I personally would like to see how many bloggers and right wing media nuts were paid by lobbying firms to cast this provision in such a light that it causes this much rancor. Unfortunately, since this provision failed, I doubt I will ever know. This provision was not an attempt to keep people from speaking their minds on blogs, etc. This was an attempt to make bloggers, etc. who are paid to speak other people's minds say who is paying them. It expanded payola laws to include other forms of media, which I personally view as a good thing.
This bill did not count funding from generic advertising as being a paid lobbyist. The actual text of the bill made it very clear that the money paid had to be money paid to encourage others to political action. That means if Ann Coulter or Al Franken paid you for an advertisment spot on your blog, it doesn't mean anything, but if Phillip Morris or Green Peace paid you to write a blog post encouraging their view point you would have to disclose it. Same thing goes for payola laws that main stream media has to follow. (or should follow rather).
Unfortunately in listening to these right wing stations you didn't hear the truth. The provision was not an attempt to keep people from talking without paying fines. It was an attempt to make bloggers disclose when they are being paid to write posts favoring a political view. This had nothing to do with trying to censor free speach. This had everything to do with letting me know whether what I am reading is an honest perspective or paid invectives. Talk radio should be under this provision as well. News media outlets already are. Making bloggers, etc. report that the DNC or RNC paid $5 million for me to say good things about them helps the populace by adding transparency to government.
Not to be stripped of any slashdot cred, but I don't understand why the GPP got modded down as a troll. While you can hold MS accountable for DRMing to death the HD DVD playback capabilities, its no more of a sellout than anything else MS has done for the past decade and more. And, IIRC, the media distributors are requiring all hardware, PC or otherwise, that plays HD DVDs to be DRMed to death. Blaming MS for a policy being handed to them from the media companies is like blaming MS software vendors for following idiotic MS policies, the policies aren't good, and (if it worked in an idealistic way) would be stopped by the free market, but they aren't the fault of the people who follow them.
And if someone can reprogram the machine to record votes a certain way, why can't they program it to dispense the correct paper audits as well?
Which is where laws come in that say the paper audits are done by hand and not machine. Most states have the laws written properly now where the paper audit takes precedence over the computed results.
And a lock-box? Secure? You're right back to the same problem you have with paper ballots. Locks can be picked, boxes lost... so you end up with all the safeguards you have now plus those required to secure the computers and electronics from tampering. The only way you could be sure that the paper audit would work is the voter retained it, thereby confirming that this was the way they voted, although it does bring up all the problems you outlined.
Yes, a lock box is only as secure as the lock and the poeple handling it. However, that is more secure than giving a piece of paper to the voters to keep secure. Not to mention the additional fraud, both through voter influencing like pay for votes and forged vote tickets, that will need to be addressed. The most secure way to protect a vote paper trail is through a lock box, it is both simple and allows for fewer methods of failure.
The reason current non-electronic voting methods are so insecure is that the voting record, in most cases, is not human readable or is open to interpretation (hanging chads, marked too much of a circle, etc.) The printed paper trail locked in a lock box, at least here in Missouri, is human readable plain text, no room for other interpretation. This, IMO, is a relatively secure method of protecting my vote and a much better method of auditing the vote should it be required.
If an organization is making money (NPOs do get money, they just have restrictions on what has to be done with that money) through political activism, which can influence laws that affect me, I want to know where that money is coming from. This is good for politics in general and will make groups like the Swiftboaters more transparent. These provisions like the 500 readers are protections for the general populace so they don't fall under these other restrictions.
Remember, this bill isn't for advocacy groups, this bill is for the people.
They will be harrassed only if they are paid not just for lobbying through their blog. This protects everyone's rights by showing who is paying whom. Transparency in government is the best way to protect those governed.
no, your grassroots lobbying is ok as long as eithernoone is paying attention or you aren't getting paid for the blog posts. Thus Joe Shmo blogger who personally supports the EFF is free to post all he wants in support of the EFF as long as they don't pay him, or, if they do pay him, as long as he doesn't have more than 500 readers. This bill is made to ensure transparency in our government, so one can at least follow the money like in all other forms of lobbying.
re-read that subsection means any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials google ads aren't (usually) payments by Google to influence the public to contact legislators. Those payments are only payments to host the ad and get clicks, not for political action. The legislation is specifically targeting those bloggers who are being paid by special interests to push an agenda on their readership.
