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."
... 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
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"
If you don't have a manual typwriter, bring out that old impact printer that is gathering dust in your closet. A simple Perl script could change the letters you send enough to make them seem less formulaic.
Then send them to all of your:
Then you just have to sign them by hand OR get a plotter to do it.
I think we are framing the idea of "lazy" wrong. Sure computer people are lazy. They hate expending effort that will just have to be done over and over again. It is better to spend a couple of days hacking together a solution that could be applied when needed instead of taking the few minutes it will take to solve the problem once.
Doesn't Larry Wall say that the three great virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience and hubris? Well, let's put that crap to work.
If you don't have an impact printer, fake it by choosing a crappy fixed width font like IMPACT or something. Sure, it is not the same, but it does tend to throw people used to recieving nicely formatted text. Also throw in some spelling errors and leave out some words (then go back and correct them with whiteout... though this goes against the virtues
If you start to analyze the problem, you could probably figure out what makes a personal letter sound personal and a form letter sound like a form letter. Capitalize on that! Keep a couple of flat files with appropriate phrases in them for a particular subject. Combine them in interesting ways with a program and only include a couple of new sentences here and there of original content (which should be put into files for later use).
I think this could work. Anybody have any concrete ideas or recipes?
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
"the NRA and religious right (the two most powerful lobbys)"
Actually, the most powerful lobby out there is the AARP. Anyone in the US over 50 can join the AARP, and they have millions of members. Because they are a non-profit they cannot be too politically active, but when a politician does something that senior citizens don't like, the AARP volunteers can mobilize overnight into a vocal force that give politicians nightmares. This is why you rarely see politicians do things that piss off old people.
As for geeks having no balls, I don't think that is the problem. The real issue is that geeks are lazy bastards. Because we have so much freedom, so much money, and generally pretty easy lives, it is very hard to motivate geeks to be proactive. Until something is lost that really hits home, geeks will continue to be far too relaxed as politicians fuck America over again and again.