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Free Software for Politics
kevin lyda writes "The Howard Dean campaign is releasing software for web-based communities under the GNU GPL. The project apparently is based on drupal. See here for more info, and here for the software. Regardless if you're for Dean, against Dean, or you're not an American, it's great to see an American politician on the national level using and promoting free software. I wonder if RMS thought he'd see a U.S. presidential candidate releasing stuff under the GPL when he founded GNU 20 years ago!"
I wonder if RMS thought he'd see a US presidential candidate releasing stuff under the GPL when he founded GNU 20 years ago!
That's a gnu-candidate thank you.
More candidates should do this. Frankly, I'd be interesting in hearing more about General Clarke's ideas on time travel. (Follow the link... he actually talks about this. I kid you not).
GNU/Howard Dean, then?
Shhhh, don't tell Stallman or we'll never hear the end of it!
There was a call for this before... Slashdot and Dean staff, are you listening?
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Although I'm politically more with Kucinich, I really admire the way Dean has taken the lead with using novel forms of communications technology. Everything he's done, from meetups to blogging to soliciting individual donations on the internet shows a kind of grasp of the technology that really reflects well on him (or, at least, his staff). The latest news is pretty much in line with that behavior.
It does beg the question--will a Dean presidency be geek friendly? Will it turn back the DMCA and scale back software patents? I'd like to know more, but I'm optimistic for the first time in a long time.
The more significant story is Dean's Internet Principles
a ge name=InternetPrinciples
a ge name=NAN
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?p
and Net Advisory Net, including Lessig
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?p
I submitted this, but it wasn't posted, yet the story about the ridiculous spider case mod was posted. Hmm.
"I still believe in e=mc, but I can't believe that in all of human history, we'll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go," said Clark. "I happen to believe that mankind can do it."
<Grin>
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Hmmm..maybe some /. spelling technology would help me too. :-)
Al Gore invented the Internet but (kinda) lost the elections. Common knowledge.
So 3 years or so from now it migth be common knowledge that Howard Dean invented GNU, the weblog, and Linux too but (kinda) lost the elections. That and his house (to Darl for stealing everything from SCO).
Seriously though, nice initiative but it also smells a bit of, well, I'm sure you get the point.
The great thing about this software is that it could ultimately cut down on the cost of campaigns, lessening the need for big political donors and their influence on politics.
A former employer of mine was involved in developing Web communities for conservative clients, and the bill for his services is huge even by 1999 standards.
he talks about faster than light travel
If you go to the Drupal website, you'll see that Brad posted some brief comments from his interaction with the Dean campaign (9/10/2003).
(Taken from Drupal.org)
I met with a Presidential campaign yesterday. They asked me to advise in general on their web site, but when we got into our discussion, I learned they were doing the static html thing. So, I demoed three CMS' to them - Drupal, Typo3, and a fork of Backend my company developed. They were blown away by all of them,. But I steered them to Drupal for speed of setup, flexibility and features. As a matter of fact, if you compare the features to what Howard Dean has on his site, you are basically setup with everything he has.
Having managed campaigns for a living in a previous life, I realized that if a Presidential campaign is this far behind technologically, then there are likely hundreds of candidates running now and next year that will not have a system in place. Additionally, most do not have the budget of this campaign and are unable to hire developers, designers, and writers, but know it is necessary.
Regardless, it is quite impressive to see an open project get this kind of press (Presidential campaigns?), and the modifications given back to the community?! Ye gods! w00t!
Here's the Freshmeat page for the project.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You know, I like free software as much as the next geek, but as for him "promoting free software"... well, he's not. His campaign staff is...give credit where credit is due. I seriously don't think he knows about this promotion.
It'll be interesting to see if any competing campaigns take it up and use it for their communities.
Said Joe Trippi, the Dean for America campaign manager: "It is extraordinary that our grassroots base is now building tools to support itself. This is grassroots squared." He added: "As far as we know, this is the first open source development project for a presidential campaign, and it's definitely the most ambitious."
O.K., so Dean is smart. This is one of the most impressive grass roots campaigns I have ever seen and he has my vote. Assuming Dean is elected President, given his background, perhaps we could have some open source solutions to the health care crisis to enable physicians and hospitals to reduce costs associated with all of the electronic medical records problems that are cropping up.
The ideal pair? Dean and Clark. A thinker and an individual who gets things done. What a concept!
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Remember Gore's 'secret' HTML comment in the webpage?
... The fact that you are peeking behind the scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet effort." From there, the message asked web designers to submit ideas for improving the campaign web site "in the spirit of the open source movement." Ironically, this clever attempt to build credibility among web professionals backfired. Gore was given some credit for the cleverness of the technique, but the internet community roundly criticized him for hypocrisy in claiming to support the open-source movement when, in fact, his entire web presence was built on closed-system technology developed by Microsoft. One Apache programmer likened the message to putting a "Buy American" bumper sticker on a Honda."o de=HTML%2 0comments
"This technique was used most famously by the Gore Presidential campaign, which included a hidden message in the campaign web site. The message began, "Thanks for checking out our source code!
---http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?n
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
If you can't get to Dean's website, you're not alone. I think the Dean campaign is about to get a dose of the Slashdot effect.
totally slashdot a presidential candidate.
But will he release his gubernatorial papers under GPL? Right now they are closed source. No one has the right to view them. I am more interested in his political history than some software someone else wrote that he is piggybacking on for publicity.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
A group of computer scientist professors is creating . This is not the same as GNU's Free Software Internet Voting. Given the Diebold fiasco there's a greater need for these than for the software to discuss potential candidates.
