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C-SPAN offers 3 streams: http://cspan.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/
Whitehouse.gov has a live channel, mostly presidential events (tis the season): http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
CNN also offers live streams: http://live.cnn.com/

By that logic, any company that wins a government contract (e.g Lockheed Martin) can be sued by another potential contractor (e.g Northrup Grumman).

If there is an open bidding contract and the execs of Lockheed Martin didn't back the president's election just to be rewarded with the contract, then no. If it's a no bid contract rewarding supporters and donors, then I would say yes just like Farms can sue other farms for using illegal labor and other outlawed farming practices for compete unfairly.

Clearly the government can enrich any private corporation in exchange for services and products, based on its needs, yes? One would be more worried about the government enriching failed CEO's with multi-million dollar goodbye packages out of honest taxpayer money, but that's another story.

Being worried about one wouldn't negate the other. There never has been a standard of let this corruption go because that corruption happened. Google was on the verge of investigation until the administration it backed during the elections got in office now they are being rewarded with a no bid contract to do something that the government is already set up to do (CSPAN) but they get control and the ability to pass ads onto it for revenue. This isn't exactly the government enriching a private corporation, I can't see how it is much different then Haliburton.

I hope Google says no, or at least manages this wisely. If the government invades the "promoted content" section with propaganda, especially to US-based IPs, it will not be a good thing.

I hope that the government stops and does this properly. IF CSPAN ( http://www.cspan.org/VideoLibrary ) or any part of it isn't up to snuff, then the primary goal should be to make it work, not to reward some company that put some resources behind the president's election.

It should be streamed from here: http://www.cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN_wm.aspx

You can also watch it on C-SPAN's website.

You could watch the live stream from http://www.cspan.org/

For the things you want to watch which are covered on C-SPAN, you can see C-SPAN 1, 2, and 3, and C-SPAN Radio here.

You can watch it on C-SPAN yourself, if you're part of the interested public.

"You have brought nothing to the table except your "world is flat" dismissals."

Nice way to change the subject from the fact that actual numbers of media voices show that there is no media consolidation.

"When you consider that Clear Channel used to own a paltry 41 before the Telecommuncations Act of 1996, and has now ballooned to over 1200 stations"

How misleading when you conveniently leave out that this is a small fraction of the total number of stations.

"but there are several others who have gobbled up television and radio stations and newspapers in markets all across the U.S."

Each of which controlls far less than what Clear Channel controls. How many do all of these control between them? 30% or 40% or something like that?

"That is media consolidation whether you want to admit it or not"

How can I "admit" something that there is no evidence for?

"The trend since 1996 has been cosolidation because the FCC relaxed the rules on how many media outlets a particular company could own. This is fact. "

The fact is that the FCC has relaxed the rules, but there has been no consolidation. Looking at the definition, "to bring together (separate parts) into a single or unified whole; unite; combine: They consolidated their three companies.", it is clear that nothing like this has happened.

From Ted Turner: "When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace"

In other words, the FCC ignored the First Amendment and meddled in the media to try to dictate preferred content. Good riddance.

From Ted Turner: "They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks--CBS, ABC, NBC--wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV."

Yet, when the FCC had much tighter control, we only had ABC,NBC,CBS. With the relaxation of control, we've had more and more new voices getting added. The "forever" domination" of those few voices is over.

From Ted Turner: "They believed in the value of competition."

And there is more such competition now than ever before. Do you want me to link to other new media voices aside from the ones I linked to above? It's like Ted had no idea what he was saying, which could be summarized as "Back when the FCC encouraged competition, we only had 3 news networks. Now we have less competition and more news networks."

"The debate here is whether or not media consolidation is happening or not"

I guess that is true. It is hardly a debate since there is no evidence of media consolidation.

"As I'm sure you're aware, the Dixie Chicks(sp?) made a comment about the president back in 2003 while on tour in London. Even though they are still around and touring, this comment cost them dearly"

Cost them? How so? Do you have any idea what cost means? They ended up more popular than ever, selling more music than ever. They are more than "still around".

"There was a corporate mandate "from on high" that dictated that none of the stations would play thier music after their comment."

Worked so WELL, didn't it? I'd never heard them on the radio before. After the Bush comment flap, I started to hear them on the radio.

" That is the kind of power media consolidation gives corporations. I'm sorry you can't understand this, but it's right there in front of your face"

What, the power to make musical artists like the Dixie Chicks more popular and more rich?

"Apparently you aren't aware of what happened to Pacifica during the 90's."

I followed this as it happened. Does not change the fact that Pacifica is a corporation.

Man, if you thought C-Span was a snooze-fest before, you should check it out now.

