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Former BSA VP Confirmed as Tech Undersecretary
RedOregon writes "The Senate has confirmed Robert Cresanti as the Commerce Department's new undersecretary for technology.
Who's that, you ask?
He was the former vice president of public policy at the Business Software Alliance.
Does this give anyone else the Heebie Jeebies??"
You're getting the heebie jeebies from an undersecretary? The position means very little, be glad he wasn't given a real job like a spot on the Supreme Court.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Sounds like par for the course to me.
About the same as a Doubleclick hack (Nuala O'Connor Kelly, Chief "Privacy" Officer of Doubleclick) advising HomeSec on privacy.
Or the Gator/Claria hack (D. Reed Freeman, former Gator/Claria Chief "Privacy" Officer) sitting on HomeSec's Data "Privacy" and "Integrity" Advisory Committee.
Maybe we should be thankful. Based on precedent, the BSA guy should be put in charge of the Copyright office, or perhaps hired by NSA to... adjust its priorities when it comes to what sort of traffic is worthy of further investigation.
Anyone taking bets on when Jeff Bezos gets picked to head USPTO?
The best public policy is found and served by understanding the public. The public is a group of individuals who make individual decisions that best serve their lives now rather than later. This is true as we see that people would rather spend today rather than save for tomorrow, and they know they can live tomorrow by passing on the costs of retirement to the next generation rather than their offspring.
To put a crony into this chief position is not news, it is status quo. The public is never served by the politicians, especially those who are not voted into office directly (which can have even worse consequences). The public is served by letting people make billions of decisions separately, and letting businesses and individuals find ways to serve those decisions, instantaneously adapting the market to what the public wants at that moment.
By the time government is ready to react, it is usually too late and unnecessary. Even worse, many of government's reactions are to previous reactions that were too late, making the situation even worse for the millions of individuals making billions of decisions, sometimes unable to get what they truly want because that decision has been judged criminal by previous generations of politicians who never appreciated that the individual's need is best served by the individual's decisions.
Read F.A. Hayek's many books for more details.
Them I forgive; they're senators, not technologists. But note this well:
As Cresanti pushes to expand the scope and scale of software patents, he knows full well that the term "intellectual property" is problematic at best and outright deceitful at worst. As rms said, when people use this term they are either confused or attempting-to-confuse-you.
The senators are confused. Cresanti is a propagandist
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Does this give anyone else the Heebie Jeebies?
No, I'm used to this sorta news by now.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yup, I don't think that they have missed a single opportunity to suckle at the cock of big buisness.
Lets not forget to add to that list no bid sweetheart deal contracts for hailburton. Installing a big oil consultant as head of afghanistan, tax cuts, defeating net neutrality... doesn't seem to matter the issue, as long as it doesn't mean a bare breast on TV big buisness can just have its way.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
We, the American people are to blame.
We elected a drunken frat boy to bring honor and dignity back to the whitehouse.
We elected a man who cavorts with gay prositutes to satisfy our "pro-marriage" bigotry.
We elected a man who is beholden to Saudi oil money and Neocon insanity to run a humbler foreign policy.
We elected a man who openly prefers dictatorship (just so long as he's the dictator) to defend the consititution.
Yeah, there're foxes in the hen house, and we put them there, cheering the whole way. Twice.
Play Command HQ online
It could also be argued that the administration is picking people who know something about what they're regulating and understand the issues. Mind you, I don't say you're wrong, just that there's more than one interpretation of this.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Fortunately Ebay did in fact reinstate my auctions but I was pretty unhappy about the disgusting way I had been treated. I can only hope that the shoot first, ask questions later attitude will be moderated now that this guy has a government job.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
A BSA guy will fit right in with the rest of the sleazy bunch in the white house and their enron-like supporters. Is there even ONE senior guy in the Bush administration who puts the good of the country ahead of private agendas and interests?
"the poor teachers copied a text editor and they got sued by the evil BSA" hardly helps your cause.
You are entitled to your belief, but most people would dissagree.
This is the heart and soul of how non free software is evil and how out of whack "IP" laws are. Most people think of schools as worthy of public support and money. The BSA thinks of them as a source of money and thinks that money is more important than the school's mission. These suits were carried out in the most disruptive way possible. People understand that's wrong. They should also know the intimidation effect of those suits and the massive amounts of public money wasted keeping track of licenses and all that, to avoid more of the same. The case also nicely illustrates why it's wrong to use a non free file format as a communications standard, which is something the public also understands very well now.
