It's not the same case as what you mention, no, but it does demonstrate that *shock* Microsoft does listen to internal feedback, even if it happens to be scathingly negative, and is willing to make changes to improve itself. Maybe not always, but it happens.
Big difference between telling your bosses what you think about your situation, and spouting off publicly about how crappy one of their products is. Really big difference.
Google may have to look at whether having more internet users that don't have the same disposable income to buy their advertisers' products is worth alienating a smaller user base known to have the spare cash to buy their advertisers' products. Their advertisers will be watching.
As if there's a more moral company that those users could switch to?
Kinky gets my vote. Mainly because every other choice sucks worse. I'd rather have someone in there that doesn't know what they're doing than someone who's in the pocket of their contributors and anyone else that wants to buy a seat at the table.
I met my wife on a dating site. I couldn't be happier. So they can and do work. As well as meeting someone anywhere else really, and probably better than most since you can usually learn a lot more about them up front. Saves a lot of the trouble of going out with people who are completely wrong for you, which you might know if you'd been able to talk to them for a couple hours ahead of time. Nothing's perfect, as our divorce rate indicates, so I don't know why people give dating sites a bad rap. It's certainly no worse than the traditional methods.
Could you be more specific? I fail to see an easy way to rig the voting system I've described, if you can see one I very much want to know about it.
Actually, after thinking further about it, I think that what I was thinking of as abuse is probably the way it's supposed to work by design. I was thinking that given a sufficiently large group, any bill could be categorized as, say a copyright bill, even if it was completely unrelated. That kind of bothers me, but I'm not sure it would actually be a problem. Then again it might be, depending on how easy it would be to spot such deceptions. Categorizing a bill that people might actually care about as a category that many people don't understand, don't care about, and/or don't pay attention to would make it easier to slip something through. As long as there were some sort of controls on this, it would probably be ok though.
Look at something as seemingly simple as the Slashdot moderation system, and all the ways it has been gamed and exploited over the years, and it might give some indication of how a new election system might have to go through years of testing, modeling, and simulations before it was actually ready to really be used. I would suggest that once it gets to be mature enough, it could be adopted at the local level in some test cities to see how it works for a few election cycles at least, before moving to wider use.
I'd be interested also in hearing others' opinions about the lack of anonymity in the system. What kind of abuses of that could we expect to see. How could they be mitigated? I can think of a few ways that it could be abused. I'm hoping there would be solutions for these problems though.
If nothing else, this system would almost require you to be much more attentive to the workings of the government and those who influence it. It would require a significantly larger time committment than most people make these days, but then that's really not saying a lot I think.
I'm sorry...CS sucks wether it's Source or not. It's sucked ass since shortly after beta 7 when the glitching, cheating, and 1337ism went into overdrive. Anyone playing Source likely has no idea what beta 7 is.
If you play on decent servers with decent admins, then it's great. Other than that, it can be a hackfest. It has become quite a bit better over time though.
The same, or a similar, system as the one used for the voting itself would be used.
Sounds like a lot of overhead for people to deal with. They have to vote to categorize things, and then actually vote on them. Also sounds like it could be seriously abused.
I don't see any alternative to an open source implementation, where the responsible maintainers would be selected through the system itself. I've heard of no better recipe for security than peer review.
Selecting maintainers through the system is fine, but building the system to begin with is going to be quite an undertaking, and would probably take years to come to fruition. Look at all the failed government data systems over the years. I agree that open source is the only way to go with this, but there are going to be a lot of obstacles and a lot of debate on how the system should be built. That will take a lot of time and I'm not sure if a consensus could be achieved.
You may not have realized yet, but such a system does away with anonymous voting.
Yes, it occurred to me after I posted that in order for it to be auditable, it couldn't be anonymous. I'm not sure how well that will go over, but I think I'd be ok with it as long as there were strict privacy laws in place, and they were strictly enforced. The personal info should only be used for auditing the votes casts or recounts, and no other purpose.
