Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot in Politics?
Michael "Codetalker" Obersnel asks: "I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas on how to turn all that passionate talk on Slashdot (how I love it) into a political force that people will pay attention to. Like a lobby group or something similar. It seems that people tolerate the DMCA and spam enough to complain about it but not really do anything about. I think we could change that with some organization and a cohesive front. I'm not suggesting that Slashdot itself be responsible, only that the community take part. Like a micro-payment system to hire lawyers for topics we are interested in or some sort of petitioning system. I know I'd pay a buck to overturn the DMCA, free Dimitri, outlaw spam, protest license problems, protect the GPL etc."
It's called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Best Slashdot Co
If all the people who take the time to complain on here would just take the time to phone and/or write their congressperson, it would probably make a big difference. The other side is organized; why aren't we?
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Then pay the eff.org
--- censored
we do what we do because we are lazy. if an e-mail won't cut it, well they just won't listen :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
We could call it the Elementary Freedom Fight or something like that, and even get a website such as http://www.eff.org. Oh, wait. That's already taken ...
Skip it. Listen to the tv campaigns, they have enough political puke anyhow.
I think we should just have 24/7 mindless Bush bashing. That way we can get all our leftist friends to boost ad ratings and show the Euros how cool we are. Anybody with me?
Are screaming, katzian, verbose-but-meaningless idiots getting involved in polit....uhh... oh...
[Echoing D'oh!]
I'd suggest naming it as "Nerd Lobby".
I wonder how this could by any means work, and which kind of issues this lobby would care about.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of lobbyists!
Join the EFF.
Or at least donate.
You would think everybody on Slashdot would know about it by now.
maybe not lazy but half of slashdot readers are probably highschool/college students with no time or money to be of much help
... is by allowing the EFF to have free banners on the site. If lets say every 50th banner is a free banner for the EFF then /. and Andover would really put their money where their mouth is. I mean there's anyway a decline in banner sells worldwide, that gap could easily be filled with "goodwill" banners... How'bout that Taco & Co?
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
>>on how to turn all that passionate talk on
>>Slashdot (how I love it)
Why bother? It will only turn into a stage for
the minority? that think Linux will solve all
the worlds problems.
As we have been told over and over, if you don't use Linux, there must be something wrong with you.
There, I think I was the first person to say "Linux" in this thread.
I reckon they should print some t-shirts saying,
"I'll carry an ID card when you shove it up my cold, dead ass"
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
I believe that was the idea (or one of the ideas) behind Bruce Perens' Technocrat.net. Unfortunately, discussions between users never reached a critical mass to get out of cyberspace, and Bruce decided to shut the site down.
"It is more complicated than you think" (The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925)
There's the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), which I'm still waiting for the results of the interview that were posted, unfortunately before the recent events. That is a lobbying group on many tech issues, and they appear to be pro-Slashdot-manta in several cases.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
We're just getting started, so it's a great time to join in.
Miko O'Sullivan
Something that I'd like to see on this site:
Links to congressional websites where you could email your representatives/governors/senators/president when an issue comes up that needs grassroots support. I know I've sent emails and written letters to the government after reading some posts here, but it generally takes a while to find where you need to go. Someone generally posts a link, but why not have it after the description of the issue?
Just a thought.
Congresspeople and other politicans pay attention to three things: (1) manually typed, manually signed letters from registered voters with reasonable arguments and tone (2) contributions of $$$ (the more the better, but any amount gets attention) (3) contributions of manhours.
I suggested when the Dimitri issue broke that if 100,000 slashdotters typed out a letter to their Congressional representatives (quick - who is the house member from your district?) and mailed it in, then Congress would begin to pay attention to the debate.
The typical response was "I don't know where a manual typewriter exists {hint - your public library} and if I can't e-mail my letter I won't bother. And send in $50??? You have to be joking!".
So exactly why would you expect any politician to take anything said here seriously?
sPh
You can always donate to the Free Software Foundation too.
I like fire ants. They are very spicy!
I think its a bad idea... at least to have it associated with Slashdot. If someone was to create something seperate then fine. But I cherish the independence of /.
/. isn't the postings, but the replys.
/. had gone from a really cool community (that anyone can participate in) to something with "official positions".
.0215 Euros.
Yeah, I know some will complain that it really isn't independent, that the same types of stories are posted, and there's an anti-MS slant, but I think Taco and the boys (girls?) do a much better job than most folks give them credit for. Plus, the real value of
Something would just sit wrong with me knowing that
Just my
How about instead of just donating money and hiring lawyers (please note eff.org in previous posts), we get someone, who represents the slashdot community, in a position of REAL power. Such as helping to get local selectmen, mayors, and senators/congressmen elected. These are the people who make / help make laws.
Helping someone who represents the slashdot community get into some of these positions would really make a difference in the short, and long run. And, if someone did get elected through this method and through our backing, it would make the slashdot community a viable player in the role of politics.
Just think of it, politicians asking for our backing.... wow! The day will and can come, if we have the right people, means, and support.... and none of this pushing some strange fourth party politician like I was reading during the presidential elections.... I mean a real, viable candidate!
Think of the possibilities!
Linuxrunner
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
I've seen what happens when a geek becomes a political activist, and it's called "Richard Stallman". Keep your priorities straight.
...but for what? On these boards, people range from libertarians to conservatives to social democrats to socialists, with a generous sprinkle of anarchists, nihilists, new-age followers and so on ad infinitum. A political movement would become an excercise in flamage withing ten seconds of platform discussion.
A non-political, issue-focused lobbying group, on the other hand, could be workable. On the other hand, EFF fills that role quite well already.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I can see it now. We'd have to start another disscussion board to rant about taco's lobbying against using windows (sorry, but i use it for games) or making "user friendly" ilegal, or perhaps even banning proper spelling and gramar?
It may be a nice idea to have a /. lobby, but the /. community is an international one, and I doubt that more than half the readers are USian.
/. readers, I apologize for the provincialism of my fellow USians.
So, for any non-USian
EFF is for the USA only.
Are there other, perhaps more European-centric organisations, as well?
There have been many times when, on a lark, I've posted completely contradictory comments, only to have both modded up as "insightful" and both having numerous replies (sometimes from the same people) telling me how much they agree.
For every Microsoft basher, there's a Microsoft fan.
For every "Free Dmitri" user, there's one who thinks that he ought to be in jail.
For every anti-capitalist, there's a capitalist.
I don't know that it's necessary a good idea to start hiring lawyers to represent a mob of people who all disagree with each other.
On the other hand, maybe that's the best thing we could do.
Got Rhinos?
Now that sounds like trolling, but I mean this as honest criticism. To quote Nathan Torkington from a presentation he gave at a Perl conference: "Passion doesn't convince. Passion makes you look like an idiot or an asshole."
.plan file or a Larry Wall speech. Realistically, especially in politics, you cannot force everything into a black or white extreme. A middle ground, like "I use Perl sometimes, and I also use Python, Lisp, and TCL" is more reasoned.
The problem with most Slashdot discussion is that it comes from people with tremendous lack of experience. Language battles and API wars are fought by college students defending and regurgitating what they learned last semester or what they read in John Carmack's
On Slashdot, you find people who not only stick to the extremes, but they stick to the extremes for extreme ideological reasons. A typical example is someone arguing the superiority of Linux over Windows XP without ever having used the latter. Because the former is Open Source, so it goes, it must be better. You won't get far outside of geek circles with these kind of hard-liner views. A geek in politics is like Jerry Falwell running for president.
Thinking of collecting donations for this currently nonexistent PAC: All we need is the mouse-click equivalent of a 900 number; say, an Amazon one-click donation link, or the equivalent. Then we get the URL posted in a lead article on /. and the /. effect produces an instant lobbying fund, the money supporting efforts against strategies like this so we can prevent anyone else doing the same thing.
Laws and sausages are made much the same, but sausages are better with mustard.
could some karma whore please post a link to the EFF? OK, seriously. You want your congressman to take notice of your causes? Close your friggin browser, pull out a piece of paper, and write him. Better yet, pick up the phone and call his office. He really doesn't give two shits about online polls, petitions, and weblogs.
Remember when Microsoft sent out letters to people and told them to sign and send them to their representatives? Well, trying to force that on people was obviously silly, but the general idea was good. If I had a letter in my hand that said exactly what I wanted to express, and all I had to do was sign it and drop it in the mail, I'd have no reason to procrastinate.
Suppose we form a web site where good writers can put together coherent, intelligent letters on various issues. Concerned citizens can go to the site, browse the letters for one they like, and download it in a printer-friendly form. On the same site, they can also look up the address and fax numbers of their representatives, so all they have to do is sign it and mail it in.
Yes, I know the EFF has some of these features. However, it would be useful if the community could contribute sample letters, and if the process was even easier than it is now. Remember, the target audience is me, the lazy, disorganized procrastinator.
If we could implement some kind of karma system for letters to congressmen, all the passion that goes into hour-long rants here could instead go to something useful.
Got Rhinos?
In the UK a group of people have formed the Campaing for Digital Rights (CDR ;), and our web site can be found at http://uk.eurorights.org/
i nfo/free-sklyarov-uk
At the moment we are campainging for three things: Consumer Digital Rights,with regard to use-restricted cd's, to free Dmitry Sklyarov and to prevent dumb laws like the EUCD (Europes version of the DMCA) from being passed.
We have held a couple of protests outside the US embassy, to ask for Dmitry to be released, the first of which had a ten minute report on NewsNight, the BBC news review program.
On October the 6th we are going to start our leafletting campaign to raise awareness of the new brain-damaged cd's being released. A copy of the leaflet can be downloaded from http://uazu.net/cd/index.html
Any people looking to take part in the campaign, should join the (now incorrectly named) Free Dmitry UK mailing list, which can be found at http://mailman.xenoclast.org/cgi-bin/mailman/list
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
No matter what the issue is, there will always be opposition. There will always be the wing extremists who oppose the view so strongly, that they won't even listen to reason. That part won't change. Neither will the government as long as its run by white, middle to upper aged men who were born in the same era as my grandparents, especially when none of them understand the technology that they're voting for or against.
