Day: May 31, 2006

My grandfather had a favorite saying about rights and priviledges. Well, one of many.

“My rights end where your nose begins.”

More and more, folks today don’t seem to recognize their responsibility to consider the effects of their behavior on others. All most folks care about is their attachment to fake “rights” (while letting the important ones slide and ignoring the fact that rights have responsibilities attached). Heck, some folks view licenses to do things as rights. And others (particularly politicians) view rights as something to be controlled, limited and licensed (making “priviledges granted by the political elite” out of “rights” *sigh*)

OK, here are a couple of examples of one small aspect of this complex issue:

1.) This page (and the attendant video) about an SUV driver (could have been an “anything” driver—nothing special about SUVs, I suppose) whose irresponsible behavior was just flat-out dangerous. Driving is a priviledge, licensed based on a certain very limited skill, knowledge of the ruling statutes concerning driving behavior and subsequent behavior. It is not a right, but it does carry an enormous weight of responsibility. Watch the video. I’ve been in situations like the one depicted. It’s not safe, and the driver was NOT acting responsibly (yeh, and I have the—healed—broken bones to back up my assertion).

But. From the camera angle and what’s actually shown in the view filmed, the biker was riding too far to the left, as well. More than one person was pushing their license to use the highways past the edge of responsible behavior. Yeh, I know the page asserts “a little left of the fog line” but that “little left” looks to be about 2 feet, to me. Too far left for riding in traffic.

But I could be wrong.

Still, from Chapter 8, page 5 of the Missouri Drivers License Guide

“There is only one reason to use your horn: to warn other drivers.”

And,

Other equipment of motor vehicles–violations, penalty.

307.170. 1. Signaling devices: Every motor vehicle shall be equipped with a horn, directed forward, or whistle in good working order, capable of emitting a sound adequate in quantity and volume to give warning of the approach of such vehicle to other users of the highway and to pedestrians. Such signaling device shall be used for warning purposes only and shall not be used for making any unnecessary noise, and no other sound-producing signaling device shall be used at any time.

Which brings up

2.) Our new “trailer park trash” neighbors.

*sigh*

If I had wanted to live around loud, drunken parties (in their front yard, no less), people honking horns outside our bedroom window at all hours of the day and night (darned near every time folks drive up there, it seems they have to honk their horns, whether there’s anyone else at the house or not*), driven-to-distortion bass booms coming from front-yard-parked trucks, easily felt as well as heard inside on the other side of our house, and all kinds of other “trailer park trash” behavior, then that’s where I’d live.

I’m putting the local cop (well, there are more than one, but there’s only one at a time on duty) on speed dial. 911 would be overkill. No more gentle warnings or remonstrations.

But why can’t folks simply stop and think: hey! There’s no one home. I don’t need to honk my horn!

Or whatever might move them to think, “My rights end where someone else’s nose begins.”

*No one home and honking the horn? I’ve had folks ask me if my new neighbors are cooking meth, suggesting perhaps it’s an “all clear” signal to someone inside. I don’t know. Sure, we get toxic fumes drifting this way from over there from time to time, but that could just be trailer park trash cuisine… *heh*

I do these silly things so you don’t have to. (Yeh, I stole Jerry Pournelle’s motto. Well, borrowed it.)

So, Microsoft has decided to try offering an online security and tune-up scanner. Interesting, thought I, when I first heard of it. But I skipped the earliest beta testing round, since I don’t have any computers I want messed up that badly. Bad enough installing Microsoft’s “shrink-wrap beta” thought I…

But. Well, you knew I’d have to test it out eventually, didn’t you?

So, I selected a machine running windows 2000 Pro, 384MB of memory and 60BG of storage. Logged on to the site (and no, I’m not linking to it for reasons that will become obvious in just a bit). Loaded the scanner engine and fired it up.

32 hours later, it was still scanning for viruses and spyware. 61% finished with that task.

*sigh*

Oh, but it had found 3 viruses and eight spyware threats.

Riiiiight.

Two of the viruses were trojans recieved as email attachments and cleaned by my regular anti-virus. The scanner found them in my anti-virus software’s “virus vault”. No threat. The third false positive was just that: a perfectly legitimate, uninfected (according to three other anti-virus softwares) and very useful piece of software.

Oh, the eight spyware security threats it had found in its 32 hours’ scanning? Bogus or negligible. Cookies, one and all. And three of the cookies were for navigating a site I want cookies from. Two were for cookies from Microsoft sites, for heaven’s sake! (Now, those were a concern, cos the only time I use Internet Exploder is when I visit a Microsoft site, and Internet Exploder doesn’t throw cookies away automatically on exit. No, it doesn’t.) Ah, but that’s been a consistent problem with Microsoft’s Anti-Spyware Beta (Giant Antispyware). Lots of false positives.

I’ll let it continue to run, just to see if it does eventually turn up anything useful, but so far on a scale of 1-100 (with 100 being perfect and 1 being “stinks to high heaven”) M$’s onloine scanner has scored a -253. The score has to run to heavy negative numbers because of its lethargic performance.

I’ll revisit this sometime next week, if it’s finished scanning by then.

If this is Wednesday, it must be time for an Open Trackbacks Alliance open trackback post. Pick one of your posts you want featured, link to this post in it and then track back here. More info below the Fair Tax Blogburst.

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by Ms.Underestimated

This is not just an idea anymore…it’s a movement! The Fair Tax movement.

What else do you call an event about something as dull and boring as the U.S. Tax Code that draws almost 7,000 to a rally? About 4,500 people got inside the doors, which had to be closed due to the 50,000 square foot Gwinnett Convention Center being at capacity at SIX THIRTY P.M.! The rally didn’t start for another hour, yet another almost 3,000 had to be turned away. People drove from Virginia, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, and all over the southeast. Hindsight being 20/20, I’ve heard some of them express disappointment over radio because they only heard the broadcast en route to the rally, and at 6:30 they weren’t even in Georgia yet. They knew they had to turn around and go home, but every single one said that next time, they’ll come a day or two in advance! Some who were turned away simply went to their cars and “tail-gated” with fellow Fair Taxers so they could all listen to the rally as WSB Radio broadcast it live.

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