Slashdot Mirror

Some more good rants on this topic:

Ellen Ullman in Salon - The Dumbing Down of Programming
Peter Merholz in Stating the Obvious - Whose "My" Is It Anyway?

"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."--Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
But it takes more than such bloopers to fail the turing test. It's longer quotes, like the extended quote in this article that make it totally clear that he's nothing but a markov engine.

A while back, I got into an "Gore wants to kludge the tax code with a zillion if/then statements, Bush wants to tweak a few constants" argument.

I confess at the time I wasn't fully aware of Gore's proposals - only that they were of an if/then nature - and so I'm pleased to say that I found this pro-Gore Salon article (but I repeat myself ;-) that outlines my beef with Gore's tax proposals.

(sprog age < 1) {
$500 tax credit
}

(Earnings < $60K) && (sprog enrolled in daycare) {
expanded day-care tax credit
}

(sprog_age >= 12 && sprog_age <= 16) && (enrolled in afterschooplrogram) {
tax credit of 20% on cost of program
}

(sprog_in_college) {
$10K tax credit
}

I'd like to thank Salon for making my point about the kludginess of the Gore plan so succinctly.

Let's summarize:

1) No sprog? Gore says "Fuck you". No tax breaks. Period. Gore hates nonbreeders with a passion. Doesn't matter if the reason for your nonbreeding is being straight-and-childfree, straight-but-infertile, or gay. If you don't pop out a fucktrophy like a good little lemming, you get FUCK ALL under Gore.

2) Got sprog? Great! Now that you've done the first thing Gore likes, you'd better make sure you keep doing the things Gore likes! Don't stay at home to take care of 'em, even if you can afford it, ship 'em to day-care and provide employment for other low-tech "soft skills" people. Don't be at home in school either, ship 'em to "after-school programs" (which are, of course, probably federally-funded... more work for the otherwise-unemployable out of your paycheck...)

3) And even if you are the ideal Gore breeder-famblee, you still gotta make sure your kids are the right ages to qualify! That is, either less than age 1, or young enough for day care (and you've got the money to enroll 'em), or between the ages of 12 and 16 (and in an after-school program), or thouse magical four years of college.

So - a tweak of some constants where everyone gets a break, or a huge series of if/then statements, where a large proportion of famuhlees (nonbreeders are, of course, subhuman and don't count) can apply for one, but only one, of Gore's "targeted" tax cuts at any given time.

Unless, of course, you had the foresight to have kids precisely 18 years ago, 12 years ago, and plan to concieve your next crotchfruit shortly after Gore's inauguration.

What I'd really like to see - and I don't know the answer in advance - is for someone to sum up the tax credits for Gore and a family with either one or two sproggen over 18 years. And then compare their Gore-subsidies against what the same family would get with Bush's tax credits on, say, a $60K income over the same 18 years.

Oh. And is it just me, or are people who have money to enroll their sprog in after-school programs really in need of a tax credit?

(Wait a minute, sponsored daycare, sponsored age 12-16 afterschool programs. Guess even if you do breed, but decide you'd like to stay with the kid because you're lucky enough to be able to live on one income, you're still fucked under Gore.)

In Candle, Memes have jumped the sentience gap from hardware to wetware, allowing them to run within the human brain, placing beliefs directly and absolutely in the mind, incontrovertible except by the destruction or replacement of the meme itself.

Who needs Memes/the-escaped-computer-software for that? We already have memes/regular-old-ideas for that, and they can cause enough chaos as is.

The part about software jumping the computer and landing in peoples' heads like a virus? That is science fantasy (or paranoid delusion if you look beyond Bill Gates' plans for .NET).

But people getting wrong ideas into their heads and acting on them as if they were true? That's entirely too hard to believe.

We live in an age where a lie, told sincerely enough, takes on a life no truth can hope to match. That high-pitched whirring sound is Mark Twain, in his grave, spinning like a dentist's drill.

It doesn't have to be some sort of mutant freak of programming to be absorbed -- if people like the tune coming from the bandwagon, they'll jump on even if it's being drawn by a jackass.

I'd like to blame television for this, but deep down, I know the problem is just people being lazy. They don't understand the news, they don't read the news, they hardly even skim it. Someone reads it to them on the radio in the morning, or they hear appetizing bits around the water cooler, do a little half-assed research, and decide, "Well, that's good enough for me!"

Those memes also use their hosts as armor; try to attack a meme like that, and the person holding it will take it as an assault, and fight back.

And memes mutate quickly. To follow up the bandwagon metaphor above, once people jump on, they'll start belting out the theme they think they hear. Ever play 'Telephone'? You whisper something to one person, then watch as it gets sent around, and when it comes back, it's been mangled beyond recognition. Memes (uppercase) are I assume perfectly self-replicating, but memes (lowercase) rely on peoples' powers to emote, speak, hear, and comprehend. They change en route not because they want to, but because the transmission vector is faulty.

The book gives the phrase "How do you fight an idea?" a sinister twist, but doesn't provide a solution to handling the real-world problem of bad memes.

---

Depressing as it is to many who loved Sega, it is probably inevitable that they get absorbed by another company. While reading Salon, I came upon an article by Jim Lynch suggesting it might be Microsoft.

Does this mean that instead of being a speedy, powerful, spunky hedgehog, Sonic is going to get bloated, weak and start crashing [into things] randomly? :)

The author, Damien Cave, doesn't identify his sources, other than some quotes from Napster CEO Barry. But he describes the deal as a) a loan from Bertelsmann to Napster, b) rights for Bertelsmann to buy part of Napster, c) a promise to drop the lawsuit once a membership service is online, and d) the availablilty of the Bertelsmann catalog for the membership service.

Cave also describes how the existing free service will remain.

Why does /. keep perpetuating this lie that the Coumbine kids were these picked on geeks. Even a quick glance over any of the reporting that came out since the story broke, for example, this story at Salon shows that these were fucked up kids who were sick and wanted to be famous.

