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Candidates on Net Issues
Robert Wilde writes "Slashdotters have shown great interest in knowing where the US Presidential candidates stand on the 'geek issues.' Now Microsoft's Slate has some answers."
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The only problem I have with Gore is his going to bed with the NSA and I do remember some things relating to internet censorship. He supports higher education, which is very important.
I honestly don't care where candidates say they stand on net issues.
It is not because I don't think that they could have an impact on us as a community. It is not because I don't care whether the net is regulated or not. That is important. But it is because I don't trust politicians. And I especially don't trust politicians that have opinions on issues they do not understand. Which is almost all politicians these days.
So I consider backing or voting for any candidate on this issue to be ultimately a waste of time. Politicians don't get it, don't care about it, and can't be trusted to keep their word anyway even if they do (a) understand the issues and (b) say they're taking a stand for the Right Thing. Politicians are too easily bought and think nothing of lying to us.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
They didn't ask what Harry Browne thinks, but I bet I can guess. How are most slashdot readers planing to vote? Almost every geek I know is a libertarian, though many don't realize it..
Libertarian.org
Harry Browne for President!
All candidates say
Stop porn, terrorists, crypto.
Ignorant morons.
Al Gore invented
the Internet. He is such
an 3133t h4x0r.
His "Open Source" web site
runs on NT/IIS
not Linux/Apache
GWB
begs Bill Gates for donations.
Protection money?
Are we citizens?
Or netizens? Elections
just encourage them.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I think this article misses the same point lots of techies miss. In spite of the fact that these are significant issues which will have a major impact on the way people live their lives in the upcoming network-centred era, most people neither understand nor care about things like encryption, taxation, the patent threat, or stupid ideas like deep-link banning. They just don't WANT to understand high tech or the complexities thereof.
We'll know for sure when the masses hit the polls, but I'll bet that technology issues will remain unimportant until the wars have been fought and there are no big decisions left to make. Then, once the issues are simplified past the point of meaningfulness, we'll see them used prominently in political campaigns.
-Mars
So, which candidate would win in a Quake III tournament? *That's* the real question that would influence the vote of many /.'ers.
Internet taxes are not an issue for just the 'geeks'. It's an issue for all Americans, like any tax. What will taxes do for us? They'll give us more money for things like road improvements, educational purchases (computers anyone?), and law enforcement support. What will they do against us? They'll slow down this explosive economy that has really carried this country to the front of the world's pack. When Asia's economy fell apart, it was America's economy that survived relatively unscathed.
So what are geek issues? Computers in the schools for one. We talk a lot about kids need to be educated in the ways of the binary. Clinton made a pretty good announcement today, but let's go back a big further and get kids started with computers now so that maybe that won't need to take CS to really get to know the most important tool of the next millenium. Also, how about things real OSHA telecommuter guidelines that are fair to both businesses and employees? How about government seriously considering open-source software? How about patent reform so that people who come up with genuinely real ideas get some control over them and people who don't don't? How about some sort of final word on whether consumers will ever quit getting raped for advanced services like DSL?
I like privacy and Internet taxes and all, but those aren't geek issues, those are real American issues. Politicians are once again just paying lip service to a group of people who they think they need rather than taking a look at their real issues and addressing them. They did it with the 'soccer moms' in 1996 and they're doing it with us now.
I don't expect anything more out of this election than I've received out of any of the past: a bunch of lies and a lame-duck President.
I don't want a checklist of where the candidates stand on various issues. Because there will inevitably be unaddressed issues.
What I want instead is a clear and concise understanding of the candidate's philosophy. When does he or she feel government intervention into the private sector is necessary? Instead of a checklist of policies regarding relations with each and every nation, I want an overall guideline on foreign policy.
I want to know how the candidate will react when confronted with some vital issue that did *NOT* come up during the campaign.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
These are all issues that affect EVERYONE, not just Internet users. And they're not even the biggest issues -- are you going to vote for a candidate based on his ideas about exporting technology, or about his ideas for education and health care reform? Besides, most candidates' opinions on these "geek issues" follow with their stands on the role of the government in other areas of society.
Internet users may be the key electorate this year, but that may have more to do with Internet users being middle-class, well-educated, and having a LOT of access to information -- the sort of information about a candidate that could perhaps make or break an election (or at least help an individual make a decision). Just remember to vote, people, otherwise you have no right to complain. ;)
Bill Bradley: Inclusionary - "In this time of unprecedented prosperity, we need to establish a consitutional right to ADSL."
George W. Bush: Proud - "I'm the only candidate here featured as the executive on a government website..."
John McCain: The Open Architecture candidate - wants to get rid of proprietary access to government (special interest lobbies).
Steve Forbes: Rich & Clueless - Doesn't quite understand the Internet, but is willing to pay somebody millions to tell him about it.
Orrin Hatch: The Content Provider - The Internet is a great place to disseminate porn, like the Starr report.
Gary Bauer: The Right-to-Lifer - Only interested in protecting unsaved emails.
Alan Keyes: Moralizing - Would ban the Internet. "What we need to do is get back to the ways of our forefathers, who blah blah blah..."
