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Government Web Sites Are Not for the Incumbents
Hal Plotkin has a column pointing out a severe deficiency in how the U.S. government handles web sites - they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs. The practice of using official resources for partisan political purposes is not new - the big rush actually hit about 3-4 years ago - but we could make such better use of the web, if only...
-I am a Windows user
-I am also a f4g0rt
-All Windows users are f4g0rtz
-Bill Gates loves men
-Linux is the sux0rz
-BSD is dying
-Stephen King loved goatse.cx before he died
-75% of people in the US make up 3/4 of the US population
-Adolph Hitroll is my bitch
-RecipeTroll loves the cock too
-Natalie Portman is naked and petrified
-I poured hot gritz down my pants and all I got was this lousy T-shirt
-R.M.S. is a commie
-Linus Torvalds is keeping his brotha down. Free him!
-Looser = Loser and vice-versa. Stop complaining and learn New English
-Imagine a Beowulf cluster of trolls
-The CowboyNeal jokes are old
-X is unstable, let's get rid of it
-KDE is the sux0rz, GNOME rules
-Real men use TWM
-vi is better then emacs (no it's not, emacs is better than vi)=Tastes great/Less Filling
-Ford sucks
-Chevy sucks
-Capitalism is dying
-Linux on the desktop is dead
-IE won the browser war, give it up Mozilla. (No. The war's not over yet M$)
-MySQL is robust and scalable
-PostgreSQL is better than MySQL. Nyah!
-So you like your pages W I D E N E D?
-I 4m 1337. giv3 m3 w4r3z d00dz.
-w00t!
-In other news...
-1. Steal concept from open sores 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!
-RMS is a dirty hippie
-Moderation sucks
-UNIX will never be as secure as VMS
-GayPee is not a hacker, he's a dork
-General strike!! Now!!!!!!
-ESR is a homo
-Grok THIS you GIMP!
-Corporations are evil
-Corporations are good
-Quake is the sux0rz, give me Unreal Tourney! (You Canadian f4g0rt, UT sucks, Quake 0wnz j00)
-Canadians are gay
-Americans are stupid
-Brits are assholes
-For hot gulrz see: http://www.bakla.net
-~the fux0rz has spoken~-
GOATSE.CX!
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 09:21:27 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
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Karma should be the least of your worries. Just remember the only reason you exist is to spread your genes. Posting to splashsnot on a Friday night is not the way to do that.
fp?! Naaah! Early post! (Score:-1, Redundant)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:36AM (#4535953) Heheh, hey! Two FPs a day is my way! [ Reply to This | Parent ] Golden rule of choosing leaders: (Score:2, Informative)
by Ravenn on Saturday October 26, @04:37AM (#4535955)
(User #580407 Info) Those who seek the power are least deserving of it.
Ravenn [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Golden rule of choosing leaders: (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:40AM (#4535965) Of those who can post faster. [ Reply to This | Parent ] How to be a slashdot troll: FAQ version 1.00 (Score:-1, Redundant)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:38AM (#4535956) So, you've always wanted to be a troll? Good choice. Trolling slashdot is a fun hobby. Let's deal with the basics first:
1. What is trolling?
Trolling is the art of pissing of people with too much free time, namely moderators. It's a highly amusing sport. A sucessful troll can cause tons of havoc.
2. Sound good. How do I troll?
The best trolls are somewhat subtle. For instance, posting "linux sucks!" and you will be immediently modded down. A smart troll might post
"Linux on the desktop is simply not an option right now. It's simply too hard to use. Forget what the typical microsoft hating linux zeolot says - the truth is linux is not a viable alternitive".
The above post is longer, and not a blatent troll. While it will piss off the typical long haired hippie it might even be modded up as insightful!
3. Hmm. Can you give me any tips on my first troll?
Certainly. Don't post typical troll phrases such as "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" or include a link to goats.cx. These are far too obvious, and will be modded down without comment. Likewise, whilst gettng first post is fun, don't say fp! I suggest using a little imagination, such as setting up a free redirector (like cjb.net) to point to goats.cx. Try and make the site relevant too the story, such as "Joe MIT hacker making his XOR gate out of water is pretty cool, but it's been done before here . Most moderators are lazy and won't click the link. Chances are you will be modded up as insightful.
