Author: Shawn K. Quinn

It’s a police badge, not a license to shoot defenseless dogs

This video was recorded in 2010 February in Columbia, Missouri, documenting what happens during the execution of a search warrant on the home of Jonathan and Brittany Whitworth. It may (in fact, it almost certainly will) be upsetting to dog lovers, or for that matter, any human being who places at least some value in life, whether it be human, canine, or otherwise. It’s not graphic, but the audio track clearly records the very disturbing thing that happens to this owner’s two loyal dogs at the cold, brutal hands of these police officers serving the city of Columbia, Missouri:

There’s also a blog entry on norml.org about this case.

The worst part of this is that the raid was supposedly for a small amount of marijuana, one of the least dangerous drugs that in fact stands the best chances of having its prohibition ended during my lifetime. And they shot the dogs with a child present in the house.

I can’t imagine what these cops could possibly have been thinking to do something this mean and cruel. Frankly, I don’t care if the guy was a wanted fugitive with an arrest warrants for multiple murder charges; that is no excuse to kill defenseless animals like this. One was a pit bull, which has a bit of a reputation as a violent breed of dog. But the other dog, the one that it sounds like they shot three times? It was a Corgi. Yes, a Corgi!

Not surprisingly, the family has filed a lawsuit against the city of Columbia for this despicable, inexcusable, and unprofessional act. Thankfully someone was recording video of this, so there may be no mistake about what happened.

I’ve ranted before on what I think of drug prohibition in general. This is the best example yet on why the madness needs to end, and end now. Maybe it’s too much for this society to realize that drug prohibition in general is a failed policy, but certainly the case for legalizing marijuana is not that hard to make.

And it would seem others agree. From Russ Belville’s Huffington Post article in May:

P.P.S. Paul Armentano reminds me that in 2004, seven in ten Columbia, Missouri residents voted for the end of the “arrest, prosecution, punishment, or sanction” citizens for their medical use of marijuana, and six in ten voted for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use.  So the dog was murdered and the family terrorized over something only 30%-40% of residents believe is a crime.

So much for rule by the majority. It is my sincere hope that justice is served for the Whitworth family by a judgment in their favor and that other citizens fed up with such blatant violations of the public trust file suit as well.

Riding above the law: an observation in downtown Houston

Update 2011-02-06: I know the images on this post are broken. I’m in the process of moving them to Flickr due to hosting costs.

Update 2012-04-20: Images are back up as they were before, temporarily. They will move again, I’m not sure where yet.

Regular readers will notice most of my posts are commentary on third-party articles covered elsewhere. This will be an exception to the rule, as it comes from first-person observation.

(All pictures posted were taken yesterday, 2010 October 6; please keep this in mind. And yes, this post will be quite picture-heavy.)

It started when I observed a vehicle with a prominent “official police business” windshield parking pass. It’s not that which really caught my attention as much as the expired inspection and registration above it (two and four whole months past due, respectively), which made me really glad I brought my camera with me:

I went about my business in a nearby building and came out an hour later, walking towards my destination elsewhere in downtown. One would hope that a vehicle either used for police business or obviously owned by a police officer would have current registration and inspection. While I did observe several such vehicles that were in compliance, it seems there are plenty of scofflaws carrying a badge.

This is one of the less egregious violators. Still, the inspection has lapsed for a whole month:

Oh yeah, and the front license plate is missing. I had to go to the back plate to get a positive ID:

This next one has a current registration, but an inspection that’s been lapsed for a whole year and a half:

Another one with current registration, but an inspection that’s been due for some time, and also missing the front license plate:

Finally, yet another expired inspection:

When average citizens drive around with lapsed registrations, lapsed inspections, and missing front plates, they are at risk of being nailed for a ticket. I don’t think there’s a real consequence for law enforcement officers that do this, as all they usually have to do is flash a badge and say “this ought to take care of it” thus making them above the law. Especially in the case of the second vehicle which very well could be a warrant car actually belonging to HPD instead of a private individual (just an educated guess, given the emergency lights).

Quis custodet ipsos custodes, indeed.

In summary (with license plate numbers in text for search engine robots):

  • Silver Chevrolet, Y74-XXD, expired inspection and registration
  • Black Nissan, MTN-443, expired inspection and registration, and missing front plate
  • Dark blue Pontiac, GKT-328, expired inspection (over a year)
  • Brown Nissan truck, 20x-FT3, expired inspection and missing front plate
  • Maroon Chevy, Y31-XXD, expired inspection

More to come, maybe. If I don’t post any more, it won’t be because I forgot my camera; I’ve decided I’m packing a camera every time I go downtown from now on.

Admin/meta: Changes ahead

I haven’t made very many of these type of post here, but this one really deserves it. I have alluded to some of these things in prior posts but to make sure nobody misses them, I’m posting them here.

Major career and personal changes are happening in my life over the next few months. The current format of this blog will be incompatible to the success of those changes. I may need to put it on complete hiatus for a time with virtually no notice. I have slowed down a lot with the posting, and I’ve noticed my readers have slowed down a lot to check for new posts.

I’m not yet declaring this blog dead by any means. I’ve enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, this blog while I keep it active. The way I wanted to end it, by making a flurry of final posts in its final few weeks, may simply not happen. It may well be better for my personal brand (which has taken a fair number of hits over the time this blog has been up) for me to make a clean break.