My concern would be with the ability of some individuals to steal the votes of others, through identity theft or other mechanisms. If there is a national database, then whoever has access to that database would be able to determine who does and does not vote, and then possibly be able to forge votes for those who don't normally vote, and who are likely not paying attention to whether a vote has been recorded in their name.
Perhaps my point of view is skewed from being an experienced software developer, but I don't find it complex. It's merely a chain of responsibility.
Here's where I'm seeing the complexities. First, are there different levels of delegation, for local, state, and federal elections? Seems like you would need to have that capability. Second, who categorizes the issues/bills that are to be voted on? How are conflicts resolved? Third, wouldn't this require something along the lines of a centralized national voter database? That doesn't currently exist AFAIK. Fourth, who is going to ensure the security of this presumably web-based system? We can't even seem to get secure standalone voting machines. Fifth, what mechanism will be used to create a paper-trail in the event of a recount?
Regardless of the "Flaminess" of your post, I will still respond.
You consider that a flame? You have a pretty thin skin, huh? That was far from being a flame. If it was a flame I would have just called you an ignoramous with throws out tired quotes for any given situation without giving any serious thought to the issues at hand, but I didn't do that.
This was the meaning of my post. It sucks. But its better than many other things.
Right. That's what I understood your point to be. Which is why my point was that saying that it's better than the alternative and looking on the bright side is not going to make things better. You may be content to be complacent and have us rest on our laurels, but some of us recognize that just because it's better than other forms of government doesn't make it good, or even good enough. There's a huge amount of room for improvement, and we're already sliding backwards.
That all sounds grand. Would you like to propose some actual solutions, or just bitch about how the current ones suck. I've posted many comments about specific reforms I'd like to see regarding our election system. There are quite a few good proposals out there, any of which would be better than the current system which perpetuates the two parties and legalized bribery.
This is government, Get used to it. Improve it, Regulate it, Reform it, But you wont remove corruption from government. Where the power is, the corrupt go. Again, I am not trying to belittle your viewpoint, and I would tend to agree that it needs work, but I would rather see you propose solutions that just BITCH.
Like I said, I've posted many times in various stories discussing specific reforms. I'm not at home right now and don't have the links handy, but seriously, how can you be so enamored of the current system? Have you looked into election reform proposals? Campaign reform proposals? I don't mean the watered-down crap that they argue over in Washington. That's just them trying to look like they give a damn about it. There are lots of good recommendations out there, the problem is that they would reduce the power of the people who are currently running things. They would take away their safely drawn districts. They would make it easier for other parties and individuals to compete in elections by removing the fear that people have of "throwing away their vote". Of course this is why they refuse to even consider or even mention such reforms. They'd rather boil it down to a fight over which meaningless "reforms" to implement. It makes for good TV and soundbytes.
In theory, the committees are supposed to advise the rest of Congress because they are informed on particular issues. In practice, I'm not sure how much smarter politicians are than you and I.
Sorry to butt in:) But I think that he has a point about the amount of influence brought to bear on Congress. Between money and favors and such, it's hard to believe that the committee members are acting in good faith. Even if they are, it's much easier to misinform them and redirect or redefine the issues for them than it is to do it to the whole country. So much of it happens behind closed doors, and on issues that are technical in nature and not well-understood by the population in general, it's easy to snow them. It's not like their constituents are flooding them with letters on copyright issues.
Delegating your vote on certain types of issues to another agent (and I'll ignore the horrible complexity of such a system for now) would let you give your vote on copyright issues to a group like the EFF, or the RIAA if you swing that way. A group that is educated on such issues, and whose general stance you agree with. The major difference between that method and the current method is that you can have many different kinds of issues, and you can delegate to an expert on such issues, and who shares your general feelings about the issue.
some of them do become corrupt yes... what I'm saying is that they're not ALL corrupted
Perhaps not all, but I believe that the number that aren't is insignificant. The election system is based on legalized bribery. Influence buying. I don't see anyone involved as being uncorrupted really.
This new bill only clarifies the existing position by making you have licenses for every version of a song you have. I think it is silly. I don't think it is the worst thing Congress has done.
I don't know about that. I still haven't figured out exactly what it means, but the language in the bill regarding "General Designated Agents" seems pretty suspicious to me. Haven't seen anything yet that actually explains what it means though.