Their congress-cam only ever seems to show that same one guy with a rubber stamp in his right hand and a blank check in the other.

c-span

The live feeds allow you to compare Real Video and Windows Media Player side by side. I have personally always preffered WMP.

For instance C-SPAN has video archives available.

From what I saw, they did raise a few interesting points -- the AO rating, for example... Based on some of the clips they showed from the M rated games, even I began to wonder what it took to bump a game from M to AO. I guess only the makers and purchasers of "Singles" know for sure. I figure that ESRB M is sort of like MPAA R (just like NC-17, apparently few retailers will carry AO), and I'm thinking that if they were from movies, some of those clips would would have pushed the MPAA to NC-17, especially if you consider Team America had a tough time getting an R, and it's all puppets. The speaker essentially said why have an AO rating, if there isn't anything that can bump you into AO teritory?

On the other hand, you could easily argue that these rating systems make parents feel they don't need to pay attention to what their children are playing, and that's probably bad.

C-SPAN.org is all you need...

http://www.cspan.org/

If you have other debates, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, Presidential and/or VP, or higher-quality of the above, PLEASE POST!

Here are 2000 debates:
2000 three presidential debates and one vice presidential debates

Here too

• The mainstream supports debates that include third parties, the duopoly doesn't.
• The mainstream wants corporations to pay their share of taxes, so middle class taxes can be lowered. The duopoly wants to give them more special interest subsidies and tax breaks.
• The mainstream is tired of this war. Neither party wants to take a definitive stance against the war, even the same John Kerry who said in fighting against the war in Vietnam, "This is not the fight of one day or one war, but the fight of our entire lives."
• The mainstream isn't voting in many states. A lot of people are frustrated with politics for many good reasons.

Without its fundamental rights to ballot and debate access, how can a major third party reach mainstream America with the only fundamentally different political messages about corporate misuse of power, media ownership, and issues that actually matter?

Also, why did you choose to run against Ralph Nader instead of endorsing him as a party with views so similar? Where do you two differ?

Although C-span still has that file on it's site, it occurred to me that the ability to save a stream of something like this would be nice, especially for lower bandwidth students needing to do research; Kind of hard to parse a debate on 56k!

(and, before any of you make claims of broadband penetration, remember that given population size and deployment there's STILL a lot of kids out there tied to dial-up!).

So, the short question, will you be enabling this type of activity or will you lean toward the Hatch "induce" scheme?

The wider question is what will your company be doing to help people create their own outlets of A/V information? Will your company move to enable new artistic and intellectual synthesis (affordable authoring tools) or circle 'round behind and demand outrageous royalty when you feel market saturation sufficient?

Oh, and are you working on a "Play the format of your choice" hardware player? I mean, if your software can really play any format, why constrain it to a GP computer? I'd love to replace my "MP3 capable" car CD-player for something I could *update* to a better codec.

Although C-span still has that file on it's site, it occurred to me that the ability to save a stream of something like this would be nice, especially for lower bandwidth students needing to do research; Kind of hard to parse a debate on 56k!

(and, before any of you make claims of broadband penetration, remember that given population size and deployment there's STILL a lot of kids out there tied to dial-up!).

So, the short question, will you be enabling this type of activity or will you lean toward the Hatch "induce" scheme?

The wider question is what will your company be doing to help people create their own outlets of A/V information? Will your company move to enable new artistic and intellectual synthesis (affordable authoring tools) or circle 'round behind and demand outrageous royalty when you feel market saturation sufficient?

Oh, and are you working on a "Play the format of your choice" hardware player? I mean, if your software can really play any format, why constrain it to a GP computer? I'd love to replace my "MP3 capable" car CD-player for something I could *update* to a better codec.

Although C-span still has that file on it's site, it occurred to me that the ability to save a stream of something like this would be nice, especially for lower bandwidth students needing to do research; Kind of hard to parse a debate on 56k!

(and, before any of you make claims of broadband penetration, remember that given population size and deployment there's STILL a lot of kids out there tied to dial-up!).

So, the short question, will you be enabling this type of activity or will you lean toward the Hatch "induce" scheme?

The wider question is what will your company be doing to help people create their own outlets of A/V information? Will your company move to enable new artistic and intellectual synthesis (affordable authoring tools) or circle 'round behind and demand outrageous royalty when you feel market saturation sufficient?

Oh, and are you working on a "Play the format of your choice" hardware player? I mean, if your software can really play any format, why constrain it to a GP computer? I'd love to replace my "MP3 capable" car CD-player for something I could *update* to a better codec.