I know its trendy and all to claim "victimhood" in soceity these days, (usually as a precursor to sueing someone or ttrying to get some law passed to tip the scales back in our favor), but this navel gazing by "geeks" is pathetic.

Posters will have to take that up with Google, if they have a problem with it. It's nothing to do with me.

Your 'contract' is invalid because it is factually incorrect.

How so?

Besides which, what's your point? It's posted to a public forum and now it's in the publc domain.

So, I can go to Salon and take any article posted there because it's posted on the web? That's "posted to a public forum" just as much as any K5 comment is. It's text, which is available on the web, and under copyright. If my copyright notice is invalid, then so is theirs. That's absurd, and any lawyer would tell you so.

--
There is no K5 cabal.

This is getting spun so much as time passes that I wanted to add a little update while we can still post to this thread.

Associated Press

Oct. 30, 2000 | SEATTLE -- A hacker had high-level access to Microsoft Corp.'s computer system for 12 days -- not up to five weeks, as the company had first reported -- and was monitored the entire time."

So they watched the guy for 12 days? OK...

"The company was alerted to the break-in by the creation of new accounts giving users access to parts of Microsoft's computer network..."We start seeing these new accounts being created, but that could be an anomaly of the system," Miller said.

Well, I know that spontaneous account creation is a commonplace occurance on *any* system I've ever worked on.. Personally, I *never* worry about it..

"After a day or two, we realized it was someone hacking into the system."

Well, that must have been a shock! From "System Anomaly" to "Being Hacked"! That must have ruined someone's day...

It was not until Oct. 26, however, that the company notified federal law enforcement, which is investigating the matter. Microsoft said it initially planned to handle the break-in on its own.

"We realized the intrusion had grown to the level that warranted bringing in the FBI," Miller said.

READ: "..we realized we'd been cracked and we had to say something before the cracker did, so we could control the spin..."

Miller acknowledged the hacker could have been in the system for longer than 12 days, but he said the company is confident that high-level access occurred only between Oct. 14 and Oct. 25.

But even with low-level access, the hacker could have accessed corporate e-mails and other confidential information, Miller said.

But wait! Which is it? Twelve days, or longer? Or twelve days of high-level access and some longer period of -- what? -- mere access to "e-mails and other confidential information"?

That's a relief..

When you look at the entire pattern of M$ discussion of this event, from the first admittal, to Balmer's statements (which I take as very significant), to the more recent evolution, it's MNSHO that M$ got cracked, and cracked hard, and cracked by professionals, not scr1pt k1dd13s.

Next, watch for this story to disappear off the front page entirely.

In a week or so, you won't even know that this happened.

Except for new legislation in Wa$hington, if Gee-Dub-Ya and the Republicrats get elected..

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®

See September 15, 2000

Jakob Nielsen is the world's foremost expert on software and web usability.

He links to this Scott Rosenberg Salon.com article for more.

Bad cat.

According to this article on Salon, the U.S. Department of Justice has declared the organized vote swapping scheme legal. Relevant details are in the last paragraph, under the heading "Phone a friend".

Well he should know it's not working. From Salon

In 1996, the general set a goal of having 80 percent of young people -- based on the perception of 12th-graders -- consider drugs harmful. But despite his ad blitz, the percent of 12th-graders who look unfavorably on drugs actually dropped for three straight years, falling to 57.4 percent by 1999 -- a far cry from the promised 80 percent.

That's nothing. Yahoo is putting Larry Wall's daughter through college.

Salon also is asking the question

http://www.s alo n.com/tech/log/2000/10/27/microsoft_crack/index.ht ml

----

• fear ("Don't want me to have to arrest do you?"),
• ignorance ("All of this stuff will kill you!"),
• and social ineptitude ("You shouldn't hang out with these 'bad' people!").

Here's another reason why I have no respect for GWB:

He's Inconsistant and Hypocritical.

And I'm not the only one that feels he's a few short of a six-pack upstairs. It's not so much that he's stupid, but that he utterly lacks any intellectual curiosity, and is totally apathetic about it. Here are some other people (including republicans) that agree. (note, the above link might not be valid after today... if not, click on the 'It's the stupidity, stupid' link on that page)

- Spryguy

Salon did a feature on this.

IIRC, the problem1 were 1) who is liable and 2) who will pay the certification costs for it to be approved by the FDA (because without FDA approval, you're nowhere).

Read the story here. (I believe this was once on /.)

So people, stop saying not voting is USEFUL for anything!

Saige is correct. As far as I know, only one candidate is trying for the vote of the "non-voters" (Nader), and his strategy seems to be to make the 5% goal rather than even try to win. The candidates are all going for the "undecided voter", the operative word being VOTER, even though the non-voters outnumber them 100 to 1. They will consistantly ignore the opinions of the non-voters, because it is a waste of time and energy. The declared non-voter's opinion would, from a political perspective, be about as worthless as a random foriegner's opinion.

There is even evidence that both sides like the low voter turnout. I've heard the opinion that the Clinton centrist strategy developed by Dick Morris works only in a low voter turnout situation, and that rain on election day hurts the candidates who are challenging incumbents (some people won't bother going out and voting during a storm).

I think it's noble to try to send a message, but these are politicians - subtlety doesn't work that well. Instead, send a message by voting for the candidate that best suits you - and then write letters or email, telling them what doesn't suit you. Anything else is an ivory (or electronic) tower idea, that may look good on the screen, but doesn't translate well to real life.

"If that's the worst you can come up with, I think I rest my case."

Not hardly. There's the whole patients bill of rights thing in Texas... the one he fought hard against, didn't sign and let become law without his signature, that he's now taking credit for. Not only that, he's taking credit for the one aspect he fought the hardest: that patients could sue HMOs. Bush, in general, stands for corporate freedom, not individual freedom. Corporations get free reign, while individuals have no recourse in his perfect world. He scares me a lot in that area.

And as for his intellectual capacity, regardless of how you may revile salon, this article seems to state my views rather well. This is not a man I really want in the white house, in a hugely powerful position, where critical thinking is an asset.