The best way that we (as constituents) have to deal with this situation in a peaceful way, is 1) to vote. Vote for the candidate who supports the same issues that are important to you. 2) Write to your congressman/woman and let them know how you feel on certain issues. I know a lot of people think that their letters won't help, but if all the Slashdot-ers all wrote to their representative (granted it wouldn't be the same person, but you get my drift), I bet that it would at least be read, if not acted upon.
The government was created 'Of, by, and for the people'. Well if the people don't like whats going on, its the people's right AND responsibility to change those in the government.
In order to make an effective argument, letters like 'u suck, get outta office' aren't going to do much for the movement. Instead, it will only strengthen the opposition's arguement. What we need to do is write logical, coherent letters, explaining the situation (I bet that a lot of these representative types aren't fully briefed on how it really is), give alternatives, and best of all, give good reasons.
Laws can be repealed, however it takes action on behalf of the people to make those changes. People shouting that they hate [insert elected official's name here] doesn't make a difference. What they need to do instead is vote their mind.
And for those out there who are really ambitious (and with no criminal background!) run for representative yourself! Which state is it that has an 18 year old congressman? Delaware?
I would definitely like to see some kind of lobby group, and I would be a part of it, as long as its peaceful, legal, logical, and creative. I'm not going to help or support a group that has an '31337 d00d' in charge.
We need to find someone out there that is empathetic to the feelings of people like us Slashdoters, and go with it.
And they said zombies weren't real!
to know that the FSF is the brainchild behind GNU. Check out Free Software Foundation.
Highly recommended for GNU fans.
What's a sig?
It's a shame that a Beowulf cluster of Slashdot lobbyists would typically be found running Quake instead of using all that power for something useful.
Got Rhinos?
Contact your congresional representatives directly with any concerns you have. That is the surest way to ensure your voice is heard. I do once or twice a year.
It would be nice if politicians listened to us, but they just see us as minority group of finatics.
/. is that the advancement of laws be stopped. We don't have any alternatives, we just want these laws to go away. You want to make a difference and be listened to? Propose your own laws that include regulations we can live with. You want to get the RIAA off everbodies back, weaken their economical standing or find a middle ground everybody will be happy with. From what I see, nobody is doing this. We're basically starting our own little war with every other industry including our own, and yet we're still not unified in our efforts of opposition. Last I checked, a group of separated individuals don't win wars against unified groups.
There's still a good chunk of people out there that believe in some mystical entity controlling our lives without any proof of such thoughts. Yet these are the same people that say "that's impossible" when they see what science is capable of. Like it or not, these people have more political influence than we do. They have more power because they are unified, with leadership and there's a lot of history behind them.
There's a lot of programmers here, and I'm sure they're all used to trying to see the big picture and chart all the variables. This is one of those BIG projects in mapping all the variables and figuring out their relationship. The major points are: there's little history in computer technology right now; t's still new and strange to a majority of people; pogrammers work long hours, and the pay is decreasing, leaving less time for political movements; and there is no single "leader" that represents us, which is very important towards political advancement. You can't expect politicians to summarize the demands of many individuals, all with different points of view. They're more likely to listen to an individual with well thought ideas and the backing of a large community.
What we have been proposing on
And lucky you: education can be done easily, by you, today. Spend some time thinking about how you can present your viewpoint, sift the wheat from the chaf, and when your topic of interest pops up during conversation, try to explain your viewpoint in the most consise and clear way possible.
and it's called the EFF. Do we need another lobby organization?
Jason
You just slashdotted congress!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
1% is being very generous. I bet the number is more like .001%.
When the time came to write my anti-weakened-crypto letter, not only did I get it onto one page of dead tree, but I hand-delivered it to the local congressional offices downtown. Especially with all the WTC disruption, I had no idea how fast or slow mail delivery would be had I mailed the directly to DC. There's some sort of diplomatic-pouch type thing from the local offices.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Only people with karma over 10 or who have paid money into the fund can vote (once per month) on allocation in order to stop skiddies and others manipulating the distribution too much.
The karma thing is basically saying "Anyone who is probably not a troll". Karma whores could be put off by charging 1 or more karma for voting.
Just a thought, off the top of me 'ead, pull it up the flag pole and see if the budgie bite.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
See, the big problem with writing your senator, etc, is that he only cares so much. The guys who finance his election are the ones that get the real response, because they expect to get the government they paid for (and often do).
When it becomes illegal to use strong encryption, for example, I think the best way we can get someone's attention is to make it clear to all online vendors that we can no longer do business with them because their sites are no longer secure. Make sure all your friends know that internet commerce is no longer secure, so they make the same decisions.
(Not that internet commerce is that huge a part of the economy, but it's the best we can do.)
Once the people who own congress start feeling the pinch, then they'll relay their discomfort to their legislative lackeys, who will in turn respond with legislation just as hasty and ill conceived as what we're rebelling against now.
The point is that if we have a hard time finding (buying) influence with our elected officials, our best bet is to turn the heat up on those who hold the real purse strings.
... is of course the S l a s h d o t E f f e c t.
Sooo... congresscritters are thinking of passing a nasty ole law? Rob could just threaten to post a story like "An anonymous coward writes: Streaming video of Natalie Portmans hot grit's posted to the US Congress Web site. "([sic] - TacoLexicon in force. my real grammar is better.)
Congress would naturally cave in and meet all our demands. Well, maybe not RMS's...
--------------- Murphy was an otpimist.
We have every stripe of political opinion on this page. thus let it ever be! The day /. became a lobbying organization, it would lose its unique position as a forum where all voices can be heard (even if some get modded down)
it looks like it has been said already, but 15-year-olds (note that i'm 2x that) tend to not have a great deal of clout with local, state or federal representatives (it might be the skateboards *:^).
however, some 15-year-olds do manage to get through adolescence and make the effort to go out and vote when they are of legal age - a fact that the politicians see to neglect.
to be honest, i'd trust my daughter to make more informed and wise decisions than most of the people i work with.
in reality, unless the collective, "slashdot-we" manage to create a bribe..er...fund to contribute to campaigns, real (to us) issues will never get real solutions.
Mind the gap...
They think it's perfectly reasonable for advertisers and con-artists to peddle their wares on your nickle:
a m/ HTML/19980729_eff_hr3888_letter.html
http://www.eff.org/Spam_cybersquatting_abuse/Sp
They just don't like it when you get more than one spam.
like I said, in general. you are definatly up there with RMS, ESR and the minority of other Geeks who are not lazy, but most of us are.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Slashdot posters are very uninformed people who need to read more news from varied sources and take a civics class. They are examples of why universal voting rights may be a bad idea. They don't even understand the basics of this country. 90 percent of them seem to think America is a democracy (and not a republic).
This idea was performed as an aprilsfool joke by the big LUG, Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group, (www.sslug.dk) this year. The Party was named "The Linux Party" and over a period of few days 292 people signed up for it!
The SSLUG jokers said in a comment, that the party cannot be a reality due to the wide spread of political interest from the Tux-lovers. Although we all like the OpenSource idea, we cannot agree on economics, social plans etc.
On the positive side it showed that the Linux movement is coming from everywhere: Geographical, political, sexual etc. Beware of the paenguins! =D
Dr. Ø
Eih bennek, eih blavek
Just follow the NRA model. You've already got a bunch of fanatics. The next step is to figure out how to get their money. That will be a little harder since they are a bunch of thieving fanatics who won't even support their favorite music....
Today on NPR they talked about the coming bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It sounds as if in the next few years, there's going to be a decent amount of noise about this.
What may be key to us is that Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark, and there will hopefully be increased interest in all three historical figures. Any renewed interest in Thomas Jefferson gives us the opportunity to bring up his politics, including his beliefs on copyright.
Some sort of Jefferson-fad wouldn't hurt Geek issues a bit.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
moderators - please mod nagora's post up!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I wonder how many can actually name their congressman.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
I'd like to see Slashdot start a slashbox for each of the following organizations. The data for the slashbox can be taken directly from their home pages - they each have news headlines that a bit of PERL could pull out very easily. In addition, I'd like to see a section before the headlines labeled "top issues" that can be written by the organization themselves. It would be a space for a link to the issues they think most important.
CDT
ALCU
EFF
These organizations stand for many of the things talked about on Slashdot. Those that feel strongly about any of the issues supported by one of these organizations should join that organization!
Rudy
1. 2.
The Federation of American Scientists conducts analysis and advocacy on science, technology and public policy, including national security, nuclear weapons, arms sales, biological hazards, secrecy, education technology, information technology, energy and the environment... FAS combines the scholarly resources of its scientists with a knowledge of practical politics. As a non-profit organization licensed to lobby in the public interest, FAS is uniquely qualified to bring the scientific perspective to the legislative arena through direct lobbying, membership and grassroots work, and expert testimony at Congressional hearings.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
We need a Political Action Group.
,,, got a course this morning but I'll look into it and I hope you DO TOO, contact me of you got info etc... we could setup a web site a lest to start and more info from ppl who knows politics would be apreciated
Or we will get ripped of our rights that is for sure. And it's even more true with the recents evens
The first group I tought of was eff but it's mission is not what we wish for (as seen in previous posts)
I don't think this kind of body exists right now and the only peaple I see witch are in position to motivate and lead this movement is slashdot.
Slashdot is for me and many others a central point of our "cyberlife"
So if I wanted to create a Political Action group I would
1- Contact someone who could help us the the political arena
2 - Create manifesto for the group with the help of the community (Slashdot and others...)
3 - Create the lobby group
4 - Get the community to donate etc... memberships to pay for the lobby (5$ a moth should be affordable to evreyone or something like that)
No more time to talk
Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law Love is the law, love under will Capital drives the will of mankind
I think once they offer things like online voting, and allowing people to leave comments about the candidates with some type of peer moderation system, our voices will be heard!