You underestimate the power of fundraising. If he runs unopposed, then there are a lot of disenfranchised constituents just like you itching to mail some candidate $25 and a batch of grandma's brownies if they'll just take a stab at the guy.
You underestimate the power of gerrymandering. If he's been running unopposed this long, it's because the opposing party has given up on trying to find someone to run against him. His district has been drawn too well for an opposing candidate to have a chance. It's the reason why 90%+ of incumbants are re-elected every time and there are only a handful of districts where this is an actual competitive race.
Your problem is not democracy but a two-party system where democracy is merely a convenient label. Your country is essentially an oligarchy.
I think that's what I'm getting at. That's why I was saying that we can make things better. People saying things like that seem to be presupposing both that what we have is a democracy, and that it's as good as we can get.
Except that "Honorable" is the proper honorific for members of Congress. It has nothing to do with their personal morality or lack thereof.
Doesn't make it appropriate. I think they just like it because it makes them sound respectable. Given the current state of our government, I don't think they deserve an honorific. Unless it's something like "the Shady Gentleman from Nebraska" or "the shifty-eyed Gentleman from Vermont" or somesuch.
If the guy is that bad, and no one in your area is going to step up to the plate, then so be it. You got what you deserved.
And you get the money to compete with him how exactly? He's sold himself already, so he's got the cash to drown out your message completely, what little people will actually hear from you anyway if you have no money to get media coverage.
but a lot of the party members and elected officials, especially at your local level, tend to be very dedicated in serving their constituents and promoting the common good.
Unfortunately, local politicians get no say in any of this, and by the time they make it to D.C., they've been corrupted by the money and special interests you have to suck up to in order to get there.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
People trotting out that line all the time are part of the problem. They are the people that are resistant to attempts to improve the situation because they think this is as good as it can get. If this is as good as it gets, we're screwed. Some of us don't want to take that lying down.. or bending over as the case may be. We want to come up with better ways of doing things, and I'm sure that there must be better ways. We need serious reform of our election system, first and foremost. Until then, we are stuck in a corrupt system that feeds off the cash of special interests and puts up walls to prevent the non-corrupt from getting in.
And as long as that freedom exists, money will continue to pervert the process. I'm not convinced that less liberty is worth less perversion of the system.
I'm convinced that a corrupt system is worse for the preservation of my rights in general than the loss of the right to buy an election for a candidate that I like. As long as bribery is legal, then the system will be corrupt and for sale to the highest bidder. I'm far from convinced that the highest bidder has my interests, or the interests of the country in mind over their own interests.
Indeed it is. It's possible that swedish law considers just about anything. However, I have yet to see any evidence that swedish law is different and does permit sites such as The Pirate Bay.
I was just pointing out that your critique of his logic was flawed, and it is. We don't have authoritative answers, and we won't until this case goes to trial and is decided.
According to this logic, if google.com is legal under US law, any US torrent hosting site must also be legal.
Umm. No. US Law and Swedish law are different, so you can't compare the two situations. It's quite possible that according to US law, google.com and a torrent site are very different, while Swedish law considers them to be basically the same.
My point isn't to legally treat copyright infringement as theft, but to explain why I see them as closely related.
Probably not as closely as you seem to think though. An idea, or arrangement of words would even be considered something of value if it weren't for laws granting exclusive, monopoly rights over such things. The law creates the thing, and the law creates the crime of infringing on the thing. It's a much newer concept than actual property laws, and I think people can recognize instinctively when they're getting the shaft.
Copyright law is supposed to be a bargain between society and the creators of works that society values. They get exclusive rights to distribute and sell the work, and after a period of time, we get unfettered access to the work as it becomes public domain. However, over the last several decades, copyright law has gotten out of control. The works that were to become public domain were snatched back, some retroactively. The copyright term is now longer than a normal human lifespan. Almost nothing has become public domain in the last 80 years or so. The content industry has screwed us, and most people didn't even realize it. But, people do realize, even if unconsciously, that copyright is a legal fiction. They don't see the bargain anymore because the bargain has been long broken, so they don't feel that they are morally wrong to download copyrighted works. Why should we be creating monopolies to charge us more for something when we get nothing in return?
