In response to Jeffypoo:Original Post: 11/1/06
I think this is a horrifying question. To loose your franchise because you've been convicted of a felony is reprehensible on so many levels. Let me explore a few.
Note: In Canada, you can't be charged with a felony, it's called an indictable offence, and your are not called a felon, but a convict. I realize that the source of this question stems from an American article, so I'm not trying to be a pain, just clearing that up.
First, one can be convicted of a crime without having actually done anything illegal. False convictions happen. Alternatively one can commit a crime without being convicted. This leads to a very serious question of fairness in regards to application of punishment which we really ought to consider, but won't address any further at this point for the sake of brevity.
Secondly, a citizen being convicted of a crime does not automatically equate that he has poor judgement. In fact, he could have been making a political statement, or participating in civil disobedience, or rebelling. All things I would hope we would encourage of those who have the conviction and see the need to do so.
Thirdly, A single failure of judgement in one instance does not indicate a contamination of the whole. Even multiples failures don't. In fact, it's often said that to succeed, one must fail. Failure of judgement is something we respect and see as a means to a healthier more enlightened end. One or many bad choices does not extend to an exclusive future of the same, nor the reverse. It's too simplistic an argument; not to mention illogical. We as a society tend to frown on throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why make an exception in regards to the most sacred of democratic rights?
Last, Let us also not forget that we are talking about RIGHTS, not PRIVLEAGES. Rights are non-revocable! As example, you have the right
to freedom of association, you have the privilege
of using the public motorways. Do we value our RIGHT to vote so little that we are willing to equate its worth with driving a car? If so, shouldn't one then be licensed to vote? (A whole other can of worms, I know.)(Section in Italics added June 18/2007)I learnt long ago that conviction of an offence does not necessarily mean you have committed a crime. Even if you
had technically violated a law, it does not mean you were wrong, morally or otherwise. Our legal system is rather arbitrary and has little basis in justice. It tries to be just, and some that work in it try very hard to keep it so, but it is far from it. A legal conviction means one thing only, that the convict was perceived guilty by his peer(s) of violating an interpretation of an arbitrary rule whose spirit may or may not have been violated and has therefore been punished, or not, in a matter befitting the weight and severity of the crime, or not.
To revoke someones franchise because they ran afoul of the legal system is self righteous as well. A conviction says nothing of innocence or guilt, of intent of action, of clarity of mind or pureness of heart. It says nothing of the convicts ability to clear and rational reasoning, nor how they would exercise their rights and responsibilities as a citizen. It is an illusion of justice in an attempt to hold people accountable for their actions and keep society from breaking down because of fear. It may be the best system out there, but it sucks, and it is
not just. As such a conviction is not good enough a reason to revoke the prime method of participating in the democracy it purports to protect.
"Why is the idea a seemingly popular one?" is a much better question.If a vote is a judgement on the execution of a governments roles and responsibilities, and being that government is the representation and logistical machinery of a society, a vote is a judgement on society itself, of where it's been, and where it's going. This being true, then maybe some people don't want to be judged or held accountable by those who may have the perception that society has failed them and is in part or wholly responsible for their conviction and the legal and social consequences therein. Maybe it's easier to declare arbitrary laws against people and behaviours that some of us feel are unpalatable and then lock up those who violate said laws and throw away the proverbial key.
Maybe it's comforting to not be held accountable by the disenfranchised and the neglected, by the sick of mind and and sick of body, or the dissenting and the poor. If we don't have to look in the mirror, if we don't have to listen to their wants and needs, if we can just remove them physically and legally from participating in society, then maybe we won't have to deal with their problems.
A society can be best judged by how it treats it's poor (of wealth, body and MIND), what does it say then that we lock them up and want to strip them of their only recourse? Are we scared of what they may say if they had to sit in judgement of US? Is that why the morally righteous among us feel the need to strip a citizen of his franchise?
Can we live with that?
I can't.
Candian VOIP Provider down, second time in a month.
