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Watching Tonight's Presidential Debate Online
farkinga writes "For those of us that no longer have a television, live TV events can be a challenge to watch. Fortunately, tonight's Presidential Debate has attracted the attention of most US broadcasters, many of whom will provide online viewing options. Leading the way is Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp, who will stream the Fox-branded feed tonight — assuming they worked out the bandwidth issues that came up during the second debate!"
This is why Multicast would have been so nice, one feed goes out to anyone who wanted it. The current point to point way of distributing video is a quick and dirty solution, where multicast is eligant.
They don't have "analysts" telling me what my reaction is.
C-SPAN
The Acorn thing isnt that big of a deal, because "Mickey Mouse" is not actually going to show up to vote. Having your vote manipulated in some blackbox voting machine IS a big deal.
mod me funny
I only "have" TV because my roommate has TV (because of his addiction to "Deal Or No Deal"). It's generally not worth having because it's content controlled by big corporations, not real people.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sure, I am. Just hook me up with a few dozen OC-192 connections at each of the largest 100 cities in the country, and set me up with 1000 computers at each site, and I'll stream it in OGG Theora format. Oh, and I'll also need a satellite dish and receiver tuned to the C-SPAN channel.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If you're going to avoid things that are controlled by huge corporations, then make sure not to use any electricity, fill your car up with gas, or fly on a commercial airplane. Maybe your best option would be to dig a hole, jump in it, and wait for the apocalypse.
I have MythTV, but it only records what Obama says. ;)
IT'S A JOKE PEOPLE!
Speaking as a non USian, living outside the US, I have to say that the American presidential election is all over the news feeds here as well.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, newsfeeds and syndication. Whatever the American media decides to talk about, the entire anglosphere usually ends up talking about as well. If there's a bus crash or school shooting in the middle of nowhere in, say, Nebraska, its gets on the Irish, and usually English, national 9 o'clock news. This is a symptom of an increasingly monopolised and centralised media in the western world.
Secondly, the US presidential elections are actually very important. I see Slashdotters posting comments to the effect that both parties are equally bad and it doesn't matter which way you vote and excuses, excuses, excuses. I can tell you from the point of view of someone who is very much affected by the results of your national elections, this is a pretty depressing thing to hear. It's clear to anyone who has half a clue that there are very wide and deep differences between the two main candidates, and it's quite irritating to find out just how flippantly many Americans go about voting, or not voting, for their president.
Your election affects me. It affects people around me. My nation's economy, policies, laws, and culture, yes culture, are significantly affected by your selection of a president, through his administration's policies. When the choices made by religious southern fundamentalists end up slowly eroding my way of life because people who should have known better were too apathetic to vote, I get a little irritated. So in my view the more coverage this election gets, the better.
So in short, I would rather these stories on the Slashdot front page rather than have this site ignore or only pay lip service to the issue. This is "Stuff That Matters" to me.
May the Maths Be with you!
I don't know that you can necessarily make the jump between having Linux run their intranet server and the political candidate being a steward to open source in government. I know the /. community as a whole think's Mr. Obama is the FSM incarnate, but come on now.
Join the fight in the preservation of your right to bear arms. www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
Awesome, I spotted the links I wanted @ the bottom, I didn't see that the first few times I searched.
thanks again!
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Anyone ballsy enough to stream using a more widely available, non-Flash codec?
Are you actually arguing that OGG is more widely available to the viewing public than Flash, Real, or WMV?
It's not about "balls." It's about installed base and the marginal utility of supporting OGG compared to formats installed already on most people's machines. I'd love to see an OGG stream of the debates, but I wouldn't claim that it's "more widely available" in an attempt to suggest that people aren't supporting it for illogical reasons.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You do understand that the chance of the president getting involved in the choice of what operating system to use in the white house is about as likely as the CEO of IBM getting involved in the choice of what brand of toilet paper to use in their office in Bangalore, don't you?
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Why drive out and cast a meaningless vote when the swing voters have decided for me?
Guess what? When you're trying to influence an election where the person with the majority of votes is the winner, removing one vote from the vote pool has the effect of giving the other votes more sway. You are literally giving the ignorant voters more say over the course of this nation because you don't want to 'reward' the candidate with your vote. Instead you'd rather reward the candidate by making other votes count more. If you're really pissed off, vote third-party. Will they win? Hell no. But, it will detract from the percentage of people who voted for party 1 or 2, and those percentages are what determines how much public funding third party candidates get to campaign with.
Grow some balls and stand for something. Don't rationalize your own apathy to me; you just enable the current system we have. I'm trying to actually change something.
Nooo, "American" *also* means "of the Americas." It *also* means "a native or inhabitant of the United States." USian is a made-up derogatory term that is no more accurate than "UKian" or "UAEian."
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Well, we're still missing some of the ACORN story. For one thing, the problem is because they pay people per registration. So some people like to add a bunch of phony registrations to get paid more.
ACORN knows this, so they look for it and fire those people. They also separate the probably fraudulent registrations. But they are required by law to give ALL of the registrations to the elections officials, so they also include a note saying, "These are probably fraudulent, please check. And here are the details of the guy who came up with these probably fraudulent registrations so you can prosecute them."
They've done this for a long time now. Remember that scandal over the illegal firing of US Attorneys? That was because they refused to prosecute ACORN for this years ago because they did not believe that they were doing anything illegal. But Bush's people fired all the people who said it was legal and stacked the deck with hardcore Republicans. So now they're prosecuting.