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm even more afraid of the totalitarian moral agendas of those 'Crats who worship the Greater Good and the diety called Godverment.
Those "christians" who want a totalitarian moral regime are not fooling themselves. I doubt most of them are even real Christians, and just mere church-goers. They do not follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, who said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "love thy neighbor as thyself".
I am a Christian. But I am also a libertarian in every sense of the word. I am a libertarian precisely because I am a Christian. Christ came to offer people a choice, not to make the choice for them.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I don't think you get it. Democracy isn't about individual people. It's about masses of people; the proverbial People. The People have the right to govern themselves, not the individuals. What we have, though, isn't a true democracy. It's democratic, but we have representation. If I think that a law needs to be made, I can't submit that law for a vote by all of my fellow peers. I have to get my lawmaker to do it, and if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to. Of course, I can try and vote him out, but that may not work either.
Tyranny vs. Democracy is like a parent vs. a child. Parents take away all the rights a child thinks it should have for the child's (and often the parent's) own benefit. Left to his own vices, the child can govern himself. He makes a lot more mistakes when he first tries something than he does when he works with it for a while, but eventually, everything usually works out for the best (unless the kid is especially dumb and tries to stop a fast-moving semi truck).
Our government is like a child. We're faced with the new issue of what we're going to do with this whole e-commerce thing, but guess what, we'll make a few mistakes and we'll learn a few things and in the end, we'll end up on the right side of things, cause we're not dumb enough to try to stop a fast-moving semi truck and we've got enough people recognizing our mistakes that eventually we correct them. But you can't help guide unless you make your guidance heard.
Ignorance isn't the answer; participation is. Anarchists are people who are too lazy to recognize the difference they can make.
I'm from South Carolina, where McCain is on his anti-porn mission.
First of all, I don't believe that there are miracle cures for computer porn. If you're a parent, the only way to keep your children from downloading porn is to keep a close eye on them while they're surfing. But that means parents have to actually be responisble for a change. Oh horror!!
However, most South Carolinians don't see it that way. They want a miracle cure, and if you can promise one, you'd probably get the Conservative Southern Baptist vote.
At issue right now is whether schools and public libraries should provide Internet access. If a library offers a public terminal to the web, then little Johnny can go download porn, and Mommy doesn't like that. Since there is no way to provide porn-free Internet access, the solution is to remove Internet terminals from libraries. Personally, I think that sucks worse than filtered Internet content. If you don't have a computer for whatever reason you should be able to go to the library to check your hotmail account and read CNN.com.
The privacy Chernobyl that the Slate article mentions has sort of happened in SC. Our Department of Motor Vehicles sold every drivers license photo in the state to some company for a whopping total of $5000. They're going to build a huge database of names and photos and sell it. I sent in a form barring them from using my picture, but most people don't know how to do that.
The interesting thing is that politicians here don't give a rat's ass about privacy. There was a federal law barring the sale of DL photos, but South Carolina took it to the Supreme Court, arguing that Americans have no constitutional right to privacy, and the law should be shot down. The court agreed, and a little bit later the DMV sold our pictures. Smells pretty crooked to me.
Take care,
Steve
So you can't have tyranny since it infringes on basic liberties, and you can't have democracy because the majority will usually be wrong. What's left? How about governing yourself and leaving others alone. There's no government like no government.
You imply that the US is a democracy, which is incorrect. The US is a democratic republic, a compromise between "democracy by idiots" and "tyranny by tyrants". In the US, we get a selection of tyrants from which to choose. >;-)
cpeterso
finkployd responds:
> Now there is a trade off. Do we allow e-commerce?
> Or do we allow state to educate kids and fight crime. Choose carefully, we can only pick one
>
> Where is is written that to be a vice president, you have to be a complete moron? Beteen Gore
> and Danny boy, we have had 12 years of some of the most off the wall comments come from that department.
The place it's written where, in order to be a vice president, you really do have to be a complete moron is in the minds of the voters.
It's a classical fallacy; that of "false dichotomy", and it's made much easier to do by a quirk of the English language. Most geeks instinctively know the difference between "A OR B" and "A XOR B", but the general public generally doesn't. Ask Joe Schmoe if he wants "pepperoni or olives" on his pizza, and he'll never say "both".
Politicians love this technique, because it makes demonizing one's opponent trivial. If you're not for Mr. Foo's Plan to save the chiiiildrun, you must be into taking pictures of nude six-year-old kids making bombs from instructions they got off the Internet.
With taxes; there are plenty of other ways to fund the local police and schools, but e-commerce threatens one of those ways. Therefore you can have e-commerce or police protection. By implication, you can't have both.
With crypto, you can have either free crypto or less terrorism. Never mind that the crypto cat is already out of the bag and that there are plenty of effective ways to fight terrorism. By putting them in a sentence with the word "or", the implication is that the two are mutually exclusive.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together, geek or not, can see the flaws in those arguments.
As an added bonus, the use of the false dichotomy allows your handlers to get two opposing sound bites for the price of one. In Silicon Valley, "The VP supports finding a solution to these issues that allows the Internet and e-commerce to flourish". In the Mississippi Delta, "The Veep strongly opposes measures which would strip the states and counties of their ability to educate children and fight crime."