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
My feeling is that although PACs command some attention, sincere letters from constituents weigh far more heavily.
My humble suggestion is to create a place on Slashdot where members can readily find the names/addresses/email adresses/phone numbers of the Representatives and Senators in Congreess who vote on these issues. Of course, key members on the right committees (like Technology) should be prominently displayed.
A well-categorized list of these elected officials with the ability to fire off an email while surfing (a/k/a a mailto: link) would promote discourse directly with those to whom we have given the decision-making ability.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Maybe setting up a /. Presskit for each article would help...
/. Community" or such..
Some details, in my opinon a Presskit should be published when a thread is closed. It should consist of the article itself, an overview of the links used in it, and all Informative/Interesting/etc. comments with a threshhold greater than 3.
It could be called the "Voice of the
I'm sure that some newspapers would be interested in publishing comments approved by the mass moderation system...
We don't need lawyers if we have the public.
Just my 0.02 EUR
With more and more ill thought out laws being presented to Congress that attempt to impose poorly thought out restrictions on Technology and the Internet, a strong grass roots lobby group is certainly getting more and more important each and every day.
As computer profesionals, we need to be more vigilant when it comes to law and politics, and be at the forefront to provide information and guidance to our countries lawmakers. For example, the DMCA could have been so much better if we IT profesionals had been there to provide input at the drafting stages; we could have told them back then, that the provisions againts IP circumvention were inadiquate to protect against Hackers and Pirates. We could have been there, to provide useful information to the media companies to help them develop their incryption schemes so that they would not have had to use the horribly insecure CSS system, which has led directly to the arrest of a Norwegian teenager. No one wants to see people in jail, we could have avoided it, and we didn't.
Maybe now is the time to speak up and help Sentor Ashcroft to draft his anti-terrorism bill in a way that will actually help to catch evil-doers. We all know that encryption back doors are technologically infeasable, why are we not there right now explaining that key escrow is far more workable and sensible?
The time now is for action, so lets get to it and make America proud!
I don't know what the american equivalent is, but in israel we have some nonprofit, non-govermental organizations ("AMUTUT") helping the poor, lobyying for education, etc.
try to get the EFF to join forces with one of these:
e.g., make a volunteer effort to incorporate linux in schools, teach programming and/or creating profesional libraries for the poor, etc.
You cannot fight the rich people's lobbies 'on their own playground': they are professionals, they'll eat you like a snack.
but if you join an existing movement, with it's politically savvy and dedicated people, and work from bellow (i.e. actually contibute to the welfare of common people in a way they can recognize.) you may have a chance to influence your society (look at SHAS in israel.)
Working for necessity's mother.
Consensus is derived by compromise. Can you imagine where the middle would be today without zealous idiots on either end of it? We'd have fascist lefties ruling or we'd have a christian theocracy that'd make the Taliban or Saudis look gentle by comparison.
Put a bunch of radical screeming-ninnies in the mix so they'll make the middle move. Initially, society will react against them like "whoa, who're those crazy fools?!", but eventually many folks will see sense underlying some of their arguments and we'll be better for it.
--- The reclining dragon deeply fears the blue pool's clarity.
the problem is that lawyers don't believe in micro-payments.
Dave
ESR and RMS are lazy. When's the last time you saw them get off their fat asses to do anything but complain? All ESR does is offer useless advice and sit on the porch shooting his guns, and all RMS does is make a pest of himself on serious developer's mailing lists.
By the way, "geeks" is a lowercase word. It isn't a nationality or anything.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
Well, isn't the purpose of a PAC to make it so that people don't have to exert as much effort? ;-) Just throw money at the PAC and the PAC does the activism. I think that's what the submitter wants, he just doesn't think the PAC that he wants, exists yet.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I wonder how many can actually name their congressman.
Most people can't. That's why the ACLU, NRA, Christian Coalition, and so forth are more than happy to tell you. The stuff I get in the mail from some of these people is constantly telling me who I should contact since they assume I'm too lazy to find out for myself. That's what these groups are for - to make it easy for their members to be heard.
I'd actually pay a buck to turn down some of the political meandering that goes on around here. It takes away from the News for Nerds and gives to the News for Activists. I've turned off every topic I think has to do with annoying political activistism (Your Rights Online, Censorship, any article that CmdrTaco posts) and this makes it way into the Slashdot.org topic.
... is that we're a bunch of normal citizens with no hidden agenda or corporate interests... The lobbyists who actually sway the lawmakers decisions are the ones who are funded by huge companies, like big tobacco for example. We did well with the DMCA protests earlier, and that's about all we can do, organize and voice our opinions when the right opportunity comes up. Unless someone here is a multi-trillionare who wants to start lobbying in Washington, we're really not going to sway the Lawmaker's opinions.
~ now you know
Part of the problem is that people don't know who
their elected officials are.
A good place to start is www.congress.org.
You can easily search for your representatives
by simply entering your zip-code.
Hope this helps.
*sigh* back to work...
I would like to know the geographical distribution of the slashdot readers/posters.
You could do a connection world map with live data on it. Of course maybe there is a not so expensive way of releasing the data.
I expect density to be high in the USA. But just would like to see where else a lightbulb pops up.
I would love us to be the first community to do so? Is there something alike elsewhere?
Would this compromise security or freedom? I think not. Maybe you can tell if there would be a reason for not doing it?
I'd pay a buck to overturn the DMCA, free Dimitri, outlaw spam, protest license problems, protect the GPL etc... you can do all of that with a buck? man, you really know how to streach a dollar.
;)] and the typical anti-MS slant but a legit presentation in the general public about the advantages of open-source/GNU software. i'm sure taxpayers are very happy to fork over millions of dollars to pay for systems at public offices so that when they go there to patronize the service they paid for, the 'systems are down'. I think we need to recruit writers to write columns in local newspapers, about success stories (the city in florida etc.) TCO comparisions, uptimes, at least in a way that would make it clear to the general public that they are paying way more than they should (it's a gross mis-appropriation of funds) and counter at least one of the two strong suites of MS and other closed-source vendors: marketing. (the other being the dough to *contribute* to politicians where it'll be hard to match 'em). so stop thinking like a typical american -- it's not all about money. where i agree with you tho is getting some people mobilized as a coherent front to check and balance bills that affect technology. IBM is doing some of that but it's one multination vs. the other. hardly the true representation for linux or other Open-Source/GNU software... but then you are entitled to yours and me, mine.
Yeah yeah, the collective power of a community each with a dollar. you put 10,000 peeps with a dollar each but you're still left with $10,000. that might just pay for dimitri's bail. hardly enough to pay for all of the things you've mentioned.
Money is hardly the solution here. the beast north-west has the edge there. we need the collective power to give Linux (and the idea of software freedom) a 'marketing' competitiveness. and i think that's where the collective efforts should go. i'm not talking about beast-bashing [like i'm doing here..
Sounds good to me, but how do we determine what orgs get put on the list of choices?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I agree with Theodrake.
1000 individual letters make a bigger impact, because it indicates that 1000 people each had enough conviction to write about an issue. A petition just indicates that one person had conviction; the signatories just went along for the ride (it doesn't take much effort to sign a petition).
The way, it seems to me, is to build a few options into slashcode.
/. would become a very powerful force overnight. If done right, you could have a pro and contra click through, but maybe taco and the bells can mod that one. It seems that with those three options you get a very powerful trio while given the average /.'er (even those anonymous lurkers) and chance to really influence the political system that we all flame about so often. And I hate to say it, but if you hand it to your readers, /., than you will in a way become a political force.
/. is already VERY political. So anti-up. I'll be right there with you, all the way...
First, when an issue has any type of political implications, then, as the catagory images that are placed with the story, a vote via email link, a paypal contribution, and yes... a typed letter that can be directly printed (event the envelope). This way
What's that you say? Your not interested in becoming political? I dare say that
I certainly hope so! RROWRR!
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
We all "know" what's wrong with the system, but when the rubber hits the road, very few are willing to take the time, energy and money to try to make a difference.
Now, in all fairness, the US population in general isn't particularly different from our subpopulation, it's just that we've found a different outlet for talking about what's wrong and what should be fixed...instead of meeting at the barbershop or the bar, we have online outlets. But even though the forum has changed, the result is still the same. All words, no action.
-h-
Even though slashdot does not generally report news itself but instead draws interest to certain articles, it does pose as a news service of a sort. We discuss the articles, exchanging opinions etc. If slash became a lobby platform, any objectivity that it may have had with respect to the writing here would go out the window. That is what a lobby is. A subjective opinion.
The power we have in numbers is tempting to us - many of us are the technicians and administrators that drive our technology. We control the information infrastructure.
We, more than anyone else, need to pay attention to the "other side" of tech arguments. Keeping this forum as impartial as possible is a good way of doing that.
If you are American and looking to protect our use of encryption in America, you may wish to check out Americans for the Preservation of Information Security.
/dev/psychic: No medium found
90% or more of the political stuff on /. is related to the US. Please tell me why this has any relevance to me. I'm not an American, nor do I live or desire to live in the US. How would this help me? /. is an international forum, if you want to do US political lobbying, fine, but please create a separate topic for it so that I can check the box to ignore the stories. And that goes for things like the DMCA: I've got the gist of it, now I can be on the alert for similar practises here. I'm fed-up and bored of the DMCA, and don't want to hear anymore about it.
The ACLU (http://aclu.org)is already very sypathetic to the issues that seem to be recurring themes here on slasdot. There are some differences. But also the Libertarian party (http://www.lp.org/)is very much against the types of infringments on freedoms that we talk about.
Although, there are pitfalls with supporting a third party in a two party system which should be under
They don't take any case. They only take cases, which will get the most press, therefore showing their cause.
