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Obama, at least, has a website with more details than most candidates.

So the folks who are swayed by slogans (alas, apparently most) can be swayed by the slogans, and those that wish details can get them.

McCain, in fairness, has some policy details at his website, as well... But I'll leave it up to someone who likes those policies to put up a link to them.

Obama, at least, has a website with more details than most candidates.

So the folks who are swayed by slogans (alas, apparently most) can be swayed by the slogans, and those that wish details can get them.

McCain, in fairness, has some policy details at his website, as well... But I'll leave it up to someone who likes those policies to put up a link to them.

He'll delay Constellation for five years (pdf link, go to the last page), which will result in layoffs for all the people we'd need to get to the moon, and then we'll have to go try to re-hire them. Meanwhile the designs are being done now, so the plans will just sit for 5 years going out of date. Brilliant. And what will the money be used for? Saving no child left behind. Yes, let's dump more money in to education, that will fix it.

When Mossberg asked if we needed to fix copyright policy, McCain gave a tentative yes: "I think we probably do," to applause from the audience. "But it's got to be carefully thought through--most members of Congress do not understand the complexity of these issues." However, when Mossbrg said that many people think that U.S. patent law is allowing companies to patent existing ideas, and asked McCain if this was a problem on his radar screen, McCain gave such a firm "No!" that it prompted audience laughter.

"I want to focus on the big things," he said.

Stop Tax Shelter Patents by prohibiting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from issuing patents for "inventions designed to minimize, avoid, defer, or otherwise affect liability for Federal, State, local, or foreign tax"

When Mossberg asked if we needed to fix copyright policy, McCain gave a tentative yes: "I think we probably do," to applause from the audience. "But it's got to be carefully thought through--most members of Congress do not understand the complexity of these issues." However, when Mossbrg said that many people think that U.S. patent law is allowing companies to patent existing ideas, and asked McCain if this was a problem on his radar screen, McCain gave such a firm "No!" that it prompted audience laughter.

"I want to focus on the big things," he said.

Stop Tax Shelter Patents by prohibiting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from issuing patents for "inventions designed to minimize, avoid, defer, or otherwise affect liability for Federal, State, local, or foreign tax"

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
Just so you know, Hillary and John McCain aren't reciting their budget proposals to the audience either.

It's of no consequence. Obama's time has come. He will will beat Hillary Clinton in the primary, emerge battle tested and go on to beat John McCain in November as the demoralized conservative base of the Republican party sits this one out. If Obama wins in November he will begin the process of righting the ship.

If your tired of your privacy rights being trampled on by the government and if you're sick of having our laws written by lobbyists, stop bitching and moaning and do something about it.

Not to be a troll, but how exactly does Obama equal Ron Paul? Seems like Obama doesn't really say much more than the typical Time for Change bs while continuing to stuff his pockets with lobbyist money.

You do realize that Paul (like most big-L Libertarians, though perhaps even more extremely than most) is firmly and explicitly opposed to any such "New Deal" domestic policy, right? (We are, after all, talking about a man who would seek to completely eliminate the Department of Education and defund education spending at a federal level.)

If an end to expensive and counter-productive military adventurism and a re-commitment to New Deal-style domestic programs is something you feel strongly about, you might find yourself better served by a candidate like Barack Obama.

You do realize that Paul (like most big-L Libertarians, though perhaps even more extremely than most) is firmly and explicitly opposed to any such "New Deal" domestic policy, right? (We are, after all, talking about a man who would seek to completely eliminate the Department of Education and defund education spending at a federal level.)

If an end to expensive and counter-productive military adventurism and a re-commitment to New Deal-style domestic programs is something you feel strongly about, you might find yourself better served by a candidate like Barack Obama.

You do realize that Paul (like most big-L Libertarians, though perhaps even more extremely than most) is firmly and explicitly opposed to any such "New Deal" domestic policy, right? (We are, after all, talking about a man who would seek to completely eliminate the Department of Education and defund education spending at a federal level.)

If an end to expensive and counter-productive military adventurism and a re-commitment to New Deal-style domestic programs is something you feel strongly about, you might find yourself better served by a candidate like Barack Obama.

At least the issue is on his radar, unlike Clinton.

I know it is easier to repeat Republican/Clinton "talking points" about Obama's "empty rhetoric." It's ironic, because many of the same people will admit that Obama's speeches sound "inspirational." Perhaps they sound inspiration because there are actually abstract ideas and principles organizing his agenda?

Clinton, on the other hand, has a huge swarm of disconnected policy proposals -- which is probably contributes to her being a flat, boring speaker.

At least one sane guy there, reading about Obama:
>Reforming the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Seems like that one is the geek choice.

Sadly, not really.

The "reform" described on Barack's site is as far as I can tell an exact rehash of Microsoft's proposal to "reform" patents.

