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The Software Politics Of 2004's Presidential Race
mjamil writes "The NYT(free registration required) has an article talking about the polarized use of OSS in the building of campaign Web sites. Specifically, it states that the sites for John Kerry (Democratic candidate for President) and the Democratic National Committee are built using OSS, while the site for President Bush's re-election campaign uses IIS. Linus and ESR are quoted. It's an interesting look at how even presidential politics are no longer immune to the free software war (free as in beer)." (David Brunton, pictured in the article, wrote to say "Now I'm going to go call my mom... won't she be proud? For all those girl geeks and gay geeks out there, I'm already taken, but it is an awful nice picture, isn't it?")
Could someone please explain what this means. It comes up often and I don't get it.
The Libertarian presidential candidate's websites are running FreeBSD and Windows 2003. Interesting. :>
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
That would be more revealing than what their websites run on. To the best of my recollection, Kerry didn't answer the question "Mac or PC?" at a debate among the democratic contenders (Al Sharpton was the only Mac user). I also recall reading that Bush used a Mac, and that he used to be an enthusiastic emailer until he was informed that records would be kept of all his email. I may be wrong about all this. Maybe someone could provide better info.
In 2000, I remember noticing that GWB's site used Apache and Gore's used IIS.
I thought IBM was an American company. They're pushing hard to sell Linux and related services aren't they?
Funny how your focus is on Kerry being "guilty" of driving the wrong brand of car and somehow ignoring how Bush Jr. is screwing hard working American workers by not repealing tax incentives for big corporations to send jobs overseas. Free market is good but having our govt pay for outsourcing is ridiculous.
Remember how often the term "draft dodger" was applied to Clinton and "war hero" was attributed to Bush Sr. by the so-called liberal media? I suppose you think all of us Americans are stupid enough to believe the media is liberal if the media keeps telling us they're biased liberals 20 times a day. We heard more about Monica this year than the Whitehouse scandals such as INTENTIONALLY LEAKING IDENTITY OF OUR CIA OPERATIVE or VP REFUSING TO DISCLOSE HOW NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY WAS SHAPED BY CROOKS--and that was before Clinton's self-serving book came out.
Thanks to assholes like you, its gotten so fucking embarrassing to be a conservative that I don't tell anyone I'm a conservative Republican anymore because they'll mistakenly assume I want to lie and rape the US constitution to fatten my bank accounts or bloat the national deficit for short-term profits so our children can get royally screwed with 80% taxe rates 10-20 years from now.
see http://www.fair.org
Guy has a good point.. how can one RTFA when /. keeps posting links that require registration? not everone wants to cop spam for a stupid NYT article.. should be compulsory to have a google news link in there or something.
As one who rather likes open source, but whose job can potentially be offshored, I am having trouble making up my mind about this offshore outsourcing thing. I know there are other differences and complexities. The "free software" advocates want code to be free-as-in-speech, but the momentum is really behind the free-as-in-beer motive. Also, there are some who argue that offshore outsourcing will be detrimental to the US economy as a whole, but those who argue otherwise -- and back their arguments with data -- seem to have the better argument. So the above paragraphs distill the state of my reasoning at the moment. I have trouble seeing how I can favor one and oppose the other.
Please, argue with me.
(Pardon this repost ... didn't get any response last time).
The incumbent Liberal party (which is actually very conservative) uses IIS. The opposition Labor party (which is slightly less conservative) uses Apache.
The Greens (progressive) use Apache on Linux for all their websites (including the one I built) and have a pro-F/OSS policy in general.
Yes, this is shameless self-promotion.
I sure as heck ain't changing my vote because of this issue. Anyone who is voting for any person because of only one reason is not thinking about the whole picture. So what? Bush probably is hosting their site and their host uses Windows and IIS. Bush uses Movable Type on his Blog too. Does that mean he's a worse candidate then Kerry is JUST because he paid for his software? Again, this is just probably how it worked out and neither candidate probably has a clue WHAT software their web site runs on.
Gorkman
"You'll find gun nuts along with total lefties," Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said in an e-mail message.
;-)
Any prizes for guessing who he was referring to?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It startles me to see that Microsoft gave more this year to the Dems... But not that much. The financial company I work for gives similarly - to both parties - though they tend to favor the incumbent. Makes sense I suppose, you can pay for your legislation with either party, but you don't have to work as hard to bribe the party already in power...
I don't care what servers they run. The Bush website is *way* better.