Some useful links:

Free Radio Santa Cruz http://audio.str3am.com:5110/

Enemy Combantant Radio http://mirror.enemycombatantradio.net:8030/

Portland Indey Media Web Radio http://radio.portland.indymedia.org:8000/

CSPAN has a video feed on CSPAN 1 check http://www.cspan.org/

Come on you people have got to mod this up so people can see it!

Recently on a radio interview I heard the investigative reporter Greg Palast make this exact point, with the addition that the fiasco will be by design. Palast also said that, as bad as the electronic voting machines are, this year the real problems will be happening outside the polling place, with policies and programs such as the "Help America Vote" act, which are designed to disenfranchise voters the same way they were disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.

Palast points out that there is a decidedly racist agenda to these voting shenanigans, which he believes are bipartisan, and I believe he is also in favor of using simple paper ballots a la Canada, or using on-site optical readers the way they were used in the non-hanging chad parts of Florida in 2000

The point then is that the chaos likely to occur in November will cover up / give room to maneuver to those who wish the election to go a certain way.

Anyway, I've been looking all over the web to find that program to link to it, but maybe I actually heard it on a real radio this time, because it's nowhere to be found.

I did find a link to a Palast article from the San Francisco Chronicle that touches on this problem of voting disenfranchisement. It's subtitled "It's not too hard to get your vote lost -- if some politicians want it to be lost" Here's another link to an article in The Nation Magazine entitled Vanishing Votes

For those interested in more of Palast's writings, they can be found at www.gregpalast.com

Oh! I remember now. It was a video on CSPAN on the Washington Weekly program. It's an hour-long interview and call-in show with Palast located here

Ummm... CPAN? Ohhhh, I see - And make our congressmen code monkeys. - laws written in Perl. Might be more understandable then. :P

(BTW, it's CSPAN. I know that and I'm even Canadian.)

Soko

This is exactly right. The press conference from yesterday can be seen on CSPAN. The reporters asked about colors a couple of times. There are a number of filters and the coloring will depend in part on which filter an image was taken with. NASA also said that since they know the spectral characteristics of Mars, they can take a picture with a near-infrared wavelength (e.g. 750nm) and alter the image so that it would appear as in a visible wavelength.

What does Alan Greenspan have to do with energy policy?

I would have asked myself that same question a week ago, but they've been having him testify before the Energy Committee

Profile of the 108th Congress

A bit under half of the House and a bit over half of the Senate have law degrees. Both lower numbers than I expected, but there you go.

In response to this, the United States Senate was discussing this very problem (which is appropriate because they are the body that will actually declare a state of war against somebody.... not the President).

They were pointing out that fifth ammendment protection rights and other technical short commings (like wiretapping laws and proper search and seisure laws) that would normally get a case thrown out of court simply don't apply in this situation. All you need to do is convince a bunch of senators that counrry so and so is responsible for the attacks, and you will see bombs and armies flying over there. I even heard a senator (on CSPAN2) specifically mention that the Miranda warnings weren't even necessary in this case.

This is kinda scary in that respect. BTW, in regards to international law, I think you need to read Machevelli's "The Prince" before you make any real judgements. The current mood is to actually punish the country that sponsored or at least harbored and encouraged these terrorists. This doesn't bode too well for Iraq, Afganistan, or even Iran or Palistine. The last think you want people in America to see right now is a bunch of people parading around and yelling praises to the fact that everything happened.

cspan has many of Harry Browne's speeches and debates in realvideo.

To quote:

But Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line, we've begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and can have their heart turned dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life. So gun laws are important, no question about it. But so is loving children and, you know, character education classes, and faith-based programs being a part of after-school programs. Somebody -- some desperate child needs to have somebody put their arm around them and say, "We love you." And so there's a -- this is a society that -- of ours has got to do a better job of teaching children right from wrong.

Now read: ...have their heart turned dark as a result of being on the Internet. On top of that, we need "character education classes" and "faith-based programs" after school. Great, let's teach Christianity to everyone because we know it makes them a more caring, less psycho-killer person.

Please go read the debate before you start spouting BS. Uninformed people are the most dangerous problem in politics. Please become informed so you don't screw up the rest of our futures.

Read the Oct. 11th debate here.

The FBI claimed (during the Carnivore Congressional hearing last week) that the ISP which was being sued (presumably Earthlink/Mindspring), and the ISPs in every case where Carnivore had been used so far, were not able to provide the FBI with the data they needed. Given the almost trivial effort needed to track e-mail, and other internet activity (e.g. web browsing), this shows that either Carnivore is after much more than it is currently assumed, or the FBI wants a broad surveilance device, not limitted by the traditional court-order wire tapping.