If a court isn't going to uphold a patent, yeah sure everyone is in favor of it not being issued as a patent or making it quicker and cheaper to get it tossed out. That's swell. However that really has little connection to the "geek" issue with patents, that being that the courts are upholding bad patents on non-inventions. Microsoft's version of "patent reform", and as far as I can tell Barack's version of "patent reform", is to make bad patents on non-inventions "less vulnerable to court challenge". Making a broken system continue to produce broken results.... more cheaply and more efficiently.

If *any* candidate has said anything actually addressing the patentability issue, I'd be thrilled to see it. But it's probably far to obscure of an issue for any of them to have addressed it.

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http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/#open-internet

Do any other candidates support net neutrality?

He didn't amend it to make people vote for it, he amended it to make it less wrong. Politics isn't about winning absolutely it's about winning as much as you can. You have to look at a situation decide what you can and can't get out of it and get the best you can.

Obama pushed for the SAFE act (the EFF even endorsed this one), which had even stronger protections for civil liberties than the final PATRIOT Act Re-Authorization bill had. That failed. The House passed Bush's re-authorization bill and when it got to the Senate, he did filibuster it that time and it stopped there. So he and other senators amended it to look more like the SAFE act and it passed the Senate whereupon a committee had to merge the changes into the House version of the bill. When that happened some of his amendments were removed but enough were left in to bring people over and prevent a filibuster (hey politicians are smart like that!). At this point the game is over, he had probably promised to vote for it to bring in Republican support for his amendments, he didn't have enough support for a filibuster but at least some changes had been made.

http://www.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/01/05/fact_check_obamas_consistent_p_1.php

His answer about Marijuana was very straight-forward, unlike some others running for president

• The Obama campaign has renewed my sense of patriotism, long buried under the cynical misuse of patriotism as a cudgel to suppress honest debate and dissent. If you haven't seen it yet, this video captures in four minutes much of the feelings his campaign has rekindled for me.
  
• After the last seven years, I want to feel proud of America again, and help send a message that we as a nation reject torture, fear-based authoritarianism, an unaccountable executive, ideologically-driven anti-science policies, and indefinite war with a constantly changing mission.
  
• I believe Barack Obama is the strongest candidate, with the best chance of garnering enough support across parties, races, genders, religions (including us atheists!), and regions to actually credibly claim a mandate for change. He has a proven record of bringing diverse interests together to get meaningful legislation passed: when he authored a law that required the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases, prosecutors and police adamantly opposed the bill, as well as the governor and most legislators who wanted to look tough on crime. But Obama led a campaign to get it passed, and a key element of that was to quietly but effectively bring together prosecutors, public defenders, police organizations, and death penalty opponents work out an agreement that all groups could endorse. Eventually, the bill was passed unanimously and became law. (the American Bar Association later unanimously adopted a similar resolution)
  
• Despite being considered a visionary, Obama is very conservative (in the traditional Burkean sense), with a pragmatic, minimalist, and consensus-based approach to government.

Registered at GoDaddy, hosted by Pair, running Server: Apache/1.3.37 to redirect http://barackobama.com/ to http://www.barakobamaa.com/ which is running Server: PWS/1.2.18.

PWS is supposedly Win98's Personal Web Server... which probably means Barack's web admins have a rich sense of humor.

Which means absolutely nothing as far as any of the issues mentioned in the summary: "Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment". No wonder you posted as an AC - your answer is the same any politician would give when asked a question - use a lot of BBBs (bullshit bingo buzzwords) to avoid actually giving an answer.

Obama is for net neutrality, for increased broadband deplayment (including the use of the wireless spectrum), and wants to pass laws strengthening the privacy of individuals on the Internet to apply to both corporations and the government. He also advocates reforming the patent system. This are all clearly stated on his web site.

I noticed the story was tagged with every variant of Ron Paul, which puzzles me, because Ron Paul is against net neutrality (says it counts as regulation by telling the ISPs they can't regulate), could care less if ISPs implement content filtering (regulation!), doesn't give a crap about broadband deployment (government should have nothing to do with it! Free market will fix it!), and doesn't care a whit what corporations do with our information (regulation), although I believe he would demand very stringent privacy laws on the government side, which is a very good thing, but overall, he doesn't come close to offering what other candidates do. There are even other Republican candidates with better positions.

Which means absolutely nothing as far as any of the issues mentioned in the summary: "Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment". No wonder you posted as an AC - your answer is the same any politician would give when asked a question - use a lot of BBBs (bullshit bingo buzzwords) to avoid actually giving an answer.

Obama is for net neutrality, for increased broadband deplayment (including the use of the wireless spectrum), and wants to pass laws strengthening the privacy of individuals on the Internet to apply to both corporations and the government. He also advocates reforming the patent system. This are all clearly stated on his web site.

