I forgot about their no-privacy policy. The problem is that you get a good company, and then someone gets a case of the clevers-- they think they can hammer out this zany scheme. And maybe you do see some marginal benefit from being sneaky or doing something which annoys your customers.
But never mind people like you, and like me (I can't shop there while I know they are sharing their profiling of me with who knows what other companies). It just takes your focus away from your core business. That's, at least from their interests, the major problem.
Can Jeff Bezos and his team really focus on staying ahead in what matters: selling music, movies, microcode and books to consumers? Not if they are busy working out legal strategies, speaking publicly on the issue, dealing with The Boycott, etc. This patent stuff costs time. Why turn into the lawfirm of Amazon and Dotcom when you could be focusing on beating out B&N in the one arena that matters: the marketplace.
Quite the contrary. We will need to move into mine shafts deep in the earth. Food can be stockpiled, pigs can be bred und schlaughtered.
In order to allow the human race to quickly regain its old numbers, we will need to bring a hundred women for every man.
The men can be chosen from the finest examples of humanity: scientists, programmers, engineers, great leaders, etc. The women, however, should be chosen based on their fertility, and their ability to entice men to undertake the onerous task of breeding so many of them so often.
Figure skaters, actresses, musicians, cheerleaders, all possess qualities which will lend themselves to additional fertility. I expect that while it will take great effort and creativity to keep their men suffiently aroused to perform their duties to humanity, that the greatest of our men will rise to the challenge.
I guess it is time to stop worrying and love pollution....
From someone who works w/ the INS on a regular basis:
1) Start early: Many applications don't go through due to procrastination on the part of the applicant. Many of these processes take months or even years. And don't wait for your current residency to expire before looking for the next one.
2) Check your work: There are tons of hoops you have to jump through and they are not well marked. The INS won't always helpfully remind you when you have a problem. Only warning here is not to pester the INS too much-- that could delay your answer.
3) Get assistance: Some lawyers specialize in immigration issues. Talk to one-- she'll be able to give you advice which is tailored to your particular case. Or talk to your congressional office-- they have people who know the rules and can explain them to you. Your company can also help-- IF you plan on staying there long enough for them to benefit.
Does anyone have some direct evidence that the patent is invalid? The fact that it is so "obvious" now is not direct evidence. McDonald's patented the seeds they put on hamburger buns. Remember, geek != lawyer. And I'd rather have Amazon than BN.
IANAL
I like Amazon more, too. But frankly, this is so risky. They're in a deathmatch with B&N, and are giving investors the impression that this is their armor-- when they have such great customer service! They may be talking about their many other advantages, too, but this patent stuff is:
a) Distracting from what really makes Amazon better.
b) Setting a bad precedent for future patents, including those used against Amazon.
Jeff Bezos wrote to Tim O'Reilly about the need for patent reform that is industry-wide, rather than one side unilaterally disarming. Good argument, but I've heard precious little come out of that since. Does anyone have a status on this? Maybe bundle it with Sen. Hatch's work on protecting fair use in the copyright laws? He's had six months-- we shouldn't expect anything for 1-2 years, but we should have heard something by now.
dotcomtelecom.com! world headquarters (AP): Every morning, Bart Flanders rolls out of bed, throws on some clothes, and goes to work. Sixteen hours later, he is still there, finishing a major project for his company, dotcomtelecom.com!. He has worked for six days straight on this schedule and, nearly consumed by exhaustion and stress, now has a choice.
"I've been drug free for all of my life," Bart says, pacing outside his office building. A green sign across the street catches his eye. "The product has to ship tomorrow. Our investors will be there for the rollout. If I can just pull one more all-nighter, we can do this. Everyone else on my team is doing it." He pauses, and a weary smile crosses his face. "Wow, I never thought I'd actually say that. It's so, like, just like an after school special. I guess this is how junkies get started."
For all too many programmers, Bart's dillema is a familiar one. Known on the street as 'joe', 'code juice' and 'venti', use of coffee is increasingly prevalent among the programming digiterati. And experts are alarmed by its rapid gains among the road crews of our nation's cyber-highway.
"Cocaine and binge drinking have always been pretty standard among the CEOs. And LSD and marijuana are pretty much job requirements in marketting. We in Vice are used to cruising through a startup on tuesdays and thursdays, busting half the company or more," Lt. Chuck Wagner reports. He leads the 'Internet Startup Division' of the Los Gatos police department. "What's got us worried are these techie guys. I mean, I can understand a CEO needing a few lines to unwind with two of his girlfriends after a hard day. I mean these guys have stressful lives, what with being proactive and all that. But why would a mere techie be doing joe? We're watching them-- we know they're not partying. So what are they doing with their time? That's the big mystery."
Techies, as they are fondly known by their pals in marketting, are the socially dysfunctional experts who provide internet startups with valuable mockups and beta copies to show to investors. These computer geniuses are valued employees, and are carefully shielded from such terrible messes as senior staff meetings, strategy sessions and promotions.
"I don't understand it at all," confides Laura Graham, VP of operations for dotcomtelecom.com!. "I mean, we don't let these guys make any decisions whatsoever. They don't have to go to conferences, parties, etc. And I don't let them anywhere near the wild, hallucenigenic orgies which I am rumored to host. All we ask in return is that they ship a product with wildly varying requirements within hours of the unrealistic deadline we promised to the venture capital firm which is just trying to test the waters before investing in our competitor. I mean, how hard is that? It isn't like they are adaptivating, or strategizing, or playing golf. We let them play on the magic glass boxes, and we talk about the magical wonderland which is javaembeddedinternetconnectedfutureVR-TML 5.0."
"Laura just doesn't get it," Bart says with a shrug. "We're trying to create a more secure ecommerce model, and she's telling us to do it in Virtual Reality. She hasn't even been to work in two weeks." Bart is still tempted by the green sign across the street. It should be easier in his cubicle, where there are no distracting windows, but there, the smell of espresso is strong.
"It boils down to this: I have a job to do, and x hours to do it in. Without some joe, I won't be able to finish. You tell me what I need to do. I know the risks. I've lost good friends to coffee. I've seen the desperation, the shakes, the demented ravings of people crashing after a two day high. I know people who have two hundred dollar a week habits, and that's not counting cream and sugar. I've heard the cries of pain and anguish from the men's restroom. But I have to do this. Just this once."
Bart returns to his desk a few minutes later, with a paper cup and a sharp, edgy expression. On his desk is a bag with enough pure, uncut joe to last nearly a week. Its street value is at least $50.
"I know what this looks like. But I'm not a junkie. Once we've shipped our product, I'm throwing this out. It's only this once." Bart's expression turns plaintive; he fortifies himself with another sip. "You don't think I'm going to be an addict now, do you? I don't want to die."