Now you are just taking out your ass.

No, I'm not. Bush will do whatever it takes to get elected. From crowing about legislation he fought (see above), to distancing himself from the religious right when expedient, to cozying up to it when expedient. He plays a mushy, wishy-washy middle-ground, trying to appear to be as many things as possible. It's easy for him not to flip-flop too many times, becuase he doesn't seem to take too strong a stand very often (and he certainly never argues specifics, as his brain seemingly just can't hold on to too many facts or figures). And as for Gore, some of his 'flip-flops' as you call them, are the result of growing and learning. True, some others are due entirely to political expediency -- I'm not arguing Gore is any better at this than most politicians I know. And as for Reagan, he was pretty empty cranially, but he at least had strong convictions and a 'vision', which Bush utterly lacks. And I've never met Quayle in person, but from every interview and debate I saw him in, everything I heard him say publicly, he came across as a dunderhead to me. Not as bad as Bush by a long shot (I'm not saying he was totally stupid by any means), but I don't have any great respect for him as a thinker. Maybe meeting him one-on-one would change my mind, but I haven't had that opportunity.

GWB doesn't maintain close ties with them either. Maybe you should ask yourself why you are afraid of them. Do you really think that the Bush administration is actually going to push legislation that restricts religious freedom?

I know EXACTLY why I'm afraid of them. I am a non-Christian, non-heterosexual male. Yes, I think Bush would push legislation that would restrict religious freedom, as well as my freedom in general. He's already DONE so here in Texas, staunchly defending the Texas sodomy law, and killing any legislation that attempts to treat gay people as equal citizens. And while he may not have firm ties to the Religious Right in the way other Republican Candidates might (the very intelligent and VERY scary Alan Keyes to name just one), he does feel the need to 'appease' them (speeches at Bob Jones university, refusing to meet with the Log Cabin Republican group, etc).

Now, the only issues that I agree with him on are environmental. But even on environmental issues, he talks but doesn't deliver.

Hrm. Check out Bush's environmental record for just two seconds, and I have to wonder how you can support him at all. Bush doesn't give two figs about the environment. Gore at least talks the talk most of the time, and walks the walk at least some of the time. Bush doesn't even really pretend to talk the talk. If this is your primary issue, vote for anyone but Bush. Please. Don't let him do to Alaska and the rest of the country what has been done to Texas. Ugh. He asked corporations to write their own regulations, and then made following those regulations 'voluntary'. Texas is one of the most polluted states (in every way) in the country. Gore will not be, by ANY means (on ANY issue) perfect... but he'll be a damn sight better than Bush on major issues like the environment, in technology and the information economy, and understanding all the issues involved (and more importantly, the consequences of the decisions he makes). Gore will do better in standing against religious conservatives more strongly than Bush, preserving not only religious freedom (and freedom from religion for those who aren't Christian fundamentalists), as well as in preserving and maintaining equal civil rights for all individuals across the board.

Frankly, I wish we could ask for a shuffle and re-deal. I'd take McCain and Colin Powel over Bush too. I'd take Jesse Ventura over any of the current crop, to tell the truth, and that's just sad. But of the limited choices available, Bush scares me on more fronts than Gore does.

- Spryguy

Perhaps November will be more meaningful if large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to participate in this election, and make their reasons known, rather than shrugging and ignoring it. Perhaps then, the Beltway might really buckle a bit.

I really don't think that will make any difference whatsoever. You stated in your article that on one-third of eligible voters turned out last election. Did the beltway buckle? The only way to affect real change on the system is work from within the system. Elect candidates that you believe in to local offices state offices and even to congress. The top-down approach (which is amusing considering Nader's history of grassroots efforts) of backing a third-party candidate for president will not work. In 1992 Ross Perot received 18.91% of the popular vote. In 1996 he only got 8.4% of the vote (stats from uselectionatlas.org). It didn't work for Perot and it won't work for Nader. And it especially won't make a bit of difference if you don't vote. In the small races for things like state houses and even congress, 500 people can make a HUGE difference. Especially if they are actively involved in the campaign.

Don't let country be run by this man. Vote Gore 2000

Thats true.. What you said reminded me about that whole Courtney Love article where she ragged on the RIAA for being selfish, arrogant, and taking all the money. Online distribution could easily free artists from greedy companies and deliver music straight to the fans (and money right back at the artists).

Fuck the industry, before they fuck you.

Verbatim

Comments are owned by the poster, so the posters then collectively share responsibility, through answers and moderation, for making sure that meaningful viewpoints are aired and responded to. This works exceedingly well at Slashdot, not so well in other online forums.

CmdrTaco whines about there being no submissions... well I submitted this and he didn't post it in his political links. Whatever, here it is for your consumption: http://ww w.s alon.com/business/green/2000/10/19/harry_browne/in dex.html.

-l

Just thought I'd post a more recent late-breaking article from Salon.com here:

Another crack in the SDMI wall
A team of researchers claims to
have successfully hacked a digital
music watermarking system

(Basically, more corroboration that SDMI has been broken & SDMI knows it.

I'm annoyed that consumer technology is being delayed [by years] for this.)

--

Just thought I'd post a more recent late-breaking article from Salon.com here:

Another crack in the SDMI wall
A team of researchers claims to
have successfully hacked a digital
music watermarking system

(Basically, more corroboration that SDMI has been broken & SDMI knows it.

I'm annoyed that consumer technology is being delayed [by years] for this.)

--

There has been a lot of talk about how the major candidates have basically ignored the issues that are important to us, or worse, came out with positions that are completely opposite to our own (such as Bush's statement about the Internet turning hearts dark, and both major candidates support of filters and monitoring devices).

There is a good reason for this - we don't vote. The other groups - senior citizens, minorities, unions, even the undecided idiots - will all go to the polls that Tuesday, and support the candidate that speak to them. Because they have an excellent track record for voting, the candidates actively seek their vote, and spend some time and money learning about the groups.

