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Interactive Campaigning ala Wiki
brettlg writes to tell us LinuxInsider is reporting that Utah Democratic hopeful, Peter Ashdown, is hoping to leverage his knowledge of the internet and small business resourcefulness to take down the incumbent Senator Orrin Hatch next year. From the article: "Peter Ashdown is the founder of Xmission, Utah's oldest Internet service provider (ISP). His Web site includes a blog and a monthly live chat session. But Ashdown's site takes public participation on his campaign Web site one step further -- opening his platform to all. The site is based on the "Wiki" open-source model made famous by Wikipedia."
The problem with this idea is it's just a magnet for people to tamper with his page - Wiki had to block edits of Bush and Kerry during the 2004 election. There isn't the mechanisms to revert changes and viewers can get a bad impression. Just now, for instance, I noticed that somebody defaced his website by posting a picture of a really geeky-looking white guy.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Remember, msft is the major player in the scox-scam. Msft is financing the entire thing. And remember that msft tried to keep that secret.
Frankly, when considering it's msft, I wonder if it's possible to be paranoid. Think of all the bizare and brazenly illegal activities that msft can been caught doing: fake grass campaigns - including letters from dead people, faked video evidence in DOJ trial, the entire ODF fiasco in MA. . .
That said, remember that Hatch's kid works for scox. Also remember that Hatch is on the judicial commitee, which means that Hatch has significant say-so over the careers of the federal judges in Utah.
Anybody familiar with the scox-scam knows that these judges have been insanely pro-scox from the start. The fact that obvious farce is still going strong after nearly three years speaks volumes. The trials don't even start for another 1.5 years.
I've met and talked to Orrin Hatch many times, and his daughter-in-law is a good friend, but he needs to go down. He has this strange knack for making the wrong first decision every time. Sometimes someone points it out to him, and he back-pedals (stem-cell research); but by and large, he has consistently made this country a worse place to live in.
That said, Pete Ashdown isn't the man to do it. See, I've met him on several occasions, and while he is a techie and may get those questions right, he is not a people person. At all. Much like Orrin, he himself is first on the priority list. XMission is a wonderful ISP, and far and away the best available in Utah (I wish someone as good as them existed in Upstate New York), and I thank Pete for that. Stick to tech.
Yes, just like the open source movement has taken down Microsoft on the desktop.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
I typically vote Republican and have voted for Hatch in the past but I feel that Pete's attention to his customers (through XMission) will translate to his constituents. I will definitely vote for him this fall.
Who am I to blow against the wind? -- Paul Simon
At first (and subsequent so far) glance, this guy appears to be awesome. He founded Xmission, which was the host of Maddox, an author who I feel would have been censored by other ISPs a long time ago. His policies also appear to be sane, and he seems to genuinely want input from the public (the Wiki goes a long way in my eyes). I would vote for him if I was in his district.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"Though I do have a hard time believing there was not one fiscally responsible Republican you had an opportunity to vote for the in the past 30 years."
For president, yes. Not one.
"Additionally, bearing in mind that most of our current spending can be accounted for in a foreign war,"
First of all that's bullshit. The war "only" costs 200 billion or so. Secondly the war itself was discretionary spending. There was no reason to invade iraq which was a secular socialist state which opposed religious fundamentalism.
"do not forget the amount of spending Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson did on Vietnam."
Once again discretionary spending but in their case they kind of inherited the problem.
"Also, most economic indicators would also suggest we are doing better than we were at the end of Clinton's second term."
Yea right, and Iraq is going to join OPEC any day now. Thanks for the laugh though.
evil is as evil does