There was a lot of excitement around "The Cluetrain Manifesto" when it was first published.
Personally, I found it to be similar in many ways to "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People": a couple of useful observations and good ideas, wrapped up in many pages of useless blather, pseudo-religion, annoying condescension, and obviousity.
Has anyone seen any effect, anywhere in the world or the world's economy, resulting from the publication of "Cluetrain"? From the perspective of late 2001, that is, with all the dotbombs now fully buried, not 1999.
"Every time I have gotten a response from one of them. Why would you expect a response from a representative of another area anyway ? It is not their job to represent your views in congress, but those of their constituents"
Um, then why is Fritz Hollings working on the Son of DMCA bill? South Carolina is neither a high-tech nor "content" hotbed (sorry guys!).
Define "lives destroyed". Clearly your definition is subjective, and cannot be quantified
This is a discussion/opinion forum, not a Master's program in history. You asked for examples and I provided them. You now reply that these examples were not quantified and therefore invalid. Can you please provide in advance your criteria for an acceptable example? Otherwise, no matter what is provided you will find a reason why it doesn't meet some test that you haven't previously defined.
The Smithsonian had an excellent exhibit last year on what happened to the US citizens of Japanese descent in 1942. It described in quite a bit of detail what happened to families who had grocery stores, dry cleaners, construction companies, homes, etc. confiscated without reimbursement. If you have ever built a family business, you know that it usually doesn't recover from a loss of that magnitude.
Next time you are in DC why don't you stop by the Smithsonian library and ask for some of the backup detail. I am sure that is quantified.
The fact that they "pay more attention" to handwritten letters just shows how absolutely out of touch these people are.
That's pretty much the equivalent of 1999's "you just don't get it". Of course, it turned out that those organizations which didn't ignore 100 years of experience and knowledge in favor of "e" really didn't get "it". The "it" they didn't get was a little different than the one the dotcoms expected in '99, though!
Effort filters exist for a reason. Plenty of the people who join the USMC are in great physical shape - they still have to go through boot camp. Why? It's a filter. Plenty of super-geniuses still have to take classes and write theses before they are granted a PhD. Why? It's a filter.
Expecting you to expend a modest amount of actual effort before your input is considered is a filter as well.
Find me one negatory personal freedom provision the US made in WWII or Vietnam that has stuck through to this day?
People imprisoned for life for criticizing the President under the Alien & Sedition Acts (WWI) were not released, in some cases, until 1925; they had felony convictions on their records and for the most part their lives were destroyed.
US citizens of Japanese descent had their lives and livelihoods destroyed when their property and businesses were confiscated during WWII, and they were imprisoned for 3-4 years in concentration camps. Most of these people never regained anything like the lives they have prior to the confiscation (IHMO the 2nd worst thing, after slavery, that the people of the US have done to themselves).
The people who had the misfortune to disagree with the ultra-right during the Cold War in many cases had their lives destroyed, whether by Senator McCarthy or other more subtle "anti-communists".
For good or for ill, I agree that to be heard in the long run you are going to have to send in some $$$.
However, do NOT send money to the Congressperson's Washington office, or to any office they operate with Federal funds. That is a no-no for you and a big no-no for them. Send it to their Re-election Committee, which is usually run from a small, privately funded office somewhere near their original power base.
Let's keep saying it a few more times, and maybe it will sink in
Perhaps the powers-that-be at Slashdot could put post a story with this theme on the front page. There are a lot of things going on right now that will strongly affect the Net community for years to come. Like it or not, the only effective way to communicate with elected representatives is with a handwritten, stamped, postal-mailed letter.
"Well, I hate to break it to you, but if you DON'T live in their states, then it isn't their job to listen to you. You are wasting their time."
I would disagree a bit here. All members of the US Congress are supposed to act in the best interest of the nation as a whole. In practice they will of course focus on the concerns of their electoral district, but that should not prevent them from taking a wider view - Senators in particular.
Mazda and General Motors have been testing rotory engines on pure hydrogen since the late 1960's. I certainly remember reading about this in "Popular Science" in the very early '70's. Real cutting edge, wacko stuff...
"I'm going to try that. I'm going to take a 2 liter of the "opposition" drink into a restaurant and see if I don't get kicked out. If movies can ban external refreshments, then I don't see why Taco Bell, et al can't do the same."