Young people, however, appear to have the shortest political attention span ever. They don't really seem to know what issues they want to fight for, and are only motivated for a short period of time. Any politician who has worked with young Americans quickly learn that there is a minority that will vote reliably and even help with campaigns, but that the majority will vote on gut feelings, for or against their parents, forget to go to the polls, or put it off until the last minute ("Maybe I'll go right after the Simpsons.")

Traditionally, young Americans are the doers rather than the voters. We love pitching in on a cause for a day, supporting rallies, going to war, and writing comments on online forums, but don't have the willpower to really do poltical acts with a lasting impact.

I'm fairly disheartened by the candidates, because, even though I intend to vote, I'll probably be voting against candidates rather than for candidates. Since I'm in Oklahoma, I can't even write in Nader to stage an effective protest vote. But I will vote, and I plan to vote in every election, and make sure my representives know that I'm a voter.

I'm encouraging all those out there to do the same, and to follow the lead of all those other political action groups out there - make yourself heard. This means voting, but it also means letting those you voted into office know who got them there. Everyone should have their representatives' email addresses in their address books. Everytime you get really angry about something you read here, you should fire off an email to your representative, knowing how one of his voters and taxpayers feels on the issues. Otherwise, we'll get what we have now - a political landscape formed by the retired, the "family guys", and the corporations.

Sorry, I'll get off the soapbox now. I'd love to hear any other ideas for getting the tech voice heard.

The moral dilemma that I (and I'm sure quite a few others) face is whether to vote for Gore, who actually has a chance of winning, and is certainly the lesser of the two most significant evils, or to do the Right Thing and vote for Nader, thereby essentially helping to elect George "There ought to be limits to freedom" Dubya. Voting for Gore, still, would leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I would be very, very frightened to have Bush in the White House. Politics is a dirty game.

Of course, a vote for Nader brings just that much more support to third party candidates, and specifically the Green Party closer to the ... what is it, five percent? ... they need to get federal funds in four years.

What finally made up my mind to vote for Nader is the corporate exclusion, by physical force, of Nader from the first debate. This was thuggish and low, and should never have happened in America. I still don't understand why it (and corporate-sponsored debates, for that matter) was tolerated. Well, I suppose I do, but it's depressing.

(Usually, of course, I'm more of the opinion expressed in thi s comic...)

No, it is not. Though it might seem a workable (I won't say good) idea on the surface, it's scary to think of the governmental mechanisms that need be in place for such a policy to be implimented with adequate swiftness and thoroughness. Any government that could elimate aids victims swiftly enough to stop the spread of the disease could just as easily eliminate dissentors swiftly enough to stop the spread of free thought.

it's biologically impossible for a gay couple to produce children.

Wrong. Gay men can produce children just as well as any other men; all they need is a cooperative woman to be the mother. It's even easier for lesbians, who require only sperm, which is readily available. And on top of it all, homosexuals tend to make excellent parents.

Xerox PARC ceased being "the future" when the Smalltalk crew bolted for ParcPlace in 1988 and it was essentially dead when Paul Allen acquired David Liddel and moved him a quarter mile north to Interval Research in 1992. But now, after $100 million of free-wheeling capital, even Interval Research is dead.

Yes yes yes yes yes. I'm glad someone said this. American culture has a longstanding anti-intellectual bias. When someone's as intelligent as Gore, people start looking for ways to take him down a peg; they pounce on every tiny mistake. Then you get an affable idiot like Dubya who can make the most egregious errors, and everybody shrugs it off.

The American public identifies more with the affable idiot, which tells you a little about how most people view themselves. It's the same belligerent know-nothingism that sells a million quack cures and crackpot theories ("don't listen to those so-called experts, don't trust the gubmint...") and now threatens to put the country in the hands of a mental lightweight and his many handlers.

The kicker is, the public's stand on the issues--to the extent the public actually has a stand on the issues--is more in line with Gore's. It boggles my mind that this is one giant popularity contest. I don't care what Gore's personality is like, he's smart (a Good Thing) and I agree with him. He's got my vote.

Salon ran a good article lamenting how the media likes to put together focus groups of "undecideds" as if this staggeringly ignorant bunch of herd animals is representative of the nation: "Ignore the undecided."

Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm another registered Democrat and a card-carrying egghead to boot. My biases are obvious.

Really, you should know better than to ask that. Of course they don't have any examples. They never do.

To the conservative mindset, any time a news outlet doesn't print one of their press releases verbatim it's evidence of a "liberal media".

I remember when it was the liberals who were annoying, whiny assholes.

P.S. Here's a couple of stories about Bush that so far have been under reported.

• Bush's sleazy stock manipulations (far worse than anything Hillary ever did)
• Bush the military deserter

An interesting piece - clearly slanted toward Gore of course, but one that raises some interesting questions. There was a similar article recently in Salon that made much the same argument: that so many of Gore's "exaggerations" are things that either misreported or misrepresented by his opponents, who have been taken by the media pretty much at their word. From that standpoint, Gore's mea culpa in the second debate may have hurt him even more than it helped.

That said, how important an issue is this? Is it more important, for example, than Bush's propensity to make embarrassing verbal gaffes?

The point is that when we focus on "character" as an issue in politics, we lose sight of that which is more important - where the candidates stand on issues of public policy and what agenda they will pursue when elected to office.

Didn't our nation learn an important lesson not too long ago with the Lewinsky scandal? Yes, what Clinton did was disgusting and wrong, but was it important enough to push virtually every other public policy issue out of the limelight for more than a year? Doesn't the the plight of the 40 million Americans without health insurance, for example, maybe have a little more significance than what one American was doing with his intern in the Oval Office?

Nixon's "dirty tricks" were at best a crude precursor to the sophisticated media manipulation practiced by today's political handlers (Nixon's hatred for the press prevented him from realizing it could be his most powerful tool).

