Slashdot Mirror
McCain Releases Technology Platform
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "John McCain has finally released a technology platform. Most of it is the same old stuff; lower corporate taxes, protect children from porn, and avoid Internet regulation unless 'necessary.' Alas, in his view, helping the RIAA's War on Sharing is necessary to stop the 'global epidemic' of piracy, while Net Neutrality is something he 'does not believe in.' Ars Technica has a review of McCain's platform."
A brief analysis is also available from Federal Computer Week. In addition to the technology policy, McCain has also released a paper describing his stance on security and privacy. We've previously contrasted his views with those of Barack Obama. Obama's technology policies are also available online.
Yay for contradictions?
I think you missed the point. While it is nice of you to enhance the blogopshere comment with a bold font, that was not his subject. He was obviously speaking about the tendency of youth to dominate the conversation about anything and everything as if they knew the best approach and all others had nothing to offer. In fact, what he is implying here is that it is important to listen, especially to experienced individuals, but listen. That does not reduce the value of a blog, it puts it in context of "where, or from whom,do good ideas come from"?
no comment
If you are basing your vote solely on technological issues in a presidential election, you really need to get out more. There are much more important issues that the President should be considered about (economy, jobs, defense, etc).
I'd agree with you, except that right after the blog line McCain said he "would have felt very much at home in the medium", obviously taking a cheap shot at bloggers as people who "dominate the conversation about anything and everything as if they knew the best approach and all others had nothing to offer."
The original poster very much got his point, methinks.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
I knew this kind of position was coming as soon as he said he didn't know how to use a computer. He obviously doesn't understand the issues, so naturally he is just going to default to his party's (or contributor's) position.
If I were in his place and somebody asked me to formulate a position on farming, I would do the same thing. That's why it is important to look at what party a candidate belongs to and who is giving him money.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
And McCain is a big loser on all those fronts also. The economy is not his bag, man. Said so himself. Be ready to bail out another Lincoln Savings and Loan or three. And He's a warmonger. Not that the other guy is actually any better. Time to vote the party out.
What?
Arguably one of the worst leaders in the tech industry. It's no wonder his technology positions don't make any sense. That's like picking Jeffery Skilling as an energy advisor...wait, he doesn't need him, he's got Phil Gramm. With the added advantage that Gramm isn't in federal prison...yet.
Let's just pick the most incompetent, corrupt people from every industry we can find and bring them together in one party. It's no wonder his positions on technology don't make any sense. A classic case of the problem dictating the solution.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
he's mocking what many people perceive to be the stereotypical self-important blogger attitude.
I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me,
What I believe he was implying is that children should be seen and not heard. Of course his definition of 'children' seems to extend to all bloggers, regardless of age. Of course the First Amendment gives freedom the press, but doesn't tell us the definition of "Press", but I really doubt if the Framers meant "Government sanctioned and licensed persons"
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
How about, "I'll protect the American consumer, and I'm against net-neutrality[sic]"?
Maybe I'm just reading different posts than you are but I can't recall the last time I saw a post supporting a conservative view point that didn't get flamed.
I'm a registered Republican, so maybe I'm just focusing on the posts I agree with that get tarred and feathered, and the ones I strongly disagree with that keep getting modded +5 insightful.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
It's worth remembering that technology is a huge factor in the US economy, jobs, defence, (privacy/spying, civil rights, scientific progress...) etc. - so the topic is quite important.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'll reply to this as an AC rather than moderating you then. The average political post seems to center around a few things...
1. Protection of the little guy - stop allowing big corporations to use the law/lobbying to create an unfair environment. See DRM, Patent trolls, subsidies given without stipulation and no-bid contracts. Most think it's ridiculous you can patent a seed to which you found in a government vault, which they obtained from the wild. You can.
Enforcing a free market is a conservative value.
2. Government staying out of our personal lives. This would fall under the small government category/give us personal freedoms. These are views in keeping with the constitution/bill of rights. I'd say that the constitution has a Libertarian feel to it. This isn't the viewpoint of the Republican party, so you have us there.
3. Most of us don't seem to be for most welfare in it's current state, view SS and medicade as a fiscal disaster in need of much revamping, etc. Conservative/Libertarian.
I think in general we're all for a competent government, whatever form that may be, so long as it will stay competent/for the people. As a Republican you do realize that in the past 20 years, your party has changed drastically. Government debt goes up the most during your terms, often setting new records. Not fiscally conservative.
In terms of the past 8 years, we're tired of the government being very competent at taking away the rights we're guaranteed to have in that "goddamned piece of paper". We're tired of how competent they are at lying, but incompetent they are at leading. They're experts at returning favors for those who gave them money or ran their political party, but they fail horribly of their ONLY responsibility, which is to uphold and defend that piece of paper. They spit on the hundreds of thousands who have died to defend this country and its ideals and the people who have given them the power in the first place.
Maybe that's why we appear liberal. We cannot stand the current adminstration, and if your quote is any indication, you are a traditional republican. I suggest you check out the Libertarian party's main points, http://www.lp.org/platform, as they are more in line with traditional Republican viewpoints. The one main area you might disagree on is the US's role in the world.
Abstinence is the only proven method of not contracting STDs. The only way.
I'm sorry, my friend, but if you're going to slut it up... you're going to pay the price. All the latex and gels in the world won't give you the same protection as abstinence.
The problem is it only works in theory. In reality, on large scales, even kids with abstinence rings end up doing it, and getting pregnant or catching a STD. The reality is, most people just have to get laid, no matter what you say or what they say, they're gonna do it. All you can do is make sure the ones who will do it will do it properly. Pretending that it's as easy as not doing it is sticking your head in the sand. Abstinence alone isn't enough. You also need to be completely reliable, which is foolish to assume from anyone. Or very unattractive.