You may have seen these names before, waving hands and talking about the amazing future - Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Andreesen (even makes the cover of wired recently, all for having co-written mosaic w/ eric bina), Lanier, Kurzweil, Ted Nelson, Gelertner, etc. Most or all of these have been "has beens", who never quite produce anything useful, except visions of the future that are lapped up by journalists and viewed as the gospel.
I think that the worst of the bunch are the anti-technological lit crit types. Alan Sokal's experiment last year came to mind while I read this, and I am glad you linked to it, since I couldn't remember Sokal's name. Here is the whole archive.
The problem is that the technological process is composed of normative and positive components. Normative components are pure opinion and value setting (eg that education is more important than national security, or that spam is something to be discouraged). Positive components are purely factual (eg that a technology can be projected to earn X dollars for the industry, or that a black hole's event horizon is at radius Y. Or that a component's magnitude cannot exceed that of its whole).
Ideally, we use Positive techniques to achieve Normatively determined goals. Positive methods are evaluated by reason and experiment. Normative beliefs are evaluated using persuasion and politics. We need both! But as Sokal's experiment warns us, we also need to keep them separate. Science, like journalism, is our society's information-gathering apparatus. Politics, religion, the marketplace, and the media (including slashdot) are our decision-making apparati.
It is really, really tempting to try to mix the two. In fact, it is pretty much inevitable, since much of what we think is fact is really widely-accepted opinion. Facts, like opinions, are often in dispute. However, I think much of the lit crit world is intentionally blurring the distinction for two reasons:
1: Facts have a special weight in society. When these become subject to revision, one can manipulate opinions by manipulating the perceptions of what a 'fact' is. Also, anyone can have an opinion. By placing policy judgements into the domain of positive analysis, you make opinions the exclusive province of the Credentialled Academic. Noam Chomsky, for instance, is a giant in the field of linguistics. However, many people who agree with him seem to think that his academic standing makes him a better economist, for instance, than real live economists. This is an extreme example, but often people who are good at describing a phenomenon are considered somehow to be specially endowed with the power to judge something. You don't need a PhD in military history to be able to say that wars are terrible. Or an economist to say that economic growth is good. Walling something away from the generally educated public is not just bad, it is a form of subtle tyranny.
2. The very lit-crit people who are trying to remove the objectivity from science are themselves just trying to move all the sciences under their banner (or as Lanier puts it, 'campus imperialism'). On a more meta level, the lit crit set actually study persuasiveness and persuasion for a living. They are experts in its techniques and uses. So why not make persuasiveness the basis for all scientific discourse? If everything in the sciences becomes a matter of who has the most witty barbs in the social scene, or whose critiques are the most cleverly worded, or whose syllables-per-word average is the highest, then of course the lit crit people would win. You can't blame them for trying.
Our prototype for the Real Scientist should be Richard Feynman. He was a total iconoclast. He was a fiercely creative, but intellectually disciplined person-- willing to throw almost any notion away in the face of hard evidence. He wasn't political, and resigned from the National Academy of Sciences because he saw them as an organization devoted entirely to determining who was worthy of being a member. I'd say that that describes the lit crit crowd pretty well. And while everyone has opinions, when it comes to science and factual data, you have to bend over backwards to ensure your own objectivity. Lanier's article challenges one part of this threat, and I hope that people recognize the problem.
You think this is bad, you should see what else they have on the way:
Internet Explorer: Automatically posts to slashdot announcing that you are now using Internet Explorer and that we will all be assimilated.
MS Word: Prints a letter and envelope, complete with Estamps, to everyone in your address book, then uses Orbital Mind Control Lasers to make you sign, seal and send them. MS charges the estamps to your credit card.
MS Money: An 'affiliate' program. They send spam announcing that you use MS Money, then offer five bucks to people who switch, also. The money comes from your bank account. (After all, they didn't get this rich writing big checks. Buy 'em out, boys!)
One major problem is turnover. Companies spend so much time filling their needs after they appear, rather than planning ahead. So they go through ooodles of interviews while the position is unfilled, and complain about a personnel shortage. Not really a shortage, just poor management.
This is a symptom of an even worse problem. Who knows a manager who wouldn't give a promotion because you were 'irreplacable where you were', even hiring newbies above you? You are a lot harder to replace when you jump ship and aren't there to train your replacement.
Or managers who won't give a 5% raise to keep you at the salary average-- but pay 20% more to pull in someone new? The manager's view: you already negotiated your salary, he can often use social engineering to keep you around at the lower salary. The reality: such ill will usually sends people packing.
I can't believe they put Pixelon in there!! They are ruining Pixelon's good name-- I'll have to sue.
Note to the Clue-Impaired: Pixelon was the company which turned out to be run by a con man, who spent 20 million in VC before people caught on that his 'revolutionary streaming video technology is actually windows media player. Let's see if they send a C&D.
I'm just racking up the FC points by betting on FC! Severity: 50, Points: 125!
I think that Ditzel is saying that Intel can't do that in less than five years. The reason isn't technological-- it is procedural.
Transmeta was starting from scratch with some of the masters of VLIW already on board. Intel will be starting with a legacy platform which they are trying to replace. The problem is that there are hundreds of people at Intel whose entire job is their current platform. Intel can do it, technologically, but it is difficult to convice the troops to march in a different direction. Such a radical shift for such a big company is quite rare. Intel might pull it off, but it will take time for management to realize that Transmeta's technology is worth the time and effort, and that they will need to change to make it work.
Now that it has been done successfully already, it probably would only take a couple years to release a competing design. If they started today. Which they won't. If they are like the big companies I've seen, they'll form a project group and kick the idea around until they start losing market share. Then they'll go into panic mode and finish it.
Someone once told me that technologically, you can do nearly anything. Most obstacles to advance are actually procedural. A big mass of people such as those at Intel is very hard to move into a new direction. And success and power such as theirs is hard to wager on a radically new approach. Five years, by that measure, is very reasonable.
Personally, I would prefer a separate PDA and phone, but they should be tightly integrated (using Bluetooth or similar). The possibilities are essentially the same as with a combined device (browse the web, caller ID, call from PDA, etc.), but to me having two separate devices with specific functions seems a lot more convenient.
You beat me to it! The interface and purpose of a PDA is totally different than those of a cell phone. Not to say you shouldn't tie them together tightly, but you might as well have the Palm 9 that Motley Fool 'announced' a few months ago. I'm too lazy to look it up, but they were joking about a Palm that had every conceivable feature-- and weighed 30 pounds.
Frankly, most of the weight of a portable anything is its battery. So you should put that on a 'utility belt'-- it can charge by induction in a charger embedded in your chair at work. All your electrical stuff could have a short duration battery-- say about a half hour of use. Then, they charge as needed while they are clipped to your belt.