Setting aside for the moment the observation that Congress is in fact in the oil industry's pocket rather than that of the entertainment industry, I wonder, what makes you so certain that another DMCA is on the way, and that it will be as comprehensive as you claim? And if it is as grave a threat as you suggest, what are you doing about it? I personally don't vote for anyone who pushes that kind of measure.
There's no reason to believe they aren't in the pocket of both, or that each industry owns some group of members within Congress. Second, there have been numerous reports of legislation being drafted to bolster copyright laws. One thing they've been wanting for quite a while is to close the analog hole that they weren't able to do with the original DMCA. They are seeking stronger laws to require hardware to comply with DRM requirements as well. Nothing has passed yet, but given enough time and money, there's no reason the believe it won't pass. I've written to my own congresscritters several times. A few months later I always get back a form letter talking about how it's important to protect copyrights because it helps the poor artists, etc. They never really address the concerns I put forth. So, obviously someone is paying them well enough that they can't be bothered to actually look into the real issues. They just take the money and vote however they're told. The sad thing is that this bribery is completely accepted by pretty much everyone as business as usual. I avoid voting for people that support these crappy laws too, but unfortunately, I usually have a choice between 2 candidates that both support them. That's the sad state of affairs right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Big difference between telling your bosses what you think about your situation, and spouting off publicly about how crappy one of their products is. Really big difference.
Yikes.
As if there's a more moral company that those users could switch to?
Kinky gets my vote. Mainly because every other choice sucks worse. I'd rather have someone in there that doesn't know what they're doing than someone who's in the pocket of their contributors and anyone else that wants to buy a seat at the table.
I met my wife on a dating site. I couldn't be happier. So they can and do work. As well as meeting someone anywhere else really, and probably better than most since you can usually learn a lot more about them up front. Saves a lot of the trouble of going out with people who are completely wrong for you, which you might know if you'd been able to talk to them for a couple hours ahead of time. Nothing's perfect, as our divorce rate indicates, so I don't know why people give dating sites a bad rap. It's certainly no worse than the traditional methods.
Actually, after thinking further about it, I think that what I was thinking of as abuse is probably the way it's supposed to work by design. I was thinking that given a sufficiently large group, any bill could be categorized as, say a copyright bill, even if it was completely unrelated. That kind of bothers me, but I'm not sure it would actually be a problem. Then again it might be, depending on how easy it would be to spot such deceptions. Categorizing a bill that people might actually care about as a category that many people don't understand, don't care about, and/or don't pay attention to would make it easier to slip something through. As long as there were some sort of controls on this, it would probably be ok though.
Look at something as seemingly simple as the Slashdot moderation system, and all the ways it has been gamed and exploited over the years, and it might give some indication of how a new election system might have to go through years of testing, modeling, and simulations before it was actually ready to really be used. I would suggest that once it gets to be mature enough, it could be adopted at the local level in some test cities to see how it works for a few election cycles at least, before moving to wider use.
I'd be interested also in hearing others' opinions about the lack of anonymity in the system. What kind of abuses of that could we expect to see. How could they be mitigated? I can think of a few ways that it could be abused. I'm hoping there would be solutions for these problems though.
If nothing else, this system would almost require you to be much more attentive to the workings of the government and those who influence it. It would require a significantly larger time committment than most people make these days, but then that's really not saying a lot I think.
If you play on decent servers with decent admins, then it's great. Other than that, it can be a hackfest. It has become quite a bit better over time though.
Sounds like a lot of overhead for people to deal with. They have to vote to categorize things, and then actually vote on them. Also sounds like it could be seriously abused.
Selecting maintainers through the system is fine, but building the system to begin with is going to be quite an undertaking, and would probably take years to come to fruition. Look at all the failed government data systems over the years. I agree that open source is the only way to go with this, but there are going to be a lot of obstacles and a lot of debate on how the system should be built. That will take a lot of time and I'm not sure if a consensus could be achieved.