ACLU isn't as bad, but actually has a no-computer policy now, they're handing all that over to the EFF.
GNU is only for license copyleft issues, which is a mute point - as it seems that every company who violates GPL quickly turns the other cheek.
I agree with the author, we should form a union, PAC (Political Action Committee), something so that we can be more organized and be clearly heard, but make it easy enough for people like me, and I'm sure for many of the other thousands of people who feel the same way but don't want to write a letter to there congressman or protest on a weekend.
What I don't want to support is any anti-Microsoft legislation, frankly I've been against the whole crusade against them, a lot of people think that slashdot is full of 'rabid linux zealots' if slashdot does form some type of political group - please leave that linux stuff behind.
-Jon
this is my sig.
The most effective way to lobby is to make one on one contact with your Representative or Senator. It is actually much easier to meet with your Representative than most people think. If you are travelling to DC, simply call their office and set up a meeting. Explain that you want to discuss Tech Policy. Even if the elected official is unable to meet with you, most offices will set up a meeting with a staffer who specializes in certain issue areas. This staffer is typically called a Legislative Assistant. Be aware that this staffer may have only a rudimentary knowledge of how technology works. They are policy geeks after all, not tech geeks.
/. in the past, Congress is deluged with tens of thousands of e-mails every month.
If you are not travelling to DC, find out where your Representatives nearest State/District office is located. Contact the staffer at that location and arrange to set up a meeting with the staffer. During the meeting explain that you would like to meet with your Representative the next time they are in the area.
If you are overly shy, write an old fashioned snail mail to your Representative's DC office. Elected officials typically have a policy of responding to all letters. Believe it or not, those officials who do not respond, typically do not get reelected.
DO NOT USE E-MAIL! E-MAIL is the worst way to communicate your concerns. As has been posted on
This is not the sig you are looking for...
is to put morons like John Katz in the faces of our duly elected representatives.
"Mr. Katz, I understand your group has some objections to this bill outlawing Linux?"
"Senator, the zeitgeist of the age we inhabit is literally filled with the pathos-ridden desiderata of a people whose very conception of reality is marked by a lingering sense of technophobic alienation . . . "
"Sergeant-at-Arms! Sergeant-at-Arms! Get this pretentious lackwit out of here before he makes my ears bleed! God, where does he -get- this stuff? If this is what Linux does to America's youth, then by God we ought to lock up that Torvalds fellow (that's a foreign name, innnit?) and throw away the key. Where's Ashcroft, we need -more- legislation to erase this horror from the Earth - for the sake of the
children . . . "
By the way, "geeks" is a lowercase word. It isn't a nationality or anything
;-)
I would beg to differ on that point
on the first points about ESR and RMS, they actualy go places and make speeches.
RMS went to India to open the FSF-India
ESR speaks at conventions as does RMS
btw one realy active and not lazy **Geek** is Jon "Maddog" Hall. that guy goes all over the world to evangilise Linux, plus he has time to write books.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and all of that. The people here are no different than anywhere else. Everyone is content to sit around and complain about how things are, but no one actually wants to do anything about it. The prevailing attitude is, "If we can throw a couple of dollars at it to have someone else take care of it, we'll do it. But anything else is too difficult." If you really feel strongly about the DCMA and the new wiretapping proposals or the Microsoft case, then write a letter to the responsible people. Sure, it may not get read. And if it's read, the person reading it may not agree with what you have to say. But you've at least made your voice heard to your representative in the government. Which isn't going to happen complaining around here or at the office water cooler. I'm off to go find my old electric typewriter...
You seem to be suggesting turning the slashdot community into a viable political party. I don't think that's possible. For any third party candidate to win an election that means anything (it might not take a lot to get a mayor elected in a small town) it takes quite a lot of dedication and work on the part of a great many people with real world connections and issues. The slashdot community is spread across the entire United States and beyond. To even win a US representative election it would take a concentrated group of people capable of convincing real voters that casting a ballot for whatever candidate would be in their best interest. Most people aren't too interested in the GPL. State legislature elections would be even harder for such a candidate to break into; people would want to vote for someone who seems most interested in local issues of the state. Forming a PAC with substantial backing numbers might be a good idea, but actually trying to get a candidate elected is pretty far-fetched.
Only a buck for each of course... I am an aussie after all ;-)
/.
Seriously though.. I like this idea and would like to see this as a bold link on
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Case in point: you.
If anyone here wants to prove me wrong, go for it! Slashdot has more readers than most States have regular voters. From a platform like that, it should be almost trivial to become at least a US Senator at the Federal level, or an Independent MP in the UK.
I'm sure that people will be happy to pick apart my arguments, but if those same people aren't willing to be living proof of their counter-arguments, then what kind of counter is it?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
My own barriers have included not being confident that I'm sending a letter to the right politician, or at the right time.
A resource that clearly spells out the right politians ( senators and representatives ) for a zip code, their addresses, and that gives advice on when is the right time to send a letter would help.
It might be more valueable, in some cases, to write to a Senator who might be swayed, instead of your own Senator that has already made up his mind.
A political letter writing FAQ!
It may be lame, and embarrasing to admit that people need help with every little thing, but anything that will make it easier for people to get involved is good.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Are they allowed to take credit-card donations from foreigners? If so, I'm in.
everything against our views.
but I must be the pope okay?
Here is one thing you can do, go to
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
and enter your zip code. You have a choice of email, fax, or letter to your state reps regarding the recent issues with our rights being trampled on.
----
As a result of what happened in NY, DC, and PA, Congress has begin passing all
sorts of crazy legislation. Most of these bills are being labeled as
"Anti-terrorism" bills, when in actuality, they are mostly anti-American.
Included in their changes are:
- Allowing for wiretaps to be without a search warrants. This includes
listening in on your phone conversations and scanning your email he use of
certain words. For example, it will be legal to begin reading your email and
monitoring your website usage if attention was brought to you because you
used suspicious words in your communication. If your thinking "Isn't that
un-Constitutional?", your right, it WAS.
- Requiring giving the encryption keys to any encryption scheme to be
given to the government. Basically, your privacy would non-existent to any
non-ethical person in the government that wanted to use them. In short,
there would be NO (legal) WAY to communicate via email or internet that the
government couldn't monitor. Law abiding Americans would the only people
they could monitor, while those breaking the law would continue to use their
own encryption schemes, meaning that we would only monitor those NOT
breaking the law. Sound like fun?
- "Hacking" a computer would now to an "Act of Terrorism." Meaning that changing a website without permission could be punished with life in a federal prison. I'm not going to defend hacking a computer, but I think that
fits under the cruel and usual punishment scenario. Once we give the
government power to punish people to this extent, how long until we begin
executing people for misdemeanors?
The list goes on and on, and it scares me. I urge everyone to visit the
site: http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html. Go to the bottom, enter
your zip code, and hit go. This will bring you to a page that will allow you
to fax your congressmen while only spending about 10 seconds. It will send a
fax that is basically a generic letter the ACLU has drafted. For those not
sure how to do anything about our world, this would be a simple way to
finally do something.
Congress will likely be voting on this bill within the next week, so time is
of great importance. I sincerely hope many of you will spend the 30 seconds
needed to do something that could effect our lives for years to come.
Considering the fact that most Slashdotters aren't old enough to vote, I sincerely doubt that they can have any impact.
In other words: there's no point letting every cause be added to the list if there is no way of actually applying the help.
That suggests at least a level of "vetting" of nominations for practicality and then we're onto the question of who does the vetting.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yea, but I'll bet dollars to donuts if Slashdot offered karma points in reward for cash donations, manhour donations, or writing letters for this proposed lobbying foundation we'd have Dmitri out in 3 hours flat.
/.? Get +5 karma or maybe a neat little logo next to your name identifying you as a Slashdot lobbier if you donate money through Slashdot to this foundation?
So, how about it
I posted to
This should be affordable. I know of a group that wanted a self serving exemption to a politically inevitable law. They pooled resources, hired the right sort of lawyer, and $50k later they have their own little sentence enshrined in the US laws.
I don't know what the readership of slashdot is these days, but surely it can produce 10,000 readers willing to pay $5 for a particular freedom.
The trick is to for someone to become a credible focal point. Someone who will be trusted by the donors to make the best use of the funds.
The EFF makes a wonderful contribution with respect to the legal issues of interest to the technically inclined (read: Geek) comunity, and it's admirable how they spech most of their resources in these pursuits, but honestly, they should take a page from the playbook of the NRA with respect to fund raising if they want to compete with the powerful political action committees that live inside the Washington beltway.
/. community.
There are also other organizations which deserve your support (financial or otherwise), such as the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Federation of American Scientists which has a number of projects that would be of interest to the
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
What exactly are we going to DO (besides chew our cud) about these scary motherf*ckers in the government... about this herd of conservative, corporate-fed cattle that are trampling over our (soon to be dangling by a shoestring) rights.. our civil-liberties, the ones that our 'forefathers' had fought for, and everything else that we cherish will soon have new meanings, and there's not one person who can tell us what they will mean, for us, and for our children... mark my words, this is the beginning, and unless people start to speak up LOUD and CLEAR in a manner where they will be heard by the SHEEP, then we are all doomed to suffer the fate of an ever-persistently evident CO-LIGARCHY (Corporate Oligarchy) state.... Or, are we already past the point of no-return.. where everyone is too scared for fear of being arrested, racked, flayed, or any midieval torture that can be imposed on a citizen fighting for the constitutional right to privacy~~!
Heard on NPR this morning, in an interview with a policeofficer (likely in new york, but I stepped out of the room):
"To hell with the ACLU, people's safety is at stake."
The reporter went on to point out what a few weeks ago would have been fodder for multi-million dollar lawsuits is today conscidered routine. The risk is of course that our enforcement bodies are required to work under different standards, without being told when the standards change.