It's aslo an indication of the future winner, as, in presidential election years, MS always bet on the winner :
... let's see
1992 : Dem. 72%
1996 : Dem. 54%
2000 : Rep. 53%
2004 : Dem. 58% - Rep. 42%
(Winner side and MS percentage)
#include "coucou.h"
The AT&T guys chuckled at the problems. Who is chuckling now phone boy!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
We use omniture on our websites. There is nothing big brother about it. It gives you information like how many unique visitors, page views, IE users, Mac users, etc... We can correlate one set of numbers against another and then again with another if we wish. It's simply a VERY powerful breakdown of site statistics.
We tied our omniture into our registration system recently, which allows us to track how many users come from each zip code or the number of male or female users.
I don't see how this is insecure of big brotherish -- it tells us what kinds of people use our site, and it allows us to use this information to lure advertisers to match.
Well, you have to consider the alternative to Bush. Can you imagine the U.S. reaction to terrorism under Kerry? Kerry is completely anti-military (look at his voting record, if nothing else). He would have the country just lie back and try to enjoy it.
Bush may not be good, Kerry would be far, far worse.
Another reader pointed out this:
Microsoft Campaign Support
Apparently Microsoft campaign spending is down, and is pretty biased towards the Democrats right now, reversing a previous trend of biasing towards the Republicans.
Penguins for President?
The best part is at the end:
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It should be noted that whitehouse.gov, the official site for President Bush, is apache running on linux. So in the end this is all just political propaganda, interesting but still just propaganda. Peace, Rovaedne
...The bit with the list of problems with the Muslim world and saying each one is not the fault of Israel is a standard misdirection tactic. His entire rant has the form of reasoned opinion, but when examined it is full of lies, exaggerations, repetitions of propaganda, and racism. I am so tired of this BS that it's all Israel's fault that the Middle East is so fucked up. As the writer of the article astutely points out, there are MANY reasons why the Middle East has gone awry, not the least is the 11th-century attitudes and behaviors toward women. If there is anything "racist" or repetitious of "propaganda", it is coming from the side that would rather have the Western world sympathize with terrorists who would rather keep us women in the beekeepers' suits than get with the fucking 21st century for a change. I will give said two "Anonymous Clowns" this much--Israel isn't perfect, it as a nation HAS indeed unjustly punished its share of innocent bystanders in the Palestinian community. We as a world community can't keep enabling this behavior but neither should we allow equally innocent Israelis to continue to lose their lives. OK, maybe Israel's creation never should have come into being. It was a stupid-ass idea for the Brits and Americans to have the brilliant idea to stick an egalitarian people in the middle of a culture that insists on the subjugation of women. Of course, they're going to hate that kind of intrusion! But what the hell do we do with a nation full of two million people who won't budge? Nuke them? That would make us murderers and genocidal maniacs, and it would make any other nation also guilty of likewise. So then what would your alternative be? That Yasser Arafat et al had their way and were able to "push the Jews into the sea" so a democratic Israeli state ceased to exist? Fine--if I had Bill Gates's money, I'd gladly give the Israelis Montana and say take it, Robert Redford never did anything good with it; but then the only shred of forwardthinkingness gets engulfed in a sea of a return to oppression and religious fanaticism. Fanatics will get their way and terrorism will prove to have worked. I do not defend a lot of what Ariel Sharon and his hawkish government get away with, but neither do I want to kiss the ass of Arafat in the name of so-called "liberalism" and "anti-racism"--I thought we liberals were about anti-_violence_. People who defend the oppression of women--and the perpetuation of it--make me sick; and IMO they _should_ be squashed like the insects they are.
At the risk of being labelled a heretic or worse, may I suggest that police and intelligence forces are in fact a more effective method of fighting terrorists than sending in the Marines? Our armed forces are great at destroying enemy armies, toppling dictators, etc, but it seems they are much less effective at rooting out underground insurgencies like Al-Quaeda. For every terrorist they kill, they kill several innocent civilians, inspiring their relatives to take up arms against us. Furthermore, our military actions have made the US so unpopular abroad that it is very difficult even for "friendly" politicians to help us track down terrorists -- cooperating with the US is now seen as a major political liability in many parts of the world. So instead of rooting out terrorism, we've given the terrorists valuable recruiting propaganda AND places to hide while they plan their next attack. You may have noticed that according to the US government, terrorism has increased since 9/11, not decreased... I think that is evidence that our current strategies are not working well.
Sooner or later we'll have to face the fact: we are not re-fighting World War II, and what worked against Hitler won't necessarily work against Al-Quaeda. Terrorists ARE criminals (albeit very nasty ones), not armies. Therefore, trying to fight them as if they were something they are not is simply ineffective.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.