They passed FISA, renewed FISA and now everyone is up in arms because the administration actually used the provisions of FISA to do what FISA intended. The telcos are caught between a rock and a hard place and to top it all off, the people responsible are now going to punish them by not giving them immunity from complying with a bad law that they passed. How is bypassing the FISA court the same as complying with FISA, or doing what FISA intended?
It seem the want to punish the last step in the process, however we are not out for blood on the people who pushed these actions from the government. I think that's a good point. The problem seems to be that Congress is unwilling to pursue the administration for their actions. I mean, if they start creating an atmosphere of accountability, it could end up enveloping them as well!
it should be the job of every/.er to write to their local newspaper
You crudely assume that every slashdotter is located in the USA.
Do you honestly have to have the meaning of that post spelled out for you? You really couldn't figure out from the context that he's referring to/.ers that have a representative in the US Congress? Are you just being pedantic to be a prick?
How hard would it be to slip in a last-minute amendment that canceled the immunity? If billions (trillions?) of appropriatiations and Avg. Joe-screwing legislation can be slipped in to irrelevent bills, why is correcting it so hard? This is far too visible. Those other things don't really get slipped in without anyone's knowledge. They just get overlooked, because that's how Congress does business. I overlook this pork-barrel project this time, and they overlook mine when I stick one in a bill later. As long as the people aren't paying much attention, then it's no problem. Something like this is under a microscope though, so nobody can really mess with it. With all the attention on this one aspect of the bill, I wonder what else is in there though.
Well, it's a lose-lose. If he votes against it, the Republicans will hammer him to hell about "not being tough on terrorists". If he votes for it, a bunch of his voters will be pissed with him.
So what? He wants to be the president! He better be able to take a stand on things like this. If he can't, then he's wasting our time.
This is why your constitution protected your right to bear arms. The rest of the world has spent decades listening to Americans wax lyrical about how and why those rights are needed. If you don't use them now, then everyone who said you were just a bunch of nut jobs spouting empty rhetoric will be proven right.
The rest of the world doesn't get to make the decision about when to make that stand. Americans do. We aren't there yet. We haven't even come to the point where people are willing to try to elect an outsider yet (i.e. outside of current political circles). If and when that happens, then we'll see whether our democracy holds up.
Nobody wants to believe that the people running the show are doing it for themselves and pulling the strings to make themselves fat and happy at the expense of everyone else, but eventually, that realization could set in. We've got a long way to go before we're likely to see any real stand against the government.
Because it is such a private and special act, despite the act having been demeaned over the past 60+ years. And that's the problem. Sexual intercourse is meant to be an act performed in private for the two parties that love and care for each other deeply enough to create a stronger bond. When you put that on public display, the act is reduced to a trite sensuality. Whole lot of preconceived notions and assumptions in that paragraph. The indoctrination goes deeper than you may believe. Who says it should always be private, or particularly special? Who says it should only be with someone you love and care deeply for? Why do you consider sensuality to be trite?
So, if I give you nothing but negative information when there is positive information, is that not misleading? We're bombarded with the positive information all day long by the campaigns themselves. Press releases, campaign speeches, interviews, etc. We need to see the negative information as well if we're to know what questions need to be asked of them.
Besides, if these guys want to highlight the negative information, assuming it's true information, then that's their right, and I don't see anything wrong with that. They're playing by the rules that Google has set up. They aren't doing anything to hack the system. They're just encouraging like-minded bloggers to link to these articles. Seems like a good way to get the information some more attention.
darkmeridian has a great point, too--we can always break Microsoft up if the monopolistic policies do not stop. It would likely even be easier to separate than Ma Bell was in the 80s--Microsoft peripherals, Microsoft software, Microsoft gaming, etc etc. Yeah, that was tried. The current administration made sure that they only got a slap on the wrist instead, and this was after mountains of evidence proved that they intentionally leveraged their monopoly in illegal ways. I certainly wouldn't rely on a Republican administration to do a damn thing about anti-competitive behavior. It's hard enough to get done under a democratic one. I'm still pissed at that judge for shooting off his mouth too.
But that is not what they are doing. They are playing with the google search page, which doesn't belong to them and is intended to be a reflection of what you would want to see when you type in a search term, not what some other person wants you to see. They're asking more bloggers to link to the articles in order to make them more visible in the searches. Seems pretty legitimate to me. That's how Google determines what information is worth showing to people. They aren't forcing anyone to do it, and they aren't using any kind of illegal hacks or tactics to accomplish their goal. I don't see it as gaming the search engine. I see it as playing within the system.