4. Any other dirty tricks?
Sure, there's plenty. Whenever anyone includes a link, follow up and say 'Don't click here! it's a goats.cx link!' this will earn you karma whilst getting the sucker modded down. Another one: When the site featured in the story gets slashdotted, claim you have a mirror. Give the IP address of goats.cx as the mirror.
5. What should I avoid doing?
Please *don't* post stuff incolving disturbing sexial experiences of comments. We don't want to hear about what you did with a dog last week, nor why michael (the editor) does with 5 pounds of ice and a shovel a day. Not only is it sick but you give all trolls a bad name. Also, speaking in l337 makes you look like a teenage acne scarred moron. Finally, think carefully before you troll. You are trying to cause havoc. This will not happen if you are modded down within 30 seconds of posting. be subtle.
Have fun, and remember: trolling is an honorable sport.
[ Reply to This | Parent ] the big question for me is (Score:3, Informative)
by j14ast on Saturday October 26, @04:39AM (#4535958)
(User #258285 Info | Last Journal: Saturday October 26, @04:45AM) the big new here is ?
i mean the president (take your pic any one ive been alive for) has flown all over the counrty on tax payer provided planes and fuel to campain for OTHER canadates in tight races not to mention a convient trip to a party fund raiser [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:the big question for me is (Score:1)
by Banner on Saturday October 26, @05:06AM (#4536027)
(User #17158 Info) Actually the President gets billed for these, and has to pay for them (or his party does). Of course it doesn't always happen that way, but it usually does. (I forget when they started cracking down on this, think it was the 60's). [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:the big question for me is (Score:1)
by elfkicker on Saturday October 26, @05:20AM (#4536047)
(User #162256 Info) Sure. You're telling me that Bush and the Republican party pay for trips in Air Force One that are basically for party affairs and endorsements? Riiiight. [ Reply to This | Parent ] EVOLUTION OF GUN CONTROL (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:39AM (#4535959) 1. Legislation
2. Registration
3. Confiscation
4. EXTERMINATION
Buy a handgun today! Piss off a liberal! [ Reply to This | Parent ] My Pretty Little Sister (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:40AM (#4535963) I first remember seeing my pretty little sister without clothes when I was about six years old. (Although I always call her my 'little' sister, she is actually a year older than me - but smaller!) The news on TV had been full of a story about a woman who had received a heart transplant. This meant nothing to me, of course, but I asked Dad, and he explained it to me, very simply. The next day we played doctors and nurses, except my sister, Pat, had to be the patient rather than a nurse. Being a patient meant taking off all her clothes and lying on the bed while I pretended to operate on her. I worked out that to put someone else's heart into her, a cut from her groin to her neck would be needed, and I remember fiddling about pretending to make the cut. It needed special adjustments of my pretend scalpel (my finger) at the start of the 'cut' - between her legs. Anyway, she survived the situation, I discovered model railways and she discovered dolls, and we forgot all about it. After this, there were odd occasions, inevitable in a small house, like meeting up as she left the bathroom and ran to her room. Mostly, though, we ignored each other, although family honour demanded I defend her against any insult, real or imagined, which might come her way in the playground. Eventually, of course, we grew through our teens into our early twenties, by which time we were good friends, but certainly not involved even slightly on a sexual plane. I tell you this because you will then realise just how strange my (our) story really is.
One day, Pat brought her latest boyfriend, Kevin, home. Before this, I had either ignored her boyfriends, or liked them. With this one I could do neither. To be as kind to him as possible, he was a self-opinionated bully. But he could be charming, and he was certainly good-looking. However, neither of these explains my sister's lack of judgement in seeing him. But worse was to follow - they became engaged to be married. The full blown engagement thing - rings, gifts, setting the date for the wedding, the lot. Then I found out something else about him - his family are rich - loaded! That explained a bit more about what Pat saw in him. But only a bit.