This bill is about paid lobbyists. The only bloggers that will need to register are those that are being paid for their posts and have a readership of 500+. The article author didn't read the bill itself or at the very least misread it.
For those who would like the full text of this bill see here. The article is just a bunch of FUD. The actual text that has the author so concerned, about a readership of greater than 500 counting as paid, is actually being misread. The actual text is "The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public." (from here). This means that you can be paid for grass roots lobbying and not have to register if you have less than 500 readers, which actually protects your rights.
That is only applicable when firing into space. The GPP was refering to firing at ground targets from a destroyer, which will need to account for both atomspheric conditions and the Earth's curvature. Firing into the air is easy, any Iraqi or Kentuckian can do it.
Re:VB already gets the respect it deserves...
on
Lisp and Ruby
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· Score: 1
From personal experience (I still work in it regularly) I have to say that Pick Basic is no better than any other form of BASIC. It encourages bad code and bad design.
No, we aren't hard to remove (unless you have trouble with the concept of 'add/remove programs').
You know, I tried that, and there is still a ton of WT junk on the system including in active processes. In fact, I have attempted to remove WT from computers disconnected from the net, with nothing other than spyware removers running and have had to delete some of this junk dozens of times.
No, we aren't spyware.... And no, we aren't on anyone's "spyware" list (we spent a lot of time getting off lists that we were incorectly on, though).
Any program that locks itself into memory, then reinstalls itself as soon as it is deleted in my book is malware. This isn't a slight on you personally, but your company is a purveyor of malware. I don't know what this malware is used for, as I avoid it completely, but malware is malware, whether you steal my information and sell it or not. If I can't easily remove all vestiges of your program from my system, or avoid getting it in the first place, it shouldn't be on my system.
I'm also one of the people at WildTangent that had to deal with Vista. My impression: they should (explitive) document their own (explitive) changes so that we can (explitive) figure out what's (explitive) going on. (explitive).
Agreed. Although I believe all software should be better documented, so its no real surprise to me that Vista isn't well documented.
This isn't about creating an artificial monopoly. This is about determining which company has been successful and how successful they are. When you know that Nintendo sold twice as many Wiis than Sony, you know that Nintendo is doing really well compared to Sony, making them a good investment both for stock holders and for game developers (as others have mentioned).
Early numbers like these are a good thermometer of how well a system will do long term as well. If it has strong market saturation early, not only will more games be sold, but more people will be talking about it creating the ever important market buzz and helping you sell more consoles.
To a random gamer, these numbers are just bragging rights ('I got a popular console.', or 'Why did you buy that? Noone really wants it.') But to the businesses themselves, the shareholders, and the developers these numbers do mean a lot.
Actually, the use of signing statements, especially in this instance, is unconstitutional. The Constitution very clearly states that the Executive branch will enforce all laws passed by Congress that aren't vetoed. Attaching a signing statement to a bill to change that bill is outside of the President's powers and if the signing statement overrides a provision of a law he has then overstepped his Constitutional powers.
As DigitalRaptor pointed out - Reasonability is determined by a judge willing to give a warrant because of good legal reasoning, not my some nutjob in a big house on Pennsylvania Ave.
I have to disagree with this arguement. The government is best situated to audit the tests, rather than test and audit. Otherwise you are left with two options:
1) One oversized agency that tests equipment X and then 'audits' those tests.
2) Two government agencies, one that tests the equipment and another that audits those tests, both vying for the same appropriations.
The way it is set up with one government agency set up to define tests and audit them and given the appropriations to hire companies to run the tests is the most efficient. Anyone who has worked in a medical field that has to deal with FDA regulations (my personal experience having been working in a blood bank laboratory) knows that the auditors are very stringent thus imposing the rigidity that you value in your post.