The media's current obsession with "character" is most directly a product of the 1988 Presidential race. Following the Gary Hart scandal in the primary season (the first time that an American politician's sex life had an impact on a campaign), Republican strategist Lee Atwater spent the last month of the campaign barraging Duakais with everything from Willie Horton to his wife's mental health. Instead of defending his stand on substantive issues, Dukakis had to defend his stand on flag-burning and his membership in the ACLU.

In the 12 years since, we've had to deal with everything from Clarence Thomas to O.J. Simpson to Monica Lewinsky - all scandals which have tied up our national attention in lieu of more substantive issues. Part of this focus can be attributed to the rise of 24-hour news networks that find "sensational" stories a great way to attract viewers and advertising revenue. The rise of Internet news venues have forced more traditional outlets to report news more quickly, without going through the same level of rigorous fact-checking required in the past. These factors, among others, have contributed to a culture of instant political gratification, where politicians are treated more like celebrities (and celebrities more like politicians).

In this kind of environment, stories like the one that Gore is a chronic exaggerator can spread very easily and quickly. Bush's camp needs only to fan the flames a little; the media will do the rest on their own. Yes, Gore has been known to stretch the truth from time to time, and for that matter, so has Bush. But if you look closely enough, you can find falsehoods in just about any statement.

Character assassination of political figures is nothing new - it goes back as far as recorded history. What is new is the speed at which highly sophisticated attacks can travel in the era of electronic media.

If you find this sort of thing interesting I recommend a couple of books. The first is Daniel Boorstin's "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America", which predicted all of this in the early '60s. The second is Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which came out in the mid-'80s and talks about the demise of public discourse. The third is Neil Gabler's recent book "Life: The Movie", which expands on Postman's thesis and puts it in historical context.

An interesting piece - clearly slanted toward Gore of course, but one that raises some interesting questions. There was a similar article recently in Salon that made much the same argument: that so many of Gore's "exaggerations" are things that either misreported or misrepresented by his opponents, who have been taken by the media pretty much at their word. From that standpoint, Gore's mea culpa in the second debate may have hurt him even more than it helped.

That said, how important an issue is this? Is it more important, for example, than Bush's propensity to make embarrassing verbal gaffes?

The point is that when we focus on "character" as an issue in politics, we lose sight of that which is more important - where the candidates stand on issues of public policy and what agenda they will pursue when elected to office.

Didn't our nation learn an important lesson not too long ago with the Lewinsky scandal? Yes, what Clinton did was disgusting and wrong, but was it important enough to push virtually every other public policy issue out of the limelight for more than a year? Doesn't the the plight of the 40 million Americans without health insurance, for example, maybe have a little more significance than what one American was doing with his intern in the Oval Office?

Nixon's "dirty tricks" were at best a crude precursor to the sophisticated media manipulation practiced by today's political handlers (Nixon's hatred for the press prevented him from realizing it could be his most powerful tool).

The media's current obsession with "character" is most directly a product of the 1988 Presidential race. Following the Gary Hart scandal in the primary season (the first time that an American politician's sex life had an impact on a campaign), Republican strategist Lee Atwater spent the last month of the campaign barraging Duakais with everything from Willie Horton to his wife's mental health. Instead of defending his stand on substantive issues, Dukakis had to defend his stand on flag-burning and his membership in the ACLU.

In the 12 years since, we've had to deal with everything from Clarence Thomas to O.J. Simpson to Monica Lewinsky - all scandals which have tied up our national attention in lieu of more substantive issues. Part of this focus can be attributed to the rise of 24-hour news networks that find "sensational" stories a great way to attract viewers and advertising revenue. The rise of Internet news venues have forced more traditional outlets to report news more quickly, without going through the same level of rigorous fact-checking required in the past. These factors, among others, have contributed to a culture of instant political gratification, where politicians are treated more like celebrities (and celebrities more like politicians).

In this kind of environment, stories like the one that Gore is a chronic exaggerator can spread very easily and quickly. Bush's camp needs only to fan the flames a little; the media will do the rest on their own. Yes, Gore has been known to stretch the truth from time to time, and for that matter, so has Bush. But if you look closely enough, you can find falsehoods in just about any statement.

Character assassination of political figures is nothing new - it goes back as far as recorded history. What is new is the speed at which highly sophisticated attacks can travel in the era of electronic media.

If you find this sort of thing interesting I recommend a couple of books. The first is Daniel Boorstin's "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America", which predicted all of this in the early '60s. The second is Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which came out in the mid-'80s and talks about the demise of public discourse. The third is Neil Gabler's recent book "Life: The Movie", which expands on Postman's thesis and puts it in historical context.

The New Science of Character Assassination
Phil Agre
15 October 2000

You are welcome to forward this article electronically to anyone for any noncommercial purpose.

The past ten days will go down as a turning point in American history. This is what it's like when the far right is taking over your country: the people support Al Gore's policies, but the polls are shifting toward George W. Bush because the media is filled with false attacks on Al Gore's character. A story in today's (10/15/00) New York Times states openly what has been clear all along, that this campaign of character assassination has been planned and executed over a long period by the Republicans.
--Story Link--

Character assassination is, of course, nothing new for Republicans, who mastered the art in the days of Richard Nixon. What's new is that the press constantly repeats the lies. Not just once or twice, not just the occasional slip, but over and over and over.

Let us consider the New York Times story in detail. Written by Alison Mitchell, it describes Al Gore's abject apology for two trivial and much-exaggerated errors in the first debate as "the culmination of a skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy".

The New York Times discerns four landmarks in this campaign, and they are as follows:

• Landmark number one:

• ... in December 1997 ... the [Republican National] committee announced it had started a contest to come up with a slogan for Mr. Gore after he told reporters that the hero and heroine in the novel "Love Story" were modeled after him and his wife, Tipper. (Erich Segal, the author, soon said that his protagonist, Oliver Barrett IV, was only partly based on Mr. Gore, while Jenny Cavilleri had nothing to do with Tipper Gore.)