"There's so much left to know/ and I'm on the road to find out." -Cat Stevens
How would you persuade Boston City Council offices and our city public libraries department to use other software than the commercial software?...
...until his genome is sequenced and released under the GNU GPL. Accept nothing less!
As an article in a recent issue of The Nation put it, I would vote for Count Dracula rather than Bush.
In other news, the Bush administration has decided to counter the Howard Dean campaign's effort to create a network of weblogs ("blogs") by giving Republican supporters access to the surplus WMD which were recently discovered at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.
"We hope that our supporters use the smallpox virus in a way that will support our common goals" stated White House insider Karl Rove. "We think that the time has come to deal with the infidel huns who are attempting to thwart our ultimate goal of establishing a reactionary, protestant theocracy with President Bush as Ayatollah. Using smallpox in areas where there are concentrations of liberal and Democratic voters will surely help us to win an outright majority in the next election. Jew York, here comes Itchy and Scratchy!" Rove went on to describe the plan to trade smallpox-infected blankets to residents of New York City in exchange for wampum.
Democrats in Congress criticized the move, calling it cynical at best and mass murder at worst. In the Senate today, Ted Kennedy (D-MA) spoke to the issue, calling the use of biological weapons by Republican campaigners, "worse than anything than Daddy ever did, and that's saying a lot." Senator Kennedy was later found garroted in his chambers in what appears to be the work of a lone assassin. See our related story for information on the investigation, including the appointment of Chief Justice Rehnquist to a commission to investigate the assassination of Senator Kennedy.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) chastized the President for the move as well, calling it "barbaric". Senator Clinton was last seen ushering her husband, former President Bill Clinton, into a limosine bound for his office in Harlem. "Bill needs to be in the right place to do the most good during this crisis." Commentators noted that Senator Clinton did not seem alarmed that her husband was going into one of the hardest-hit areas. Staffer John McClintock was quoted as saying that [Senator Clinton] seemed to be "strangely peaceful" as former President Clinton left for Harlem and that "she danced a jig similar to the one Hitler did when his troops defeated the French."
GF.
[just laugh people, just laugh]
Lots of petrified grits
Slashdot killed the Dean campaign website. He has lost my vote. How can run for President if you cant keep your blog runnning.
---- Berlin Brown http://www.newspiritcompany.
This is defiantly a novel way to get the geek vote. Plus some of the yonger vote. I just hope it's an honest attempt at open source and not just a vote getting move. What's his record like?
So he'll probably raise taxes on the wealthier to help the poor, undoing the tax cut that Bush passed that gave massive tax breaks to the very wealthy. After seeing a report recently that said that almost 10% of Americans live on less than $8000 a year, it is hard for me to whine about my high taxes.
I'd much rather have a president who knew what the GPL was and raised my taxes than a president who didn't know the difference between a computer and a calculator, but cut taxes blindly.
Probably not. They're too busy asking Georgy Russell (www.georgyforgov.com) if she wears boxers or briefs.
If Slashdot gets ahold of Dean.. let's hope they'll actually ask *decent* questions instead of stupid stuff.
I served in a leading capacity on a university government (and I don't mean to compare the governing of a university to the governing of a state or country).
Sometimes they were changes that were meant to protect everyone from new regulations. Sometimes they were changes to cut costs or eliminate incredible redundancy from systems that had evolved over decades.
It was very difficult to get certain groups, people, and factions of the governed to change. Sometimes they were being asked to give up a privilege, power, or money that they wanted to keep. Sometimes they were just ingrained in having done something the same way for years and "didn't want to".
I found that incentives were the best way to make the governed swallow such bitter pills. Certain incentives cost a lot of money (printing brochures, sending people to seminars, etc), but making software and giving it to people willing to change their bueracracy was a very cheap way I could get things done.
"Keeping track of all those forms is a nightmare, but here's some software specially designed for this task. You can have it for free if you'll just change over to this new way of bookkeeping."
The first taste of this software was always hard and usually involved handing over cash or help to transition the information. Later on, annual upgrades to the look and feel or new features made it trivial to force new regulations on the goverened. In most cases, unless this were a regulation being forced on us by the government, these were just voluntary upgrades and people could go on using older versions and keep whatever privilege/power/money they had. Eventually though, after two or three "upgrades" they'd find something compelling to force them to come back in line.
Because of it's cheap cost to create and it's high value to others being given the software, there was no other incentive that was as economically powerful.
But back to the Dean campaign. It's great that he's giving away his software. It's great for standardization that he's making it GPL. But what makes me uncomfortable is that by cutting out custom software that I was the only vendor of in the government, I'm would lose a lot of power to force others to do things the way I want. I have to go back to governing by fiat "You'll do it my way and I won't accept any other" than by these software incentives because people will be able to download software for their particular governence area on the web.
Sorry, but I take this as a bittersweet change.
Fnkmaster has it right.
I spend 8+ hours a day on something that was 'scientifically impossible' less than a century ago, supersonic flight...
I don't think faster than light travel is possible, but to say that you know it is impossible is a little short sighted.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I am so amazed whenever slashdot mentions a candidate, they put it in the context of what technologies they support. Is that the only thing that matters in your lives? What kind of gadgets and software you have?
What about important issues like:
freedom of speech
privacy rights
abortion
Who cares what technology the politician supports? What about their moral character?