Here in Missouri we have a similar system as well (using ES&S systems). These are a bit better than the ones you describe since as soon as you make a selection it prints to the paper and displays it to the voter. As I didn't have any issues with my vote I didn't have to cancel on any, so I am not sure how it handles that. But this is the best way, IMO, of doing it.
Thus the emphasis on paper trails rather than the punch card paper ballots.
The thing that most confuses me about the arguements I have heard for why paper trails can't be created is that it is too hard for a company (Diebold) to create machines that make a paper trail, even though this company's primary product (that I have seen) is ATM machines that users require to make a paper trail for.
Yes, the punch cards were difficult to verify at times, but replacing them with something that can't be verified at all is stupid and completely undemocratic.
In my opinion, it works similarly to written works in any spoken language. It should fall under copyright with the same access to fair use and other protections that written works have. I don't know where a good cut off would be for fair use, I would expect a whole class/library/etc. would be outside of fair use, but would a function/method be? The problem is that the people writing these laws know little or nothing about it and the loudest voice lobbying for it are those who stand to make money off of how much code is restricted from reuse.
Tangentially, the ruling a while back that no part of a musical work falls under fair use is similarly idiodic as all songs are made up, at their smallest part, of a set of 8 notes in different octives. Thus can I no longer use middle C because it was in a copyrighted song?
From what I have been reading on this it is a bug in how the browser and the reader integrate, not just with the browser and not just with the reader. And I agree, it pains me to say it but it seems that IE handles this correctly (tested myself just to be sure), but I do have to wonder why.
A two year commitment to net neutrality is just a bunch of hot air, if consumer advocacy groups accept something like this they have obviously been drinking the kool-aid. Net neutrality to be reviewed in two years and would need to be revoked would be a concession, this needing to be reinforced two years from now is nothing.
Not to mention the other bs in this agreement:
$20 DSL for consumers whether they sign up for other services or not - when you are an effective monopoly in the area, does it matter if signing up for other services is required?
Repatriate 3,000 outsourced jobs - when you are dropping 10,000 jobs, 3,000 is a drop in the bucket.
And, going back to the net neutrality clause, 'AT&T said it would "maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service"' - sounds to me like they are trying to leave all sorts of wiggle room here...
Slashdot Mirror
I personally would like to see how many bloggers and right wing media nuts were paid by lobbying firms to cast this provision in such a light that it causes this much rancor. Unfortunately, since this provision failed, I doubt I will ever know. This provision was not an attempt to keep people from speaking their minds on blogs, etc. This was an attempt to make bloggers, etc. who are paid to speak other people's minds say who is paying them. It expanded payola laws to include other forms of media, which I personally view as a good thing.
This bill did not count funding from generic advertising as being a paid lobbyist. The actual text of the bill made it very clear that the money paid had to be money paid to encourage others to political action. That means if Ann Coulter or Al Franken paid you for an advertisment spot on your blog, it doesn't mean anything, but if Phillip Morris or Green Peace paid you to write a blog post encouraging their view point you would have to disclose it. Same thing goes for payola laws that main stream media has to follow. (or should follow rather).
Unfortunately in listening to these right wing stations you didn't hear the truth. The provision was not an attempt to keep people from talking without paying fines. It was an attempt to make bloggers disclose when they are being paid to write posts favoring a political view. This had nothing to do with trying to censor free speach. This had everything to do with letting me know whether what I am reading is an honest perspective or paid invectives. Talk radio should be under this provision as well. News media outlets already are. Making bloggers, etc. report that the DNC or RNC paid $5 million for me to say good things about them helps the populace by adding transparency to government.
Not to be stripped of any slashdot cred, but I don't understand why the GPP got modded down as a troll. While you can hold MS accountable for DRMing to death the HD DVD playback capabilities, its no more of a sellout than anything else MS has done for the past decade and more. And, IIRC, the media distributors are requiring all hardware, PC or otherwise, that plays HD DVDs to be DRMed to death. Blaming MS for a policy being handed to them from the media companies is like blaming MS software vendors for following idiotic MS policies, the policies aren't good, and (if it worked in an idealistic way) would be stopped by the free market, but they aren't the fault of the people who follow them.