This is my de facto personal blog for the moment. With Iced Tea and Ramen closed to new entries, it’s this blog here, Quinn’s Big City, and my personal site. I am not completely comfortable with this arrangement and while I don’t regret moving this blog to its own domain to free up my personal site, I definitely have missed having a true standalone personal blog.

I don’t want to just up and delete the archives here. I have too much good stuff and too many old posts getting hits to do that, for now. At some point, the bare minimum I feel necessary will be to call attention to the dates, possibly adding a plugin that adds a disclaimer “this post is more than six months old and may not reflect the current views of the author.”

Yes, I’ve ranted a lot against certain companies, probably more than I should for someone wanting to get into marketing and PR. I know I hold many minority viewpoints and have not been shy about them. I’m not shy about certain legal and justice issues, either. The unanswered question, so far, is the influence on the body of my posts here on my personal brand. I’d like to think it’s neutral to slightly positive. Some will agree; others will disagree in varying strengths and degrees of politeness.

It does get monotonous, even for me, to hit the same targets over and over again. I try looking for something new now and again. If the topic of this blog has to be limited to topics such as censorship, civil liberties, the more flagrant police/judicial abuse instances, and maybe an occasional sports/light news rant, then that’s what I may do to keep it afloat. I’m sorry if any of you feel it’s no longer Rant Roulette anymore if I’m not slamming Apple, Google, Microsoft, Walmart, AT&T, or some other megacorporation at least once a month. I’ve not decided this yet, but I’m considering the possibility of  some posts where I mention misdeeds of a megacorp, but the bar will be raised significantly; garden variety misdeeds won’t be eligible anymore, it will have to be something quite egregious.

I pledge to keep my remaining readers in the loop. Thanks for your support.

Engadget editor shows us the “restrictions” in Digital Restrictions Management

I know, two stories from the same source. But this one hit one of my hot buttons a bit too hard to just skip.

Paul Miller, senior associate editor for Engadget recently posted about a nasty surprise that his Apple iPad had waiting for him. Instead of quoting the entire story I’ll do my best to summarize in bullet-point format:

  • Paul gets stuck in an airport with his iPad and buys a movie for $15 to pass the time (since his laptop battery is dead, the iPad was his only choice).
  • The download only gets 2/3 of the way completed before Paul has to board his flight.
  • Luckily his flight has in-flight WiFi. Unluckily for him, the port iTunes needs to access to download the movie is blocked (I have no idea how iTunes works so I’m just using the same terminology Paul did).
  • Paul finishes downloading the movie at home, and decides the iPad’s small screen is too small to truly enjoy the film. So Paul connects his iPad to his TV.

And… bam! The “Restrictions” part of Digital Restrictions Management kick in, and the iPad throws up “Cannot Play Movie / The connected display is not authorized to play protected movies.” Not surprisingly, Paul’s next move is to fire up a BitTorrent client and download an unrestricted copy of the same movie, which I would assume works fine.

The unfortunate part of Paul’s post is that he has bought into the misleading and loaded usage of terms such as “steal” and “theft” for copyright infringement. Unfortunately, that’s a much bigger problem and it’s not going to be solved overnight, or probably even this year. But that’s another rant for another day. That, and the fact he gets bitten by DRM on a device built entirely around DRM, that is a brick until it’s connected once to a copy of iTunes on Windows or MacOS, is an unfortunate non-surprise to the readers of this blog. (Oh, yes, you read that right! The iPad will not work without being hooked to a computer with iTunes at least once! More on that in a future entry, maybe.)

The reality is that the MPAA is overdue to “get it” like the RIAA did. The RIAA finally figured out that it made more sense to sell unprotected music files via Amazon and even iTunes than it did to keep using digital locks to try to keep the honest people honest. It’s a step in the right direction, of course those are still MP3 and most record companies still aren’t embracing WAV/FLAC downloads (which I could understand being a little more expensive per track, but which I would actually buy).

But the MPAA has held onto “lock it down with more DRM” like a stubborn mule. Why, I don’t know. Movie producers and studios are finally grasping the concept of digital cinema, but a good many productions still originate on 35mm film. The new age is the digital age, an age of non-scarcity, where we can have as many copies as we want. DRM is a failure. Shame on you, MPAA; it’s time to let your obsession with DRM go.

Intel’s silicon shenanigans

As reported by Engadget, Intel is experimenting with a somewhat novel CPU upgrade scheme. They want to charge you to unlock features of your CPU that are already there.

Now, it’s not unheard of for CPUs to have cores or cache memory disabled at the factory. It’s acceptable, perhaps even expected, that a chip manufacturer would disable a defective portion of a chip before shipping it out. This is in fact how maximum clock speeds are determined: a chip that cannot run reliably at, say, 2.0 GHz is tested again at 1.9 GHz, then 1.8 GHz, etc. down to a minimum acceptable speed for the class of CPU until the highest speed is found at which that particular CPU chip will function. It’s similar with cache and cores: quad-core chips with two defective cores will have two of the cores disabled and become dual-core chips instead, and a chip with a defect in part of the L2 cache will have that portion disabled.

The difference is that Intel is shipping out fully working CPUs and using a DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) scheme to lock them down, holding the full functionality for ransom. This is not how responsible companies operate. A few of the comments on the Engadget blog entry already indicate that Intel has lost goodwill with this rather cowardly move.

What to do? I personally recommend avoiding the purchase of the DRM-crippled CPU chips in question. It may not be practical to buy your next PC without a single Intel chip in it, but I certainly won’t blame you if you do. Intel’s “just testing it out… in a few select markets for now.” Let’s all grade this test a big fat F.