Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility

For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
— The Continental Congress, July 4, 1776

“The task of statesmanship has always been the re-definition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (Commonwealth Club Address, 1932)

“Roosevelt was wrong! The principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence are the principles of individual liberty. Our unalienable rights, given to us by God are given to us as individuals. Our rights do not come from society or the government, and they cannot be redefined by politicians. The nature of these rights carries with it the implication of individual responsibility, without which we surrender them.”
— Perri Nelson, November 6, 2008

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Glad it wasn't me

Published Tue, Mar 20 2007 12:03 PM
Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, Annoyances

A friend of mine at work sent me a link to this article. Now I don't feel quite as bad about the Vista mishap that plagued me for the last week and a half.

JUNEAU, Alaska - Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing an account worth $38 billion.
That’s what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents’ biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.
There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.
“Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario,” said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow. The computer foul-up last July would end up costing the department more than $200,000.
Over the next few days, as the department, the division and consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand.
Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.
And the only backup was the paperwork itself — stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

They managed to get the paperwork scanned and into the database, and they met their obligation to the people of Alaska, at a cost of about $0.37 per person.

All I had to deal with was the loss of a bit of email.

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