Place the blame where it belongs...
Which is where laws come in that say the paper audits are done by hand and not machine. Most states have the laws written properly now where the paper audit takes precedence over the computed results.
Yes, a lock box is only as secure as the lock and the poeple handling it. However, that is more secure than giving a piece of paper to the voters to keep secure. Not to mention the additional fraud, both through voter influencing like pay for votes and forged vote tickets, that will need to be addressed. The most secure way to protect a vote paper trail is through a lock box, it is both simple and allows for fewer methods of failure.
The reason current non-electronic voting methods are so insecure is that the voting record, in most cases, is not human readable or is open to interpretation (hanging chads, marked too much of a circle, etc.) The printed paper trail locked in a lock box, at least here in Missouri, is human readable plain text, no room for other interpretation. This, IMO, is a relatively secure method of protecting my vote and a much better method of auditing the vote should it be required.
You can be harassed right now by anyone that pleases, the loopholes in this bill just give you legal grounds to say "Piss off."
And what is wrong with that?
If an organization is making money (NPOs do get money, they just have restrictions on what has to be done with that money) through political activism, which can influence laws that affect me, I want to know where that money is coming from. This is good for politics in general and will make groups like the Swiftboaters more transparent. These provisions like the 500 readers are protections for the general populace so they don't fall under these other restrictions.
Remember, this bill isn't for advocacy groups, this bill is for the people.
They will be harrassed only if they are paid not just for lobbying through their blog. This protects everyone's rights by showing who is paying whom. Transparency in government is the best way to protect those governed.
no, your grassroots lobbying is ok as long as eithernoone is paying attention or you aren't getting paid for the blog posts. Thus Joe Shmo blogger who personally supports the EFF is free to post all he wants in support of the EFF as long as they don't pay him, or, if they do pay him, as long as he doesn't have more than 500 readers. This bill is made to ensure transparency in our government, so one can at least follow the money like in all other forms of lobbying.
re-read that subsection means any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials google ads aren't (usually) payments by Google to influence the public to contact legislators. Those payments are only payments to host the ad and get clicks, not for political action. The legislation is specifically targeting those bloggers who are being paid by special interests to push an agenda on their readership.
This bill is about paid lobbyists. The only bloggers that will need to register are those that are being paid for their posts and have a readership of 500+. The article author didn't read the bill itself or at the very least misread it.
For those who would like the full text of this bill see here. The article is just a bunch of FUD. The actual text that has the author so concerned, about a readership of greater than 500 counting as paid, is actually being misread. The actual text is "The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public." (from here). This means that you can be paid for grass roots lobbying and not have to register if you have less than 500 readers, which actually protects your rights.
That is only applicable when firing into space. The GPP was refering to firing at ground targets from a destroyer, which will need to account for both atomspheric conditions and the Earth's curvature. Firing into the air is easy, any Iraqi or Kentuckian can do it.
From personal experience (I still work in it regularly) I have to say that Pick Basic is no better than any other form of BASIC. It encourages bad code and bad design.
No, we aren't hard to remove (unless you have trouble with the concept of 'add/remove programs').
... And no, we aren't on anyone's "spyware" list (we spent a lot of time getting off lists that we were incorectly on, though).
You know, I tried that, and there is still a ton of WT junk on the system including in active processes. In fact, I have attempted to remove WT from computers disconnected from the net, with nothing other than spyware removers running and have had to delete some of this junk dozens of times.
No, we aren't spyware.
Any program that locks itself into memory, then reinstalls itself as soon as it is deleted in my book is malware. This isn't a slight on you personally, but your company is a purveyor of malware. I don't know what this malware is used for, as I avoid it completely, but malware is malware, whether you steal my information and sell it or not. If I can't easily remove all vestiges of your program from my system, or avoid getting it in the first place, it shouldn't be on my system.
I'm also one of the people at WildTangent that had to deal with Vista. My impression: they should (explitive) document their own (explitive) changes so that we can (explitive) figure out what's (explitive) going on. (explitive).
Agreed. Although I believe all software should be better documented, so its no real surprise to me that Vista isn't well documented.