Then, you put the PDA's processor, memory, and your cell phone's antenna onto the utility belt-- they'll all talk to one another over Bluetooth. Not only are you putting weight where your body is designed to hold it, but you are saving weight by consolidating your power needs and limiting the handheld portion of the device to the interface only.
This way, you have a belt which is about as bulky as it is now (or less, since it doesn't have to be designed to make everything easily in reach, since much of the bulk and weight will not be accessed by the user while the belt is worn). Your 'cell phone' would be a microphone, an earpiece, and (maybe) a keypad (or maybe just a Secret Service-style earpiece with a bluetooth transmitter and a hearing aid battery). Your PDA would be a touch sensitive screen, a stylus, and maybe some buttons. Your digital camera would be a wand with maybe a viewfinder, a lense and a button.
The problem with combos is that they tend to try to do everything and fail. The nice thing about Bluetooth is that it encourages a better distribution of labor between devices.
Of course, the downside is that you move the EMF's from next to your brain to your genitalia, but hey, that's progress.;)
He could have said something like "a poll on favorite fast food place outside of a mcdonald's".
The Holocaust denial crowd love constant comparisons to Adolph Hitler or to fascism or the KKK. It is like throwing a hot piece of metal into a bucket of cool water. The cool water (metaphor:= the conversation) gets heated up. What the racists like is the equal and opposite effect, that the hot metal cools down (the subject becomes less emotionally shocking).
Holocaust deniers have an easy job when everyone and everything is compared to racists or Nazis in an argument. They don't care who wins the argument-- what matters is that people get used to using evil as an argument tactic, not a morally atrocious ideology.
From there, it is only a short jump to making jokes about nazis, to making jokes about the holocaust, etc. It would take years, but pulling the shock, revulsion and horror out of the holocaust, making it just another episode in history, is the first step to having another.
The same should go for the massacres in Rwanda, Stalin's purges, Communist China's Cultural Revolution, the massacres in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, what happened to native americans in this country, or any of the other notorious episodes in history. The secret to making these monstrous acts possible isn't making people angry-- they usually are anyway. It is removing their conscience, their sense of outrage. Humor and satire can dispel fanaticism, but it can also dispel our horror and moral certainty when we see something terrible happening. Many of these atrocities were made possible by indifference.
(I turned off my +1 since this is off topic, but I'm glad it came up.)
Another way to (ab)use polls is to phrase the questions in a manipulative way. There, you don't care what the results are, you're using the 'scientific neutrality' of being a polltaker to lure people into believing what you say.
example:
PONDS: "Sir, I am from the Ponds Institute of Knowledge, and I wanted to ask you a few questions about skin cream. It is, after all, For Science.
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "Well, since it is For Science, I'll just put my dinner on hold and answer a few questions for the sake of Pure Research."
PONDS: "Yep, that's right. So, sir, do you use skin cream?"
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "Well, no, not really."
PONDS: "Do you suffer from any skin conditions?"
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "No."
PONDS: "Are you experiencing symptoms of dermal dehydration? Is that a condition you suffer from?"
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "I don't know what that is."
PONDS: "The symptoms of Dermal Dehydration are dryness of the skin, occasional irritation, and some sensitivity."
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "Well, when I shave, it does sometimes get a little sensitive in places. Especially if I haven't shaved in a few days."
PONDS: "OK, then, I'll put you down as a yes for skin conditions in this Completely Academic survey."
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "Wow, I really do have a skin condition. With a medical sounding name and everything! I wonder what the cure is?"
PONDS: "Well, that isn't our survey, sir, but on a Totally Off Topic Note, this condition is completely treatable with the application of a topical dermal hydrating application, known to Laymen Like You as a skin cream."
JOHN Q. PUBLIC: "Oh! I'll have to buy some!"
PONDS: "Good for you! Now, on to our last question. Are you aware of the fact that only Ponds (tm) skin cream hasn't been reported to cause festering sores, which ooze pus at the dinner table?"
Results: 100% hadn't heard that report, but 100% have now. Not that they know who reported it, or where...
Note, I totally and unfairly single out Ponds, which to my knowledge has never done a poll at all, let alone a 'push poll'. I pick ponds out because of that Ponds Institute they always talk about on TV-- kinda like the Halls of Medicine, or the Center for Bubbliciousness Studies (last my invention). But the point is that you can use a trick like a scientific survey to manipulate people without them ever hearing the results. And since these are usually targetted calls, your competitors never hear about the rumors you start until it is way too late.
I liked the article-- though I think it's safe to say he's preaching to the choir.
One thing I noticed is his opinion that this would start in the US and be opposed by Europe. The Euros are anti-MS, but that's only because it's an American company. Look at what's been going on lately: British Telecom, anything France has done in this century, and some of the EU's bizarre laws seem to me to point to Europe being an early adopter! If nothing else, the world as he describes it seems to be more like minitel and less like those hearings in the US a few weeks ago.
BTW, is Slashdot going to pay BT the patent royalty for their many links? After all, Al Gore invented the Internet, but British Telecom invented hypertext...
Frankly, if our software engineering skills are worth only $10k to them, they obviously don't need this too much.
I can just picture a bunch of arrogant marketting types sitting together:
"Yeah, let's use these hackers to make our product better! We'll dare the kids to break our product, and then they'll work for us."
"But wait, why would they do that. They hate us."
"Yeah, but so what? Remember, these guys may be real computer whizzes, but they're naive. Most of them are just kids-- they're doing this because they can't play football and don't have dates. They don't have the savvy, the talent, the raw creative spirit to be in marketting. After all, if they did, they'd being doing this, right?" Everyone nods thoughtfully, except for Todd, the exfootball star, who is suddenly lost in his glory days.
"So we invite them to crack our system! And then, when they find the hole in it, we'll hire some techies to fix it, and we're done! We can even offer a prize! We'll jack up CD costs."
"Sounds great!! And just think, we're doing this right here, in Hollywood!"
And just think, people like these gave $5 million to the vice president last night...
Re:It's still a democracy.....use it!
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Didn't Hatch work with Ted Kennedy on ENDA (the gay rights bill?). And as a Mormon, he's gotten rave reviews on religious tolerance issues. Anyway, I didn't want to turn this into a Hatchathon-- I wanted people to recognize that they aren't voting based on the IP law they talk about here.
If your vote is based on the environment, and not based on IP issues, it shouldn't be any wonder that you get politicians who compete with one another on the environment, but who disagree with you on IP issues. After all, the RIAA has people who will vote based on copyright law.
Right now, the Democrats are against us on nearly ever computer issue. If you are a democrat, you should be writing your congressmen, volunteering for local Democrat candidates who DO agree with us, and voting in the primaries. I'm not saying be a republican, I'm saying recognize your party's problem and work to change it.
