two cars in that parking space, there is a good chance you will hit one of the other cars. Or hold up traffic for 15 minutes while you attempt to come into the parking spot from all angles. Just because your car is a MAV does not give you the right to force your way into a lane on the freeway. See all the other cars piling up behind you, it was caused by you forcing your way into a lane where the driver of the Metro had no chance. Last but not least, if you would have hesitated doing something in your old car don’t even think about it now! This includes tight parking spaces, driving on the shoulder, pulling a U-turn in the middle of ANY street.

Thank you in advance for following any of these guidelines. You may have just kept from flattening me and my Civic.

P.S. If you are in front of any of us smaller cars at a stoplight, please remember we most likely cannot see when the light is going to change, this is especially true of the left hand turning lane. Find some way to let us know the light is completely red that you are turning left on. Just because you can make it through doesn’t mean that we would survive the onslaught of cars that are now barrelling towards us.