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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?
Now the government might start using bad data to justify ridiculous copyright laws and restriction of users' rights! But wait, surely no-one would let them get away with that?
The BSA was pretty impotent. They achieved only a tiny bit of what they could have, had they had half a clue. Personally I hope they hire more people from the BSA.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would have thought they would have went with some script kiddie or long-haired open source zealot, but instead they went with an industry man. Still scratching my head over this one.
Here's a guy who ran a market-leading motorcycle company into the ground in the days of carburettors, coil ignition and chain drive. Now he's in charge of technology for the good old US of A.
I loved those BSA motorcycles.
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
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?
If this administration was to make an appointment that didn't favor business interests over the needs of the populace, THEN I'd be worried. I'd be expecting a time-space continuum breach or the earth spinning off its axis or something.
From a ZDNet Aug.1, 2005 Declan McCullagh article titled , Copyright lobbyists strike again
The Central American nations participating in CAFTA must also:
- Permit software patents
- Extend copyright protection to "70 years after the author's death"
- Ban the "manufacture" or "export" of any hardware or software that could decode encrypted satellite TV signals
- Offer "online public access to a reliable and accurate" WhoIs database of domain name registration details
It's true that these may be ideas beloved by the Bush administration and business lobbyists, but they have far more to do with special-interest lobbying than traditional notions of free trade.
In reality, they're simply the latest in a string of victories that copyright lobbyists have managed to accumulate in the last decade--under both Democratic and Republican presidents--through adept work at influencing the arcane process of treaty drafting.
Negotiating below the radar "We push for that in trade agreements and treaties and bilateral" agreements, Robert Cresanti, vice president for public policy at the Business Software Alliance, told me last week. Members of his group include Adobe Systems, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You're getting the heebie jeebies from an undersecretary?
That is fine and dandy, but one has to wonder if this goes on all the time.
Sure one undersecretary isn't that bad, but what if all positions like this were dealt in the same way.
Boil a frog, anyone?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I first interpreted "BSA" in your title as Boy Scouts of America... ... and given the nature of Bush Administration appointments, it would have been about as likely.
Generic "robotic" hardware, computer-controlled devices that do useful work for their owners, seems to be a required next step to convert centralized mass production into distributed mass production. Still the stuff of sci fi, though.
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.
What? You were expecting Cowboy Neal to be appointed?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
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
I need half a bottle of Valium just to read /. anymore.
/.
Sorry, your Scientologist pharmacist won't be providing that to you any more because he has found it is against his religion. You'll just have to fly to Canada to read
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does this give anyone else the Heebie Jeebies?
No, I'm used to this sorta news by now.
Developers: We can use your help.
So what? Who cares? Why is the BSA such a bad thing, unless you're into stealing software?
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
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.
That is fine and dandy, but one has to wonder if this goes on all the time.
You have to wonder if cronyism and giving government positions to connected corporate interests occurs all the time?
Let me help you out: Yes, it goes on all the time.
In this sense, the OP was right that a mere undersecretary position isn't anything special.
The enemies of Democracy are
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Technical Information Service and the Office of Technology Policy all fall under the oversight of the Technology Administration
So there's one big no vote on making any free file formats or programs standard issue for government offices. That's a big deal.
People from the BSA have no place in government service in any case. The BSA is an organization that sued public schools systems for copying a text editor. People who do things like that should be shunned.
Ugh, he even looks like a bit character from the Sopranos.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Um, no thanks. At least, not without a good dash of cajun spices, or perhaps some good curry or chinese chilis. Otherwise, the boiled frog won't sit in your stomach and digest very well.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"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.
*snort* :-\
Oh, man, I'm sorry, I just couldn't keep a straight face through that one.
Dear Word Detective: At a recent party, I had occasion to use the phrase "Heebee Jeebees" to refer to something that gave me a "creepy" feeling. I was flummoxed when half the crowd was nonplussed! (See, you do have an effect!) Actually, I was even more surprised when someone suggested that she thought the phrase was not in good taste because it was anti-Semitic! I am doubtful, but I'm PC enough to worry. -- Chris Kuhn, via the Internet.
Of course I have an effect; many effects, in fact, some of them rather alarming. Most people find me easiest to take with meals (you can always play with your peas and pretend not to know me), and it's generally wise not to go swimming within a half-hour after reading this column. If dizziness or skepticism develops, go ask William Safire.
I, too, am surprised that half the folks at that party didn't know what "heebie-jeebies" (the usual spelling) are. What are they teaching in school these days, anyway? Nothing useful, apparently. To quote the Oxford English Dictionary, the "heebie-jeebies" are "a feeling of discomfort, apprehension, or depression; the 'jitters'; delirium tremens; also, formerly, a type of dance." Just like the "wim-wams," I'd say, except the dancing part.
As to your worries about "heebie-jeebies" possibly being an anti-Semitic slur, the answer is a somewhat qualified "no." The phrase "heebie-jeebies" was invented by Billy De Beck, a famous American comic strip artist of the 1920's, in his popular "Barney Google" strip in 1923. De Beck, by the way, also invented "hotsy-totsy" (a term of approval) and the wonderful "horsefeathers" (meaning "utter nonsense") in his strip. "Heebie-jeebies" must have caught the popular imagination immediately, since the dance of that name appeared a scant three years later, in 1926.
The invention of "heebie-jeebies" by De Beck was, without doubt, innocent of any racial or ethnic animosity. The only possible anti-Semitic interpretation of "heebie-jeebies" comes from its unfortunate resemblance to the slang term "hebe" (a cropping of "Hebrew"), which is indeed an anti-Jewish epithet. Whether you want to risk possible misunderstandings when you use "heebie-jeebies" is up to you, of course, but the truth of its innocent origin is its best defense.
FC Closer
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.