The thing which finally convinced me he was a total nothing was when he invited me out for a drink. I went, for her sake, trying to maintain a facade of friendliness towards him. He maintained a facade of 'all boys together' and kept up flow of one-sided conversation about his previous conquests - a regular Don Juan he'd been, if you believed him. Every now and then he would assure me that this was all in the past - now he had met Pat, he was a changed man. Changed man, my arse!! Then he got onto the subject of the wedding. How much he was looking forward to it. How lucky he was to have won a girl so wonderful as my sister. How he knew she was 'pure' (his word) and what a night they would have on their wedding night. All this with a leer on his poxy face. I wanted to throw up. And hit him! In any order!
Especially distressing was the thought that he was going to be the one to take Pat's virginity. This made me feel ill just to think of it - I could imagine the scene, with his gross cock penetrating her and filling her, making her cry out with pain, and then leaving her with a grunt, his own pleasure accomplished, with no thought for hers. But the thought made me cry out in pain too, and I decided it was not going to happen. Not like that. So I began to plan how I could kill; him and get away with it. Then, I realised, there was another way
Since I was at university, opportunities were scarce, and it seemed one would not arrive before the wedding. However, I invited her down to stay for a weekend, and to my delight, she accepted. I began to lay my plans. First, I checked and found that the nearest girl's hall of residence was full that weekend. Since it was the night of the student ball, I was not surprised. I rang Pat and told her, but she said she was happy to stay in my flat. So
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This | Parent ] damn (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:44AM (#4535974) figures, I finally get a chance to post one of the first 10 on a slashdot article to help out my poor karma and it ends up being a friday night when im totally sloshed.... [ Reply to This | Parent ] Typical Politics (Score:2, Insightful)
by geronimo_jerry on Saturday October 26, @04:44AM (#4535975)
(User #620406 Info | http://www.cotse.net/users/geronimo/)
It's standard practice in
I've always thought what a waste of time and resources it is for a particular State to rewrite road signs and post the picture and "thoughts" of the current governor on the backs of road maps. Of course there's many things you see, such as this
No matter how the politicians spin things, their primary goal is to get reelected. Very few policitians have enough guile to tell the establishment (and stick to their guns) that they're only there for one/two terms, to make a difference.
[ Reply to This | Parent ] Off Topic: fux0rz - I am a MetaTroll (Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:46AM (#4535977) -I am a Windows user
-I am also a f4g0rt
-All Windows users are f4g0rtz
-Bill Gates loves men
-Linux is the sux0rz
-BSD is dying
-Stephen King loved goatse.cx before he died
-75% of people in the US make up 3/4 of the US population
-Adolph Hitroll is my bitch
-RecipeTroll loves the cock too
-Natalie Portman is naked and petrified
-I poured hot gritz down my pants and all I got was this lousy T-shirt
-R.M.S. is a commie
-Linus Torvalds is keeping his brotha down. Free him!
-Looser = Loser and vice-versa. Stop complaining and learn New English
-Imagine a Beowulf cluster of trolls
-The CowboyNeal jokes are old
-X is unstable, let's get rid of it
-KDE is the sux0rz, GNOME rules
-Real men use TWM
-vi is better then emacs (no it's not, emacs is better than vi)=Tastes great/Less Filling
-Ford sucks
-Chevy sucks
-Capitalism is dying
-Linux on the desktop is dead
-IE won the browser war, give it up Mozilla. (No. The war's not over yet M$)
-MySQL is robust and scalable
-PostgreSQL is better than MySQL. Nyah!
-So you like your pages W I D E N E D?
-I 4m 1337. giv3 m3 w4r3z d00dz.
-w00t!
-In other news...
-1. Steal concept from open sores 2. ??? 3. Profit!!!
-RMS is a dirty hippie
-Moderation sucks
-UNIX will never be as secure as VMS
-GayPee is not a hacker, he's a dork
-General strike!! Now!!!!!!
-ESR is a homo
-Grok THIS you GIMP!
-Corporations are evil
-Corporations are good
-Quake is the sux0rz, give me Unreal Tourney! (You Canadian f4g0rt, UT sucks, Quake 0wnz j00)
-Canadians are gay
-Americans are stupid
-Brits are assholes
-For hot gulrz see: http://www.bakla.net
-~the fux0rz has spoken~- [ Reply to This | Parent ] wait.... (Score:1)
by standsolid (kenny @ b l i n d i n s t inct.com) on Saturday October 26, @04:46AM (#4535978)
(User #619377 Info | http://blindinstinct.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 26, @04:22AM) The US Government promotes candidates currently in office... this can't be fair. we didn't elect them there in the first place.