It's entirely likely that Dean's site doesn't have the caching module enabled (which it isn't by default). With it, there's only one SQL hit per page. Without it, the entire page gets built for every page-view (slooooow).
Drupal.org has caching enabled, and therefore hasn't fallen over (yet). But we don't have all that much bandwidth, so it's being *very* slow at the moment.
I've been developing Drupal for a few months now. It has a very active developer community and continues to get more flexible and modular with each successive release. It's much more extensible and better architected than (for example) PostNuke.
We're also coming up on a new release (4.3) which should go RC in the next few days. If you're thinking of trying it out, I'd recommend either waiting for that, or getting latest CVS tarball - things are much nicer than 4.2!
Although the shouting in the title definitely makes it LOOK like a troll...
Guys, I got a problem. This isn't related to this topic exclusively, but for ALL Gnu articles here... Okay, here it is. The icon for "Gnu is not Unix" here at Slashdot doesn't really look like a Gnu at all. It looks like a giant penis carrying a security blanket. Really. Take a close look at it. Are those two big red balls supposed to be feet? What does that logo MEAN?
We need to change that logo to something that doesn't have hidden meanings. I suggest the typical Gnu head (no pun intended) that RMS uses on his website.
to directly communicate our views on technology policy to government. Most of our representatives couldn't even tell you what the DMCA is, much less give two shakes about why it's bad. They're in the pockets of special interests.
/. interview would be the perfect opportunity to imprint their campaign and let them know we're out here.
But it occurs to me that the Dean campaign is the best shot we have to turn the fight for online freedoms around. They're an organization that's volunteer-run, so it's not beholden to special interests. They use OSS to run their site and various tools, and now they're open-sourcing their stuff, so they're going to understand why free software is so important. Finally, as a tech-driven campaign they're predisposed to sympathize with our take on issues like privacy, frivolous patents, etc.
And as far as I know, they haven't yet expressed any kind of position on tech issues. So a
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If Hemos and Taco thought they would see a slashdotting of a US presidential candidate's blog five years ago?
Petty of me to pick this nit, but: RMS did not "found" GNU. He founded FSF. GNU is not an organization, it's an operating system, intended as an alterntive Unix. And, like his other grand plan, it is still unfinished!
Was Dean just as "geek friendly" when the campaign spammed users back in August?
Dean is going after low-hanging fruit. Go up to your average voter and mention that Dean released software under the GPL. Go ahead. After you get the brook-trout stare, consider the much-ballyhooed blogs of these candidates. High-tech tools to preach to the choir.
Great for shoring up the base, maybe a little grass-roots organization. Then throw in Clark or someone who actually affects the campaign on more than window-dressing geek issues and see how irrelevant it all becomes.
To all the not-so-smart U.S. voters out there: For reasons no one understands, we aren't all intelligent. When it comes time to vote for a presidential candidate, however, if you aren't intelligent, please don't vote for someone like yourself! A presidential candidate needs to have powers of analysis, for example.
(From http://www.deanforamerica.com/)
At midnight on Tuesday, September 30th, the fundraising deadline will close for FEC filing purposes.
...
Click here to contribute:
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
...
Can we raise nearly $2.5 million in 36 hours? I know we can, because on June 30th, when we had 130,000 supporters, you raised more than $819,000 in 24 hours. You have shown the power we have when we join together in common cause.
Time to stand up Slashdot.
this means that republicans can use it is well. (and yes, there are republican free software advocates out there.) i hope they realize this. they obviously want to help dean with his campaign, but what if a republican, or even another democrat, was to use this software? would they complain? i wonder.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I looked at your homepage, and although you're a libertarian, I highly doubt you benefitted or will benefit from the Bush tax cuts.
Already have. Not much, but the tax cuts haven't fully phased in yet. But every extra dollar from my paycheck that I get to keep is an extra dollar I get to spend the way I want, whether it's for consumption, investment, or philanthropy.
If cutting taxes magically stimulates the economy the government grows from growth in tax revenue in other sectors (sales taxes, taxes on businesses, etc.)
All taxes should be cut, along with all social programs. The only things the federal government should be funding are the military and the courts. Everything else should be handled by private industry and state/local governments.
I feel so inclined towards libertarian beliefs, but when I see a dude in a tie died t-shirt talking about how great tax-cuts would be I go into paroxysms of laughter.
I'm guessing I make more money than you do.
Do you have some large estate (>$250,000) that's going to be passed onto you that you don't want to be cut in half by estate taxes? I doubt it.
No, and if I did, you'd be conducting class warfare against me instead. You can't have it both ways.
[ home ]
The real link to the site for the community behind this is deanspace.org. The deanspace software is based on drupal 4.2. It'd be nice if the developers over there contributed back to the Drupal codebase - it's dangerously close to a fork, and needn't be. The upcoming Drupal 4.3 has some features 4.2 is lacking, and is much more user-friendly. It'd be a pity to lose these when a fork isn't necessary.
How about a new political party based around more open standards. We could call it the Open party. We could make one of it's key points to implement more things into the government that are based on open standards. Maybe even fund more open projects.
So, I suppose it's time for forking, to service the other candidates (and parties).
Reading this news item reminded me of a point that Lawerence Lessig makes 'Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace'. He observes that governments are able to push hidden agendas by regulating software makers, instead of using the law.
Free software counters this ability by allowing the public to examine the software. If Joe Hacker doesn't like what the software does, then he can alter it. The important result of this is that it forces the government to openly legislate if it wants to prohibit, for example, some online activity.