If the BSA wanted to look good, they would leave schools of all types alone. Unlike "piracy", this would not have cost them a thing but a few lost sales. I'm glad they were so stupid because it shows them for what they are and encourages the use of free software. No one likes being threatened. Threatening public education is about the dumbest thing a private company can do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It could also be argued that the administration is picking people who know something about what they're regulating and understand the issues. Mind you, I don't say you're wrong, just that there's more than one interpretation of this.
So it's a coincidence that they are all from the pro-business side of the resource managed? I do see how they could select people in the know, but to only select people from within the industry that had direct conflicts with the exact same government agency they are now working for, and often with personal interest remaining in the industry they left doesn't seem to be filling the positions with people that will fulfull the duties to the best of their abilities. Even if they happened to be the most qualified person on the planet, there would still be some internal conflicts.
Once or twice isn't an issue, but picking everyone from the same cookie-cutter is indicating that it isn't knowledge they seek, but a point of view.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't think you understand the statement "foxes guarding the henhouse."
No one comprehends the issues of henhouses better than the foxes who regularly attempt to defeat them. Both the farmer and fox understand the issues quite well. They are both experts in the field. The question is motive, not competence.
It could also be argued that the administration is picking people who know something about what they're regulating and understand the issues. Mind you, I don't say you're wrong, just that there's more than one interpretation of this.
No, "foxes guarding the henhouse" usually implies people who know the situation but profit from not enforcing the rules.
The problem with conservative government is that it's primarily run by people who wish it didn't exist in the first place. The reason why everything is so screwed up in the current administration is because it's staffed by people who have such disrespect for the institutions that they are running that they don't bother to do the job right.
Witness FEMA. Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform once stated, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Congratulations. Was New Orleans a good enough bathtub for the people to realize the problem with letting people with this attitude run things?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Where does government money go that doesn't create jobs in America?
Much of it is spent very, very inefficiently (relative to activity in the private sector). Or, much of it is "spent" as grants, social programs, and other hand-out-ish type stuff that doesn't actually require (or produce) an actual productive job in return for that money. Simple re-distribution of money from a worker to (say) a non-worker does not create a job.
Pork-type spending (like, building pointless highways in the middle of nowhere, or sponsoring a teapot museum in the Carolinas - really!) may ultimately employ people in the literal sense, but it doesn't focus that money in areas where there's a real, 'natural' demand for the output of those workers. It's very distorting, and creates false spots in the economic landscape.
Why do you expect investors to invest as much money in America as the American government as opposed to investing in overseas and multinational companies
I expect investors to invest money wherever it suits them. If they're smart, they'll invest a goodly amount in domestic activity... but there's nothing wrong with investing in operations overseas, because that creates larger, newer, hungrier markets in those other places... and if you're still banking on the US as an innovative, useful place, those other countries will then have more to spend on our higher-end goods and services. Do you really think we're better off running low-end textile mills in this country? Or, are we better off leveraging developing economies that need the stimulation at that level, and focusing locally on more high-end, info/service/brain-type stuff that we do so well? It's not as simple as investing in/outside our borders, because we're completely past that as an economic model anyway. Practically everything we consume is made in China... so why not invest there and have a greater impact in how we operate parts of our companies there, and do everything we can to make Chinese citizens able to buy from us the stuff that we're still better at?
I think the other thing that's worth mentioning is that "tax cuts" cover a lot of ground. Where it really counts is in reducing the capital gains taxes, so that people who have their cash tied up in something (a second family house, or a pile of stocks, etc) can liberate it and move the investment onto something else (which stimulates growth) without getting killed by taxes. This is much more of a middle class thing than people think it is. Just selling one stock and turning right around to buy another that looks promising... that can clobber you with taxes. No money has landed in your hands, and some other company's just raised the capital with which to expand their business (and thus hire people, etc), but all the sudden 20% or so of the money you were willing to relocate into a needy part of the economy is... gone. That completely kills the incentive to push money into the hands of growing businesses that will make the most of it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It could also be argued that the administration is picking people who know something about what they're regulating...
Hey, so why don't we hire pedophiles to protect our children?
Oh wait...we do