Totally off-topic, funny, but true: a friend of mine brought a Subway sandwich into a Taco Bell and sat down with a bunch of his buddies who were eating there. The manager asked him to leave, and he said no. She asked the security guard to escort him out, and the security guard refused. So she came around the counter and threw his butt out the door onto the grass.
The kicker: he was so smitten by the personal attention that he tried for 2 years to woo her, finally succeeded, and they were married a year after that. Today she is a Chicago cop.
I would second (or third) the recommendation for AT&T Global Network (AGNS). We used them quite a bit to support a worldwide network of travellers, many in locations off the beaten path. There is no good solution to this problem, but AGNS seemed to be the "least worst".
Of course, then the president of the co. stopped by and bitched at me because he could only get a 9.6 connection in rural Paraguay. Not the capital mind you; the middle of nowhere. I just looked at him...
My underlying point, which I think M. Hizzoner was actually echoing, is that to "not have a policy on software patents" is in fact to have a policy. Just as to not make a decision is to make a decision. Combining "no patent policy" with a RAND (or UFO) policy for standards is essentially to take the position that the Web should become the property of those who can pay the most to control the standards and legal processes. This may be bad (MHO); it may be good (after all, this is how most of the technical world works). But it should be discussed explicitly.
"How do I "identify the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for my area of concern""
Thought about this a little more on the way home (at least I am not on the Ring!). If you don't have the time to dig through the morass of Senate subcommittees, you could do one of two things: (a) pick a Senator who represents a state similar to yours, and just write to him/her. For example, there are may similarities between Brussels and Chicago, so you could write to the Senators from Illinois. The problem would be that any city similar to Brussels will have a large population, so your letter might not get noticed. (b) Select one of the states with small or mid-sized population (say Nebraska, South Dakota, or even Missouri on the higher end), check to see if one of its Senators has some views somewhat similar to yours, and write to that one. The Senators from the states with small population probably get less mail, and yours will stand out from the average letter.
"How do I "identify the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for my area of concern" (Brussels, in fact) ?"
Um, I think most Western legislative bodies work pretty much the same way. If your concern was the overall relationship of the United States to the rest of the world, either the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or a member of that committee who has voted in agreement with your thoughts, would be a good place to start.
OTOH, if your interest is in promoting joint research into Belgian endive production between the US and Belgium, the Senate Agriculture Committee, (or one of its specialized subcommittees) would come to mind.
Issues involving beer: the Senator from Missouri (home of the world's largest brewery). And so on.
You're allowed to look at the building codes for free; you can go to the city office. You can even make copies there. However, you're not allowed to publish copies the building code.
The city of Naperville, Illinois (for many years the fastest growing community in the US, although they have finally run out of room) writes its own plumbing code. In theory, you are free to go read it at City Hall. In practice (a) what is kept at City Hall is the revisions to the original code, rumoured to have been written in 1915 and to still exist, but which no one has ever seen (b) the actual documents are kept locked in the 3rd subbasement of the building, and can be retrieved the 3rd Tuesday of any month with an "R" in it (c) when you ask to see the code, your name is written down in a big book (d) a week later, the building inspector shows up at your house and does a top-to-bottom inspection (e) if you hire a plumbing contractor licensed by the City, no such inspection occurs. Guess who the largest contributors to local election campaigns are?
So you see there might be some reasons why it is important for citizens to be able to re-publish their own laws.
And that's just a plumbing code - it has nothing to do with National Security - yet!
"At any rate, that situation doesn't apply to what we're discussing with the W3C. The building codes themselves aren't proprietary... anyone is allowed to build a building according to the code"
As far as I can see, W3C standards are analogous to building codes (although there is no statutory enforcement organization - yet), so I guess I am missing your point.
On the surface, this appears to be a terrible situation.
If you read a little further into the case, it doesn't seem like miscarriage of justice.
Well, that would be a long discussion, and my lunch hour is ending;-)
Basically, I have done many web searches, and I have looked into the facts of the case.
Baldly put, a government is that entity in human affirs which reserves for itself the right to kill humans in the name of justice.
Less dramatically, building code departments have the effect of confisciting property without due process.