The beginning of the month is turning out to be a curse for Canadian VOIP provider Primus Tel. Last month a late night firmware upgrade involving the companies customers using Dlink hardware encountered an error that locked up the devices and their clients Internet connections, shutting out many customers for days, some even for weeks. The company attributed this to human error, and it is understandable that these things happen. To it's credit the company has stepped up and offered those affected a $30 credit on their bills.
In our age of always on communication we regard outages as big events that shouldn't happen, even though they are ultimately inevitable. As such we should point out the Primus Talk Broadband service (VOIP) like many VOIP providers have an Out-Of-Service roll over feature that allows calls to be routed to landlines or cell phones when their systems are knocked off line, a feature we don't really see in Traditional POTS Systems.
It's seems however that this evening, March 2nd 2007, has provided another challenge to the Primus customer base, support and engineering staff. At approx. 18:00 mst the entire network went dead and as of this writing is still down. The Talk Broadband forums on the companies customer portal quickly filled up bringing it to a crawl with complaints of phones such as mine just started ringing incessantly and refused to produce a dial tone. This is yet another frustrating example of the unpredictability of VOIP technology.
As fragile as it seems though, when I ask myself if it was worth switching from POTS lines to VOIP, I have to answer yes, because even though the last month has been wrought with problems, the prior year wasn't and the control and features, not to mention the price point, make the occasional glitch bearable. After all, it's not like a cable cut hasn't taken down a POTS system for days on end. At least with VOIP, the problems are logistically easier to fix, and likely to come back fast, and with Out-of-service forwarding, I'm not likely to miss call.
Update: Within 1.5hrs of the problem happening Primus enginers have replaced a blown switch, restored service and notified their customers through the forums. Again, what ILEC, CLEC could do that?
I must quash this rebellion or I shall go insane!
The following is a true story, though fragmented and probably missing a bunch of stuff:
Due to the events of the last three weeks I've come under the impression that anything with a microchip in it has declared war on me. This is an odd sensation, I've been known to walk into a customers site and seemingly (and occasionally literally) solve a problem with their computer equipment without doing a thing. Sometimes my mere presence is enough.
Not this month. No, this month is the month of Complete Technological Meltdown. It all started one day when I decided I would double the ram in my motherboard. OOPS, a little too much pressure (I assume, but don't see how) and now instead of going from one to 3 GB of ram, my computer will only recognize 256mb. Frick. Then the fans start acting up, the processor fan thumps and the graphic card fan things it's a drill. Double frick. No problem, I can deal, it's time for a bit of a hardware upgrade anyway. I have a new computer still boxed in the office that I bought for a customer a few months ago that he ended up refusing (asshole). So, I figure I can handle this. I go to prep the new machine. It will only accept 512mb of ram in one particular bank (out of two) and it has to be a certain kind. And it will only accept one hard drive. No graphics card or other extras thanks. Oh, and plugging a floppy into the board to update the firm (which chokes) causes the screen to start refreshing at 85hz. Not good as I have an lcd which prefers 65hz. This is how the rebellion started.
I give up and get ready to go to bed, with two computers down I decided to check my palm pilot for tomorrows’ appointments, except, it decided to drain it's battery and needs a reinstall off the pc. Great. Fuck you all. I'm going to bed.
I wake up in the morning and power on the old machine (the one that will only recognize the 256mb card) and try to get online to price out hardware. No can do, no internet access. Check the modem, seems, fine, call Shaw Cable to find out what's up. Sorry, phones are down. I look at the voip gateways and they’re flashing away like everything is hunky-dory. Pick up my new Treo, hit the power button, it burps and resets. I haven't even gone pee yet. This is not going good. I go to the washroom, the toilet chain is broken. The world hates me I decide. I crawl back into bed.