Basically, I think you have the right premise, but to adjust Sagan's quote to be a bit more accurate - "Absence of evidence is not evidence."
This isn't about creating an artificial monopoly. This is about determining which company has been successful and how successful they are. When you know that Nintendo sold twice as many Wiis than Sony, you know that Nintendo is doing really well compared to Sony, making them a good investment both for stock holders and for game developers (as others have mentioned).
Early numbers like these are a good thermometer of how well a system will do long term as well. If it has strong market saturation early, not only will more games be sold, but more people will be talking about it creating the ever important market buzz and helping you sell more consoles.
To a random gamer, these numbers are just bragging rights ('I got a popular console.', or 'Why did you buy that? Noone really wants it.') But to the businesses themselves, the shareholders, and the developers these numbers do mean a lot.
Actually, the use of signing statements, especially in this instance, is unconstitutional. The Constitution very clearly states that the Executive branch will enforce all laws passed by Congress that aren't vetoed. Attaching a signing statement to a bill to change that bill is outside of the President's powers and if the signing statement overrides a provision of a law he has then overstepped his Constitutional powers.
As DigitalRaptor pointed out - Reasonability is determined by a judge willing to give a warrant because of good legal reasoning, not my some nutjob in a big house on Pennsylvania Ave.
I have to disagree with this arguement. The government is best situated to audit the tests, rather than test and audit. Otherwise you are left with two options:
1) One oversized agency that tests equipment X and then 'audits' those tests.
2) Two government agencies, one that tests the equipment and another that audits those tests, both vying for the same appropriations.
The way it is set up with one government agency set up to define tests and audit them and given the appropriations to hire companies to run the tests is the most efficient. Anyone who has worked in a medical field that has to deal with FDA regulations (my personal experience having been working in a blood bank laboratory) knows that the auditors are very stringent thus imposing the rigidity that you value in your post.
Here in Missouri we have a similar system as well (using ES&S systems). These are a bit better than the ones you describe since as soon as you make a selection it prints to the paper and displays it to the voter. As I didn't have any issues with my vote I didn't have to cancel on any, so I am not sure how it handles that. But this is the best way, IMO, of doing it.
Thus the emphasis on paper trails rather than the punch card paper ballots.
The thing that most confuses me about the arguements I have heard for why paper trails can't be created is that it is too hard for a company (Diebold) to create machines that make a paper trail, even though this company's primary product (that I have seen) is ATM machines that users require to make a paper trail for.
Yes, the punch cards were difficult to verify at times, but replacing them with something that can't be verified at all is stupid and completely undemocratic.
I would agree with this.
In my opinion, it works similarly to written works in any spoken language. It should fall under copyright with the same access to fair use and other protections that written works have. I don't know where a good cut off would be for fair use, I would expect a whole class/library/etc. would be outside of fair use, but would a function/method be? The problem is that the people writing these laws know little or nothing about it and the loudest voice lobbying for it are those who stand to make money off of how much code is restricted from reuse.
Tangentially, the ruling a while back that no part of a musical work falls under fair use is similarly idiodic as all songs are made up, at their smallest part, of a set of 8 notes in different octives. Thus can I no longer use middle C because it was in a copyrighted song?
From what I have been reading on this it is a bug in how the browser and the reader integrate, not just with the browser and not just with the reader. And I agree, it pains me to say it but it seems that IE handles this correctly (tested myself just to be sure), but I do have to wonder why.
A two year commitment to net neutrality is just a bunch of hot air, if consumer advocacy groups accept something like this they have obviously been drinking the kool-aid. Net neutrality to be reviewed in two years and would need to be revoked would be a concession, this needing to be reinforced two years from now is nothing.
Not to mention the other bs in this agreement:
$20 DSL for consumers whether they sign up for other services or not - when you are an effective monopoly in the area, does it matter if signing up for other services is required?
Repatriate 3,000 outsourced jobs - when you are dropping 10,000 jobs, 3,000 is a drop in the bucket.
And, going back to the net neutrality clause, 'AT&T said it would "maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service"' - sounds to me like they are trying to leave all sorts of wiggle room here...