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White House Website Switches To Open Source
Falc0n writes "WhiteHouse.gov has gone Drupal. After months of planning, says an Obama Administration source, the White House has ditched the proprietary content management system that had been in place since the days of the Bush Administration in favor of the latest version of the open-source Drupal software. Dries Buytaert reflected on this, adding: 'this is a clear sign that governments realize that Open Source does not pose additional risks compared to proprietary software, and furthermore, that by moving away from proprietary software, they are not being locked into a particular technology, and that they can benefit from the innovation that is the result of thousands of developers collaborating on Drupal.'"
The key really is, how do create a social mechanism to prevent excessive concentrations of wealth, without creating a defacto concentration of wealth?
It's almost like you need to have the social rules set up so that its easy come, easy go... once you reach a certain point in wealth, it should be easier to blow it and lose it all.
This is my sig.
A rebuttal to the "socialist agencies" comment I quoted is here by "hiram":
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/08/a_savage_mob.html
Hiram makes some good points. Still, is not regulation of monopolies something you need a government for? Also, much drug research is fundamentally based on publicly funded (NIH) studies. Also, broadcast media was in general much better for families when there was an equal time law and restrictions against advertising to children. So, some of the problems he points to are the result of deregulation as well as shifting government resources away from "butter" and into "guns". I agree public schooling is a big problem (see John Taylor Gatto and my other post).
We need to separate out various functions of government like regulation and oversight or taxing and redistributing wealth for legitimate public purposes (including avoiding a concentration of wealth that is bad for democracy, like with a progressive tax up to 91% under Roosevelt after WWII) from the issue of who actually provides the services.
But, as I said earlier, take a look at this video of a high speed robot hand from Japan and tell me *anything* about our economy will make sense as-is in ten or twenty years:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
Or even this: ... ...
From:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2159038/posts http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202191.html
"Armed robotic aircraft soar in the skies above Pakistan, hurling death down on America's enemies in the war on terrorism. Soon -- years, not decades, from now -- American armed robots will patrol on the ground as well, fundamentally transforming the face of battle. Conventional war, even genocide, may be abolished by a robotic American Peace.
The detachment with which the United States can inflict death upon our enemies is surely one reason why U.S. military involvement around the world has expanded over the past two decades. The excellence of American military technology makes it possible for U.S. forces to inflict vast damage upon the enemy while suffering comparatively modest harm in return.
The rapid emergence of the armed unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that roam over Pakistan is a sequel to Moore's Law. Onboard computers became far more powerful, so automatic pilots became far more competent. Signal processors became more sophisticated, facilitating collection and processing of more interesting intelligence. Global Positioning System receivers shrank and could be economically employed on small robotic aircraft. Precision-guided munitions could deliver lethal firepower. And so forth.
The U.S. Navy has arguably moved farthest toward substituting treasure for blood. A generation ago the Reagan administration brought World War II-era battleships out of mothballs to provide gunfire support to onshore operations. With a crew of more than 1,500, these ships were designed to be manned by the low-paid draftees of the 1940s, not the more amply rewarded volunteers of the 1980s. The Navy couldn't afford them, and the ships were soon returned to mothballs. In their place, the Navy came up with the new DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer, an automated warship with a crew of only 150."
I came across that while looking what the freepers say about robots:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/robot/index?tab=articles
Anyway, many conservatives don't get it about technology invalidating muc
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.