I believe that (democratic) governments should be as open as possible. Free software helps to achieve this role. Howard Dean using and promoting free software is hardly a major step, but at least it's a start.
It's too bad you don't understand the implications. Any method (wormholes, tachyons, "warp drive", etc) to reach a velocity higher than c is mathematically equivalent to a time machine. Unless you and Clark are secretly smarter than Einstein and Hawking, it can't be done.
p.s. teleportation-type methods involving "hyperspace" might be a loophole, but so are angelic chariots and/or pixie dust."American" should be capitalized, you insensitive clod!
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Isn't the Bush campaign releasing software for both touch-screen and online voting? Ok, so they're not releasing it, just making sure the companies who are don't have any competition. Or have to bid. Or make it secure. Still, it's going to have a way bigger impact than anything Dean does. ;-P
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
That's a gnu-candidate thank you.
That's "GNU/Candidate".
Okay, you've got strong opinions. I hear a lot of this kind of comment, and since we're on Slashdot, I can ask you a question back! Let's see what kind of policy you're imagining.
So, specifically, which programs would you cut and by how much?
What policies would deal with the potential gaps between what private charity can provide and the needs? The last time the USA didn't have a significant welfare state, private charity was manifestly not up to the task of providing adequate services for all (although it did a good job for some).
What proportion of income do you imagine the average citizen will put into private charity a year? How much are you willing to personally commit to giving?
How much deficit are you willing to accept?
Based on those savings, and target deficit, how would you distribute the resulting tax increases or decreases? You don't have to confine yourself to income taxes - look at all federal taxes, including payroll, social security, capital gains, and corporate.
If you could run things, what do you see as a better distribution?
My video compression blog
i'll host some dean sites if you want to run them. i have a lamp setup and can install this thing (i'm fairly sure) in a matter of minutes. just email me at my /. email
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Thanks slashdot - how's Dean's campaign supposed to raise that last minute cash now that you've brought their site down! Couldn't the story have waited till tomorrow? :-)
Energy: time to change the picture.
DeanSpace development comunity - Website : DeanSpace.org Articles: http://drupal.org/node/view/2267 Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,00 .html
Dan Gillmore
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/650 1101.htm
Reason Online
http://www.reason.com/links/links081303.shtml
Hesie Online (german)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-26.08.03-00 1/
Don't you slashdiots realize there are much, much, much more important things going on in the world right now than the debate over the intricacies of software patents? Voting for a candidate on the basis of whether they support free software is like voting for a candidate on the basis of whether they like blue moon ice cream.
DeanSpace development comunity - Website : http://DeanSpace.org0 .html
0 1101.htm
0 1/
Articles: http://drupal.org/node/view/2267
Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59497,0
Dan Gillmore http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/65
Reason Online http://www.reason.com/links/links081303.shtml
Hesie Online (german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-26.08.03-0
Maybe not. Most USian slashdotters will vote for Bush, or against Bush.
But -- all Dem hopefulls could always use help
* with finances, the sooner the better
* with grassroots efforts. This is Dean's strongsuit.
Dean will get the vote of the anti-Bush USians, if he wins the Dem primary. But to win the Dem primary, he needs their support sooner. Doing an interview with slashdot might help convert folks that will vote for him should he win the Dem primary to actually help him win the Dem primary.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
look, kennedy (god bless his adulterous soul :) said off to the moon in ten years. maybe Clark will send us to mars and direct the start of it. rather spend it there than iraq. don't skewer the man, he has only been running for pres for 2 weeks, not his whole life.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
What makes you think you have to post such rubbish on a poublic forum? Have you no sense of decency???
What is next Buckley on P2P? Whoops to late.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
I want to see the Dean campaign (or somebody!) release software implementing alternative voting methods. Everybody's talking about voting machines, but not many are talking about the software and algorithms, which make more of a difference IMHO. Dean has expressed support for Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), but there are better methods out there.
I've built an online poll demonstrating these methods (see my sig), but I wouldn't call my stuff release-worthy just yet (it's pretty slow, and I lost my source in a HD crash last week anyway)...
Read my keyboard review.
I am an aerospace engineer
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Does that sound like the left wing freak Lieberman and the bogus DLC want you to think he is? Note also all the republicans actively supporting Dean (he's doing for the Dems what McCain did for the reps four years ago, only much better).
Karl Rove said he wanted Dean to win, but Rove is an ignorant son of a mother who is about to learn the meaning of "Be careful what you wish for!"
Given all the donations that the Calif recall candidate Cruz Bustamonte received from Indian tribes I am suprised he is not releasing patches for Apache.
It's the end of the quarter - a big fundraising day for the candidates.
Since we slashdotted them and you can't see the site, here's the link if you want to give them some support
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
Personally I like to support this sort of thing (the GPL software, not the slashdotting)
That logic, while sound on the surface, is frankly, a disgrace to US politics. It encourages people to vote for someone purely as a defensive measure.
The system works properly if everyone votes for whom they feel is the best candidate. Curbed voting like this puts less qualified, but more well known, candidates in office (probably why Bush is in office in the first place).
While I get where you're going, you're essentially contributing to the demise of independants or third parties. You're saying "It's no use, so don't bother."
You have to have some faith in democracy, even though it doesn't always work right.
Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, used to be an advisor to Progeny
(a commercial version of Debian started by the Debian founders). Joe
is very tech and Linux savvy. He has stated that the way he has been running
the Dean campaign was inspired by how Open Source software works.