A big part of lobbying is pro-actively developing alternatives and amendments to proposed legislature which address (or attempt to address) the concerns to be addressed. Too often slashdot people are "anti-legislation". This doesn't endear us to congress. What's important is that we participate by helping to make the legislation more palatable and measured.
For instance, we could have definately weakened (in a good way) the DMCA if we had pushed for amendments to be put on the table. When there is an amendment congress people listen. What we do now is much like someone sitting on an open source mailing list yelling: "I don't like this." or "This would be cool." Yes, sometimes it works... but how often? When the person submits a patch... it's different. The primary coders listen. We need to get our fingers dirty (or hire people do get their fingers dirty). We need to sling legal code. It's easy to be critical if you don't dig into the code.
hahaha
We have organized a lecture series to take place over the coming months, but need help advertising it to the public.
Speakers include Dan Burk of the University of Minnesota's Law School, John Logie of the University of Minnesota's Department of Rhetoric and Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security, author of Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
Read about our efforts at underwhelm.org.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Here is a list of issues that the readers of Slashdot believe to be of importance in America today:
1) goatse.cx guy
2) Cmd. Taco having gay sex
3) First post woots
4) Censorship via moderation
5) sporks
6) Destroying Microsoft
7) Promoting Linux as the state religion
I think this covers a good 70% of most threads, if you browse at the -1 level. If you ever feel bad about yourself, go read the first 30 posts of any thread at -1, you will instantly feel better!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
No one in the real world takes the /. community seriously.
With a SlashDot lobbying group we'd see all of these wonderful changes:
Jean-Luc Picard, President of the US
Linus Torvolds elected to new position: Supreme High Commander
Linux becomes the "Official OS of the US"
Microsoft is broken up: Into 10000 business units.
Professional sports, or anything else athletic, is banned on US soil.
Success is officially condemned. If your company becomes sucessful, the new government will subsidize the underdog competition and break you up. That is, until the underdog becomes the leader, at which time the cycle repeats.
"Capitalism" is declared "Un-American". Selling things, like software and music, is banned. The new "Slash/Socialism" takes over, and all products are GPL'd.
Suntans are deemed "unattractive" until a new monitor is developed that emits UV rays, giving pasty-white geeks a deep, rich tan.
Go Slashdot GO!!!
Armand28
"-LINUX was a good OS, before it became a religion."
"Animal Farm"
Why do I get the feeling that in this political spin (It's already started) some animals are more equal than others. Why are some companies and products unreproachable, yet others are "evil" et cetera. On the surface an outsider would come to the conclusion that since x=5, and y=5 that x==y. Of course in this newspeak world x might be better than y because it better fits the gustapo's iodealogy. y might think for themselves~! Do you think it is an accident that the content on these pages is so slanted? You are being brainwashed, and someone is trying to make money off of it.
Slashdot: News for turds, Stuff that splatters.
I applaud the intention, but I think another way weould need to be found to achieve the overall goal.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
I'm pretty sure no state has an 18-year-old representative in Congress. The US Constitution (Article 1, Section 2) requires a representative to be at least 25.
tpm
"I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some fucking book." -- Sean in "Good Will Hunting"
Get off your asses and do something! How many government officials have you contacted to voice your opinions? How much of your dot.com salaries have you donated to organizations that advocate your viewpoints? How many non-geeks have you spoken to about these issues? If nobody outside of Slashdot ever sees what you write or hears what you think, then what good is all your passion?
I think the most effective technique would be to do what the NRA has been doing for a long time: send postcards. It's an easy thing to do on an individual basis, each person just needs to write a short statement on the back of a postcard and send it to the targeted congressman. Simple enough to do, but it takes enough time that the writer will be taken somewhat seriously.
The key to this technique of course is volume. Individually a typed letter is more impressive than a postcard, but if you can guarantee 10,000 - 100,000 postcards arriving at a congressman's office... that carries a lot of weight.
The ideal scenario is this: a person representing our concerns meets with a congressman, the congressman acts concerned but probably blows the representative off. The representative sits down at a computer and reports back using Slashdot or a mailing list, asking us to send out postcards on a given issue. The congressman's staff then spends the next several days sorting through several bags of mail coming in from all over the country but focusing on the same issue, giving the technical representative a good deal more credit.
We still need a reliable representative to actually meet with members of congress though. I continue to be impressed with the EFF and think someone from that organization would be the best bet.
...before they're declared illegal by the Office of Homeland Security.
Why? Because when faced by a horde of armed geeks, negotiating with the moderates looks awfully good to The Powers That Be.
Maj. Kong
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Slashdot IS a political tool of enormous value which will no doubt leave a huge mark in the history that is to come. Why? Because the heart of Slashdot is something very much like the newsgroups which were and are an invaluable source of information. The free and open flow of information is already happening over the internet and this is partly due to the power of electronic discussion groups.
The sheer volume of discussion on the newsgroups throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century created the FAQs that we all know and love. They've been like the Bible of the Internet. Okay, the Man pages is the Old Testament. But the FAQs are the Protestant and Catholic additions. Perhaps the Koran as well.
Slashdot takes it to the next level. You don't even need FAQs with Slashdot. Just look back a few stories and you can find lots of valuable knowledge. That knowledge base in itself is a form of power. Trying to make that particular form of power into something blatantly political is fraught with difficulties.
Here's a sig from a letter I wrote to my Mom last night.
How boring if we ever come to all killing and no fucking to save the children.
They're not old enough to vote.
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
It didn't take long for the new administration to
kowtow to MicroSoft and cancel the court decree.
Recipe: (1) make your software essential to the functioning
of government, even though a stupid security breaches disable it every week.
(2) Spend millions of dollars on election contributions and lobbying.
If we do create a PAC, here's what we're up against [opensecrets.org]. That's the yearly contributions by the movie industry to both sides of the political fence. In 2000, about $24 million to Democrats and $13 million to Republicans.
I was raised a Quaker, and there is a Quaker lobbying group called the Friends Committee for National Legislation (FCNL). The FCNL has had an impact, particularly on the state level, because the politicians recognized that the agenda was not driven by economic considerations, but rather for reasons such as social justice, et. al. It does not take as much money to make change happen if you can demonstrate that you are sincere and committed.
What does this have to do with OSS lobbying? Groups like the IEEE have been very receptive towards open source concerns (and I am writing them a letter concerning the SSSCA), and along with the group (something like Foundation for the Public Domain) which Bob Young has been involved with could also be helpful. But if we can demonstrate that some of these laws like the DMCA are simply bad ideas, then maybe people will listen to us. But it takes people who honestly believe in the cause, and for more than economic reasons.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If only there were a clearinghouse, where technodonors could read about and choose to support the technoactivists they like... I hoped Slashdot would help us reach supporters to help fund our efforts, it seems like the most likely candidate at this stage in the game. Alas, they won't post stories about "local" events.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
"I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas on how to turn all that passionate talk on Slashdot (how I love it) into a political force that people will pay attention to."
/. trigger phrases and link to the website of the group who you are trying to pressure. After a days worth of the /. effect people tend to become much more willing to listen to your demands.
Yeah, submit stories with all the usual
The EFF is not a lobbying group, and yes we need one. We've needed one for a long time. How do you think these special interests (RIAA) are getting all these laws passed? Lobbists. Necessity makes for strange bedfellows.
Oh,
And it'd be nice if Congress had some kind of concurrent versions system, so that people who wanted to have one thing didn't have to piss off everyone else to get what they wanted.
Klync
Here is some info on Congress...
Locate Your Representative (House)
Search by House Committee
Search by Senate Committe
Search Senators by State
Hope this helps!
Dang I forgot, there is an analysis of the copy protection used on the Charley Pride cd on the mailing list which can be found in the archive at http://www.xenoclast.org/free-sklyarov-uk/2001-Sep tember/000648.html
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
In America the people who are able to lobby for political power are those which have money PERIOD. Big tobbacco, the NRA, Oil Company's and Hollywood all wilde hugh potical power in Dc not becasue they have the support of the people but because they have more money then god.
The only vote that I think anyone has nowadays is that of a consumer or a share holder.
Now while this is the reality, I personally dont think that it is such a bad situation to be in since it is my personal opinion that freedom == econonmic success. For example could the internet be what it is today with out the use of open standards and protocols. It does leave a bad taste in my mouth however.
If some linux companies could maintain share prices more then single digits then I think that this would provide more political impact then the formation of a lobby group could. While this hasn't happened just let it might not be that far off.
This would be the first international political party of this magnitude as far as I know. And if it just about IT topics, you can count me in. Just make sure there aren't any non-IT topics, there are too many different kind of political colors reading Slashdot, the party would fall apart in no time.
42 + 1 = 42
A Beowulf cluster of whiners.
...The old defective pentiums.
You have to remember that while lobbyists had to take math in college, they probably only took statistics or something dumb like that.
Lobbyists are no good at calculus, and therefore would not be able to compute numbers like a Beowulf Cluster is designed for.
An IT labor union could have incredible power to
push tech policy in Washington and internationally.
Imagine an IT general strike: sys admins change root passwords, shutdown the routers and servers and go home. The *threat* of that possibility is enough to not only make employers listen but all those with power, including those in Washington.
i was just checking out a bill at senate.gov because c-span2 is covering a debate about it. There wasn't any slashcode there for public debate.. but there could be. Then, folks would just have to take part in the discussions there.
this isn't off topic....it's asking a serious question. If we are to be political, then how in the hell can we be taken seriously if we run stories about cartoons like it was something that mattered.
"When you ignore things they follow you...when you confront things, things change" - Mr. T.
The Wall of Shame
Kiss my bass.
Any politician worth his salt would take a look at the comments here and see how many people don't vote and say to hell with the whole lot of them. They can't hurt me.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I'll support no organization that makes "outlawing" spam part of it's agenda. It's been said a million times by a million others that the solution to the spam "problem" is technical, and involves adding a postage payment mechanism to mail protocols. Any serious approach to spam will involve something like this, not creating more goodamned, bullshit, bogus fucking felonies that do NOTHING to stop the problem, ENCOURAGE and ENABLE the bullshitters and liars, and end up putting HONEST people in jail. Not to mention waste MORE taxpayer money hiring cops to enforce bullshit laws and prosecute and imprison offenders, at a further, compouded drain on the economy.