I emerge a few hours later and contact Gigabyte tech support (the MOBO vendor of the new machine), they're preparing for Chinese new year and won't get back to me until the 25th. I try to get my internet working, Shaw doesn't have a clue, but wait, I’m a Primus Voip customer?! Perfect, they did a firmware update last night that knocked out half their network and locked up all their customers cable modems, you have to call them to get instructions on how to fix the problem. Uh, sorry Miss, no phones... Oh, well go to their website. Um... okay. I reset the modem, unplug the voip gateways (I have three voip lines) and plug my laptop into the switch. Nothing. Hm... oh, looky, my switch is fried. Port 2 (the port the Primus ATA's were on) is permanently stuck on and blocking all traffic. Grrrreat. Swap that out with an old hub after spending an hour looking for it's power cord. Oh, and the router reset too, won't accept any connections, needs a hard reset and to be programmed. Two hours later, I'm back online, but still no phones.
Okay, fine. I'm too broke right now to just up and buy a whole new PC, mostly cause I dropped a tonne of money on a new Treo 680 and a whole bunch of software for it. I decide to salvage what I can and determine I need some thermal grease, two new motherboards and a couple of fans. When I return I go on salvage duty dissecting the two uncooperative machines so I can rebuild them and give Tavish my old(ish) machine (an upgrade from his old Compaq) and keep the AMD 64 that my customer bailed on. I get started and the os chokes on installation. Figure out it's not detecting the sata drives properly, fix that. Hard drive starts rattling. Frick. Swap that out with a new one. Get XP 64 installed and discover (of course) that it won't run some of my software. It has a thing against 16bit software, even if they're just installers or drivers. Okay, no problem, wipe it out and reinstall XP 32. Can't, customer calls. She's got a big presentation tomorrow and needs emergency onsite recovery done. It's 8 pm and she's an hour out of town. YAY!
Next afternoon I resume my quest for a working PC. Everything throws a fit, nothing works properly. Drivers won't install. Updated drivers won't install. Oh, swap the cards, now it works, but now my cameras install (one of which has gone awol) and the printers think this is fun and won't accept their drivers either. One scanner does, one doesn't. I'm a mess in cable and realizing I have way too much shit. Try getting DVD burner in case. Case designed wired, require 8 screws and 8 tabs to get front panel off just to remove 1 drive guard. Case draws blood while I try to figure this out. I don't care, my fingers bleeding I wrestle with it. I win. Little bit of blood smeared on the chassis. I leave it there and put the cover back on. It just feels right.
Get one computer up and running (80%) and start setting it up to access my data, install Office and do a Windows update. Internet dies. Cat chews through cat-5. *Sigh* Go to Memory Express buy some more stuff (purple cat-5 yay!) and away we go. Phones still down. Build Tavish’s computer. No hassle. Set up computers, network laser printer, go to bed.
Next days, fans squealing, take apart machines, fix fans, everything okay. Backup software insists on staying in recover mode, and after 20 minutes of telling it no, don't restore over my files it finally listens. Phones still down.
Login to Primus website, read instructions to fix Voip gateways, they fail. Check the forums, yep, failed for everyone else. Could be a 4 hour wait on the cell if I'm brave enough. A little digging someone finds an little known server with the new firmware... 10 minutes later, phone back online. Pick up phone to test dial tone. Treo resets for no reason... must feel abandoned.
Friday the 23 comes around, things seem to be going good, I can relax this weekend. Nope, another client needs emergency data recovery and laptop rebuilt. Takes 27 hours in total. Finish today, Sunday afternoon, figure I can relax and enjoy myself. Except, my domain name registrar is imploding. My client’s domains and mine (around 40) are being held hostage due to a now terminated CEO who's messing with the backend and locked the whole company out. I spend next 4 hours trying to move my domains out, get 80% of them out safely, other 20% will have to wait until business tomorrow. In the last three weeks I’ve had to reinstall every piece of software I own and replace every piece of hardware except the laptop and router.
I go to check e-mail. Router fries itself.
Fuck it. I should've stuck to delivering pizzas. I'm going to bed.
First, one can be convicted of a crime without having actually done anything illegal. False convictions happen. Alternatively one can commit a crime without being convicted. This leads to a very serious question of fairness in regards to application of punishment which we really ought to consider, but won't address any further at this point for the sake of brevity.