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Julius Genachowski To Head FCC
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The US President-elect, Barack Obama, has selected Julius Genachowski to lead the Federal Communications Commission. This appears to bode well for a forward-looking (or at least clued) Internet policy, since Genachowski is credited with running Obama's internet-based election campaign, and, according to 'Fierce Telecom,' 'has an impressive record working with technology and communications companies: He was Chief of Business Operations at InterActiveCorp; he's co-founder of Rock Creek Ventures, which currently backs 11 internet-based start-ups, and he's also served on the boards of numerous technology and new media companies, including The Motley Fool, Web.com, Truveo, and Rapt'."
The FCC is probably the least competent of all our federal government's departments right now. Have you ever filed an FCC complaint? I have (against a toll-free RespOrg, and then against another one when the owner of the number in question moved). When you file a complaint, the response is a form letter telling you the FCC cannot do anything. And then when you call the FCC for more information on how they came to that conclusion you wait for half an hour on hold before someone tells you they can't do anything, either; and they won't tell you if you can find out who read your complaint (if it was read at all).
Frankly they could put a lobster in charge of the FCC and it would be just as well off as it is at this moment. So any sentient being will likely be an improvement.
The FCC is so frustrating I went to go stand in line at the DMV afterwards because I wanted to feel like I accomplished something that day.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
We do scream bloody murder. Politicians suck.
What v-chip?
My TVs are 17+ years old, and refuse to die, and I won't replace them until they do.
Got my digital converters months ago. For the amount of over-the-air TV I watch, that's just fine. No, I don't have cable. For the rest there's Hulu and Netflix.
If your TVs are too old to have the v-chip, your recently acquired digital converters have them. Learn how to use them if you want something protecting your children.
In defense of managers, you don't make money managing technical firms by being ignorant about the business you are in.
That's not to say all managers in tech are successful managers.
The FCC is a federal regulatory group. It's there to make policy, not engineering decisions. If they wanted engineering decisions, they form an IEEE working group. Now, you may argue that the scope of their authority should be limited to regulation of the spectrum proper, and not what goes over the spectrum, but policy is definitely one of their roles.
Well, apparently he's involved with Common Sense Media which seems to provide ratings, tools, and advice for parents with concerns to the media. It seems to be fairly parental-responsibility oriented. However, their "Common Sense Belief" sections contains a couple of statements you might be interested in:
# We believe in media sanity, not censorship.
We believe that the price for free and open media is a bit of extra homework for families. Parents need to know about media content and need to manage media use.
# We believe appropriate regulations about right time, right place, and right manner exist. They need to be upheld by our elected and appointed leaders.
# We believe ratings systems should be independent and transparent for all media.
Seems like they'd support some government toe-stepping in the form of mandatory ratings and enforcement of time-slots, but stop short of outright censorship.
You have a dim view of this. How is it that I see the link you posted of his biography entirely different than you?
Harvard Law grad, with honors. Not everyone can say this. Might be a friend of Obama's but doesn't necessarily exclude him from being qualified.
Your statement on clerking is off the mark. My wife clerked for two judges, both of them pretty conservative guys, one at the district level and one on the circuit level (my wife, btw, is not even close to being a conservative). Clerking for any judge is a competitive position, usually sought after by hundreds of applicants. Clerking for the USSC is a highly sought after position and a huge honor. Wouldn't serving for a conservative and a liberal judge at least show an ability to work across the aisle? Plus, having clerking experience really can pay off to know how the court thinks and what they demand in terms of what arguments make the grade.
Did you skip over the part about Barry Diller and IAC? You know Barry, the guy who helped start Fox Broadcasting? His involvement with Common Sense Media seems somewhat balanced out with some of the other companies who's boards he has served on.
Of course you skipped right over the part where it said he previously worked for the FCC as General Council and all, denoting a level of experience with the organization he's being appointed.
The ultimate judge of this guy will be the positions he takes and the moves the FCC make during his reign, but to say that he only got this because he was Obama's buddy (which he is) and that he's not qualified (he's far more qualified than the last few FCC chairs we've had) is missing the forest for the trees.
Using a blackberry and checking email doesn't make you a nerd.
Nice pick and choose there. To sum up:
* One of the first things Barack Obama did when he became president-elect was to post his own Web site
* At the Al Smith dinner, Obama made a relatively obscure joke about Superman, cracking that his real father's name was Jor-El.
* Not only did Obama pose for a photo in front of a statue of Superman in Metropolis, Illinois, he went even geekier and posted the photo at his Senate Web site (since deactivated).
* Appointed nerds to key cabinet posts, including the appointment of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist to be secretary of energy.
* Obama was supported by nerd icon Leonard Nimoy during his campaign, getting donation money (in Quatloos, no doubt) from Mr. Spock himself. According to some reports, he's been known to flash the Vulcan salute.
* At a campaign rally, Obama joked that John McCain was Kato to George W. Bush's Green Lantern.
* According to Newsweek, after a campaign event Obama and his wife Michelle were making jokes about one another's wardrobe. Barack leaned close to Michelle's belt and tapped it, saying, "It's the (di)lithium crystals! Beam me up, Scotty!"
* According to the London Telegraph, he's also read every single Harry Potter book
* Obama is a gadget guy, making use of devices like the Blackberry, the iPod, and (by some reports) the Zune. His tech addiction is causing a minor dust-up, as his security personnel are trying to convince him to part with his beloved PDA.
* Not only has the president-elect admitted to collecting Spider-Man comics, he's actually going to play a role in an upcoming comic book starring the noted webslinger.
* There's a secondhand report that Obama, when an intern quipped "All your base are belong to us", he leaned over, cocked an eyebrow, and responded, "What you say?"
All we want to do is eat your brains.
There's been far too little scrutiny of a number of Obama appointees... he seems to be stacking the cabinet with nothing but extreme left-wingers every chance he gets.
Aside from low-level appointments to things like HUD and the EPA, this is pretty much backwards. The major positions are being filled by some moderate Democrats (with Napolitano and Richardson being the only thing to approach "extreme left-wingers"), some independents, and some Republicans.
More than half of the major defense, foreign affairs, and economic appointees served in significant positions in Republican administrations (mainly under George W. Bush and/or Ronald Reagan)
Of the "big 3" cabinet positions, 2 are Bush appointees:
Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton (D). Leftie, but hardly extremist.
Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates (R). Republican, Bush cabinet member
Secretary of Treasury: Timothy Geithner (I). Generally conservative. Bush appointed him chairman of the New York Fed.
Of the "next 2", one's a Reagan appointee:
Attorney General: Eric Holder (D). A moderate Democrat, Holder is a Reagan appointee (Superior court) most famous for prosecuting Dan Rostenkowski (D).
Secretary of Commerce: Bill Richardson (D). Somewhat of a leftie.
Other major appointments
The other major names on his economic team are Reagan CEA member Lawrence Summers and Reagan Fed Charman Paul Volcker
The other major defense names are 4-star general Jim Jones (recipient of multiple Bush administration appointments and special Middle East envoy under Condaleeza Rice) and Arizona Gov Janet Napolitano.
Napolitano, Richardson, and Hillary Clinton are the 3 most "leftie" of the major appointees.
The other 6 (Gates, Geithner, Holder, Summers, Volcker, and Jones) are all significant Reagan/Bush adminstration figures.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
a Library of Congress is a term of data size roughly equivalent to 20 terabytes of data. Not actually accurate since the Library has much more than that and it was estimated to be this much based solely on books and not other media, but it is a somewhat used unit of measurement in terms of data size when not speaking scientifically.
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