Yes, it occurred to me after I posted that in order for it to be auditable, it couldn't be anonymous. I'm not sure how well that will go over, but I think I'd be ok with it as long as there were strict privacy laws in place, and they were strictly enforced. The personal info should only be used for auditing the votes casts or recounts, and no other purpose.
My concern would be with the ability of some individuals to steal the votes of others, through identity theft or other mechanisms. If there is a national database, then whoever has access to that database would be able to determine who does and does not vote, and then possibly be able to forge votes for those who don't normally vote, and who are likely not paying attention to whether a vote has been recorded in their name.
Crap. So you're saying that Bush probably won't get stabbed by some senators?
Here's where I'm seeing the complexities. First, are there different levels of delegation, for local, state, and federal elections? Seems like you would need to have that capability. Second, who categorizes the issues/bills that are to be voted on? How are conflicts resolved? Third, wouldn't this require something along the lines of a centralized national voter database? That doesn't currently exist AFAIK. Fourth, who is going to ensure the security of this presumably web-based system? We can't even seem to get secure standalone voting machines. Fifth, what mechanism will be used to create a paper-trail in the event of a recount?
You consider that a flame? You have a pretty thin skin, huh? That was far from being a flame. If it was a flame I would have just called you an ignoramous with throws out tired quotes for any given situation without giving any serious thought to the issues at hand, but I didn't do that.
This was the meaning of my post. It sucks. But its better than many other things.
Right. That's what I understood your point to be. Which is why my point was that saying that it's better than the alternative and looking on the bright side is not going to make things better. You may be content to be complacent and have us rest on our laurels, but some of us recognize that just because it's better than other forms of government doesn't make it good, or even good enough. There's a huge amount of room for improvement, and we're already sliding backwards.
That all sounds grand. Would you like to propose some actual solutions, or just bitch about how the current ones suck.
I've posted many comments about specific reforms I'd like to see regarding our election system. There are quite a few good proposals out there, any of which would be better than the current system which perpetuates the two parties and legalized bribery.
This is government, Get used to it. Improve it, Regulate it, Reform it, But you wont remove corruption from government. Where the power is, the corrupt go. Again, I am not trying to belittle your viewpoint, and I would tend to agree that it needs work, but I would rather see you propose solutions that just BITCH.
Like I said, I've posted many times in various stories discussing specific reforms. I'm not at home right now and don't have the links handy, but seriously, how can you be so enamored of the current system? Have you looked into election reform proposals? Campaign reform proposals? I don't mean the watered-down crap that they argue over in Washington. That's just them trying to look like they give a damn about it. There are lots of good recommendations out there, the problem is that they would reduce the power of the people who are currently running things. They would take away their safely drawn districts. They would make it easier for other parties and individuals to compete in elections by removing the fear that people have of "throwing away their vote". Of course this is why they refuse to even consider or even mention such reforms. They'd rather boil it down to a fight over which meaningless "reforms" to implement. It makes for good TV and soundbytes.
Sorry to butt in
Delegating your vote on certain types of issues to another agent (and I'll ignore the horrible complexity of such a system for now) would let you give your vote on copyright issues to a group like the EFF, or the RIAA if you swing that way. A group that is educated on such issues, and whose general stance you agree with. The major difference between that method and the current method is that you can have many different kinds of issues, and you can delegate to an expert on such issues, and who shares your general feelings about the issue.
Perhaps not all, but I believe that the number that aren't is insignificant. The election system is based on legalized bribery. Influence buying. I don't see anyone involved as being uncorrupted really.
I don't know about that. I still haven't figured out exactly what it means, but the language in the bill regarding "General Designated Agents" seems pretty suspicious to me. Haven't seen anything yet that actually explains what it means though.
You underestimate the power of gerrymandering. If he's been running unopposed this long, it's because the opposing party has given up on trying to find someone to run against him. His district has been drawn too well for an opposing candidate to have a chance. It's the reason why 90%+ of incumbants are re-elected every time and there are only a handful of districts where this is an actual competitive race.