You just got troll'd!
You're right, we need a President who is very concerned about the Iraq/Pakistan border. I'd also like him confuse Sudan and Somalia, after all, they are like the same thing, right?
McCain, at one point, may have known his stuff. But he has lost it. There is already a very long list of these gaffes. Is this the kind of face you want America to have?
Because he knows so little that he hired Carly Fiorna as one of his chief economic advisers? Does not bode well...
Doesn't need to be an expert on everything, but it would help if he could actually identify proper experts to hire.
Is this the kind of face you want America to have?
Actually, I want that "face" to be driven by actual principles. Obama avoids showing his at all costs, and when they do show, they're contradictory, or imply a very shaky house-of-cards case of mixed premises. Whatever intellectual horsepower or rhetorical elegance he posesses is being applied to and is in the service of a very patch-work, self-defeating, confused set of principles. THAT is not the face I want America to have. He doesn't know himself, and is very careful to hide how he actually feels about a lot of things, because he knows that he has to tap-dance around issues like his crazy, race-baiting friend the preacher and what tolerating/encouraging him for 20 years (including his children's formative years, listening to him blather every week) says about his world view.
Are you really looking for a gotcha contest on mispoken names or recollections? Is that how you'll evaluate the deliberative decision-making perspective that a person brings to being the C-in-C? We're not hiring a spokesmodel (though that seems to be what a lot of people think the job is about - how embarassing). People don't need an inspirational president, they need a competent one who actually knows who he is and what he stands for. Leave it to the lefties to imply that it's the government's job to be the source of inspiration and cultural guidance lacking in homes that use their Wii and the Cartoon Network to raise their children. No, I'd rather leave the cultural polishing to the people IN the culture, and have them hire someone as president because he's been around the block enough to do the job right.
Someone like Obama, who claims to be "post partisan" while in the same breath saying that his political counterparts are idealogically unseparable from "failed ideas" is just plain funny. He's far MORE partisan than his opponent, and utterly slavish to a very loud, far left minority. Is THAT the face you want for America? A poll-following pretty boy who hates to be asked what he really thinks lest he have to actually get pinned down on specifics? No thanks.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I love it when Baby Boomers get on generational tirades like this. It has genuine comedic quality about it, particularly given how ridiculous and hypocritical it is.
But since you seem to be a true-believer, let me clear it up for you, old timer. "Young people" are, knowingly or not, rejecting the flawed assumptions and unjust laws that have effectively attempted to privatize human culture for the benefit of a greedy few at the very top of content distribution companies who are better at bribing the legislature than serving their own customers. What you describe as pathological compartmentalization is, in actuality, the very natural returning shift in public values to a more balanced, modern view of copyright protections. In short, the pendulum is finally swinging back towards the social-contract view of government-granted, temporary monopolies described in Article I section 8 of the constitution, which references not the "rights" of companies or starving artists but the "progress of science and useful arts".
-Grym
Try "nuanced"; read his second book for a better understanding -- not only of the principals in question, but of the importance of considering multiple points of view (as opposed to only a single, black-and-white view of the world based on one particular set of partisan principals) in making positions.
Can viewing the world in shades of gray lead to a charge that one must have a (presumptively black-and-white) view which is inconsistent, constantly shifting, "patch-work" or "self-defeating"? I suppose it may... but that doesn't prevent it from being The Right Thing.
Ok, let me get this straight...
1. My initial post is modded Flamebait because I assert that most posters to Slashdot are ultra Liberal.
2. It is pointed out to me that my impression of the general slant of Slashdot members is not accurate. (I wouldn't consider that flamebait, but that's just me)
3. In response to this correction, I admit that my impression is probably colored by my own tendency to focus on certain topics.
4. You vilify every person in the US who considers themselves conservative, which based on the last presidential election is roughly half of the people that bothered to get out and vote.
... And I am the "scumbag"?
This sort of hostile vilification of those "different from yourself" is the cornerstone of racism/anti-semitism/etc. that lead to political coup's, ethnic cleanings, civil war's, and further intolerance (those who were previously tolerant become intolerant as a defensive measure).
You're attaching everyone from a political party because of your dissatisfaction with the current administration. You have NO IDEA who I voted for in any election, unless of course you can read minds through the internet. You don't know whether or not I agree with any stance that the current administration has made, or whether I'm a member of the Republican party because or in spite of Bush.
Like most people I'm conservative on some issues and liberal on others. It's not so black/white as you are making the liberal/conservative issue out to be. I joined the Republican party 10 years ago because the issues that mattered most to me were best represented by the "general" platform of the party, not the platform of any individual politician.
I think you need to talk to a counselor about your hostility issues, maybe get a valium prescription, get laid, something because your reaction to my post was way over blown and disproportionate.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Don't forget he had Phil Gramm, who enabled Enron's outrageous business practices through deregulation-- the same deregulation law is suspected to be a major cause of the credit/subprime crises. Notice, Gramm tried to downplay "recession" hysteria because he helped draft and promote that bill! Gramm's history as far as his position in the campaign is concerned, but his overly business-friendly policies are generally still in place.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
No. Inspiring the next generation of poor, angry, anti-American would-be-terrorists is not keeping us safe, it is setting us up for long-term failure.
Day to day life has been devastated for many in the middle east, with aggressive US foreign policy as the catalyst (if not cause). Rightly or wrongly, it gives a new generation someone on which to assign blame for the problems they face.
Bush's bandaid will fall off sooner or later.
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.