Really? Hmmm. So, trying to get only negative stories about a candidate in the top search results is not disinformation, eh? What would you call it? Look up "disinformation". It means "false or misleading information", not "true, but inconvenient information". These articles are neither false nor misleading. They just happen to be information that the McCain camp doesn't want people to pay attention to. Getting this information in front of people will help them to hold him accountable for it. That's good democracy.
And, what would you call it if it were conservatives and Obama instead of liberals and McCain? Fair play. Read my other responses here. I think both sides should do this so that people get a more complete view of both candidates, rather than just what their campaigns want you to hear. Yes, it could just start a Google-bombing arms race, but the principle of getting this kind of information in front of voters so that they can hold the candidates accountable is a good one.
I disagree. I think it's a bit dishonest. If this guy gets his way, when someone searches for John McCain, they are likely to get negative articles. I mean, let's forget about getting balanced results and letting people make up their own minds when presented with ALL the facts. Nope, let's make sure they only see the facts WE want them to see so they can make up their minds the way WE want them to. Making these articles rise in the ranks isn't removing any other articles. How are they limiting what facts people can see?
Because clearly, the last thing you want to do is let your opponent's perspective out there. This is brought to you by the 'informed populace makes for poor voters' theory. If we want to have informed voters, then both sides should be doing this. If they both bring to light truthful articles about what the candidates have said or done, then they'll both be held accountable and have to explain their actions to the public. This would be a good thing! Otherwise we just end up with the essentially useless garbage that the campaigns put out, and the smear campaigns run by interest groups.
No bias? By what definition is emphasizing the things someone says that suit your purposes not bias? In fact, this is the most insidious kind of bias. If the pieces being ranked up were opinion pieces, at least viewers would be aware that what they are reading is someone's opinion. But this way, the ordering of the news stories itself contains some random guy's personal bias and the majority of searchers will not know to put their guard up. They are truthful articles, which are relevant to the campaign, and are things that McCain's camp would like people not to pay attention to. I think both sides should do this immediately! We need to hold them both accountable for what they have said and done! As long as the articles are truthful, I have no problem with this.
Isn't one of the tenants of democracy that everyone have access to all information and then they decide who's best for themselves? This is poisoning the available information so citizens don't have all of the information about a candidate.
This isn't preventing access to all of the information. It's just highlighting some of the information. The information is still truthful, as far as I can tell, so this doesn't seem like a bad thing. I couldn't fault McCain's campaign for doing the same thing, as long as they also link to truthful articles.
It might do people some good to read the articles that contradict the public positions of the candidates. Maybe people will wake up and realize that there's more information out there than just what the campaigns want you to see.
I find the practice of SEO to be a bit questionable in any event, but soliciting volunteers to essentially manipulate google search results in order to favor a given political agenda just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I don't really see the problem with it, as long as the articles that are being linked to are legitimate and truthful. I just looked at a couple of them, and they seem to fit that criteria. So, spreading the word about these articles across like-minded blogs seems like a pretty legitimate tactic. Call it gaming the system if you like, but the whole system is already a game, which is how the politicians have set it up.
Making it hard to find the best information (even if it's not information the liberal blogger wants people to see) about a candidate is not in the spirit of a free society and democracy. Basically, this liberal blogger is decreasing the signal to noise ratio rather than providing useful and compelling reasons to vote for his own candidate. Who decides what the best information is? Is it the information pushed by the candidate's campaign? Is it whatever information people happen to link to more often? Is it information that contradicts the candidates' stated positions? The point that the guy makes is that both sides will use a variety of tactics to control the information that the public gets to see.
Political campaigns are entirely about crafting an image and promoting anything that supports that image while simultaneously working to quash anything that contradicts it. Both sides do it in a variety of ways. It's not new, and, as always, it's up to the reader to find the pertinent information for themselves rather than just reading sources that play to their own biases. (Yes,/. may have a bias, but I see viewpoints all along the spectrum being represented here, so it's better than most forums in that regard.)
Those actions undermine society's trust in the system that if someone graduates from an institution and that institution certifies that the student did what the records say they did, they may or may not be qualified for jobs, further education, etc. Guys that steal billions from people usually face a lot less time than this. Even the possibility of a 38 year sentence makes our judicial system seem utterly ridiculous.
Of course, I used to be one of those people, too. I started out listening to NPR because I liked classical and jazz music... eventually the news wore on me and I realized that I had been sort of a dick prior. Now I really like NPR news. That's kind of why I avoid political discussions at family gatherings. Most of them get all their news and opinions from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. They see every issue as black and white and are absolutely convinced that anyone that doesn't agree with them is either stupid or (to be generous) horribly uninformed or mislead. There's no such thing as a discussion with those people. They make it a lecture about how everything wrong with the world is cause by liberals.