I have been pretty active with the Dean folks for a few months and
I think what he is saying is no BS, it really seems very open
and two way like Open Source software.
I'm not going to vote for a spammer. Unsolicited is unsolicited.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Please help me support the Republicans by /.ing Dean off the internet!!!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Until the primary/caucus/nominating convention is over.
Then the "pros" push all the activists aside, and do it their way. I've seen it on both sides of the aisle and ideological spectrum: my expectation is, that should Dean get the nomination, he'll go with the pros as well. . .
I am not voting for you, Mr. Dean, even if you do get your party's nomination. I never visited your website, never participated in any web-based discussion on your politics, and I am not registered as being a member of your party. Therefore, I request that you stop spamming my email accounts. I will believe in the validity of the penis enlarging pill offers being sent to my email account before I believe in your campaign rhetoric...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"More candidates should do this. Frankly, I'd be interesting in hearing more about General Clarke's ideas on time travel. (Follow the link... he actually talks about this. I kid you not)."
:)
Great. Keep time travel technology away from the Dems, lest they make it possible that Al Gore DID actually invent the internet...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I'm a broke college kid, but I found $20 to spare that I just contributed. I agree with mightycthulhu! Let's do something here!
Sig.i>
I would be even more proud with Dean (or reasonable facsimle thereof) in the White House. Getting more and more embarassing to live in the US of A the way things run today
Release of his campaign tools is an indication of how he interacts with folks around him. The grassroots nature of the Dean campaign is a breath of fresh air. Everyone knows that campaign contributions give leverage to the giver. Dean's funds mostly come from you and I. Much rather have someone in the white house that answers to the contry as a whole -- not to a few fat cats.
Too bad not more voters seem to get it. Things really could be different and better!
Al Gore invented the Internet but (kinda) lost the elections. Common knowledge.
No, but Apple did nominate him to their board of directors. And just a few short months later, the U.S. Navy places a large order for Mac hardware pre-loaded with Linux. Coincidence???
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
BTW- that's one obnoxious, spazzy, popup-flinging site, and the FIRST SENTENCE is "The left has long sought to dumb down America understanding that the more ignorant America becomes the less resistance liberals will meet as they push their agenda."
Are you insane? You're actually using this guy as a resource for giving advice to the demos? I have little love for the Democrats but goddamn! I would do the opposite of what this guy says because he's probably trying to sabotage the Dems. He talks like a psychopath.
Dean's not as left as some people would like- try Kuschinch (sp) for that. Dean is fiscally conservative. He's handled my state's budget (Vermont) well enough that we're not anywhere near as hosed as, say, California, financially. He's pro-gun: ESR-ites out there might like that. And he's got a legitimate beef against the Bush crowd- I mean, come on. Read that 'insightful' (ha!) opinion piece, read it, don't just take 'Jack Comics' word for it: the author thinks we all should be lining up behind Bush for the flag salute! With advisors like that you don't need enemies.
I'll go out and vote for ANY dude against Bush. Period. I think Dean would do the best job of actually doing the work of patching up the country again, though. Clark would make a cool VP, I'm thinking. The traditional democrat candidates sitting around waffling and reading polls, I'd hold my nose and I'd watch out for them if they got power, because they're weasels. And so is CK Rairden, and so is 'Jack Comics'. Dean's not a weasel. He's not perfect, he's a politician, but he's not a weasel.
I just wonder why software should be free but people are willing to pay for other products and services. Why stop at software code? If it is going to be free, why not do everything for free: Support, documentation, upgrades, etc. What makes the act of coding different than the act of documenting or supporting.
Also, in the government sector, they pay for things like stoplights, fork lifts, dump trucks, etc. Why shouldnt these products be free too? If we are willing to give our code away for free ALL companies should give ALL products away for free.
I am sorry but I have put food on the table. Why should I work for free?
Please don't insult my intelligence and reread the word "joke".
+2 don quichotte
And, you know, Wesley Clark is dangerously similar to Wesley Crusher!
WARP FACTOR TWO!
Okay, okay, nice Troll, but I'll bite.
Matter of importance, first off, is merely a matter of opinion. What you consider to be most important, is not what someone else considers important.
There are issues that I simply do not have an opinion on. Abortion, for example. I see both sides of the arguement, and just don't feel a strong draw towards the subject. Instead of joining the fray, I figure it's better to let those that feel pasionately fight it out. Same with the environment - let people who truly care about that issue fight about it - they don't need me cause I'd only get in the way no matter which side I was on.
Now, on the topic of supporting free software? I think that's phenominal! I'm most certainly not going to make a decision based ONLY on that fact, but THAT is an issue I care about.
If you expect every person on the planet to have zeleous views on every possible topic, you're just fooling yourself. No one can do that. Instead, pick a few issues that are dear to you and fight for those. In the mean time, I'll fight for my causes, and maybe something will actually get done in this world, instead of everyone stretching themselves so thin that no one can accomplish a thing...
Personally, I like global progress...don't you?
Sig.i>
Principles for an Internet Policy
This nation - and not just this nation - needs to have an honest conversation about what's real, possible and desirable when it comes to the gift of the Internet. Conversations need shared ground. Here are the beliefs we think should guide the development of a fact-based federal policy. We put these forward as part of a continuing Great American Conversation . . .
The Internet does not exist for the unique benefit of any group or economic interest. It is ours as citizens of this country and as inhabitants of this planet.