There's a reason why basic courses in logic, philosophy, and reasoning-and-rhetoric are no longer taught in high schools: none of the presently-ruling class of politicians would ever be elected if a substantial portion of the electorate were capable of even the most basic elements of reasoning: it's much easier to manipulate the actions of a flock of drooling sheeplike morons than it is to convince a bunch of sharp-minded logicians.
If it were ever extended to the broader population (this can never happen until the broader population acquires the rudiments of logical thinking), the 'net's style of open debate would scare the hell out of politicians, because bullshit would be exposed for what it is. Is anyone here buying LinuxOne?
Sadly, the converse is also true. The fact that the broader population will never acquire the critical thinking skills that we geeks take for granted means that "politicans and geek issues" will remain a red herring. You can't bluster geeks, you have to convince them. But as a politician, why spend millions trying to convince the geeks when there are 200-million sheep out there who will beg (with their votes) for your comforting logical fallacies like a masochist begs for the whip?
They need to be told that the internet, like most the rest of the world, is a place for ADULTS. It includes its equivalent of bars, bedrooms, and X-rated bookstores and theatres.
The solution to the perceived problem of kids viewing internet porn is not for government to censor the entire virtual world down to a level suitable for children. The solution is instead for childrens parents, guardians, and other supervisors to watch the kids and make sure they don't frequent the virtual bars, bedrooms, and X-rated theatres. They should not be running about unsupervised on the internet until they're competent to make their own decisions on such matters.
(Wiring the schools for internet is not a wonderful thing. It's actually the government making an excuse to censor internet content.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is why I stay politically neutral.
Anyway, there were a few things about the article that I found interesting. One, it never tackled the encryption issue. It mentioned it once in passing, but never said anything about it.
Two, check the bit about the MS case. There's a decidedly pro-MS slant. Then again, that's probably why the site's called that.
Three, the filtering problem. The issue is thorny; kids really shouldn't be accessing all the pr0n that's out there. But the government has no place in this, and no right to take the role of guardian. That's the job of parents and educators. There's also the problem that most filtering software blocks harmless sites (the most often-cited example is that medical sites get blocked).
Apple's KidSafe filtering software is actually intriguing for that reason. Instead of blacklisting the "bad" sites, it whitelists "good" ones, as approved by a panel of teachers and librarians. This one, much as I hate to support filtering, might actually have something of a place in the school system. School-owned computers shouldn't be used for stuff other than schoolwork anyway. As long as they don't try to force it onto personal and home machines, there's something of an appeal to those.
The argument can also be made that the government owns the computers placed in public schools and libraries, and therefore has the right to do what it wants with its property.
Note that I don't support mandatory filtering at all. I would still much rather see any "protection" acts shot down. But I get the feeling that eventually our twisted right-fringe zealot friends in the government are going to get what they want, so it might as well be channeled to where it can do the least destruction possible.
Let me disclose first, that I'm an atheist. That being sad, I didn't say we need to go to a religious morality, even though the Constitution is founded upon Judeo-Christian morality. The simple definition of morality is the rightness and wrongness of an action. Is it wrong to kill? Most people would think so... it's not a religous centered idea. The premise behind the general laws of the US is, or at least should be, to prevent that which hurts someone else.
Also note, the separation of church and state is a mythical lie in the revisionist history books today. There is no article in the Constitution that says that the religion and government entities have to be mutually exclusive; the only thing mentioned is that "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the exercise or the worship of religion". Even as an atheist, I see the importance of allowing things like school prayer if the kid wants to.
Start getting into more blurred things like homosexual marriage and it becomes more obfuscated. IMHO, marriage is the public bond between a man and a woman who seek to have a family in order to procreate. Yeah, not very PC but it's my opinion. That being said, although I don't care what someone does behind closed doors, I don't think homosexual marriage itself is proper even if they adopt kids( who knows what kind of impact a gay relationship could have on someone... some may handle it well but some may be devastated as they get older ). I don't have a problem with insurance companies offering coverage for gay partners IF THEY CHOOSE TO. It shouldn't be a government mandated thing much like government shouldn't be banning smoking in restaurants and bars. If some company decides to offer partnership benefits, they'll be rewarded by the gay community.
Basically, the way I see it, government shouldn't have its tentacles in your personal, private life but to some extent marriage itself is a societal contract. If there is enough demand for something, healthcare or whatever, someone will come in to fill the niche market if they could be convinced that they could profit. You might raise questions about boycotting but it sure didn't seem to hurt disney.
The feds should get out of all the unecessary areas that they have their claws in and get back to national defense and interstate regulation. Last year, the government spent $359 billion on necessities and $953 billion on social programs. Regardless of what the democrats and the heavily liberal media say, it sure wasn't defense spending that got us into debt and I'll let you guess which has decreased and which has increased. Under Bradley and Gore, expect to see the second number double to pay for their socialized medicine programs( and while everyone's at it, ask why canadians come here for medical treatment ).
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.