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A Congressman Who Can Code Assembly
christo writes "In what appears to be a first, the US House of Representatives now has a Congressman with coding skills.
Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. Foster is a physicist who worked at Fermilab for 22 years designing data analysis software for the lab's high energy particle collision detector. In an interview with CNET today, Foster's campaign manager confirmed that the Congressman can write assembly, Fortran and Visual Basic. Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all? Can we expect more rational tech-policy? Already on his first day, Foster provided a tie-breaking vote to pass a major ethics reform bill."
But I'd rather see a Congressman who can write sensible legislature.
Now maybe he can hack into the C-Span system so that, when he gives a speech before the House, it shows him as "Bill Foster (D-1337)".
Similar to the upcoming US election results
8086? MIPS? ARM? Would be nice to know.
What kind of half breed freak is this guy?
We won't see sensible tech legislation until the people that have some sensible ideas are donating more money to politicians than the people who don't.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
We have had Presidents that could make a suit, run a nuclear reactor, fly off an aircraft carrier, and fly jet fighters. I am more interest in that he seems to have a good background in science than his coding skills.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
... he's a Visual Basic guy.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Senator Bill Frist could do heart surgery, and look how well that turned out. The moron made a diagnosis based on edited videotape!
No, I'm afraid once a highly skilled individual gives himself or herself over to the dark side of politics, they promptly become yet another meat puppet to be toyed with by lobbyists and wealthy patrons.
Why would a tech-savvy human being be any more useful or valid as a politician than an education-savvy human being? Or a law-savvy human being? Or an entertainment-industry human being? Or a war-savvy human being? Or a bureaucracy-savvy human being? Or a classical literature-savvy human being? Or a propaganda-savvy human being? Or a violent revolution-savvy human being?
Is there something special about technology, that sets tech-savvy humans apart from all the other kinds of humans when it comes to politics?
Was his vote on this ethics-reform bill somehow informed by his tech-savvyness in some kind of game-changing way?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Just remember how great it was to have a Doctor in Congress.
This guy seems like a nice candidate for an Ask Slashdot. I would ask two:
(1) How do you feel about large-scale datamining projects such as the Total Information Awareness project? While the project itself is gone it is not the first of its type. Do such projects strike you as technically feasible or even usable?
(2) As someone who has written software how do you feel about software patents?
Surely someone who can code will make a superior congress-critter!
Meh. Smart is not the same as "Not evil." Lot smart people I wouldn't want to see in congress. The best situation is to have someone who is open-minded and willing to listen without being swayed by PACs.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
being able to write assembly protects you from corruption how? We're all self important techies if we think being technical means you naturally have a higher ethical standard. He has to prove his ethics outside of this one bill before it matters.
Not only can he code assembly, he has his own private store of antimatter.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
that never happened.
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/there_but_for_the_grace_of_god.html
The fact that they are associates is definitely reassuring.
Coding skills doesn't really affect ones ethical/political views...
Spyware, Viruses, Addware, Internet Adds, ways around popup blockers, DRM, Military Software, and even Closed Source Software were all were done with people who can code. They are republicans who can code, there are democrats who can code, they even have moderates who can code. Religious People can code, as well as atheists, heck I knew someone who can code who is a Jehovah Witness. Some of the Terrorist can code, so do the good guys.
This is not really a big deal. Will it effect rational tech-policy probably not. Besides what you think it is less about not knowing the issues on a technical level it is about politics on who back you need to scratch. Yea we all laugh at the internet is made of tubes... But for most ISP if you get a huge amount of traffic you will slow down, like (a slimily word, not a direct comparison) having a lot of water going threw small amounts of pipes. It all boils down to do you want to support the new emerging internet technologies to make life easer for the old TelCos.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This guy is from my state and is realy a godsend for Illinois. He took the place of Dennis Hastert who is pretty much George Bush jr. Bill is a democrat which means that the more rural parts of illinois are also fed up with what passes for conservtism today. I hope we see more democrats from my state and continue to produce politicians like Abe Lincoln, Barak Obama and Bill Foster. I cant say how happy this makes me. After pretty much writing off this part of illinois to the republicans for decades its good to see some change. His campaign was a crazy longshot too.