Re:Shooting the messenger
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PACs may only give a maximum of $10,000 dollars to any one candidate. That's from the Association of Widget Sanitizers to the NRA. If you don't believe me, call any campaign and offer to donate $20,000. They'll tell you the same thing. Many state-wide campaigns go into the millions of dollars.
You are right about volunteering, though. Assume your consulting fee as a technical support person is $100 per hour. In a twenty five week campaign, volunteer for two hours on Monday and friday night, and you have single-handedly equalled that maximum PAC contribution. And there is no limits on how much people can volunteer. And they'll remember you much more than that piece of paper.
The trick is to reorganize your priorities. Most people are furious about IP law, but then go and vote based on some other issue. By the only measure that matters, that proves that you consider the other issue more important.
For someone who doesn't think I am +1 Insightful, you did a pretty good job of saying more or less what I said.
Re:It's still a democracy.....use it!
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I'm glad to have read this-- I think you got my point. I picked Sen. Hatch because he was so clearly on our side in that hearing (at least in the article I read)-- but he is also a republican, and has a straight-laced reputation which turns many people our age off. Besides, it means that people are suddenly forced to rank their opinions on Fair Use against their opinion on other issues.
You should still send your letter. Even if you never vote for him, those letters are just about the only way that they can tell how much you care. Polls only measure warm bodies. Letters and phone calls measure intensity.
Senator Leahy is another senator (a democrat this time) who is up on computer/internet issues. I wonder what Republicans on Slashdot think of him?
Re:Cyberselfish, anyone?
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she was amazed that the underappreciated, downtrodden nerd didn't associate with other underappreciated downtrodden people, like minorities, environmentalists, labor, etc. but rather associated with big business.
I'm sorry. At my school, the labor and environmentalist activists were partying and getting all the girls. They were the cool crowd. The professors liked them, and the administration lavished them with money. How anyone can say that being a leftist activist in college is not cool is beyond me.
Everyone like that who I knew in HS went to college and majored in English, New Media or Political Science. They are now Cool Kids and Trendy Activists for a living. Despite my 'downtrodden' status, I still haven't dated any of them.
Corporations like Transmeta, VA Linux, Red Hat, etc.-- now THEY hate geeks. Sure. They aren't just in favor of us. They ARE us. They own the server this comment is posted on. They made the computer many of you read this with. They fund the trade shows that other corporations pay to send us to so we can hang out.
With enemies like that, who needs friends?
Re:It's still a democracy.....use it!
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Consider this a CALL TO ACTION for someone (for legal purposes...someone of voting age) to carry the torch and start something, hell.....even Jon Katz could do this. You may not like what he has to say, but he has credibility in the real world. and in an association he HAS to listen to the active voting members.
Jon Katz can't because: a) he can't write. b) noone has heard of him except for slashdot people (who he has only a little credibility with). c) he doesn't agree with the views of most/. readers. d) He can't work with many politicians. A good leader will work with anyone to get the job done-- not dragging in other issues that aren't related to your group.
Finally, I really don't think that most slashdot readers would actually rally behind anyone except someone who courted them to the exclusion of everyone else.
But let's try a test. Who wants to support Orin Hatch? Anyone, anyone? He's fought for fair use protection in copyright law, and as chairman of the Judiciary committee is able to get stuff done. His opponents in the committee are opposed to fair use protections. He was worried about MS before most people. Any takers? No? Why not?
If people on slashdot reward him with thank you emails, and if Utah slashdotters volunteer for him, it will be a sign that this can work. But most computer people I've talked to don't like Hatch. And do you know what? THEY DON'T KNOW WHY! Read up on him. And if you still don't like him, at least admit that some other issue is more important to you than IP law.
If you are apathetic, don't defend it with a lengthy chain of justifications and false fanaticism. Just admit that you aren't doing anything.
If you are involved, I'll apologize to you in person next time I see you. It isn't like there are that many of us.
Re:Have you joined the EFF
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If everyone on slashdot gave $50 to the EFF... Or better yet, find out the candidates who they think best will advocate the issues we believe in, and donated some expert assistance. Setting up a dinky file server. Helping a press secretary print. Configuring Postgres to track voters.
If even 1% of slashdot did any of that, we wouldn't have anything to worry about.
Re:Shooting the messenger
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Thank you for saying this. It really needed to be said.
The only thing I would add is that Suck apparantly has no clue about what political influence is. PACs and Associations and campaign donations aren't nearly as effective as personal involvement, especially on the local level. A volunteer who puts just two hours a week into a local campaign office for two months has just given a resource that cannot be measured in dollars. Most campaigns need a sysadmin. Glamourous? No, but your investment of time and effort will help tremendously. And be remembered. If you vote, that will be remembered. Especially which issues you vote on. If you vote based on abortion alone (either direction, then don't complain that your view on DeCSS isn't represented.
Corporations use PACs because they are a substitute for real live volunteers-- who are very hard to find. Money is cheaper than time, work or votes, so that's what they use. But work is more valued. The unions slather their party in volunteers, and evidence is being reported which says that they had the power last election to approve or veto the campaign strategies of their favorite candidates. Tremendous, possibly inappropriate power. Bought with time, not money.
The media wants to talk about PACs because they: 1) buy ads which are aired by the media, 2) are more interesting to report on than the volunteer in the back room, and 3) inflame people's outrage at corruption, causing them to spend more time watching the media to hear about it. But the truth is this: time you put in to candidates you like equals issues you believe in being advocated. You didn't 'buy' that influence. You helped people who agree with you get into a position to advance those issues for you.
Re:It's still a democracy.....use it!
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For one, I'm not a US citizen, but have been following all this very closely.
That out of the way, the solution is painfully obvious, yet might be difficult.
Organize an association of Internet users and like minded people. Call yourselves "Internet users of America" or something along those lines. Gather ACTUAL names and addresses, attract new members, vote on a platform, elect a leader...then LOBBY!!!!
Easier said than done is the big problem. You might be able to start with Slashdot and K5 active members, then expand to other web based gathering sites. The EGO thing will also be hard to overcome, but if someone credible, and a name you all recognize starts it, and at least gets a buy in from editors, it might actually work.
How can you fight the "Motion Picture ASSOCIATION of America" and the "Recording Industry ASSOCIATION of America" with being an asociation or special interest group yourself?
OK, this will have zero effect. Why? Because slashdot people don't vote. And when they do vote, they vote for third parties that have no chance of winning. And when they do vote for major party candidates, it is based on abortion, or human rights in Uzbekistan, etc. Or more likely, who the media told them is the 'hip' candidate.
Slashdot people also refuse to volunteer in campaigns. They also refuse to help local candidates in local elections. They love watching, and writing about, the media COVERAGE of politics, but have no interest in the political process.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Support third parties; don't vote; don't get involved and volunteer; don't write even a simple letter your congressman; ignore local elections. Oops! No wonder political leaders don't listen to you. YOU HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING TO THEM YET. You've told the Slashdot moderators a lot. But in terms of actual opinions stated, backed by the willingness to work, you've done ZERO. Note that I haven't talked money yet. Donating money is great, but peanuts compared to actual involvement.
Do you think hiring a PAC will make a difference? PACs are important because they represent voters-- individually, their contribution limits prevent any one PAC from being too influential. Politicians have learned the hard way that Slashdot people don't vote for them, no matter how hard they try to court them.
I'm sorry. I am not accustomed to flaming all of Slashdot, but you all win this year's oscar for unfounded bitching. I have been involved in politics for three years, half of which were spent volunteering on and off. I've never worked with or joined a special interest group (unless/. counts as a special interest) and I have never given a dime of money-- just time and work.
I know lobbyists, politicians, campaign operatives, Very Important People, and congressional staffers. I can guarantee you that in my three years I have seen exactly one slashdot regular. ONE. He's doing his part. I'm doing mine. Are you doing yours?
I have worked ceaselessly to promote issues important to us. And while I've made some tiny progress, I am alone. The EFF, which is our PAC, is alone. The labor unions can rally millions of voters to the polls. They gave Ralph Nader a shred of a chance, then took it away. How? With votes-- the basic unit of political influence.
Every plan for an Association will fail based on the critical insight that Slashdot people won't Associate. They might put some money, but they certainly won't vote based on these issues. Except possibly for President-- one vote in four years isn't too much to ask for. But then again, most civil libertarians are voting for Harry Browne, so why would the major party candidates care?
I guess I'm mad because I've put the last few years of my life and some damn hard work into politics. I have gotten real, measurable results. And the rest of you, instead of helping, complain ceaselessly on slashdot about stuff that you get DEAD WRONG, and wonder why things don't go your way. If you can't participate, personally, in the process, then don't complain that it doesn't go your way. Democracy's great strength is feature, but it is also a user requirement.
I have suggested that people read Heinlein's Take Back Your Government . Someone once called me naive for thinking that that is how things work in the Real World. As a registered member of the Real World, I can assure you that I have personal experience that Heinlein is right, rather than the experience of watching pundit shows on TV.
Democracy is participated in, not purchased. It isn't what people who sell advertisements to fund their news shows say, but it is true.
Did a credit card company come up with this? This is actually a great idea-- I'm really impressed. While it isn't digital cash, it still seems like a good idea. If nothing else, it will make people more confident with giving the number out, rather than feeling like a year from now some guy will trash them and then start carding TV's from Best Buy.
Pretty cool. I wonder what kind of tracking database they'll use to match people with their purchases. If there were a privacy guarantee, it would be even better, but I guess that that is wishful thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot about their no-privacy policy. The problem is that you get a good company, and then someone gets a case of the clevers-- they think they can hammer out this zany scheme. And maybe you do see some marginal benefit from being sneaky or doing something which annoys your customers.
But never mind people like you, and like me (I can't shop there while I know they are sharing their profiling of me with who knows what other companies). It just takes your focus away from your core business. That's, at least from their interests, the major problem.
Can Jeff Bezos and his team really focus on staying ahead in what matters: selling music, movies, microcode and books to consumers? Not if they are busy working out legal strategies, speaking publicly on the issue, dealing with The Boycott, etc. This patent stuff costs time. Why turn into the lawfirm of Amazon and Dotcom when you could be focusing on beating out B&N in the one arena that matters: the marketplace.
Quite the contrary. We will need to move into mine shafts deep in the earth. Food can be stockpiled, pigs can be bred und schlaughtered.
In order to allow the human race to quickly regain its old numbers, we will need to bring a hundred women for every man.
The men can be chosen from the finest examples of humanity: scientists, programmers, engineers, great leaders, etc. The women, however, should be chosen based on their fertility, and their ability to entice men to undertake the onerous task of breeding so many of them so often.
Figure skaters, actresses, musicians, cheerleaders, all possess qualities which will lend themselves to additional fertility. I expect that while it will take great effort and creativity to keep their men suffiently aroused to perform their duties to humanity, that the greatest of our men will rise to the challenge.
I guess it is time to stop worrying and love pollution....
(Apologies to Stanley Kubrick)
From someone who works w/ the INS on a regular basis:
1) Start early: Many applications don't go through due to procrastination on the part of the applicant. Many of these processes take months or even years. And don't wait for your current residency to expire before looking for the next one.
2) Check your work: There are tons of hoops you have to jump through and they are not well marked. The INS won't always helpfully remind you when you have a problem. Only warning here is not to pester the INS too much-- that could delay your answer.
3) Get assistance: Some lawyers specialize in immigration issues. Talk to one-- she'll be able to give you advice which is tailored to your particular case. Or talk to your congressional office-- they have people who know the rules and can explain them to you. Your company can also help-- IF you plan on staying there long enough for them to benefit.
IANAL
I like Amazon more, too. But frankly, this is so risky. They're in a deathmatch with B&N, and are giving investors the impression that this is their armor-- when they have such great customer service! They may be talking about their many other advantages, too, but this patent stuff is:
a) Distracting from what really makes Amazon better.
b) Setting a bad precedent for future patents, including those used against Amazon.
Jeff Bezos wrote to Tim O'Reilly about the need for patent reform that is industry-wide, rather than one side unilaterally disarming. Good argument, but I've heard precious little come out of that since. Does anyone have a status on this? Maybe bundle it with Sen. Hatch's work on protecting fair use in the copyright laws? He's had six months-- we shouldn't expect anything for 1-2 years, but we should have heard something by now.
Apple's Cinema Display
Unlimited Category, great display. Would be nice if the computer it came with were faster.
dotcomtelecom.com! world headquarters (AP): Every morning, Bart Flanders rolls out of bed, throws on some clothes, and goes to work. Sixteen hours later, he is still there, finishing a major project for his company, dotcomtelecom.com!. He has worked for six days straight on this schedule and, nearly consumed by exhaustion and stress, now has a choice.
"I've been drug free for all of my life," Bart says, pacing outside his office building. A green sign across the street catches his eye. "The product has to ship tomorrow. Our investors will be there for the rollout. If I can just pull one more all-nighter, we can do this. Everyone else on my team is doing it." He pauses, and a weary smile crosses his face. "Wow, I never thought I'd actually say that. It's so, like, just like an after school special. I guess this is how junkies get started."
For all too many programmers, Bart's dillema is a familiar one. Known on the street as 'joe', 'code juice' and 'venti', use of coffee is increasingly prevalent among the programming digiterati. And experts are alarmed by its rapid gains among the road crews of our nation's cyber-highway.
"Cocaine and binge drinking have always been pretty standard among the CEOs. And LSD and marijuana are pretty much job requirements in marketting. We in Vice are used to cruising through a startup on tuesdays and thursdays, busting half the company or more," Lt. Chuck Wagner reports. He leads the 'Internet Startup Division' of the Los Gatos police department. "What's got us worried are these techie guys. I mean, I can understand a CEO needing a few lines to unwind with two of his girlfriends after a hard day. I mean these guys have stressful lives, what with being proactive and all that. But why would a mere techie be doing joe? We're watching them-- we know they're not partying. So what are they doing with their time? That's the big mystery."
Techies, as they are fondly known by their pals in marketting, are the socially dysfunctional experts who provide internet startups with valuable mockups and beta copies to show to investors. These computer geniuses are valued employees, and are carefully shielded from such terrible messes as senior staff meetings, strategy sessions and promotions.
"I don't understand it at all," confides Laura Graham, VP of operations for dotcomtelecom.com!. "I mean, we don't let these guys make any decisions whatsoever. They don't have to go to conferences, parties, etc. And I don't let them anywhere near the wild, hallucenigenic orgies which I am rumored to host. All we ask in return is that they ship a product with wildly varying requirements within hours of the unrealistic deadline we promised to the venture capital firm which is just trying to test the waters before investing in our competitor. I mean, how hard is that? It isn't like they are adaptivating, or strategizing, or playing golf. We let them play on the magic glass boxes, and we talk about the magical wonderland which is javaembeddedinternetconnectedfutureVR-TML 5.0."
"Laura just doesn't get it," Bart says with a shrug. "We're trying to create a more secure ecommerce model, and she's telling us to do it in Virtual Reality. She hasn't even been to work in two weeks." Bart is still tempted by the green sign across the street. It should be easier in his cubicle, where there are no distracting windows, but there, the smell of espresso is strong.
"It boils down to this: I have a job to do, and x hours to do it in. Without some joe, I won't be able to finish. You tell me what I need to do. I know the risks. I've lost good friends to coffee. I've seen the desperation, the shakes, the demented ravings of people crashing after a two day high. I know people who have two hundred dollar a week habits, and that's not counting cream and sugar. I've heard the cries of pain and anguish from the men's restroom. But I have to do this. Just this once."
Bart returns to his desk a few minutes later, with a paper cup and a sharp, edgy expression. On his desk is a bag with enough pure, uncut joe to last nearly a week. Its street value is at least $50.
"I know what this looks like. But I'm not a junkie. Once we've shipped our product, I'm throwing this out. It's only this once." Bart's expression turns plaintive; he fortifies himself with another sip. "You don't think I'm going to be an addict now, do you? I don't want to die."
The Dissociated Press Contributed to this report.
I think that the worst of the bunch are the anti-technological lit crit types. Alan Sokal's experiment last year came to mind while I read this, and I am glad you linked to it, since I couldn't remember Sokal's name. Here is the whole archive.
The problem is that the technological process is composed of normative and positive components. Normative components are pure opinion and value setting (eg that education is more important than national security, or that spam is something to be discouraged). Positive components are purely factual (eg that a technology can be projected to earn X dollars for the industry, or that a black hole's event horizon is at radius Y. Or that a component's magnitude cannot exceed that of its whole).
Ideally, we use Positive techniques to achieve Normatively determined goals. Positive methods are evaluated by reason and experiment. Normative beliefs are evaluated using persuasion and politics. We need both! But as Sokal's experiment warns us, we also need to keep them separate. Science, like journalism, is our society's information-gathering apparatus. Politics, religion, the marketplace, and the media (including slashdot) are our decision-making apparati.
It is really, really tempting to try to mix the two. In fact, it is pretty much inevitable, since much of what we think is fact is really widely-accepted opinion. Facts, like opinions, are often in dispute. However, I think much of the lit crit world is intentionally blurring the distinction for two reasons:
Our prototype for the Real Scientist should be Richard Feynman. He was a total iconoclast. He was a fiercely creative, but intellectually disciplined person-- willing to throw almost any notion away in the face of hard evidence. He wasn't political, and resigned from the National Academy of Sciences because he saw them as an organization devoted entirely to determining who was worthy of being a member. I'd say that that describes the lit crit crowd pretty well. And while everyone has opinions, when it comes to science and factual data, you have to bend over backwards to ensure your own objectivity. Lanier's article challenges one part of this threat, and I hope that people recognize the problem.
You think this is bad, you should see what else they have on the way:
Internet Explorer: Automatically posts to slashdot announcing that you are now using Internet Explorer and that we will all be assimilated.
MS Word: Prints a letter and envelope, complete with Estamps, to everyone in your address book, then uses Orbital Mind Control Lasers to make you sign, seal and send them. MS charges the estamps to your credit card.
MS Money: An 'affiliate' program. They send spam announcing that you use MS Money, then offer five bucks to people who switch, also. The money comes from your bank account. (After all, they didn't get this rich writing big checks. Buy 'em out, boys!)
One major problem is turnover. Companies spend so much time filling their needs after they appear, rather than planning ahead. So they go through ooodles of interviews while the position is unfilled, and complain about a personnel shortage. Not really a shortage, just poor management.
This is a symptom of an even worse problem. Who knows a manager who wouldn't give a promotion because you were 'irreplacable where you were', even hiring newbies above you? You are a lot harder to replace when you jump ship and aren't there to train your replacement.
Or managers who won't give a 5% raise to keep you at the salary average-- but pay 20% more to pull in someone new? The manager's view: you already negotiated your salary, he can often use social engineering to keep you around at the lower salary. The reality: such ill will usually sends people packing.
I can't believe they put Pixelon in there!! They are ruining Pixelon's good name-- I'll have to sue.
Note to the Clue-Impaired: Pixelon was the company which turned out to be run by a con man, who spent 20 million in VC before people caught on that his 'revolutionary streaming video technology is actually windows media player. Let's see if they send a C&D.
I'm just racking up the FC points by betting on FC! Severity: 50, Points: 125!
I think that Ditzel is saying that Intel can't do that in less than five years. The reason isn't technological-- it is procedural.
Transmeta was starting from scratch with some of the masters of VLIW already on board. Intel will be starting with a legacy platform which they are trying to replace. The problem is that there are hundreds of people at Intel whose entire job is their current platform. Intel can do it, technologically, but it is difficult to convice the troops to march in a different direction. Such a radical shift for such a big company is quite rare. Intel might pull it off, but it will take time for management to realize that Transmeta's technology is worth the time and effort, and that they will need to change to make it work.
Now that it has been done successfully already, it probably would only take a couple years to release a competing design. If they started today. Which they won't. If they are like the big companies I've seen, they'll form a project group and kick the idea around until they start losing market share. Then they'll go into panic mode and finish it.
Someone once told me that technologically, you can do nearly anything. Most obstacles to advance are actually procedural. A big mass of people such as those at Intel is very hard to move into a new direction. And success and power such as theirs is hard to wager on a radically new approach. Five years, by that measure, is very reasonable.