I noticed the story was tagged with every variant of Ron Paul, which puzzles me, because Ron Paul is against net neutrality (says it counts as regulation by telling the ISPs they can't regulate), could care less if ISPs implement content filtering (regulation!), doesn't give a crap about broadband deployment (government should have nothing to do with it! Free market will fix it!), and doesn't care a whit what corporations do with our information (regulation), although I believe he would demand very stringent privacy laws on the government side, which is a very good thing, but overall, he doesn't come close to offering what other candidates do. There are even other Republican candidates with better positions.

My understanding was that it was a technical term -- but having only a shotgun in my house, I'm not particularly well-informed. A post discussing some of Obama's positions is here. I haven't been able to find a reliable (non-biased) source for the Obama's anti-semi-automatic position, but it is clear that he wants to enforce existing laws and to make sure that individual cities aren't blocked from having their own gun laws which are more restrictive than the federal laws.

Either way, gun control is not even remotely close to the top of his agenda, even if he were looking at supporting legislation on the topic from the Presidential bully pulpit (which, again -- he's trying to go for bipartisanship, and this is a good way to ruin that, so I don't see this issue being pushed) he's stated in the past that whatever gun control legislation he develops would not require existing owners to relinquish their weapons.

Lack of universal, affordable health care [...] Is Obama going to toss out the HMOs?

Foreign policy in a shambles

I was on the fence last summer and fall as to whether Obama was "the real deal." That is, I was until I saw the Q&A portion of his November 2007 talk at the Google campus. This was my true turning point.

It is a typical question and answer session with some pretty advanced questions lobbed by the Googlers and moderated by Eric Schmidt. It is, beyond any combative debate or stump speech, a truly (+5) insightful conversation about his views on technology.

(As others have mentioned, Senator Obama's Technology page is also a helpful peek at what he stands for in case you don't have the patience for the ~20 min. video)

I was impressed by Obama's technology issues page:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

The summary points are:

        * Ensure an open Internet.
        * Create a transparent and connected democracy.
        * Encourage a modern communications infrastructure.
        * Employ technology to solve our nation's most pressing problems.
        * Improve America's competitiveness.

The list is pretty much "policy speak" but the detailed initiatives indicate a good grasp of the issues and a reasonable stance on the direction we need to move.

Obama is the only candidate with an *actual* broadband plan.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

He supports net neutrality; content filtering conducted by parents, not the state; reforming the universal service fund to help subsidize broadband, and a whole lot more.

That's why Wu supports him, and why I do too.

Obama has an amazingly detailed plan of how to fix America's broadband situation which /.ers might find interesting (I didn't know about it until I was linked elsewhere). Clinton just says "blah blah tax incentives", and other candidates like Romney don't even discuss it, but Obama seems to really care about the issue (for example, discussing raising the minimum speed that can be called "broadband" from 200kbps which is indeed amazingly low). I think he's probably the only candidate who doesn't put the Internet on the back burner, and from the debates it seems like it's not just a bunch of interns writing this stuff up, he actually knows what he's talking about. It's a shame a lot of other candidates don't seem to care, because Internet access ties in very strongly with education issues and restoring America's technological and scientific place in the world.

Loosely related to this political thread, here is Obama's technology policy page which is very exciting because it is reasonably in line with general nerd opinion. So here I am, shilling for Obama during a Romney thread. I might be Offtopic but I hope I'm Informative! Here are some exceprts:

Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices. They have a right to receive accurate and honest information about service plans.

Unfortunately, over the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has promoted the concept of consolidation over diversity. As president, he will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum.

Obama supports updating surveillance laws and ensuring that law enforcement investigations and intelligence-gathering relating to U.S. citizens are done only under the rule of law.

Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities.

And for exactly those reasons, him using such a strong tone does more harm than good. Doesn't help that he's blatantly wrong on a few points, either.

Go watch this video. Listen especially to the comments on language.

It would be even more heartening to point out that last week he won Iowa, which is just as white.

Requiring his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can watch a live feed on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. He will ensure that these proceedings are archived for all Americans to review, discuss and respond. He will require his appointees to employ all the technological tools available to allow citizens not just to observe, but also to participate and be heard in these meetings.

Here is Obama's tech stance

Revver has a link under their videos going to Project ReadOn, which is a user-requested captioning system. Users first request captioning for a video and Project ReadOn assigns the video to their staff to caption it. It's what Barack Obama uses on his site.

They announced it on their blog a few weeks back.

The Ask A Ninja videos tend to be captioned, here's an example one with captioning already done, just click the closed captioning link under the video.

here

If we all send him (Obama) the message, I'm sure he'll "get" it.

Hillary's photo gallery requires Flash, so I didn't view it

Obama's site requires Flash. In fact parts of the site require the latest version of Flash.