A few scientists on our science committees will be nice. I think even blue-collar America is seeing the problem with theocratic elements. I dont think his geek cred is the big story here, the big story is that we're getting some more moderates in office as opposed to loud-mouth far-right idealogues. Thats a win-win for all, well, except the ultra-right.
I wonder if this will mean that he'll be able to get better funding for the sciences?
I mean, it's generally sad the way funding for science programs in the US is decided by congress, who generally know nothing about science, but perhaps an actual scientists in congress will be able to fix this.
what's that now?
My one experience "coding assembly" was 20 years ago as an undergrad visiting one of the experiments at Fermilab. They had electronic detectors triggered various ways sending data to an old Digital PHP system that was supposed to analyze each event as quickly as possible, decide whether it was interesting enough to save to magnetic tape, and then go on to the next event a few microseconds later. The data acquisition code was, naturally, in assembly - and boy they had that pared down to the absolute essentials, not a wasted instruction. My job was to try to, instead of recording to tape, to send the data over a wire to a new VAX machine that had just arrived.
Not sure I ever ran into Foster though - I wonder what experiments he was on? Actually, I have met him since then, but that's another story...
Energy: time to change the picture.
Almost all of you guys can code... and some of you have frightening opinions.
Especially you assembly hackers!
vi or emacs?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
You can expect the new congressman from the 14th District to vote the interests of the 14th District.
The first term congressman does not make policy. He will be two years learning the job and lucky to get a committee assignment that is remotely relevant to anything more significant than the coastal defense of Wyoming.
I can't help but wonder if he chose to go into politics after the recent Fermilab budget cuts. Considering the way that the current US congress has butchered science spending (at least relative to operating costs), it would be no surprise if he decided he had to fight the machine from within.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
But i certainly wouldn't want him in congess. shudder
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Except the 14th district is about 60 miles from Cook County. As someone who isn't in the district in question, but is close enough to have been bombarded with the BS from both sides, I'm not so sure Foster won this election so much as Jim Oberweis lost yet another political race (at last count he's 0 for 4).
Congress likes to talk to professionals, lawyers, doctors, PhDs.
Congress rarely invites someone who writes code for a living to talk to them about technology. More often then not you wind up with a room full of lawyers talking to a panel of lawyers about how technology works. That is, when they don't just invite Billy G in to tell them what the H1-B Visa program should look like. (I know.. Billy used to be a coder, sort of, once, maybe.. but now he's repping as a buisiness man.)
Anyway -- if we did have a genunine coder in congress, than this community would have a real representative of those interests common to programs -- like say H1-B visas and net neutrality.
-GiH
In 1876, James A. Garfield discovered a novel proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using a trapezoid while serving as a member of the House of Representatives.
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
The point being, had it been a republican, especially the person he replaced, it would not have passed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
If he's a FORTRAN programmer maybe he should run for the House of COMMONs instead
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
That's precisely what happened (United States Senate, Illinois governor, and two House runs - all failed spectactularly - and I for one couldn't be happier for it). After defeating popular (and well respected) State Senator Chris Lauzen in the special primary election for the GOP nod, he changed his cow-pie slinging from attacking his Republican rival to smearing Foster's campaign, which was also taking heat from Foster's fellow Democratic rival John Laesch, who demanded a recount here in Aurora as well as other precients in the 14th District because not all the votes were counted (absentee ballots) and due to the election problems here in Aurora (incomplete ballots, ballots missing candidates and even entire political races, and so forth). (Laesch decided to withdraw his demand the other day.)