You cannot outlaw spam without infringing on 1st amendment rights. You have no right other than your own technical control over your own property to have mail you don't want excluded. You cannot have the state infringing on other peoples freedom to publish for any reason whatsoever, much less just to suck your ass or boost your political ego. As for the cost argument, it's a red herring, but address it, or shut the fuck up.
Your support of outlawing spam gives rise to grave misgivings about your sincerity and competence in addressing DMCA and other issues that likewise involve 1st amendment issues. You can't have it both ways. To put it bluntly. I don't trust you. You appear to be the same kind of lying, hypocritical normative moralist who gives us evil shit like the DMCA to start with. Either that or you're just plain stupid and/or a venal opportunist. You're insulting my intelligence, in any case. That's your privilege, but it does you no credit, either way.
Nothing personal. I don't care what your angle is. Maybe you mean well, maybe you just think you do. You'll want to do a LOT more thinking about it, though, before you get the support of folks like me who've learned the hard way what politics is really all about, and the dangers of jumping on bandwagons.
Hope that helps,
Rogue Bolo
Set up a Source Forge project that allows people to apply e-signatures to a petition then get them validated by the court in state that has strong direct democracy laws.
Tallee-hoo!
- Geoffrey D. (d-4-democracy)
There's your answer right there you fucking skinflint!
The minimum donation to most anti-freedom organizations (700 club, CC, Heritage, etc) is $25 with most members giving at lest $50. You think 70,000 tightwads chucking pennies at the problem is going to make a difference?
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state.cf m
Just use slashdot and have an article like the ones asking for questions for interviews. The highest 5 poll topics get put up for vote.
Its called the Libertarian party.
This is a group who wants to repeal copyright law to its basic elements of 7+7 years maximum.
This is a group who wants total freedom of speech, bar none.
This is a group who wants to repeal laws that give corporations limited liability, so that CEOs and other officers are guilty for crimes committed that break the law.
This is a group who wants the government out of our lives, entirely. Full privacy, full ownership of your land property.
This is a group that believes that the only reason "big business" got there is because of government subsidies -- and they're right.
This is a group that wants each and every person in this country to be responsible for their actions, bar none. If you do something stupid, you will learn by paying the consequences, and no public organization will help you. Private organizations will help, but those kind of systems will watch your recovery closely, and shut you off if you keep screwing up.
This is a group that wants non-violent crimes repealed. We want to let two adults do what they want with each other, as long as they hurt no one else.
This is a group that wants to let you do business with any person in any country, with no tariffs, embargoes, or other limitations.
This is a group that wants to get rid of the income tax and all other taxes that eat up 50% of your income each and every day. This will double your available income so you can decide what to do with it.
This is the only group who has NEVER changed their position in the 30 years they have been together.
This is a group who has ONE Congress in office for many years (Congressman Ron Paul, http://house.gov/paul ) a guy who has voted the Libertarian way each and every time. A guy who has never been corrupted by the political system, because he stands by his beliefs, and always has. The proof is there that the philosophy WORKS.
Lastly... This is a group that got 1.7 million votes in Congress in the 2000 election. No other third party in HISTORY has ever even broken 1 million votes.
http://lp.org/ Go there today. Make a difference. Kick the careerists out.
Consider the following:
DMCA comments - 300 people wrote or emailed responses during the public comment period.
HIPAA comments - 40,000 people wrote or emailed responses to the Health Privacy regulations during the public comment period.
Home Schooling - Over 500,000 people (mostly opponents) wrote physical letters when government regulations of home schooling were proposed.
These things matter. Your letters matter. Hardcopy physical mail matters most. This is how politicians judge their constituent opinions.
Your congressman and senator has local office visiting times and DC visiting times. Have you ever visited? How about your state representatives? (I visited mine to make sure that if UCITA was brought up that she would know that at least one constituent was opposed.) They try to make these visits easy.
Have you ever been to a political fund raiser? (it is very different and rather entertaining.) Have you ever donated money to the local politicians who support your views? They keep track of these things. A few afternoons or evenings, your name on their mailing list, and a few dollars makes quite a difference. You cannot buy their vote for this, but it makes your opinions an important part of their determination of the public opinions that matter to them. Are your positions worth that effort?
If you care, get out and work with these people.
They have to spend ALL that money in order to attract OUR ATTENTION, or moreproperly craft the illusion that their goals are for the common good. We already have our attention, and wee KNOW they are full of it, we just need to organize. One factor is age, how many /bots are actually of voting age ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Perhaps we coiuld call the group Computer Proffessionals United?
Just my ($1)/50
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
I don't think this idea makes sense because I don't think Slashdot has ever had a single coherent voice (and it would be duller if it did).
/. "community" is stereotyped as pro-Linux (I am, many are not), Anti-MS (I see plenty of Windows users here now), Libertarian (a lot of the libertarianism here, esp. wrt gun control, goes too far for my liking), anti-IP (there are plenty of dissenting voices on copyright)...
It bothers me when the
No, Slashdot hosts heterogenous set of views. If you want to support a particular political agenda, get with a more singleminded organisation, one per issue. The EFF might be a good start, as might the FSF. Or the NRA if you're that way inclined.
Other ways geeks might influence their national politics is through running services like Britain's faxyourmp.org.uk -- the site was prompted by opposition to the RIP bill (privacy stuff) but now it addresses parliament's accountability, and public political apathy by making it easy for a constituent to contact their MP even if they don't know what constituency they live in or who their MP is (as is worryingly common).
If the EFF were to start taking donations to lobby politicians, they would be just another group of washington scum getting paid to help politicians buy elections by sucking up to the right people.
So its okay for you political opposite to be lobbying but not for you? That's pretty self-defeatist. If you want to play in Washington you have to play by their rules. Last time I checked donations to politicians were legal and its the most effective way to be heard.
If you don't like the system, you should just say so and stay out of politics. If you want to make a change start a lobby.
You can have this rendered on the static page with links to actions alerts and updates.
Getting involved with legislation, whether federal, state or local, is definitely "Stuff that matters" since all of these things (DMCA, SSSCA, DeCSS, Sklyarov) affect each and every one of us no matter what platform we use.
This discussion is very much On-Topic, IMO.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21863.html - this got rejected from the submission queue because the /. editors are clueless. I think y'all need to see it, so here it is.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
So the youth culture of the 60's shouldn't have happened. High School/College "kids" have the most oppurtunity to make change. You think it'll happen after they graduate? Talk to anyone working full time (If you can find someone with a job) they don't exactly have the energy/time to do anything. Add to that a family and wham that's another person unable to devote enough time to make a difference.
Fact is that we've been made cynical by the 60's movement. We're all so worried about the future that we can't possibly worry about the present. It's always, "I'll care tomorrow" a real shame.
science is a religion
HTH.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
I would argue that a major goal of politics is of information filtering, of winnowing out the 300 or so truely good ideas from all the chaff. We witness this every day on Slashdot: within minutes of a story about YRO or Politics beging posted, there can be litterly hundreds of comments posted.
And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the moderation system used by Slashdot is not perfect. (Go ahead, mod me down. Nobody'll see this anyway, and I don't particularly care about my karma) The parenthetical expression I just made is an example of this. As more and more comments accumulate, the ones at the "bottom" of the list, those posted later, tend to have lower or more average moderation score. That's sad too, because I've noticed that many of the insightful comments are made later, after the rest of us have gotten our one or two lines off our chest (I don't oresume to be included in either group here).
My moderation filters are basically set for +4 with a bonus for long comments, on the assumption that someone who writes a lot will have something insightful to say (others would disagree). But still, I always wonder if there is some gem buried 4 levels nested down that doesn't make my filter, simply because no one bothered to read it.
For the past few months, I've been wondering if a moderation system based on the concept of "circles of trust" (familiar to anyone who uses PGP) might work. Comments would be moderated for a person based on what they were moderated by people that the first person "trusts", who in turn would trust others. Individuals could add a "trust contribution" to a particular comment based on the number score, or by modifiers (funny, insightful, etc), length, number of sentences, etc. One problem with this of course is the sheer amount of data involved, and the number of computations required for each comment to be processed for each individual. Another is how to set comment scores for archiving. Another is people examining the source code and figuing out how to "karma whole" it. Oh well..
Anyway, I see politics as a way to filter information. The current American system is not perfect, some (myself included) would argue, far from perfect. The decisions made by government that can most affect peoples' lives (criminal sentencing bills, the Drug War(TM), DMCA, MATA, etc) are not the ones that people vote on. Some of us do, but most of us (out in "9 to 5 Pleasentville") could care less about the fact that we live in a country where a foriegn citizen canbe thrown in jail for 5 years for doing something perfectly legal, and ethical, in his own contry, or that legislation is being proposed that would thrown a love-sick teenager away for 25-to-life for defacing a web page. Heck, the idea of MATA didn't even exist prior to September 11, such less at election time. Most people vote based on the "bot-button" issues: Medicare, Social Security, and the (promise) of lower taxes.
For the other issues, there is the "third house" of journalistic opinion, writing to Congress and other People with Power, and "big-time" lobbying. Of the three, the third is probably the most effective, followed by the first and second, unless you happen to get the ear of a Congressperson. There's a lot of cynicism about politics floating around, and I think a lot of it is that in the face of the hundreds of thousands of dollars of soft money being thrown around, and the fact that George W. ammased 100-odd million dollars before he was even elected, "little guys" don't stand a chace. Or at least we don't think we do. I recall that in a recent Supreme Court opinion regarding campaign contributions, of of the justices said that "the appearance of a fair election process must be maintained" (paraphrased from a bad memory).