Giuliani's site uses Flash for most of the photos

McCain makes extensive use of Flash right on his home page. Also, his page on Government Spending, Lower Taxes and Economic Prosperity has an out of place </b> tag which confuses Konqueror (version 3.3.2) and causes everything after Ending Pork Barrel Spending to appear bold.

Romney's site is the only one that appears to be designed to take advantage of Flash and provide an alterative to those who don't use it.

Edwards site has an annoying Flash-based advertisement before you can view the home page. I missed it originally because I don't use Flash. He has a variety of audio formats on the site. For some reason he only offers one format at a time. One topic is in WMA while another is in MP3.

Thanks to Netcraft; now we can pick our candidates more easily.
Democrats:
Hillary Clinton: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/ Windows Server 2003

John Edwards: http://johnedwards.com/ Linux

Barak Obama http://www.barackobama.com/ Linux

Republicans
Rudy Giuliani: http://www.joinrudy2008.com/ Microsoft-IIS/6.0 John McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com/ Windows Server 2003 Mitt Romney: http://www.mittromney.com/ Linux

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 20 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!

http://johnedwards.com/ - Result: Failed validation / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 341, 358, 371, 384-385, 396, 398, 408, 410 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8

http://www.barackobama.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 66 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!

http://www.joinrudy2008.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 8 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!

http://www.johnmccain.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 95 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!

http://www.mittromney.com/ - Result: Failed validation, 22 errors / Failed Automated Verification for Section 508
This page is not Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict!

If these candidates used their web skills on Federal Websites, they could be exposing themselves to prosecution under the Disabilities Act.
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.h tm

How about this question:

Would this bill block the new Presidential Candidate Obama's social networking site?
http://my.barackobama.com/

He is allowing people to create profiles, write blogs and interact with other people. If Obama's site is not blocked according to this bill, then where is the difference between his and MySpace, or any other website on the internet?

Or how about the Pirate Party of the US forums?

Another (more famous) Illinois senator, Barack Obama, has his own social networking site. I wonder how he feels about the ban. Obama's Site.

Whether American black people consider him one of them or not, his election would still be enormously positive for them--because American whites do consider him black. Therefore, if they vote for him anyway, an election of Barack Obama in 2008 would prove that blacks can win elections--however they choose to define that category.

I can see their point, however. American Black is a distinct and strong culture, and he's not from there. (He's not from Africa either, in any real sense. Born in Hawaii, educated in Jakarta and Hawaii. His dad being Kenyan does not make him "from Africa".) And most of all, he's been in a well-to-do family his whole life. Like it or not, the American Black culture is strongly linked to the poverty faced by a disproportionate number of blacks in this country, and he ain't poor.

However, his wife is from south-side, working-class Chicago so he has a strong touchstone to that culture (again, however you choose to define it). His kids and his wife have faced and will face racism in our culture, and so has he. The very debate about whether Barack Obama is black enough represents a fight he's facing against racism. The debate about whether a black man can become president represents a fight he's facing against racism!

I hope he wins. My wife and I have already volunteered for his campaign.

Remind me how many of these were part of Bush's platform.

This is just totally out of the mainstream.

70% of Americans want our involvement in Iraq to start decreasing. Did you miss that?

Everyone agrees that health care is poor-to-mediocre and getting worse. Something has to be done. Everyone agrees on energy independence.

Repeating lies over and over again doesn't make them true.

It's also worth noting that, in addition to things like 1 million strong for Barack, his team has set up it's own social networking site where Obama supporters can share photos, messages, groups, fundraising, and events.

Dean ushered in Internet fundraising in 2004. Could Obama harness social networking?

You and me both, my friend. You and me both. I'm your neighbor to the west. This Kansan would consider you midwestern long before I'd consider Ohio midwestern. I think to most people anything west of Buffalo, NY is considered Midwest. I know the media think that way. Grrr... It was hard for me to believe going into this campaign that Bush's Campaign of Fear/Terror would work. I was probably being naive. It appears to have worked Well Enough(tm). The Democrats lost big time last night. Actually IMHO the Democrats lost big time when they chose Kerry for their presidential candidate. Edwards would have made a much better choice. Dean would have made a better choice (ignoring the media-sensationalized Dean Scream episode). Clark would have been better. No matter how many American voters hated Bush, they still didn't like Kerry enough to vote for him. We needed a likeable candidate and Kerry wasn't it. I think they could have made him appear much more likeable and they didn't. He didn't come off as a man of the people. He came off as an upper-crust career politician and people don't like that. The only win for the Democratic party and America (IMHO) was Barack Obama and his race for the US Senate. That was a very good thing IMHO. In 15-20 years I hope to see him run for president. He's going to have to spend some time in DC first but after a few terms (minimum) he should be able to make a successful race. I'm looking forward to that. Other than that, I need a hug too.