[TriLUG] OT: USA Patriot Act II

Tanner Lovelace lovelace at wayfarer.org
Sun Feb 9 19:25:23 EST 2003


On Sun, 2003-02-09 at 01:54, Greg wrote:
> Phillip:
> 
> Thanks for pointing out the new bill in Congress, and as
> died-in-the-wool republican even I have problems with some the things
> that Team Bush is trying to push through Congress.  That said, if the
> majority of Americans think that what is going on in Washington is as
> bad as many say it is we can look forward to a new president after next
> year's elections.  That's the American way.  Democracy at work.

Unfortunately, there are still two more years before the election
so you really need to let your congress people know what you think
about this *now*.  What bothers me most about what I've heard about
this is that it tries to make things more secret.  Freedom flourishes
much better in the light of openness than the darkness of secrecy.
(Oh, and one nitpick.  The USA is not a democracy. It's a republic.)

> This brings me to some other questions.  After searching the archives I
> see that you have an e-mail address that resolves back to the UK yet you
> have posted local (919) phone numbers on the list.  Are you an ex-pat
> Brit living here in the USA or are you a US Citizen with a UK e-mail
> address?  Just curious.  The reason why I ask this stems from a .sig
> from an e-mail you sent previously which can be viewed by clicking on
> the provided link (I have also included this at the end of this
> e-mail):  <"http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/dev/2002-March/000175.html">

I believe Phillip is not a Brit.  He just happened to register a
domain in the .co.uk domain.  Since many foreign companies/individuals
register domains in com/org/net it stands to reason that it wouldn't
be imposible for people to register domains in other contries.  In fact,
some country domains (i.e. .tv) specifically market themselves in the 
US.  The country system was a good idea at the time, but it's become
less so over time (unfortunately).  Even the .us system, which was
supposed to be strictly geographical, has been opened up to anyone.
It still bothers me that North Carolina is wasting my money by using
the domain ncgov.com when they, by law, have the domain state.nc.us
(Try going to http://www.state.nc.us/).  It used to be that you
could very easily figure out your local government's domain name.
State governments were state.[2 letter state code].us.  Counties
were co.[county name].[2 letter state code].us.  Cities were
ci.[city name].[2 letter state code].us.  Unfortunately, many 
of them have switched to .com or .org domains, thinking (wrongly,
in my opinion) that people would prefer a domain name that is
easier to remember.  The problem is, though, that they break
the pattern and if you go anywhere different, you now have no way
of figuring out the domain name (well, except google, but it
should be easier than that).  As an example, does anyone know
the website for the city of Raleigh?  http://www.ci.raleigh.nc.us
redirects to www.ncgov.com!  At the very least 
http://www.ci.cary.nc.us/ redirects to http://www.townofcary.org/
But why are they wasting the people's money paying for that domain
name when they don't have to with the other one.  At the very
least, Durham county is at http://www.co.durham.nc.us/ and
Durham city is at http://www.ci.durham.nc.us/

Cheers,
Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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 This would be a very good time to hang out with the Open Source 
 people, before they get formally reclassified as a national security 
 threat. -- Bruce Sterling




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