We had no reason to invade Iraq; none at all. None? So, a dictator guilty of crimes against humanity on a regular basis, who funded terrorists groups, and was so absolutely devoid any sense of human dignity wasn't a good reason? Except that we condoned and helped him commit those acts when it served our interests. When he was fighting Iran and using chemical weapons against them, he was our buddy. It's pure hypocrisy to support such actions when he's furthering your interests, and then those same actions as soon as he's not.
I want people to know how bad copyright really is and the only way to get it through their thick heads is for the law to be enforced to the letter. This law will be selectively enforced against undesirables, just like other laws that criminalize a large percentage of the population. That way those who support the administration will dismiss complaints as hyberbole from the other side. How likely do you think it is that they would seize Senator Hatch's web server for running unlicensed software?
I think we should use your reply for every post on Slashdot that mixes up the two, but will need your permission since your comment is trademarked to you. That's a great idea actually, I give you permission. Me too!
Mandarin's not that hard:). IMO, anyway. Just gotta work at it, and spend ages memorising stuff. But you have to focus and study consistently. I'd be surprised if you were able to learn it well if you only studied off-and-on. It has been only off-and-on. When I'm actually in China, immersed for a couple of weeks at a time, I learn things quicker. But when I'm back home, I'm busy with work and school and don't really have the spare capacity to keep learning it. I'm hoping that by messing around in a game like this I can help keep myself from backsliding too much, and maybe even retain some new things through sheer repetition.
Considering mandarin is standardized (no by the commies, but by the nationalists, no less), if it were pronounced differently, it wouldn't really be mandarin, but a different dialect altogether. I don't recall them ever claiming it was mandarin. Just some words that got incorporated into the common language. Just like we use words that come from other languages and don't pronounce them correctly. My wife is Chinese and she understood what they were saying. Caught her off guard at first, but she thought it was pretty funny. That was our favorite show back then. Still hate Fox for canceling it.
I've been trying to learn mandarin for a little while now. It's pretty damn hard. I'm gonna give this game a try.
Slashdot Mirror
it should be the job of every /.er to write to their local newspaper
You crudely assume that every slashdotter is located in the USA.
Do you honestly have to have the meaning of that post spelled out for you? You really couldn't figure out from the context that he's referring toWell, it's a lose-lose. If he votes against it, the Republicans will hammer him to hell about "not being tough on terrorists". If he votes for it, a bunch of his voters will be pissed with him.
So what? He wants to be the president! He better be able to take a stand on things like this. If he can't, then he's wasting our time.The rest of the world doesn't get to make the decision about when to make that stand. Americans do. We aren't there yet. We haven't even come to the point where people are willing to try to elect an outsider yet (i.e. outside of current political circles). If and when that happens, then we'll see whether our democracy holds up.
Nobody wants to believe that the people running the show are doing it for themselves and pulling the strings to make themselves fat and happy at the expense of everyone else, but eventually, that realization could set in. We've got a long way to go before we're likely to see any real stand against the government.
Besides, if these guys want to highlight the negative information, assuming it's true information, then that's their right, and I don't see anything wrong with that. They're playing by the rules that Google has set up. They aren't doing anything to hack the system. They're just encouraging like-minded bloggers to link to these articles. Seems like a good way to get the information some more attention.
Isn't one of the tenants of democracy that everyone have access to all information and then they decide who's best for themselves? This is poisoning the available information so citizens don't have all of the information about a candidate.
This isn't preventing access to all of the information. It's just highlighting some of the information. The information is still truthful, as far as I can tell, so this doesn't seem like a bad thing. I couldn't fault McCain's campaign for doing the same thing, as long as they also link to truthful articles.It might do people some good to read the articles that contradict the public positions of the candidates. Maybe people will wake up and realize that there's more information out there than just what the campaigns want you to see.
The point that the guy makes is that both sides will use a variety of tactics to control the information that the public gets to see.
Political campaigns are entirely about crafting an image and promoting anything that supports that image while simultaneously working to quash anything that contradicts it. Both sides do it in a variety of ways. It's not new, and, as always, it's up to the reader to find the pertinent information for themselves rather than just reading sources that play to their own biases. (Yes, /. may have a bias, but I see viewpoints all along the spectrum being represented here, so it's better than most forums in that regard.)
I've been trying to learn mandarin for a little while now. It's pretty damn hard. I'm gonna give this game a try.