The social, economic, and educational advantages of being on the Internet are real. Universal Internet access regardless of economic or geographic position should be a federal goal.
The Internet provides a new possibility of global access to an unprecedented sum of human knowledge. It is the responsibility of this generation to make sure that knowledge is available for innovation in business and culture.
The Internet was initially designed as a way of moving bits without preferring some bits to others. Network architects call this principle "end-to-end" networking. That way, anyone with a good idea - or a bad one - can build it and see if it works. This openness is essential to the Internet's value as a marketplace of innovation and a public square for ideas.
Although the Internet certainly can be used to broadcast messages and programs from one spot to hundreds of millions of others, its most important effect socially and economically is its transformation of the broadcast model. Rather than "freedom of the press belonging to those who own one," everyone now can reach everyone else. The Internet is encouraging people to speak up, in their own voice, about what matters to them. This empowerment of human voice and conversation is profoundly in line with the ideals of American democracy.
The Internet is not perfect and it never will be. It is a global network providing possibility of connecting to geniuses and pickpockets and worse. We need to work to root out illegal and malicious uses of the Internet and the exploitation of children and other vulnerable members of our society.
Although the Internet has connected 700,000,000 people worldwide, it is just at its beginning. We need to recognize that no one yet knows the true potential of the Internet. And we need to support the political and technological policies that will help the Internet grow to its true capacity as a force for democracy world-wide.
See post 7096601 - it is at least a partial refutation of the "extreme liberalism" of Dean's position. Ultimately, the Republicans will demonize whatever candidate the Democrats come up with as being too far left and a crazy liberal (just as, to some degree, the Democrats would do to the Republicans in reverse).
I'd rather have a candidate who will take positions I agree with and defend them than one who is desperately trying to be not liberal. The Democratic Party can succeed if it defines (and can achieve) positive goals rather than merely negative goals. Having a candidate people care about is better than choosing one that is "electable". The Labour party in Britain spent a lot of time finding this out - being respected or taking stands is much better than trying to be "electable"; if you get elected this way, it could turn out to be meaningless anyway (this is from Christopher Hitchens' essays in "For the Sake of Argument").
In summary, it is probably better for the Democratic Party (and probably politics in general) to have a candidate who is liked by a fair amount of people who is willing to stand and fight for issues, even if they were further left than many might like. Since the Republicans will portray their opponent as far left as possible anyway, it's better to stand and fight than to aquiesce quietly and in the process cede the initiative and the terms of debate to the Republicans. As in baseball, it's better to lose with your best pitches than to throw what you aren't good at and get beaten anyway.
"I still think that Bush is going to really regret doing that stupid Top Gun stunt next November."
Nothin' like dodging your chance at serving your country, goin' AWOL, and havin' daddy bail you out! you've got me why anybody in a uniform would vote for this guy, especially when all he does is cut their benefits. clueless!
"Your kids" is the giveaway. This is why we shouldn't elect parents. There's some biological defect that makes them forget that a police state isn't worth defending.
" trash Clark as a loony with an out of context quote"
Clark will do himself in. Most of his statements are outright lies: he is living in a fantasy world. He is like Howard Dean: an incredibly mean liar who wants to make things worse, but unlike Dean he has no political experience, and he comes across as the latest Perot (or worse yet: Admiral Stockdale, Perot's very similar clueless running mate who also had military experience).
As for Gore, it was Gore who claimed that he himself invented the Internet. He didn't need Rove's help for this and other nutty claims (Love Canal, listening to not-yet-written union songs as a child, and all the rest of Gore's Zeligry).
"thats why the Whitehouse included $100 million for H2 power research in the last budget. "
This is just another $100 spent on corporate welfare. Don't you have a problem with this? This is one of those mistakes the Bush administration should not be making.
I'm not an open source zealot and in the last election I supported Bush. This election I'm supporting Dean because Republicans can't balance the budget and the USA PATRIOT act is B.S.
This is my sig.
How funny is this? Weren't the democrats the ones who sponsored the DMCA? I'm a democrat because it's the lesser of two evils, but the green party has supported the open source software movement for years now. As for Dean well, I've read interviews with all the candidates and well, he's just as bad as the others. I have one rule when I judge candidates, do they really answer the question put to them or do they sidestep it? I've come to the conclusion that I'm not always going to believe in everything a candidate believes in, but I'm more than willing to consider a candidate regardless of their beliefs if they decide to actually tell me. Dennis Kucinich is the only guy out there right now that actually answers the questions asked of him, but I guess that kind of personality is sure to keep you from being elected. As for Dean and his free software, I'm thinking it's mostly a publicity stunt.
Nice gesture. Probably means that Dean will get the votes of a good percentage of the million or so people who spend their Sundays reading Slashdot or writing free software.
On the other hand, Bush will get the votes of a good percentage of the 80 million who spend their Sundays in church.
Maybe I've watched too much Babylon 5, but I just can't get read the phrase 'President Clark' without looking around for Nightwatch.
Didn't you get the memo? Someone decided that TIPS was a better name than Nightwatch.
But seriously, you can see the Democratic candidates' positions (in soundbite form) on "homeland security" at CNN. Nothing very concrete from Clark, but Howard Dean is listed as:
Against military tribunals, labeling of "enemy combatants"
Repeal parts of Patriot Act that restrict basic liberties
Country was a lot better off when Clinton / Gingrich had to duke it out. Back then the big argument was prayer in school. Now, it's the FBI everywhere.
This is my sig.