I think that's what I'm getting at. That's why I was saying that we can make things better. People saying things like that seem to be presupposing both that what we have is a democracy, and that it's as good as we can get.
Doesn't make it appropriate. I think they just like it because it makes them sound respectable. Given the current state of our government, I don't think they deserve an honorific. Unless it's something like "the Shady Gentleman from Nebraska" or "the shifty-eyed Gentleman from Vermont" or somesuch.
And you get the money to compete with him how exactly? He's sold himself already, so he's got the cash to drown out your message completely, what little people will actually hear from you anyway if you have no money to get media coverage.
Unfortunately, local politicians get no say in any of this, and by the time they make it to D.C., they've been corrupted by the money and special interests you have to suck up to in order to get there.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
People trotting out that line all the time are part of the problem. They are the people that are resistant to attempts to improve the situation because they think this is as good as it can get. If this is as good as it gets, we're screwed. Some of us don't want to take that lying down.. or bending over as the case may be. We want to come up with better ways of doing things, and I'm sure that there must be better ways. We need serious reform of our election system, first and foremost. Until then, we are stuck in a corrupt system that feeds off the cash of special interests and puts up walls to prevent the non-corrupt from getting in.
And as long as that freedom exists, money will continue to pervert the process. I'm not convinced that less liberty is worth less perversion of the system.
I'm convinced that a corrupt system is worse for the preservation of my rights in general than the loss of the right to buy an election for a candidate that I like. As long as bribery is legal, then the system will be corrupt and for sale to the highest bidder. I'm far from convinced that the highest bidder has my interests, or the interests of the country in mind over their own interests.
Indeed it is. It's possible that swedish law considers just about anything. However, I have yet to see any evidence that swedish law is different and does permit sites such as The Pirate Bay.
I was just pointing out that your critique of his logic was flawed, and it is. We don't have authoritative answers, and we won't until this case goes to trial and is decided.
According to this logic, if google.com is legal under US law, any US torrent hosting site must also be legal.
Umm. No. US Law and Swedish law are different, so you can't compare the two situations. It's quite possible that according to US law, google.com and a torrent site are very different, while Swedish law considers them to be basically the same.
My point isn't to legally treat copyright infringement as theft, but to explain why I see them as closely related.
Probably not as closely as you seem to think though. An idea, or arrangement of words would even be considered something of value if it weren't for laws granting exclusive, monopoly rights over such things. The law creates the thing, and the law creates the crime of infringing on the thing. It's a much newer concept than actual property laws, and I think people can recognize instinctively when they're getting the shaft.
Copyright law is supposed to be a bargain between society and the creators of works that society values. They get exclusive rights to distribute and sell the work, and after a period of time, we get unfettered access to the work as it becomes public domain. However, over the last several decades, copyright law has gotten out of control. The works that were to become public domain were snatched back, some retroactively. The copyright term is now longer than a normal human lifespan. Almost nothing has become public domain in the last 80 years or so. The content industry has screwed us, and most people didn't even realize it. But, people do realize, even if unconsciously, that copyright is a legal fiction. They don't see the bargain anymore because the bargain has been long broken, so they don't feel that they are morally wrong to download copyrighted works. Why should we be creating monopolies to charge us more for something when we get nothing in return?
There's no reason to believe they aren't in the pocket of both, or that each industry owns some group of members within Congress. Second, there have been numerous reports of legislation being drafted to bolster copyright laws. One thing they've been wanting for quite a while is to close the analog hole that they weren't able to do with the original DMCA. They are seeking stronger laws to require hardware to comply with DRM requirements as well. Nothing has passed yet, but given enough time and money, there's no reason the believe it won't pass. I've written to my own congresscritters several times. A few months later I always get back a form letter talking about how it's important to protect copyrights because it helps the poor artists, etc. They never really address the concerns I put forth. So, obviously someone is paying them well enough that they can't be bothered to actually look into the real issues. They just take the money and vote however they're told. The sad thing is that this bribery is completely accepted by pretty much everyone as business as usual. I avoid voting for people that support these crappy laws too, but unfortunately, I usually have a choice between 2 candidates that both support them. That's the sad state of affairs right now.