As many people here and elsewhere have stated in recent days, lots of the legislative proposals made in responce to Geroge W.'s declaration of a "War on Terrorism" are kinee-jerk reactions, grounded in little if any fact (the futility of encryption restrictions), and without regard for existing laws (much of MATA). Yet they are proposed by our legislators. Do these people truely "ignore the facts"? In some cases, probably. In some cases (Judd Gregg's proposal) it might be to push a pet agenda. In a lot of cases (Judd Gregg again), it's probably so they can say to their constituents that "I did something!"
The question shouldn't necessarily be how to get better people into power, but how to get better ideas. How to make the people in power face facts, that encryption restrictions won't work, that getting tougher on computer crime isn't necessarily going to catch terrorists (they would be breaking laws anyway) and is just going to potentially ruin a lot of lives in the process, and take away the feeling of security for a lor more of us that we won't be thrown in the slammer some day.
Do I think the idea of a Slashdot lobbying effort is a good idea? You bet! We need a way to get some sanity on tech issues, and an antidote to knee-jerk reactions to anything "high tech" that is vaguely threatening, into Washington and elsewhere, and make people listen.
Jim
Just write a script that faxes him twenty Slashdot first posts a minute.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
down with franco
dtomas@sfsu.edu
What's the difference? Why can't we take that email we just wrote, paste it into Abiword/ Staroffice/ LaTeX/ whatever, print it and stuff it in an envelope? You don't even need postage! (Well, in Canada, anyway.)
A number of people have posted the emails they "just sent" to whatever political group or news site or whatever. There have been a lot of great comments explaining exactly what the problem is with DMCA or whatever. Print those and mail them off. It's not that hard.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
I think it was The Great Shark Hunt that detailed getting normally politically unmotivated people involved in politics. Interesting read.
Although our collective stock options aren't what they used to be, I think it would be interesting to allow a single group (like the EFF) to be our proxy agent in all votes.
/.) for discussion and voting. This would not supplant the current republic but work within it.
This is a fairly significant power that most of us aren't using. If this voting was done in a block, we would not only significantly effect industry but we could also use that influence change government (Sometimes it seems like all they listen to is industry anyway)
The other way involves setting up a new political party--one where the politicans would place all issues on the net (in a forum like
Politicans would become figureheads--placeholders for our votes.
It seems that in todays day and age, protests just don't cut it. Look at the more recent Harvard protest, the police greeted them with food and clean clothes rather than night sticks and tear gas. No one really cared about the stuedents and their beliefs, partly because so many insignificent protests have diluted their true meaning. When I stood in Pittsburgh and protested the DMCA, did anyone notice or care? "Ohhhh another one of those stupid protesters". Picketers and protestors are treated more like beggers than people that have a strong political view. Obviously violent means are not the answers. So how do we protest these "oppressions"? In my eyes I see the digital front to be the next site of protest. We see this now in web sites such as /. Organizations use the web to promote knowledge about injustices, and have information on how to fight them. But this I feel is no enough. I think every /. reader is a techie, a techie with knowledge and technicle power. We control the new age of communications. I feel that /. readers are among the people that are really pushing the envelope of what is possible, or are at least utilizing this envelope pushing technology. It is through this power that I feel many protests can be made. Now I'm not quite sure how this power can be harnessed, if at all. I don't pretend to have all the answers. But I think that once a collective front of protest has formed, it had better find an effective way to protest. And I am merely recommending that someone notice that /. readers make up a small, but very valuable minority in the digital world. Maybe if we all formed a union and formed a digital picket line...
-----Zephyre
maybe something like actionnetwork.org would work? Lists issues and provides ways to contact the appropriate folks ...
It seems to me that we are afraid of collective political action. I think that--with a few notable exceptions like Linus Torvalds--we are intolerant of the human uncertainties of political activism. It is not like software design, where one can be a little god; effective democratic political activism demands persuasion of people and embracing their wants and needs. So I suppose the free software/open source community would have to embrace very different ideals of society if it was going to be effective in the wider democratic politics of our world.
I, for one, do *not* want to see Slashdot try to leverage its popularity for political benefit!
Back in October or so of last year I filtered out a Slashdot moderator because of his comments endorsing "Al-pha" Gore. He said Bush was wrong for America. I hope Bush's right-headed thinking and leadership have won him over.
I stopped reading the site. And for many months after the election I did not visit the site. I was sickened by the fact that a moderator on a geek site was promoting a ineffective bozo like Gore.
Slashdot: Stick to the news for nerds. Shut up about your personal political alignment.
The poeple who wax so eloquent, or at least so noisy, on Slashdot are not the stuff of which effective political action is made. If they were, they wouldn't be here.
Slashdotties are loud, but only when they can be so while sitting on their lazy asses. Q.E.D.
You'd be amazed what even a small group of dedicated people can do. I know the lady who singlehandedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment.
In my experience, lawmakers are competent in matters of the law and fundraising, but they're generally woefully ignorant on topics including science, history, or anything else much that's outside their concentration of expertise -- including such fundamental subjects as geography!
Thus, it becomes extremely easy to control the agenda of the entire political system, simply by buying those few who have knowledge and influence relating to your agenda.
In the eighties, the prevailing view in The Administration, Congress, and the Washington "think tanks" was that it didn't matter if the population of the United States were killed in a Soviet attack, as long as the institutions of government and business survived. If the Soviet Union somehow succeeded in killing millions of Americans, the nation could continue to be viable if the polital, financial and public utility infrastructures survived.
This thinking, of course, served the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about, extremely well.
Though it's the stuff of popular entertainment today, few at the time had ever heard of a magnetic pulse and its effect on solid state electronics. When I mentioned it to a friend in passing, her first response was disbelief. After I convinced her that a couple of Soviet nuclear explosions over key targets would effectively destroy the telecommunications infrastructure for the entire nation, she took the news to The Hill.
Shortly thereafter, the thinking toward strategic defense and the entire related public agenda changed. It was, of course, inevitable that policy makers would get a clue. But from my perspective, it happened a few major defense contracts sooner than some would have liked.
My point is that, in the right place and at the right time, a single anonymous person can change the course of human history.
In simple terms, I believe the best way to affect public policy in the face of overwhelming corporate opposition is to mount a sharp attack, backed by a dedicated mass.
So what you're saying is that everyone pitch in a miniscule amounts of money so we could hire a legal team to represent our viewpoint in the topics that interest us?
Hmmm... Sounds to me like the job of a congressman. I am by no means a genius, but it seems absurd we would pay more beyond our tax dollars to pay someone to influence someone else who is already on the payroll.
Scott
[sig]darkfus[/sig]
Another thing, which we tend to forget, is how much effect we can have on others on a daily basis. How many people look up to you for your knowledge? Can you influence them? How often do you ask "guiding" questions, play devil's advocate, mention news stories, etc? Do you take time and make the effort to explain things like Dmitri and the DMCA in terms that non-tech folks can easily understand and relate to?
/.
I'm not talking about being a relentless annoyance but about being conscientious in our daily words and actions.
The famous 6 degrees of separation can reach a long way. Sure many people will never care a whit, but many more just need to have things pointed out. Efforts don't have to stop with a few letters, we can all do our best to influence our little communities outside of
And hey, before we know it, someone could be calling it a grassroots effort. It's not impossible.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Computer people understand better than most that you need to break down a task (influencing public policy on technology and privacy) into managable chunks and then set up a program to deal with each chunk.
. html
The EFF is just such a program for dealing with the handling of technology and privacy based court cases. They do a good job of this and have a reasonable amount of public respect. They don't get heavily into lobbying; that is not what their program was written for.
Lobbying of governments should, again, be broken down into two discrete tasks: tech and privacy. A program that targets influencing privacy legislation should stay away from hardcore technology topics (like breaking up microsoft) and leave that to a second technically oriented program.
What kind of lobbying program would work for techies? How about something like distributed.net where people circulate messages about topics of interest and forward ones they agree with via email to their elected representatives. Oh, wait a minute. Such a thing already exists... it is called a "mailing list" or a "forum". Here are just a sampling of what I found doing a Google search on "privacy mailing list":
http://www.vortex.com/privacy.html
http://www.pfir.org/
http://www.epic.org/privacy/privacy_resources_faq
So, if you want to get yourself involved, just clip topical rants from these publications and email them to your friends, Member of Parliament, Representative, Muhla, or other applicable elected or appointed person.
Don't expect a non-profit organisation to do anything that you are not prepared to do yourself! If you donate money to a political party, then wrap the cheque in a rant. There, you are now using money to influence a party's politics.
-AD
"Face Time"
lobbyists with $$$$ get direct time with the candidates or high-ranking staffmembers, both of which yield much greater influence than the intern who merely runs an "issues tally" of letters received in between working on his/her gag reflex.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
In other words: what happens if there's no project manager for a particular cause?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
1. Creating an organization that can hire a lobbyist and Political Action Committee (PAC) are completely different things. A PAC is set up with the intent to pool and distribute campaign contributions to Members of Congress. Any organization can hire a lobbyist. There are some restrictions on using appropriated dollars to fund a lobbyist (commonly referred to as the Byrd rule) but otherwise, hiring a lobbyist is not a hard thing.
2. Hiring a lobbyist is expensive/cheap. You can find younger lobbyists that have recently left the Hill and are hungry to work hard for a relative pittance... but they may lack the access you need to compete against other interests. Some firms limit their monthly retainers to a minimum of $20,000 a month, others take interesting clients for much less. The costs really depend on how broad the issues dealt with are, how toxic you will become to other potential clients, how many hours the effort will take, what are the expenses (copies, dinners, cabs are important for tiny retainers) associated with it and so on.
3. Congress is already "bought" by big business. Patently not true, but I will say that the large telecommunications, software and entertainment industries have taken the time to express their concerns to Members of Congress, and to present information that suggests that, among other things, should their industry be harmed by the amorphous "open source" movement, there will be a loss of jobs in the respective congressperson's district.