-1: sarcastic [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:wait.... (Score:0)
by viggen on Saturday October 26, @04:48AM (#4535984)
(User #620157 Info) this is a phenomenon not only to america but all over the world. to be in power is just too tempting for most of the small minded politicians. [ Reply to This | Parent ] blah blah VOTE blah blah (Score:2)
by SkulkCU on Saturday October 26, @04:47AM (#4535981)
(User #137480 Info | http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday November 24, @04:31PM)
IIRC, there are some limitations to updating an office holders website close to an election.
Certainly incumbents hold many advantages... but perhaps the most important is the turnout: to a large degree, its the same people, especially in an "off-year" election. I'd ask anyone who's unhappy with the way things are to GO VOTE on NOV 5th.
If you have to write-in a candidate just to feel good about your vote, go ahead and do that. Vote for that potted plant, even. I need a laugh.
[ Reply to This | Parent ] Michael (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:47AM (#4535982) Obviously out of all of the editors on
Mod away Mikey [ Reply to This | Parent ] Explain to me this one, Einstein... (Score:4, Insightful)
by Guppy06 (david AT iwancio2002 DOT org) on Saturday October 26, @04:55AM (#4535994)
(User #410832 Info | http://www.iwancio2002.org/) "they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs."
And the other avenues of communications aren't? How is Congressman Tauzin's self-promotional website [house.gov] different from, say, the form letter I got from Congressman Tauzin explaining how good the Tauzin-Dingel through franked mail (who needs to buy stamps when you're a member of Congress?) in response to the complaint I sent to him about said bill? Tell me how that letter and all the other form letters various members of Congress send to concerned voters isn't just so much political advertising?
No, I'm not saying all members of Congress are guilty of this (at the very least somebody read letters I've sent to my Senators, for example), but there are some who are quite guilty of this, and all we've seen come of it is legislation against using franked mail within X number of days of election day.
Come back when you've noticed the problem in general and not just the websites in particular. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Hey Michael... (Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @04:57AM (#4536004)
by Omkar on Saturday October 26, @04:59AM (#4536008)
(User #618823 Info) What we need are congressional terms limits and less seneiority priviliges. Once representatives realize that gorverning should be a short detour from their normal lives, and not an occupation, our government should improve. [ Reply to This | Parent ] could make such better use of the web, if only... (Score:-1, Redundant)
by MojoReisen on Saturday October 26, @04:59AM (#4536009)
(User #218327 Info) We had a Beowulf cluster of these. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Forget partisanship -- how about some content? (Score:4, Interesting)
by abbamouse on Saturday October 26, @05:02AM (#4536012)
(User #469716 Info | http://www.abbamouse.com/) 1. Minor complaint: The article headline is backwards. These sites are biased toward the incumbents, as the article notes.
2. If we want less bias, have a nonpartisan agency write the bios and update the pages. Something like the Congressional Budget Office -- not immune to politics, but one step removed from the process and beholden to no single representative.
3. Incumbents win over 90% of Congressional races and have for some time, so the bias issue really isn't all that important. There is so much inherent bias in the fact that incumbents get to do newsworthy things in front of cameras that websites don't really change anything.
4. The real scandal about government websites, especially the Congressional ones, is the almost total lack of content. The home pages should include all votes cast by the representative -- Thomas [loc.gov] is clunky and difficult to use. As the artcile notes, it would also be nice to know when the official is up for re-election. Personally, I'd also like to see links to FEC campiagn finance reports on the same page to make correlating funding sources and voting patterns easier, but asking Congress to commit mass political suicide is probably not a realistic option.
[ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Forget partisanship -- how about some content? (Score:1)
by elfkicker on Saturday October 26, @05:29AM (#4536057)
(User #162256 Info) Open Secrets [opensecrets.org] is a great place to find the kind of info you're looking for. Even just a peak here [opensecrets.org] is very revealing. [ Reply to This | Parent ] The whole political system... (Score:1)
by The Fanta Menace on Saturday October 26, @05:05AM (#4536022)
(User #607612 Info | http://home.zonnet.nl/hardwareogg/)
The two big parties have enough funding to brainwash the masses into thinking that they are the only parties capable of winning, yet their policies differ very little.