  In this case, the RNC's claim was false. Gore had not told anyone that Love Story was based on him and his wife. Rather, he had mentioned a newspaper article that had inaccurately said that, and was carefully to say that he only had the article's word to go on. Observe that Mitchell repeats the RNC's false account, and then (following the longstanding convention) makes it sound as though Segal was contradicting Gore, when in fact he was defending him. The false "Love Story" store continues to be repeated to the present day.
  --Story Link--

• Landmark number two:

• So when Mr. Gore said in an interview with CNN in March 1999 that "during my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet", Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, issued this mocking statement: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the paper clip".

  The problem, of course, was that Gore's claim was correct. As the Internet's scientific leaders attest, often heatedly, Gore recognized the significance of the Internet very early, and took the initiative in doing the political work and articulating the public vision that made the Internet possible. His sentence, which is often not quoted in its entirety, makes perfectly clear that he was talking about the work he did in the context of his Congressional service, and that he is not claiming, ridiculously, to have done the technical work as well. Mitchell shades the story by omitting the Republicans' (and media's) most common distortion of the matter, that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. This falsehood has been repeated on literally hundreds of occasions, and George W. Bush routinely uses it in his speeches.
  --Story Link--
  --Story Link--
  --Story Link--

• Landmark number three:

• On the day Mr. Gore announced his candidacy in Carthage, Tenn., his family's hometown, Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had a more elaborate stunt. He rode in a wagon pulled by mules to the hotel on Embassy Row in Washington where Mr. Gore lived for much of his youth.

  "He has tried to pass himself off as this hardscrabble, homespun central Tennessee farm boy and that is not what he is", said Mr. Nicholson, playing off the fact that Mr. Gore had told The Des Moines Register that he had learned to slop hogs and clear land on the family farm. Friends later told reporters that Mr. Gore's father had kept him on a backbreaking work schedule during summers on the family farm.

  The problem, again, is that Gore's claim was true. He did work on his family farm as a child. This time, Mitchell admits that the Republicans were making it up. But she still shades the story by making it sound as though the truth hadn't come out until later, and as though the contrary view rests solely on the word of Gore's friends. In fact the childhood farm chores had been extensively reported for a decade. The false claim that Gore had lied about the chores was repeated on many occasions in the press.
  --Story Link--
  --Story Link--

• Landmark number four:

• The Republicans got help as well from an unexpected source. When the Democratic primary fight became bitter, former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey insisted that Mr. Gore had deliberately distorted his policy positions in what he called a "pattern of misrepresentation". At one point, Mr. Bradley spat out, "Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?"

  The problem is that Bradley is endlessly quoted to this effect without any attempt to determine whether he is right. In fact Bradley often wrongly accused Gore of distorting his positions.

And that's it. That, according to the New York Times, is the story of the Republicans' campaign to paint Al Gore as an embellisher. The New York Times cites four accusations, all of them false, and in every case the New York Times either repeats the false accusations as truth or else provides misleading accounts of them.

The New York Times' article is not an aberration. The list of false attacks on Al Gore's character that have been circulated in the media for the last two years is extraordinary. In some cases, as in the ones (mis)cited by the New York Times, Gore is accused of lying when he was actually telling the truth:

• Several publications have called Gore a liar in very harsh terms because he claimed that his father was a pioneer in the civil rights movement. It is true that his father lost his nerve on the Civil Rights Act, but that does not change the overwhelming and (until recently) universally accepted evidence of his leadership on civil rights. Gore's assertion is perfectly accurate.
• 
  --Story Link--
• In probably the single most vicious attack of the entire campaign, several publications have suggested that Gore lied when claiming to have been present at his sister's death. The only evidence they offer is that he also made a political speech the same day, and Gore's driver has explained his schedule for that day in detail.
• 
  --Story Link--

In other cases, Gore's words are twisted, misquoted, or simply made up to make him sound as though he were making a claim that he was not making. For example, some publications have even claimed, falsely, that Gore literally uttered the words "inventing the Internet".
--Story Link--

There are many others:

• In the closing moments of Gore's second debate with George W. Bush, Jim Lehrer falsely accused Gore of having called Bush a "bumbler" in one of his campaign commercials.
• 
  --Story Link--

  Was this simply a mistake on Lehrer's part? Okay, but Lehrer made his "mistake" in the context of rebuking Gore for his own miniscule mistakes in the first debate.

• Gore told a a union audience that his mother had sung the "union label" song to him as a child. Gore's comment was obviously a joke and the audience took it as a joke. Yet, incredibly, numerous supposed journalists have asserted that he meant it seriously, or else tried (on no evidence) to cast doubt on Gore's obviously-true claim that it was a joke.
• 
  --Story Link--
• When Gore spoke of his proposal to put Social Security and Medicare in a "lockbox", some "journalists" accused him of dissembling on the astonishing grounds that he was not actually proposing to put the money into a physical box.
• 
  --Story Link--
• When the Washington Post finally gave up on the "Love Story" story, pretending that it had only recently been disproven, they moved to another falsehood. Gore had claimed that his sister was the first volunteer for the Peace Corps. This claim was accurate, inasmuch as his sister had in fact worked for the Corps without pay from its earliest days, only later joining its paid staff. But the Post called Gore's claim a "lie", on the grounds that she had not worked as a volunteer *overseas*, which Gore had never claimed; they did not mention that she worked without pay.
• 
  --Story Link--
• Gore told some students in New Hampshire the story of a Tennessee community activist who brought his attention to a toxic dump, whereupon he looked for other examples, found Love Canal, and held the first hearings on the issue. "Journalists" first misquoted him as having claimed to to have started the issue, when in fact he was giving credit to the activists. Even when the misquotation was grudgingly corrected, they continued to distort his words, as if he were claiming to have discovered the toxic pollution at Love Canal.