The simple fact of the matter is this: Oberweis knows he can't buy his way into office yet he keeps trying to every single time. He wants into office as bad as Microsoft wants to crush Linux and free software (note I mean free both as in "free as in freedom" as well as "free as in beer" here - I don't play favorites on the issue). He's going to be squaring off against Foster again in the November general election, and I for one won't be voting for him. Thankfully a lot of other Illinois voters (especially conservative independents such as myself) feel the exact same way as I do - that he should sell milk and ice cream, not buy his way into public office (the Illinois GOP is even thinking of asking him to step aside as well "for the good of the party" since they're claiming that he cost them the election and their traditional Congressional stronghold).
If I'm right though (and for the sake of the nation, I hope I am), the Illinois GOP is going to have three years to figure out how to get the district back into its hands. Though with the current problems plaguing the Illinois Republican party, I doubt that's going to happen in three years as long as Oberweis keeps wasting his milk money on failed campaign after failed campaign (not to mention the lack of a clear direction and leadership in the state party as well). If Foster ends up doing a good job though, puts his constituents first (like that'll ever happen) and serves to the best of his ability, then I'll consider voting for him (like I said, I'm an independent, not a lackey).I think lolcats might have reached escape velocity from being just a novelty/meme. They have a lot of extensibility, and cuteness is timeless too.
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
You know what else assembly can do? Self-modifying code.
After all, your program is just zeroes and ones in memory. They can be added, subtracted, multiplied, and mutilated, just like anything else digital can.
So, for speed purposes, you can write a bastard of a for loop that changes the address of the jump statement at the end rather. It's hard to find a real practical purpose, other than on the TI-83 graphing calculators that only let you have 8811 bytes of code running at a time.
So... What can a congresscritter do who knows assembly language?
He can write self-modifying legislature!
DATABASE WOW WOW
Of course not. He's one guy out of 432. And a freshman Representative at that. He'll have no more effect than any other freshman Congressman does, which is to say, none at all.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The real benefit of having tech-savvy people in office isn't that they could help program computers, it's that their knowledge of programming could help straighten out the poor programming of the many computational systems that are the world itself.
Politicians deal routinely with simple issues of reliably specified process (due process), proper abstraction (policies that are neutral as to whom they apply to), process control (time slicing, fairness, scheduling), data hiding (privacy), security matters (credentials, privilege), algorithmic complexity and resource management (budgets), forward and backward chaining (proactive investment vs reactive budgeting), side effect, storage management and garbage collection (literally), APIs and network services (government databases and services), automation (minimizing overhead and streamlining budgets), modularity (responsibility and accountability), etc. Modern politicians deal with these issues in a kind of haphazard way that is both scary and sad to watch.
I'm not saying a Congress of nerds is the way to go, though I'd say it was worth giving a shot for a while just to see what they could do by applying some actual schooling. For a programmer watching Congress tinker at some kinds of systematic processes is like an Astrophysicist watch an Astrologer explain the heavens.
So forget how a programmer can benefit the programming community while in office. That's small potatoes. If he really understands programming, the place to apply it is away from the keyboard, directly focusing on the real substance of what Congress does (and doesn't).
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Actually, if he programs in assembler, he's not a congressman - he's an assemblyman.
hmmm...yeah, how about "computer network"
It's an easy concept to understand, for virtually anyone...far clearer than the ridiculous "tube" analogy (i believe someone posted the full text of the original context of the 'tubes' analogy below)
In fact, the concept of the internet shouldn't be more dumbed-down than "computer network"...some older folks might have to learn what the terms mean, but if a person can't bend their mind around that concept, well, we don't need them influencing politics anyway
Thank you Dave Raggett
let's keep in mind that this guy is a representative, and not a senator. There are 435 representatives, and freshman representative has about as much voice in national policy as the guy down at the DMV. Don't expect him to be authoring any bills.
The more significant news related to his election, if you follow the news, is that he replaced Dennis Hastert in a long time republican district. His election makes the democratic majority in the house that much more cemented, and generally is a signal of the upswing of the democratic party nationally.
Max Burns was the congresscritter from south georgia for a term or two. Before that he was a professor of information systems at Ga Southern University. He definitely was a coder too.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain