Ralph Nader, the Green Party Candidate, said in this interview last night on w/Larry King on CNN that "I do disagree with Silicon Valley that wants to drain brain computer scientists, physicists, and physicians, and others into this country by paying them more. That is keeping all those skilled people from staying in their countries and building those Third World countries rather than coming here just because they can be paid more. That's a brain drain aspect of the immigration debate that's not being discussed."
Don't these kids want to go back and fix their home countries as Nader says they should?
The views expressed here represent that of NADER and NOT ME.
It's technically feasible, and we've implemented for political discussions at quorum.org, with a slight modification. It is actually computation difficult to do EVERY users against EVERY user. Instead, we have created 9 political segments. The relevance of the articles are the weighted by the actual geographic distance, the likelihood that you would agree with a particular persons rating (based on the segment approach) and a time decay function.
Check it out and see what you think. (You should try registering to see what info we use in our collaborate filtering and then try "encouraging" or "discouraging" articles.
There are "articles" and comments. There is no article queue, as every article is rated at least 10 times by random visitors. Based on their rating, it gains prominence on the site. Votes are decayed exponentially over time to ensure that the articles are timely and relevant. The idea is to have "equal opportunity to participate," at every level.
These researchers at Princeton have written a cool report on the politics of search engines (unfortunately just an abstract, although I've read the entire article).
Even "good" search methods have embedded social values. For example, Google's backlinking methodology tends to reinforce traditional power structures since heavily commercial sites tend to link to each other a lot.
Search engines are in the business of controlling what you become aware of. There are lots of things that become interesting just because lots of other people are also aware of it (e.g., Survivor, Big Brother, etc.).
Search Engines don't really try to maximize relevancy; they try to be relevant enough so that you don't leave. That's why Yahoo uses google search results as a placeholder, but that's just to create more space to promote its own stuff.
Proprietary SE techniques are a bad thing(tm) from the perspective they obscure the embedded social values in their design.
Yes, this is lots of random thoughts but I think this is an important topic.
I think our hero Doc Searls used the appropriate analogy in this great presentation "democracy is a conversation," one that is broken because politicians are not listening to what citizens are saying.
And they are either ignoring these conversation on purpose or because they are stupid, because they are being spoken loudly and publicly here at slashdot and other places. (My two personal favorites are the interview of Al Gore's webmaster which in turn inspired my partner in crime to write a whitepaper which was dissected on slashdot.)
We should not have to sift and sort through crappy web sites to find where Al stands on napster or where Bush stands on immigration; they should be engaging us on our terms in the online places where we are. (Beats pressing the flesh in Duluth, hunh?)
i find it amazing how quickly non-profits are taking their eye off the ball. It is ok for non-profits to make a buck, but only if it furthers the non-profit mission. In my space, i was agast when www.dnet.org and the League of Women Voters sold out to grassroots.com, which some saw as the inevitability of the commercialization of online politics.
I see a similar issue here in academia. They shouldn't focus on commercial appplications because the market is good at that!! Instead, they should be focusing on studying what the VC's and commercial enterprises don't want to do but that would benefit the public good.
I don't the outcome of the commercialization trend is inevitable. Money is a means, not an end, and we can choose to value academia, education, democratic space, . But if we don't speak out, like Katz has done, and actively challenge this trend, it is certainly threatening much of the non-profit sector.
Michael Weiksner, founder of Quorum.org a politics forum w/open editorial control
Is the question whether the government should be able to monitor the speed of automobilists absolutely or whether there is something wrong with this particular technology used to enforce these rules?
It seems to me that there is a spectrum of technologies and methods that governments use to enforce the laws of the land. In the case of speeding, the methods range:
Self-enforcement (i.e., for red lights)
Citizen reports
Random checking
Police monitoring by car
Police monitoring by aircraft
Automatic devices within the car (like the satelite example)
Automatic check points (like toll booths)
Other automatic systems (like roadside pictures, etc.)
I think most would agree that it is the proper role of the government to establish and enforce regulations, like speed limits, for the common good. The government has a right to enforce speeding laws to the fullest extent SO LONG as it does so in a manner that balances our other rights, such as the right to privacy.
I am not sure people realize it, but even in the good ol' US of A we have helicopter speed enforcement where they ticket hundreds of speeders on California highways in one fell swoop. In NYC, the EZPasses are used to automatically track your average speed between toll booths and can issue speeding tickets.
So the real question about this technology is: "What is different about the satellite tracking system than other forms of enforcement?"
The difference is that such a system would generate personal tracking data whose very existence is a threat to privacy, regardless of the policies for its use and technical safeguards implemented.
In the case of satellites, I don't believe the benefits of improved enforcement outweigh the risks associated with the loss of privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
L'Anglais, Le Langage Internet Global?
Don't these kids want to go back and fix their home countries as Nader says they should?
The views expressed here represent that of NADER and NOT ME.
Check it out and see what you think. (You should try registering to see what info we use in our collaborate filtering and then try "encouraging" or "discouraging" articles.
There are "articles" and comments. There is no article queue, as every article is rated at least 10 times by random visitors. Based on their rating, it gains prominence on the site. Votes are decayed exponentially over time to ensure that the articles are timely and relevant. The idea is to have "equal opportunity to participate," at every level.
It's been up for about 7 weeks.
Even "good" search methods have embedded social values. For example, Google's backlinking methodology tends to reinforce traditional power structures since heavily commercial sites tend to link to each other a lot.
Search engines are in the business of controlling what you become aware of. There are lots of things that become interesting just because lots of other people are also aware of it (e.g., Survivor, Big Brother, etc.).
Search Engines don't really try to maximize relevancy; they try to be relevant enough so that you don't leave. That's why Yahoo uses google search results as a placeholder, but that's just to create more space to promote its own stuff.
Proprietary SE techniques are a bad thing(tm) from the perspective they obscure the embedded social values in their design.
Yes, this is lots of random thoughts but I think this is an important topic.
And they are either ignoring these conversation on purpose or because they are stupid, because they are being spoken loudly and publicly here at slashdot and other places. (My two personal favorites are the interview of Al Gore's webmaster which in turn inspired my partner in crime to write a whitepaper which was dissected on slashdot.)
We should not have to sift and sort through crappy web sites to find where Al stands on napster or where Bush stands on immigration; they should be engaging us on our terms in the online places where we are. (Beats pressing the flesh in Duluth, hunh?)
I see a similar issue here in academia. They shouldn't focus on commercial appplications because the market is good at that!! Instead, they should be focusing on studying what the VC's and commercial enterprises don't want to do but that would benefit the public good.
I don't the outcome of the commercialization trend is inevitable. Money is a means, not an end, and we can choose to value academia, education, democratic space, . But if we don't speak out, like Katz has done, and actively challenge this trend, it is certainly threatening much of the non-profit sector.
Michael Weiksner, founder of Quorum.org a politics forum w/open editorial control
It seems to me that there is a spectrum of technologies and methods that governments use to enforce the laws of the land. In the case of speeding, the methods range:
Self-enforcement (i.e., for red lights)
Citizen reports
Random checking
Police monitoring by car
Police monitoring by aircraft
Automatic devices within the car (like the satelite example)
Automatic check points (like toll booths)
Other automatic systems (like roadside pictures, etc.)
I think most would agree that it is the proper role of the government to establish and enforce regulations, like speed limits, for the common good. The government has a right to enforce speeding laws to the fullest extent SO LONG as it does so in a manner that balances our other rights, such as the right to privacy.
I am not sure people realize it, but even in the good ol' US of A we have helicopter speed enforcement where they ticket hundreds of speeders on California highways in one fell swoop. In NYC, the EZPasses are used to automatically track your average speed between toll booths and can issue speeding tickets.
So the real question about this technology is: "What is different about the satellite tracking system than other forms of enforcement?"
The difference is that such a system would generate personal tracking data whose very existence is a threat to privacy, regardless of the policies for its use and technical safeguards implemented.
In the case of satellites, I don't believe the benefits of improved enforcement outweigh the risks associated with the loss of privacy.