In yet other cases, Gore made a trivial error that has been exaggerated by his critics, and the exaggeration has been falsely attributed to him. Such is the case with the school in Florida that Gore cited in the first of his debates with George W. Bush.
--Story Link--

These are just a few examples among many. People make mistakes all the time. Al Gore is one of them, and it's surprising that an army of opposition researchers hasn't come up with more substantive errors after fact-checking a whole life of public statements. So is George W. Bush, whose errors during the two debates so far have been dramatically worse than those of Gore. To start with, Bush falsely implied that the Europeans have no troops in Kosovo, when in fact they have tens of thousands, and that the United States has significant numbers of troops in Haiti, when it does not. And he made numerous false statements:

• that Gore was outspending him, when the opposite was true;
• that the rate of uninsured people was falling in Texas and rising nationally, when the opposite was true;
• that the men who killed James Byrd would be put to death, when only two had been sentenced to death and their appeals had not been exhausted;
• that middle-income seniors would get drug coverage immediately under his Medicare plan;
• that Gore had lied about this;
• that the new spending in his budget plan is equal to the tax cuts;
• that "most of the tax reductions [in his plan] go to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder";
• that the president is unable to influence the actions of the Food and Drug Administration;
• that Hillary Clinton's 1993 national health insurance initiative would have entailed nationalizing health care; and
• that Gore had claimed to be the author of the Earned Income Tax Credit law.

That is just a partial list of Bush's "mistakes" in two ninety-minute debates, and it doesn't include the dubious numbers he quoted from Republicans in the Senate or the mess he made of education, taxes, Social Security, and the Middle East. Nor does it include the "mistakes" that littered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, or the especially egregious "mistakes" of his brutal campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, and so on.
--Story Link--

With only a few exceptions (like the one just cited), the press has gone to great lengths to cover up or minimize Bush's false statements. Press coverage of the first debate focused overwhelmingly on Gore's two comparatively trivial errors and on endless suggestions that Gore was rude for having sighed several times.
--Story Link--

Of course, the sighs were often exaggerated by turning the volume up. (Falsely calling someone a liar, as Bush did several times, is not rude?) Pundits bizarrely praised Bush for his command of the issues after the first debate despite his lengthy catalog of errors:
--Catalog Link--

And the 10/5/00 Washington Post buried the Democrats' list of Bush errors at the end of a long story about Bush's accusations against Gore.

The problem is systemic. A reporter for a British newspaper, the Observer, was struck at the completely different approaches of the reporters covering Gore and Bush, and reported a disturbing incident in which a Washington Post reporter well-known for her open hostility to Gore held a toy gun to his head.
--Story Link--

Indeed, press coverage of Gore has been spun in a strongly negative fashion for a long time.
--Story Link--
--Story Link--
--Story Link--

The press, following the lead of Republican "investigators", has repeatedly falsified and spun the famous Buddhist temple event, among others.
--Story Link--

They have also falsified and exaggerated Gore's performance in earlier debates, thereby creating a caricuture of him as a vicious attacker.
--Story Link--

Yes, the press has suggested that Bush is not mentally competent to run the country. But it has not fabricated huge amounts of evidence to support this charge, and it has not routinely used vocabulary that is remotely as harsh as that used against Gore. You have rarely seen the media call Bush a "moron" or "idiot", but Gore has routinely been called much worse. Here is a very partial list:

• "evil"
• "imperious&qu ot;, "repellent"
• "lethal", "ruthless", "liar"
• "ruthless", "relentless", "bully", "maniacal"
• "manipulative", "dishonest"

(I am citing the Daily Howler for most of these examples so that you can read some analysis of them. But the Howler provides precise citations for the originals, which should be easy to look up.)

Indeed, Bush's alleged mental incompetence is often tacitly used to excuse his falsehoods -- he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he can't be lying. Or Gore is accused of a "pattern" of false and exaggerated statements, but then Bush escapes the same accusation for the simple reason that nobody bothers to gather Bush's false and exaggerated statements in one place.

This is just the press. We're not even talking about the conservatives on the Internet that have been circulating long lists of Gore's supposed lies and exaggerations -- most of which are, of course, themselves lies or exaggerations, including garbled and embellished versions of the already false versions in the press. Some of these lists are credited to the RNC, but of course it is hard to know for sure.

The new science of character assassination, then, has several components:

• It starts with a strategy: a conscious choice by a political party that it is going to position its opponent in a certain way. The 10/15/00 Washington Post quotes a Republican consultant as saying that "PR 101 is define your opponent before he tries to define himself", and the whole campaign is clearly organized by the principles of PR.
• It requires a clearinghouse to distribute "facts" that fit the strategy. In this case the burden has been carried by the Republican National Committee and by the office of House majority leader Dick Armey, which got its start by circulating the original fraudulent charges from Wired News about Gore's Internet statement.
• It requires rank-and-file supporters who are willing to pass along any junk that fits the party line.
• But above all, it requires a press corps that has decided to go along with it. Part of the problem is that the press operates in packs -- an echo chamber of lazy pundits in which every "fact" that fits a prevailing stereotype gets endlessly repeated.

But it's not just that. It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch's media properties, such as Fox and the New York Post, publish smears against people who disagree with Murdoch's far-right views. But it can hardly be an accident that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press have all assigned reporters to the Gore campaign who write, day in and day out, the same sorts of exaggerated smears. To be sure, the press is not unanimous in spreading Republican lies as truth; the contrast between the NYT/Post/AP axis and the calm reporting of the Los Angeles Times could hardly be greater. But the Post, Times, and AP, all well-connected and widely syndicated, set the tone for the press as a whole. The fix is clearly in, and these establishment media operations are clearly down with it. They see which way the wind is blowing, and they don't want to get left behind.

A kind of coup is in effect, continuing the pattern of the Whitewater hoax and impeachment. If the far right succeeds in its campaign, then the incoming government will be staffed by people who are trained in the new science of character assassination. It's all they know. And having destroyed Al Gore, they will come after the rest of us.

Copyright (c) 2000 by Philip E. Agre.
All rights reserved.

As per the already posted Jon Haddock, the artist is 38. So maybe when he graduated back in '86 it might have been on a grant or just as easily he could have paid for it himself, but he'd definately not a kid. More on the project is available here.

The first comment to make is that the piece is not necessarily making a commentary, political or otherwise. And the actual content of each image seems to be less relevant than the overall piece as a series.