The net effect is that by voting for either of them, you are voting for the status quo - nothing ever happens and they keep lining their pockets.
Vote for someone else. Left or right, it doesn't matter, just shake out the incumbents.
[ Reply to This | Parent ] No surprise (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @05:05AM (#4536024) If it's not nailed down, the fucking crooks are gonna steal it. High dollar trailer trash. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:No surprise (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @05:31AM (#4536062) High dollar trailer trash.
Come on now, you bring shame to the trailer trash name. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Nothing New... (Score:2, Interesting)
by radicalsubversiv (michael@@@sherrards...org) on Saturday October 26, @05:05AM (#4536026)
(User #558571 Info | Last Journal: Friday May 31, @07:06PM) While this is certainly an unfortunate practice, it's hardly a new one, except perhaps with regards to the internet.
One of the many benefits of incumbency is the access to government resources which can be used in functionally political ways. The most basic of these is what is known in the business as "franking," whereby congresspeople can send mail to their constituents on the public dime. In 1994, the Republicans ran on a platform of reforming the franking rules, but quickly changed their minds when they found themselves in office.
As with most problems related to political campaigning, the only real fix I see is public campaign financing [publiccampaign.org]. By allowing anyone, incumbent or challenger, who can demonstrate a certain threshold of public support (typically through collecting a large number of very small contributions), the advantages of incumbency, fund-raising connections, etc. can be mitigated, candidates can be free to spend their time speaking to the issues, rather than raising money, and, once elected, they won't be quite so loyal to big-money interests.
(If you live in Massachusetts, be sure to vote yes on Ballot Question 2, to preserve our Clean Elections public-financing system. [massvoters.org]) [ Reply to This | Parent ] Kill the Jews! (Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @05:12AM (#4536035) GOATSE.CX [goatse.cx]! [ Reply to This | Parent ] The first priority of any politician... (Score:2)
by davmoo on Saturday October 26, @05:28AM (#4536056)
(User #63521 Info)
I am a firm believer in term limits, and public financing of campaigns. I also believe how congresscritters are paid needs to be changed. Some dork making a hundred grand a year is too out of touch with reality to represent the average American who is making 15 thousand a year. It should work like the Peace Corps...while you're in office, all you get is what the average American makes per year. Then at the end of your (limited) term, you get a lump sum to make up the difference between what the average Joe gets and what a congresscritter is paid. [ Reply to This | Parent ] What's his point? (Score:1)
by T. Will S. Idea on Saturday October 26, @05:31AM (#4536061)
(User #463154 Info | http://slashdot.org/) Frankly I just don't see what he is whining about. An example: in his article he gives a link to a unsurprisingly glowing biography of the Mayor of San Francisco. [sf.ca.us] He complains about a lack of information about the office itself, but if you actually go to the Mayor's home page [sf.ca.us] there is a ton of information! You get the Mayor's budget proposal, his schedule, his address, phone number, e-mail, links to offices under the Mayor, transcripts of speeches, etc. What exactly was he expecting, pictures of the Mayor in compromising situations?
His main point seems to be that government web sites should be dedicated to organizing grass roots groups. First of all, the idea of the government organizing grass roots groups is oxymoronic. It is also a pretty dumb idea. I can just imagine the paranoia if the government tried to monopolize all of the grass roots organizations by hosting them on government web sites. "I spent the last 5 hours typing up my opposition to the mayor's speech when my computer crashed and the whole thing was lost. Then I got to thinking, who controls the web site? (The mayor.) Was it really a mistake that my post was lost?"
This guy, Plotkin, should go back and dig up some real abuses to complain about. Lacking that, this article just sounds like a big long whine.
[ Reply to This | Parent ] GOATSE confirms: SLASHCODE IZ DYING (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26, @05:38AM (#4536071) HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 09:21:27 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
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The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, pater@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
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Apache/1.3.26 Server at slashdot.org Port 80 [ Reply to This | Parent ]
Clinton huh? It is truley too bad he wasn't flying with wellstone the other day.
How do you sleep at night helping that piece of filth?