As a matter of fact, one of the points made during the Judiciary committee hearing was that currently the FBI has to go the phone companies with the court order to get information about a particular phone number. The phone companies will then give them the information, thus making sure that the FBI only gets the information specified in the court order. In contrast, Carnivore (as far as the public knows) has access to much more information, and we have to trust the FBI to only pay attention to what is authorised. This is one of the main issues as far as the fourth amendment is concerned, because the regulations under which the FBI requires the instalation of Carnivore are meant only for the above scenario of the phone companies providing the info themselves.

Learn all about it at the C-SPAN web site (the hearing from Monday, July 24).

For those who didn't see the Congressional hearing on Carnivore on C-SPAN last week (you can watch all 3 hrs and 15 minutes of it from here), it showed one thing - it is currently not known what exactly Carnivore does.

Almost everyone assumes that Carnivore tracks e-mail - this may not be all. During the hearing suggestions and speculations covered a lot of TCP/IP protocols - from the near admission of the FBI that they have tracked ftp transfers, through the constant mentioning by the FBI pannelists that they look at packets, to the tracking of http requests, streaming media server connections, etc.

One of the panelists, the CEO of a small ISP in the DC area, testified that it took one of his sysadmins about 3 lines of configuration code and half an hour to implement tracking of e-mail (incoming and outgoing) on the CEO's account, which would have satisfied the needs of the FBI if this is were the only thing Carnivore does. The fact that the ongoing Earthlink lawsuit was brought up allegedly because Earthlink was unable to provide the requested information to the FBI (with a valid court order and all), seems to indicate that Carnivore is after much more than simple e-mail.

Among other interesting things that came out at that hearing was the security aspect of Carnivore - no sysadmin in their right mind would welcome a "black box" to become part of their LAN, and at the same time be accessible remotely.

http://www.cspan.org/

• Keith Rhodes, GAO
  
• Harris Miller, Technology Association of America
• Sandra England, McAfee, A Network Associates Company
• Peter Tippett, ICSA.net

• Criminalizing the creation of all viruses or self replicating programs -- even for research purposes.
  
• Making "hacking" a federal crime with severe punishments
  
• criminalizing THE HIRING of "white hat hackers" so that anyone who has EVER been convicted of "hacking" will be permanently barred from employment in the computer industry.
  
• Of course they recommended against any corporation hiring "hacker" security firms and recommended that these organizations be criminalized.
  

Maybe slightly off-topic but on Saturday, February 5, C-SPAN will air a speech by Jacob Hornberger, President of the Future of Freedom Foundation and one of the finest speakers in the libertarian movement.

Hornberger's speech is entitled "Exploding Myths about Open Borders."

However, it is far more than a speech on immigration. Hornberger begins by speaking directly to the C-SPAN audience -- describing libertarianism and the libertarian movement.

AIRING TIME:

The speech will be broadcast as part of C-SPAN's "American Perspectives" program. Jacob's speech is scheduled to begin "approximately" ten minutes after 10 pm, Eastern Standard Time, Saturday, February 5.:

C-SPAN tells me your best bet is to tune in at 10 pm, where you'll see the concluding minutes of another speech, which will be immediately followed by Hornberger's speech.:

REPEAT AIRING:

The speech will be repeated three hours later, beginning "approximately" ten minutes after 1 am, Eastern Standard Time, early Sunday, February 6.

----

Why don't you use your Bully Pulpit to demand congressional hearings on software patents?

This is the only approach that I see having the potential to achieve any meaningful progress toward our ultimate goal.

I would love to see the leaders of the OpenSource movement before Congress making the case for a more rational approach to software patents. I would love to be able to see the different factions within this community present their views on C-SPAN. We don't all agree about the specifics, but we can agree that the patents granted in the past couple of years are the product of a process which does not comprehend the current and future state of the Internet.

I wonder who would sit at the other table and oppose us? And, what would Congress do if they were confronted with thousands of constiuent calls and e-mails demanding a review of the process?
--

Dave Aiello

Bradley is an impressive character, and he had a surprisingly large turnout among volunteers (perhaps 3-1 in numbers over Gore). If you're interested seeing how the man walks and talks in a relatively informal setting, check the C-Span schedule over the next few days; they had a crew there taping the event. Worth checking out if you won't vote Republican but don't find Gore an attractive candidate.

(Apropos of nothing, having checked the C-Span schedule just now, I find that no less a grey eminence than Jon Katz will be appearing on C-Span tomorrow morning (Sunday, April 10, 1999, at 8:27 a.m., repeating at 12:47 a.m. ET) as part of a panel discussion on writing biography. Love him or hate him, it's certain to be better than Sam & Cokie.)

The C-SPAN link goes to someone from concerned women for america (who was after jon). This is the right link. And this is the link to listen to the Rehm show.