The several strong and defining moments in this persons life all look about the same from one point of view; the point of view of a video game? It makes one think about several things, including how we relate with real life events and how we relate with fictional events in pretty much the same way. The use of color is again consistent with a video game type of palette, yet the actual images are blurred and smooth, not pixelated.

I bet the artist is glad for his work to get exposure, but the tone of the piece as a whole is pretty humble and unassuming-as if to simply say "here I am."

I really quite like it!

I previewed my damn post and it was good, but now it's messed up! What the heck?

That link still works for me, though. If it doesn't for you, try .

Check out.

It's an article about this. It's very helpful for those of us who don't know what many of these events are - for instance, the Mercedes is the Princess Diana crash, and the cabin is the Unabomber's cabin.

To end on satire...
--

You both support the war on drugs, which has swelled the American prison population with hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders. Both of you have faced questions about illegal drug use, and the vice president has admitted using illegal drugs. Yet neither of you has faced prison time or arrest. First, how can you be a credible force in the drug war considering your history, and second what will you do to make sure that the force of the law doesn't disproportionately fall on the underprivileged?

Roo the day

Don't say I never did anything for you. ^_-

Gore was instrumental in securing lots of funding for networking in the 80s between Universitites that really poised the 'net to take off. Republicans have ridiculed his statement because he didn't have anything to do with opening the 'net to commercial traffic, as if that is the only thing that matters. Techies have ridiculed him because he didn't invent any protocols, as if the funding he secured in the 80s was irrelevant.
---

system. /test on>

Actually, a better question to ask is "how are "whore" politicians going to affect technology??".

When the MPAA and a few pals roll into politicians are only too willing to roll over and support their cause after a few "donations". The conservative "Eagle Forum" explains how Disney has clout with the republican congress.

Or maybe a senator can be bought off by letting him ride around in a corporate jet when running for office. In return you can get your patent extended.

Or maybe you can get a congressional staffer to help you in changing the law by adding a couple of words, and giving him a job once he leaves town.

So if I wanted to see a bunch of prostitutes, I wouldn't go to the street corner, I'd just head to the brothel "capitol hill".

Yes, this has been a flame. If this had actually been an all out fire, politicians would be finding themselves hosed. Your revolutionary leader would have then given you instructions on how to proceed.

/test off>

Do I think that Gnutella will move in where Napster stopped? I personally don't, the reason being that Gnutella requires you to set up a direct connection with an individual you've never met. So while the dangers surrounding Napster, regarding viruses and child molesters, were moderately nebulous, they're going to be very severe with Gnutella.

Napster also makes a direct connection to transfer the files. In reality, even if it was routed through a third party it wouldn't make any difference, unless the third party somehow scanned the files being transfered, undoing whatever packaging someone had done, etc..

What the hell does either Gnutella or Napster have to do with child molesters?

If someone runs files from an untrusted source in an account which can do anything other than play in a very contained environment, they deserve what they get. (Yes, with Windows everything is root. They deserve what they get too if they do this.)

Oh, and this "key technologist" has a doctoral degree from Cornell.

I can only conclude, given Shamoon's qualifications and educational background, and the fact that Salon posted this and still expects to be taken as a credible news source, that Shamoon knows something that I don't. I can only surmise, therefore, that Shamoon knows of some group of child molesting virus writers out there who are involved in creating subliminal messages to embed in the music which will mind control any children listening to it to have sex.

Oh, wait, SDMI is embedded in the content...Nah.

Do I think that Gnutella will move in where Napster stopped? I personally don't, the reason being that Gnutella requires you to set up a direct connection with an individual you've never met. So while the dangers surrounding Napster, regarding viruses and child molesters, were moderately nebulous, they're going to be very severe with Gnutella.

Napster also makes a direct connection to transfer the files. In reality, even if it was routed through a third party it wouldn't make any difference, unless the third party somehow scanned the files being transfered, undoing whatever packaging someone had done, etc..

What the hell does either Gnutella or Napster have to do with child molesters?

If someone runs files from an untrusted source in an account which can do anything other than play in a very contained environment, they deserve what they get. (Yes, with Windows everything is root. They deserve what they get too if they do this.)

Oh, and this "key technologist" has a doctoral degree from Cornell.

I can only conclude, given Shamoon's qualifications and educational background, and the fact that Salon posted this and still expects to be taken as a credible news source, that Shamoon knows something that I don't. I can only surmise, therefore, that Shamoon knows of some group of child molesting virus writers out there who are involved in creating subliminal messages to embed in the music which will mind control any children listening to it to have sex.

Oh, wait, SDMI is embedded in the content...Nah.

I read the article. The head of the SDMI is slandering Salon.com because he says *only* the SDMI can determine whether their encryption has been cracked. He forsakes the notion that whomever has cracked their encryption can also claim that the encryption has been cracked all without the SDMI blessing.

The first paragraph of the Salon.com report even says: "A spokesperson for SDMI has denied the reports".

Salon had this very interesting article saying that insiders do want to see SDMI cracled. The logic behind what they are saying is quite believable.

Really, it looks like more people hate SDMI than even DiVX (the circuit city one). I know I'm not going to touch it with a ten foot pole even if it means I pull out all my old vinyl (or tape off the radio).

The only ones that like it is the RIAA, who thinks that they can win a kind of "tech nuke race". Evrybody else knows that there is no such thing as "perfect encryption", legally enforced or not.

--

gore has been long touting his invention of the internet..

Al Gore never claimed to invent the Internet. That story was started by none other then Declan McCallugh (of LiViD defamation fame and in no small part responsible for inciting the persecution of DeCSS and css-auth developers).

For the story debunking the myth that Al Gore claimed to have invent the internet see this ; Salon story.

Caveat: I am voting for either Ralph Nader or Harry Brown (currently leaning toward Mr. Brown). If you oppose Gore (or Bush) that is fine, but be sure you do so for factual reasons, not myths propogated by yellow journalists.