In 2002 I developed a voter contact management system (phone bank) for a municipal campaign in a medium sized Canadian city (pop 78,000). It was based on Linux/Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL, and was only accessible to volunteers within the campaign office LAN.
Some things I learned from the Experience are:
I'm hopeing to apply what I've learned and what I've learned since to building a system suitable for the next federal election.It'll probably be a combination of Servlets and domain model objects, PostgreSQL, and PL/pgSQL stored procedures.
For Dean supporters living overseas, Expats4Dean blog
Dean and Clark, 2004!
Dean for Pres, Clark for VP.
Or, maybe they should introduce the concept of dual Presidencies??? But I'll leave this for another day...
"Left-wing freak Lieberman?" Joe Lieberman's the closest thing the Dems have to a neo-con in the party. Civil libertarians and people who seek peace and international consensus should NOT consider Lieberman a "left wing freak."
He's the Democratic candidate most likely to use rhetoric about "God" and "evil" like Bush, and he supports numerous issues that blur the line between Church and State such as funding faith-based aid programs and "morality legislation" such as the ban of the sale of violent video games to minors. He supported the Patriot Act, he supports "properly constructed" military tribunals, and he supported the act which pratically rubber-stamped anti-Arab racial profiling in the granting of visas. He has also been a long-time supporter of warantless wire-taps and is responsible for the amendment to anti-terrorism language in the wake of OKC that allows for "roving" wiretaps.
He's the candidate most likely to support America's unilateral use of military power. He co-sponsored the bill that authorized the attack on Iraq. He's also a fanatical supporter of Israel, and goes proudly on the record as supporting issues which anger Muslims world-wide. He opposed cutting the flow of free US taxpayer money to Israel over their new Berlin Wall. He adamantly refuses to negotiate with the Palestinians' chosen leadership, which even Bush will deal with despite the overwhelmingly pro-Israel bias in his neo-con think-tank.
He also supports school vouchers as well as strengthened intellectual property and free trade agreements. How, he's pretty fiscally and environmentally liberal, but Lieberman is far to the right of Dean. Hell, Dean's only notable conservative views are the two points you mentioned and a less radical stance stance on socialized medicine. I call myself a hard-core liberal, and I pretty much agree with him on all of those issues as well. (While I'm at it, I don't consider having balanced fiscal sense to be a right/left issue considering Bush's huge increase in discretionary spending over the Clinton era coupled with reckless tax cuts).
I'd love to see Dean get the nomination. It'll give people an actual reason to vote one way or another. If Lieberman gets the nod, it'll be Bush Jr. vs. Bush Lite, and I'll be looking pretty hard at 3rd party candidates.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
400 Billion (Cost of War and rebuild)/ 22 million (pop of Iraq) = 181 dollars per Iraqi... Hmm
Novel should mean novel, do something on the Internet that has been done for 20 years is not novel.
There is not a patent lawyer in the world who would disagree with you. Nor does the PTO or the Congress. If someone claims something that has been "done for 20 years," on the internet or otherwise, it is unpatentable. Of course, if it hadn't been done as claimed, it wouldn't be prior art.
Prior review get rid of the secrecy in the process, all applications to be subject to a one year protest period, same as the Europeans do
No gripe here, and many patent lawyers would agree as well. Indeed, the US has moved quite a bit closer to that already -- we are now publishing many (not all) applications 18 months after application, and of course, you can provoke an interference as soon as you have such specification and claims. The process isn't as good as European opposition practice, but hey, we're doing what we can.
The constituency with whom you have a gripe here is not large corporations, but rather those who claim to represent supposedly small independent inventors -- this lobby group fiercely opposed international harmonization, fought the publication right, insisted on the "US-only" publication exception and limited the scope of remedies of an inventor.
Still, there has been quite a bit of progress on this front, and many patent lawyers would tend to agree with you -- as did AIPLA and the ABA IP committees.
You have to invent it there are a ridiculous number of speculative patents filled where the inventor has actually invented nothing. Typical cases are in the genetics field where the first person to sequience a gene often files a patent that claims the use of the gene to solve every imaginable ailment before the 'inventor' knows anything about what the gene does
This is a tricky place, and once again, many patent lawyers and practitioners tend to agree. The law has developed well in this arena as well, with significant limitations on speculative applications whose claims are unsupported by a written description, or whose claims are not enabled by the specification. In practice, this is not as bad as it used to be, and is also improving.
I don't know if there is any presidential candidate who has ever taken the lead on intellectual property issues, at least not in this century -- can anybody think of an example?
Absolutely, open source has little or nothing to fear from big corporations. Microsoft and IBM both have massive patent portfolios that could be used to sink open source in a second if they chose. But most of those patents are only ever intended for defensive use. In most cases they are only filled for the sole purpose of preventing someone else filling.
I don't know if there is any presidential candidate who has ever taken the lead on intellectual property issues, at least not in this century -- can anybody think of an example?
Jefferson and Ben Franklin were both keen, but they were also genuine inventors and in those days you had to be able to carry the invention in the door to get a patent.
The Dean campaign is listening very hard to the open source community. I believe that the patent issue is the one that matters most to them.
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Aside from making sure to keep Islam out of the government in the south....
That's a BIG aside!
Iraq itself is an artificial entity forced together by distant colonial powers
It is, but then again their are no natural political entities. 19/20th Century European history shows the folly (at the cost of great human suffering) of attempting to define the Nation in terms of language, religion or ethnicity. Still I agree there is no overwhelming need to maintain Iraq as an entity
What good reason is there to keep it together? Just like there is no good reason to insist that Kosovo remain a colonial territory of Serbia.