You beat me to it! The interface and purpose of a PDA is totally different than those of a cell phone. Not to say you shouldn't tie them together tightly, but you might as well have the Palm 9 that Motley Fool 'announced' a few months ago. I'm too lazy to look it up, but they were joking about a Palm that had every conceivable feature-- and weighed 30 pounds.
Frankly, most of the weight of a portable anything is its battery. So you should put that on a 'utility belt'-- it can charge by induction in a charger embedded in your chair at work. All your electrical stuff could have a short duration battery-- say about a half hour of use. Then, they charge as needed while they are clipped to your belt.
Then, you put the PDA's processor, memory, and your cell phone's antenna onto the utility belt-- they'll all talk to one another over Bluetooth. Not only are you putting weight where your body is designed to hold it, but you are saving weight by consolidating your power needs and limiting the handheld portion of the device to the interface only.
This way, you have a belt which is about as bulky as it is now (or less, since it doesn't have to be designed to make everything easily in reach, since much of the bulk and weight will not be accessed by the user while the belt is worn). Your 'cell phone' would be a microphone, an earpiece, and (maybe) a keypad (or maybe just a Secret Service-style earpiece with a bluetooth transmitter and a hearing aid battery). Your PDA would be a touch sensitive screen, a stylus, and maybe some buttons. Your digital camera would be a wand with maybe a viewfinder, a lense and a button.
The problem with combos is that they tend to try to do everything and fail. The nice thing about Bluetooth is that it encourages a better distribution of labor between devices.
Of course, the downside is that you move the EMF's from next to your brain to your genitalia, but hey, that's progress. ;)
He could have said something like "a poll on favorite fast food place outside of a mcdonald's".
The Holocaust denial crowd love constant comparisons to Adolph Hitler or to fascism or the KKK. It is like throwing a hot piece of metal into a bucket of cool water. The cool water (metaphor:= the conversation) gets heated up. What the racists like is the equal and opposite effect, that the hot metal cools down (the subject becomes less emotionally shocking).
Holocaust deniers have an easy job when everyone and everything is compared to racists or Nazis in an argument. They don't care who wins the argument-- what matters is that people get used to using evil as an argument tactic, not a morally atrocious ideology.
From there, it is only a short jump to making jokes about nazis, to making jokes about the holocaust, etc. It would take years, but pulling the shock, revulsion and horror out of the holocaust, making it just another episode in history, is the first step to having another.
The same should go for the massacres in Rwanda, Stalin's purges, Communist China's Cultural Revolution, the massacres in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, what happened to native americans in this country, or any of the other notorious episodes in history. The secret to making these monstrous acts possible isn't making people angry-- they usually are anyway. It is removing their conscience, their sense of outrage. Humor and satire can dispel fanaticism, but it can also dispel our horror and moral certainty when we see something terrible happening. Many of these atrocities were made possible by indifference.
(I turned off my +1 since this is off topic, but I'm glad it came up.)
Another way to (ab)use polls is to phrase the questions in a manipulative way. There, you don't care what the results are, you're using the 'scientific neutrality' of being a polltaker to lure people into believing what you say.
example:
Results: 100% hadn't heard that report, but 100% have now. Not that they know who reported it, or where...
Note, I totally and unfairly single out Ponds, which to my knowledge has never done a poll at all, let alone a 'push poll'. I pick ponds out because of that Ponds Institute they always talk about on TV-- kinda like the Halls of Medicine, or the Center for Bubbliciousness Studies (last my invention). But the point is that you can use a trick like a scientific survey to manipulate people without them ever hearing the results. And since these are usually targetted calls, your competitors never hear about the rumors you start until it is way too late.
I liked the article-- though I think it's safe to say he's preaching to the choir.
One thing I noticed is his opinion that this would start in the US and be opposed by Europe. The Euros are anti-MS, but that's only because it's an American company. Look at what's been going on lately: British Telecom, anything France has done in this century, and some of the EU's bizarre laws seem to me to point to Europe being an early adopter! If nothing else, the world as he describes it seems to be more like minitel and less like those hearings in the US a few weeks ago.
BTW, is Slashdot going to pay BT the patent royalty for their many links? After all, Al Gore invented the Internet, but British Telecom invented hypertext...
I didn't catch that-- good point.
Frankly, if our software engineering skills are worth only $10k to them, they obviously don't need this too much.
I can just picture a bunch of arrogant marketting types sitting together:
And just think, people like these gave $5 million to the vice president last night...
Didn't Hatch work with Ted Kennedy on ENDA (the gay rights bill?). And as a Mormon, he's gotten rave reviews on religious tolerance issues. Anyway, I didn't want to turn this into a Hatchathon-- I wanted people to recognize that they aren't voting based on the IP law they talk about here.
If your vote is based on the environment, and not based on IP issues, it shouldn't be any wonder that you get politicians who compete with one another on the environment, but who disagree with you on IP issues. After all, the RIAA has people who will vote based on copyright law.
Right now, the Democrats are against us on nearly ever computer issue. If you are a democrat, you should be writing your congressmen, volunteering for local Democrat candidates who DO agree with us, and voting in the primaries. I'm not saying be a republican, I'm saying recognize your party's problem and work to change it.
PACs may only give a maximum of $10,000 dollars to any one candidate. That's from the Association of Widget Sanitizers to the NRA. If you don't believe me, call any campaign and offer to donate $20,000. They'll tell you the same thing. Many state-wide campaigns go into the millions of dollars.
You are right about volunteering, though. Assume your consulting fee as a technical support person is $100 per hour. In a twenty five week campaign, volunteer for two hours on Monday and friday night, and you have single-handedly equalled that maximum PAC contribution. And there is no limits on how much people can volunteer. And they'll remember you much more than that piece of paper.
The trick is to reorganize your priorities. Most people are furious about IP law, but then go and vote based on some other issue. By the only measure that matters, that proves that you consider the other issue more important.
For someone who doesn't think I am +1 Insightful, you did a pretty good job of saying more or less what I said.
I'm glad to have read this-- I think you got my point. I picked Sen. Hatch because he was so clearly on our side in that hearing (at least in the article I read)-- but he is also a republican, and has a straight-laced reputation which turns many people our age off. Besides, it means that people are suddenly forced to rank their opinions on Fair Use against their opinion on other issues.
You should still send your letter. Even if you never vote for him, those letters are just about the only way that they can tell how much you care. Polls only measure warm bodies. Letters and phone calls measure intensity.
Senator Leahy is another senator (a democrat this time) who is up on computer/internet issues. I wonder what Republicans on Slashdot think of him?
she was amazed that the underappreciated, downtrodden nerd didn't associate with other underappreciated downtrodden people, like minorities, environmentalists, labor, etc. but rather associated with big business.