4. Congress has turned a deaf ear on electronic freedom. Also not true, Congress knows of the issues, but frankly the other side makes a much more compelling case. Additionally, I do not believe some of the organizations who do work for the policies most of you express concern about operate in a politically savy mode. I know I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but I personally came up with an effective method to combatting the cybernanny software in libraries, and suggested the idea to a head of one of the non-profs here in town. Unfortunately they were so overwhelmed with issues and underwhelmed with cash, nothing was done with it. Some organizations tend to show a "zealot" side, which is not always an effective way to advocate a position.
Finally, why would an effective lobbyist work on behalf of the concepts expressed on slashdot? To get a lobbyist who knows the Members and staff of the Judiciary committee and the Commerce committee will require finding someone who probably already has connections with organizations that would oppose the "slashdot movement". Why would he make himself toxic and decrease his/her ability to put food on the table for his family for a movement that will cost him hours of time with a likely tiny reward?
For a more complete discussion of Washington, check out my other post at Tech savvy but world dumb is the root of the issue
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
as in 'protect' it from developers having the choice of what liscense to use, or from infringements on liscensure(as is the case about the ... well, cases now)?
what we really need is to organize a mass-demonstration in DC with everyone rallying to force things to be changed... if you don't change these things (drops huge stack of papers) now, then we're going to flood the capital and have a huge geekparty!
[)(]subliminal labs[)(]
Get on the Ballot to challenge him/her in the Primary.
Don't be shy, tell reporters that you are running to educate them about you issue. You will likely get at least one face to face debate. They'll ever after recognize your name.
After I ran against Scot Klug in '96, he never failed to personally return my calls.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Join a politial party (select one based on your own belifs. We need democrats, republicans, and third parties, so take your pick)
In high school I was given an assignment to go to a meeting of a poltical party. I found a ride to the republican party meeting. In that room were 10 people. they needed 12 to go to the state convention. 9 were opposed to abortion and brought up that issue constantly, but the last person diagreed. Needless to say they had a hard time finding their 12 represenitives. If you had been there you could have been one.
Nothing gets done easially, but grassroots is where things happen. when republicans and democrats both get a significant number of represenitives who think electronic freedom is a critcal issue you have trumped all corporate money.
The eff has sample letters, easy to read action items and links to easy to use resources like 'write your rep.' It doesn't get much easier than that.
Try some caffiene.
I don't think this idea makes sense because I don't think Slashdot has ever had a single coherent voice
Ok. So. What can you do if there is no single voice.
Slashdot is a pool. You can recruit people from it for actions(not under slashdot banner evidently).
Suppose : article->discussion->proposal->discussion ->join lobbygroup, workgroup, actiongroup.
From the discussion you can get an idea if there is a lot of opposition.
People who say "it won't work" or "I don't care" are not necessarily opposition. There may be some possibilities.
The biggest challenge?
suppose some young, fairly intelligent lads with big egos. A rich pool of minds.
They will try to be interesting and show that they're smart.
Proposals are met with clever critique, telling you why it won't work. Commentatorship.
A lot of inflated emotional reactions(indignation, disgust, irritation), indicating other people's stupidity.
Drift to the intellectually more interesting parts of the subject.
I recognise these aspects in slashdot, and i think they drive the yield down when it comes to actually reaching some conclusion. (I remember a case on slashdot when the task was to construct a proposal for a law)
Being interesting is different from getting somewhere.
Gut feeling: it's possible to make it work.
First idea: create a "Collaborative Mode". A user in CM agrees to follow a tighter regime. Eg, he'll get moderated down if he puts emotional spin on his arguments.(even if it's an interesting posting).
If there was a rich and userfriendly resource accompanying legal issues, would it be used by anyone?
I don't know,by some i guess, but anyway it leads to the idea of
adding a 'summary posting' towards the end of a discussion(or summarizing part of a tree).
Easy availability of discussion points (lists)could make a difference. I imagine journalists would check them out, at least when an item is relevant to them.
Several people could create their own version of the summary.
in regards to your post, the very idea you proposed is one my fiance and I
> have been working on for almost a year now. we bought the domain
> dollarcampaign.com, got a little support from some local congressmen, and
> have finally begun developing a website. The idea is to take a small amount
> of cash from thousands or even millions of patrons, and channel that money
> into a democratically elected cause. As we are both full time students and
> working computer professionals, any help from the open-source community
> would be hot. Part of my work is in marketing, and I've pitched the ideas
> to a couple of interested parties, but the time to develop it is still
> lacking.
tevans74873@hotmail.com
I know that I have seen a story or two on your site and then written my congress person about them.
This is off topic, but I figure this is a good place to discuss my idea.
How about increasing voter turn using some kind of cash incentive.
The exact method needs to be ironed out. For example, the goverment could withold $300 of tax returns from citizens who have not voted. This money could accrue and then be given after the person has voted.
Or perhaps people who have not voted may be charged a $100 tax. These funds could then go into upgrading voting systems, increasing public awareness of candidates, educating the public on sociopolitical issues, etc.
Any method where money becomes an incentive will do. This should not be Draconian to any degree, just enough to encourage people to vote.
Yes, there are arguments where having the uninformed and apathetic masses vote may be more harmful than helpful or perhaps even pointless. However, I feel this could prove to be a good way to involve the American people in a meaningful way with our government.
I have been taking a class at my local junior college called State and Local Government, and I must say, it's been an eye-opening experience for me. Among the many things it has done is shown me some ways that a concerned group of people can affect what laws are passed and how things are talked about.
Another thing it has shown me (and I already believed his) is that it is often easier to make changes happen at the state and local (S&L) level than at the federal level. Part of this is because the S&L gov is usually very close by.
Madison, Wisconsin, my town, happens to be the state capitol, which is practically around the corner. It is relatively easy to contact my state representatives (assembly reps and state senators), and even easier to talk to the Madison city council and county board reps.
My point: Why don't we try and get an effort together to lobby or local governments to switch to open source servers? We don't need to go for full desktop implemenatation right away, maybe not even for a long while. But look at all the razzing that IIS is getting. If you tell a local gov rep this, and about how they would be saving the local gov (reduce expenditurs) money, personell time (money) and Internet traffic (money) by using OSS servers, they just might listen.
I'm planning on doing this in Madison, and was actually going to ask Slashdot for some help in doing this. But why don't we start talking about it now?
-- haaz.
-- haaz.
Slashdot's strength comes from it's collective input, and this, being diverse and often opposed, is not a unanimous opinion. Slashdot is a respected authority on linux and some other issues because it provides a great service about these issues, and as such is influential with the linux community. For it to be influential in large-scale politics- because most issues the lobby group suggests are international- it needs to widen its readership and, vitally, maintain a high standard of input as free as possible from dogmatism and ossification. I would welcome an editorial endorsement of some political lobbyists, but stay clear of too close ties which could stifle both groups.
think!
that kind of juvenile act only makes IT professionals look like children, and unprofessional
Insightful, Helpful, to-the-point
I've seen a lot of information here for Americans, but nothing for those overseas.
i'm down.
What's all this about 'only big corporation have the power to generate enough money to change things' and 'we're showing up to a gunfight with a knife'?
Yeah right. Just like only big companies can write complicated operating systems and applications. There's no way a bunch of volunteers could do something like this in their spare time.
Its pretty simple actually. We can't afford to get a crack team of well funded lobbyists to start working round the clock buying off senators. But if we get behind it we certainly can get 10000 people to put in a few hours a week to get things moving.
Si offered to host a web page with pre written letters to congressmen. I will volunteer to run a mailing list to discuss this project and see what we can do to get it off the ground. Others will fill in other roles in the project.
You can join the newly created group by going to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/slashdot_politics
The concept behind the list is to determine exactly what we need to do to form a PAC, as well as educate people on the issues important to us and how to contact their representatives.
Many people have reported being unable to find contact information on their representatives. Try out
http://www.governmail.comIts a simple program that has links to all the congressmen and senators' web pages, as well as information on various bills before them and how they voted. International information as well. Unfortunately its Windows-only, as it basically sits on top of IE. Someone might try it with WINE though...it doesn't seem like an overly complicated program.
Come join the list, lets not just whine about it on slashdot, lets DO something about it!
maddman
-- When a fool hears of the Tao, he will laugh out loud.
I would never support a group whos mission it is to protect the GPL... doing so would support RMS
That's the most profound effect your people can do for the least amount of effort. While I coordinate the ORSC root zone, I'd be happy to see you guys point to any of the alternatives (although obviously I think the ORSC one is better).
Start from there. The rest will come naturally.
http://support.open-rsc.org/How_To
http://free.tibet
rich@rd.sexton
Need Mercedes parts ?
You know it seems like half the people that post to this site are just hipocrits.
You complain saying corporations shouldn't be allowed the freedom to lobby. How dirty they are for doing it. Yet you wanna do the same thing.
I got news for you folks. Slashdot IS A SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP.
/gasp
Go ahead lobby I encourage everone to do so. Do you expect you senator to sit down and read slashdot? hehe
I would really like to see a link from slashdot articles to a secure payment system where users can contribute to a specific cause. I'm sure that the EFF would love to accept some immediate award for doing good things, as would the ACLU (which as a 501C4 can lobby on our behalf). The trick is making having someone link the article to the correct fund.
Why, you ask, is the NRA so powerful? The answer is simple: the NRA has grassroots support like you wouldn't believe.
Gun owners (I should know) are as spirited, if not more, than the pro life/choice crowd. I know many people whom would die before they would allow someone to come in and take their guns away.
You don't see this with the slashdot readers. I don't know of one person who would die before they allow the gov't to take away their encryption.
People don't give a crap enough to create such an organization.
When a story comes on slashdot about such-and-such right being taken away, people complain, but nobody ever does anything (I hope someone can prove me wrong).
Without a doubt this story was the largest hunk of ass ever.