The Serbs are going to disagree with your view of Kosovo as a colony, since they regard it as their heartland, lost to the Turks in the 14thCentury.
In any case a separate Kurdisthan is going to be opposed by Turkey (which still controls the majority of Kurdish lands) and it will lead to (even more) instability in Iran and Syria. This added to the real possibility that a Southern Iraqi (Shia) state would go 'Iranian,' are probably the policy reasons underlying the decision to maintain the integrity of the Iraqi state.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
At the rate things are going Bush may not be in office long enough to enjoy a second term.
If he is impeached or forced to resign the Democrats could win even if Sharpton was the nominee.
Remember the problem with Watergate wasn't the 3rd rate burglery but the coverup.
In this case we have disclosure of classified information that revealed sources and methods to the enemey during a time of war (treason). And we have the White House apparently sitting on the info for at least 2 months and stonewalling which leads to conspriacy and obstruction of justice charges.
I'm going to love watching Karl Rove getting frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
"Left-wing freak Lieberman?" Joe Lieberman's the closest thing the Dems have to a neo-con in the party. Civil libertarians and people who seek peace and international consensus should NOT consider Lieberman a "left wing freak."
I think you misparsed that. The parent post was saying "Dean isn't the left-wing freak Lieberman is claiming he is"
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Most likely you may have been influenced by fud.
http://saveie6.com/
I don't think Bush would kill US citizens to win elections. He would start a war with iran or sryia if he thought he was going to lose the election though.
War is necrophilia.
I wonder if RMS thought he'd see a US presidential candidate releasing stuff under the GPL when he founded GNU 20 years ago!
I wonder if RMS thought he would still be working on the Hurd 20 years from then. And I really wonder if he knows it will be another 20 years before it is stable.
Clark and Dean the ideal pair? I hope not!
Here a remarkable quote from Retired General H. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11:
If I had a sig, I would put it here.
My God, is that an intelligent candidate emerging from the thundering herd of dumbass? A democrat with common sense, damn, what'll they think of next. I never thought I'd see the day.
10% liberal, 10% conservative, who represents those of us in the majority. Find as many moderates as possible and elect them to any office to buck the trend.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.micro soft.com
Hi blog page is a hyper exclamation mark festival which has compared him to a "rock star" of politics. I don't want to vote for a rock star, as that image does not connote accountability (or even talent, given todays RIAA-manufactured boy bands).
To participate in his meetups, you have to click through an agreement that binds you into arbitration and robs you of your right to a jury trial in the event of a related dispute. To me, this makes Dean sound more like a giant corporation out to squish hapless citizens than a man who is trying to elevate dialog.
I have written more than one email to the address listed as the official input for the campaign. Brief, easily digested, thoughtful messages that invite responses. I've heard nothing back. I don't take it personally, but it certainly raises the question: is Dean fundamentally using the internet as anything more than a broadcast medium? I am only one person so I can't state the aggregate, but it's all I have to base a judgement on regarding what Dean is doing with the net. I grant him major points for so clearly being aware of the internet; now I'd like some indication that he can use it as a two way medium and not just as a louder bullhorn.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
We don't have to hope for anything. It's already going south and will go even further as time goes by.
War is necrophilia.
If every last /. user with US citizenship voted for Dean...
Join Tor today!
Yes. Yes, I did parse the completely incorrectly, and I let myself get far too worked up about it. *sigh*
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Bush was never charged with his insider trading at Harken, daddy appointed the investigator. The AWOL charge has been established as fact many times, his commanding officer confirms that he never saw him turn up for duty. If there was no evidence then 300 newspapers would not have published this week's Doonsbury strip which makes the same charge.
Of course, thank you Tom Daschle. The Democrats have been undercutting the administration at every turn in the efforts of increasing the deaths of US soldiers
You really are an arrogant little shit. Perhaps Tom Daschle would be the two people in the administraqtion who leaked the name of a CIA operative to Bob Novak and 6 other journalists out of spite. Yeah, that fits, Bob Novak's eyesight must have been faulty.
Even then, the Democrats have little chance. The fact remains that Lieberman is Jewish. There is a strong anti-semitic contingent in the Democratic Party
Yeah, that would be why Lieberman would be trailing Dean, Dean only has a Jewish wife and children so he takes a smaller hit on the anti-semitism front.
Lieberman has zero chance of being nominated because he is a Republican, to be precise he is Bob Dole.
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You know Rush, you are really insufferable on the days you can't get your oxy-contin fix.
If criticizing the Sharon government was anti-semitic then most of the jews living in Israel are anti-semitic.
The problem with you Rush is that you are a bigott and an idiot. You just spew out this stream of hatred and you can't stop it no matter how stupid it makes you look.
Have luck finding a new job now ESPN fired you. You might want to start looking before the sponsors of your radio show decide they don't want their program associated with a drug adict.
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Actually it was an Israeli judicial investigation that determined Sharon was responsible for the war crimes committed in Shabra and Chatila.
Glad to hear that you believe that right wingers that break the law should be prosecuted. I hope you will join me in calling for Schwatzenegger to be prosecuted for his admitted acts of sexual harassment.
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Isn't gravity an example of something that travels FTL? As in, information about the location and mass of an object seems to be transmitted to other objects instantly. Or has the "speed of gravity" actually been measured as non-instantaneous (sp?).
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)