I'm sorry. At my school, the labor and environmentalist activists were partying and getting all the girls. They were the cool crowd. The professors liked them, and the administration lavished them with money. How anyone can say that being a leftist activist in college is not cool is beyond me.
Everyone like that who I knew in HS went to college and majored in English, New Media or Political Science. They are now Cool Kids and Trendy Activists for a living. Despite my 'downtrodden' status, I still haven't dated any of them.
Corporations like Transmeta, VA Linux, Red Hat, etc.-- now THEY hate geeks. Sure. They aren't just in favor of us. They ARE us. They own the server this comment is posted on. They made the computer many of you read this with. They fund the trade shows that other corporations pay to send us to so we can hang out.
With enemies like that, who needs friends?
Jon Katz can't because: a) he can't write. b) noone has heard of him except for slashdot people (who he has only a little credibility with). c) he doesn't agree with the views of most /. readers. d) He can't work with many politicians. A good leader will work with anyone to get the job done-- not dragging in other issues that aren't related to your group.
Finally, I really don't think that most slashdot readers would actually rally behind anyone except someone who courted them to the exclusion of everyone else.But let's try a test. Who wants to support Orin Hatch? Anyone, anyone? He's fought for fair use protection in copyright law, and as chairman of the Judiciary committee is able to get stuff done. His opponents in the committee are opposed to fair use protections. He was worried about MS before most people. Any takers? No? Why not?
If people on slashdot reward him with thank you emails, and if Utah slashdotters volunteer for him, it will be a sign that this can work. But most computer people I've talked to don't like Hatch. And do you know what? THEY DON'T KNOW WHY! Read up on him. And if you still don't like him, at least admit that some other issue is more important to you than IP law.
If you are apathetic, don't defend it with a lengthy chain of justifications and false fanaticism. Just admit that you aren't doing anything.
If you are involved, I'll apologize to you in person next time I see you. It isn't like there are that many of us.
If everyone on slashdot gave $50 to the EFF... Or better yet, find out the candidates who they think best will advocate the issues we believe in, and donated some expert assistance. Setting up a dinky file server. Helping a press secretary print. Configuring Postgres to track voters.
If even 1% of slashdot did any of that, we wouldn't have anything to worry about.
Thank you for saying this. It really needed to be said.
The only thing I would add is that Suck apparantly has no clue about what political influence is. PACs and Associations and campaign donations aren't nearly as effective as personal involvement, especially on the local level. A volunteer who puts just two hours a week into a local campaign office for two months has just given a resource that cannot be measured in dollars. Most campaigns need a sysadmin. Glamourous? No, but your investment of time and effort will help tremendously. And be remembered. If you vote, that will be remembered. Especially which issues you vote on. If you vote based on abortion alone (either direction, then don't complain that your view on DeCSS isn't represented.
Corporations use PACs because they are a substitute for real live volunteers-- who are very hard to find. Money is cheaper than time, work or votes, so that's what they use. But work is more valued. The unions slather their party in volunteers, and evidence is being reported which says that they had the power last election to approve or veto the campaign strategies of their favorite candidates. Tremendous, possibly inappropriate power. Bought with time, not money.
The media wants to talk about PACs because they: 1) buy ads which are aired by the media, 2) are more interesting to report on than the volunteer in the back room, and 3) inflame people's outrage at corruption, causing them to spend more time watching the media to hear about it. But the truth is this: time you put in to candidates you like equals issues you believe in being advocated. You didn't 'buy' that influence. You helped people who agree with you get into a position to advance those issues for you.
OK, this will have zero effect. Why? Because slashdot people don't vote. And when they do vote, they vote for third parties that have no chance of winning. And when they do vote for major party candidates, it is based on abortion, or human rights in Uzbekistan, etc. Or more likely, who the media told them is the 'hip' candidate.
Slashdot people also refuse to volunteer in campaigns. They also refuse to help local candidates in local elections. They love watching, and writing about, the media COVERAGE of politics, but have no interest in the political process.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Support third parties; don't vote; don't get involved and volunteer; don't write even a simple letter your congressman; ignore local elections. Oops! No wonder political leaders don't listen to you. YOU HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING TO THEM YET. You've told the Slashdot moderators a lot. But in terms of actual opinions stated, backed by the willingness to work, you've done ZERO. Note that I haven't talked money yet. Donating money is great, but peanuts compared to actual involvement.
Do you think hiring a PAC will make a difference? PACs are important because they represent voters-- individually, their contribution limits prevent any one PAC from being too influential. Politicians have learned the hard way that Slashdot people don't vote for them, no matter how hard they try to court them.
I'm sorry. I am not accustomed to flaming all of Slashdot, but you all win this year's oscar for unfounded bitching. I have been involved in politics for three years, half of which were spent volunteering on and off. I've never worked with or joined a special interest group (unless /. counts as a special interest) and I have never given a dime of money-- just time and work.
I know lobbyists, politicians, campaign operatives, Very Important People, and congressional staffers. I can guarantee you that in my three years I have seen exactly one slashdot regular. ONE. He's doing his part. I'm doing mine. Are you doing yours?
I have worked ceaselessly to promote issues important to us. And while I've made some tiny progress, I am alone. The EFF, which is our PAC, is alone. The labor unions can rally millions of voters to the polls. They gave Ralph Nader a shred of a chance, then took it away. How? With votes-- the basic unit of political influence.
Every plan for an Association will fail based on the critical insight that Slashdot people won't Associate. They might put some money, but they certainly won't vote based on these issues. Except possibly for President-- one vote in four years isn't too much to ask for. But then again, most civil libertarians are voting for Harry Browne, so why would the major party candidates care?
I guess I'm mad because I've put the last few years of my life and some damn hard work into politics. I have gotten real, measurable results. And the rest of you, instead of helping, complain ceaselessly on slashdot about stuff that you get DEAD WRONG, and wonder why things don't go your way. If you can't participate, personally, in the process, then don't complain that it doesn't go your way. Democracy's great strength is feature, but it is also a user requirement.
I have suggested that people read Heinlein's Take Back Your Government . Someone once called me naive for thinking that that is how things work in the Real World. As a registered member of the Real World, I can assure you that I have personal experience that Heinlein is right, rather than the experience of watching pundit shows on TV.
Democracy is participated in, not purchased. It isn't what people who sell advertisements to fund their news shows say, but it is true.
Did a credit card company come up with this? This is actually a great idea-- I'm really impressed. While it isn't digital cash, it still seems like a good idea. If nothing else, it will make people more confident with giving the number out, rather than feeling like a year from now some guy will trash them and then start carding TV's from Best Buy.
Pretty cool. I wonder what kind of tracking database they'll use to match people with their purchases. If there were a privacy guarantee, it would be even better, but I guess that that is wishful thinking.