Even though ACORN is being defrauded by bad workers. Even though ACORN is obeying the law. Even though ACORN verifies the registrations and separates the bad ones in spite of having no legal obligation to do so.
This is just politically motivated nonsense. Yes, there will probably be convictions, but they'll be of people ACORN turned in and recommended for prosecution.
I'm a 46 year-old American citizen. My ancestors came over from Europe 400 years ago. I have been actively interested/involved in politics since I watched Bobby Kennedy get shot on TV when I was 6. I can honestly tell you that there is very little difference between the two candidates other than the color of their skin and their age. The Democratic and Republican parties have become one and the same. If our media, which dominates your airwaves would cover the "other" parties' candidates you would see the lack of difference between the two leading candidates.
Do you honestly believe that the world would be exactly the same as it is now, if Al Gore had won in 2000?
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Man I just posted this in another thread, but it fits here too.
Lets look at some policies. Iraq war, pretty much the same. We'll take the troops out of Iraq when the conditions on the ground allow it, and put them in Afghanistan. Domestic wiretapping? Obama voted for the Bush plan. Economic bailout? Both of them voted for it.
I don't see either of them talking about fundamental change in the way our system works. I don't see either of them talking about cracking down on corporate crime. I don't see either of them talking about returning federal power to its constitutional limits. I don't see either of them talking about Instant Runoff Voting. I don't see either of them talking about ending the war on drugs, or stopping the new war on copyright infringers.
Where are the significant differences on all these issues that matter? You complain about the monopolistic, centralized nature of the media. You should know that both Obama and McCain are against the reinstatement of the fairness doctrine. If you care about responsible and balanced journalism you simply don't have a choice in this election.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They're 90% the same, as said before.
Foreign policy: both parties support the War in Iraq, and foreign interventionism in general. Both parties support an oversized military, based in hundreds of bases around the world, rather than concentrating on protecting our borders. Neither party believes in not being the global policeman.
Business regulation: both parties support deregulation of the financial markets, leading to our current mess. The Graham act which overturned Glass-Steagal was passed in 1999, and signed by Clinton, a Democrat. This paved the way for our current troubles. Graham is now McCain's economic advisor, a Republican.
Wall Street Bailout: both parties supported this, the Democrats slightly more than the Republicans, though the plan was concocted and pushed by Bush and Paulsen, Republicans. The Democrats, under Pelosi, were instrumental in getting this passed.
Spending: both parties support massive spending on things which aren't important: bridges to nowhere, etc. Neither party is interested in actually reducing spending. They only differ in how they want to pay for the spending, whether through more taxes, or higher deficits.
Abortion, gay marriage: these are distractions for the two parties to make noise about, to distract people from the issues above which affect them far more.
Law enforcement: how do they differ here? Neither is against it. What a strange thing to say.
Gun control: definitely a difference here, but Bush was in favor of extending the idiotic Assault Weapons Ban. Neither party is all that great in being against gun control.
Immigration: neither party favors reforming immigration laws and securing the border. Illegal immigration is too profitable for business owners.
Drugs: neither party favors legalizing any drugs, even harmless marijuana or even industrial hemp. There's too much drug money invested in Wall Street to allow legalization, and too many bribes from those who profit from the illegal drug trade to our politicians.
This is exactly the kind of attitude the OP was talking about. I find it ironic that there are engaged and interested people all over the world who would love to have your vote, yet you refuse to apply your brain and engage in the political process because the candidates don't differ on your pet issues.
From the perspective of the rest of the world, Barak "Let's Talk to Both Our Friends and Our Enemies" Obama is a lot less of a worry than John "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb-Iran" McCain. Obama has had to talk tough during the campaign to avoid a smear campaign, but it's clear that he favours engagement and multilateralism. McCain appears to favour the 'Bush Doctrine'.
From a domestic perspective, I would have thought that Obama's consistent view, expressed both before and after the current financial crisis, that the Federal Government has a significant role to play in regulating financial markets would be dramatically more appealing than McCain's consistent view that the free market should be left to its own devices at all times, no matter how compelling the evidence to the contrary.
There is also the fact that McCain has shown himself ready and willing to cater to absolute lunatics on the religious right who are anti-science, anti-liberal democracy, and just generally scare the hell out of most sane people. I have seen no evidence that Obama will be similarly beholden. I do not want a person who will tolerate the assertion by their running mate that dinosaurs and humans coexisted in charge of a nuclear arsenal.
Finally, and probably most singificantly, the next President will probably replace three of the most liberal judges on the Supreme Court. Do you want men like Scalia and Roberts to dominate the Court, or do you want moderate/progressive judges to provide a counterbalance to the extreme conservatives on the bench at present? In practical terms, if McCain wins, Roe v Wade is gone, gun control laws are gone, separation of church and state is gone, limits on executive power are gone, and any form of affirmative action is gone. Those things seem pretty significant to me.
There's no doubt Obama has engaged in plenty of compromising. As you would be well aware, the nature of your political system is such that there are plenty of times when a vote is going to pass anyway so moderates on either side of the aisle will vote for it. It's stupid and it shouldn't be that way, but it also means that voting records are not an accurate reflection of ideology.
Read Pynchon.