So it is very important that the operations of governments and building code departments be open to extreme public scrutiny. Having the full text of a building code being a private, propritary document does not meet these requirments.
Let's say I want to build a web side opposing the politics of the local Contractors Association and their cozy relationship with the elected officials. To do this I need to quote from the building code. Can I do so if the code is copyrighted? Under DMCA? I guess not.
I don't think so. The Internet as we know it was built up from a government project that would allow it(the government) to communicate if and when an a-bomb was dropped and telephone communique was destroyed.
ARPANet, yes. The story of "the 'Net", which became the Internet, is more complex. From 1984-1994 or so it appeared to be heading in a much different direction. Then the "no commercial use" policy was dropped and the rest, as they say, is history.
In its Response to Public Comments, W3C made the following statment:
4. Is RAND licensing common for bodies like W3C?
Yes. A RAND license is common among standards organizations.
One of the strongest criticisms of organizations such as ISO and ITU is that they charge exhorbitant fees to even read, much less implement, their standards. Some government entites have even gone so far as to incorporate proprietary standards into laws, such that individuals have to right to read the laws that they can be jailed for violating (e.g. Veeck vs. City of Austin).
The Web and Internet have always been unique in having their standards freely available for review and implementation. Is is a good thing for W3C to seek to emulate the "closed source" standards bodies?
In it's Response to Public Comments [on RAND], W3C states
W3C takes no position on the public policy questions surrounding software patents.
Isn't that statement at best naive? The Internet and Web were originally designed with the idea of free and open communication. Today, there are powerful forces that would like to see open communication closed down and the Web turned over entirely to commercial pursuits. If a RAND policy is adopted for Web standards, won't the next move by those commercial entites be to create as many propriatry standards as possible and force them on the entire Web community (using hammers such as DMCA), like it or not?
[From a citizen of an EC country]So I'm asking for ideas about how we could help from here. Contacting an US senator probably isn't going to help, or is it ?
Well, two points come to mind: (a) if you don'tcontact them, you can be sure that your concerns won't be heard (b) it can't hurt.
In theory, Senators (more so than Representatives) are supposed to look after the interests of the country as a whole, and some do take quite a bit of interest in the world outside the USofA. So I would say that you should identify the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for your area of concern, and write to that person with your views. (Note that you will of course have to write in English; no Brussels-style translator corps at the US Capitol that I am aware of!).
No, it means that for the first time, it is overwhelmingly simple to actually get in touch with your representative from just about any place on the planet.
Postal service (that's an "envelope" and "stamp") has been available worldwide since the 1700's, if not before.
Note: this comment is essentially supports drizzten's, not the opposite.
From my dealing with... "the older generation"... be it managers or politicians (primarily the former, barely the latter)... they generally only read things that are physically in front of them.
And from my experience as a "tweenie" (half-way between the old fogies and the young super-geeks), I would observe that the young generation fails to see that there might be some advantage to slowing down a bit and actually thinking about what they are doing, rather than reacting in an instant.
Keep in mind that essentially all of today's large scale technology, including power plants, moon rockets, and even digital computers, was developed by people who usually did not have telephones on their desks (one phone per office was still a standard at many companies in the 1970's) and took the train from city to city.
In fact, some of the old engineers who trained me told me that their most productive time to get work done was on the train between Chicago and New York: no phones, no telegrams, no pressure: just some time to look out the window and think. Which is hard to do when you have a landphone, cell phone, pager, e-mail, and instant messenger all running at once.
That is some of the most as backwards logic I've ever heard. Personally, I tend to look on people who deliberatly make communication difficult as neurotic, masochistic, and generally to be avoided. By your logic, if I want to be taken seriously, I should send out all my correspondence engraved on stone tablets.
Frank Herbert wrote a story along these lines once. The theme: a techno-government was created that removed all obstacles to communication and action. The result: said goverment (and society) driven the brink of total chaos within days, as communication accelerated to the point where everything and nothing were being done all the time. The solution: a special Departement of Sabotage and Delay created to slow things down and impose barriers to communication. "Forbidden Planet" was another good variation on this theme.
The plain fact is, there have to be some "effort expended" filters in any political system, otherwise Bill Clinton's poll-driven triangulation policies would look like the Rock of Gibralter in comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a lot of excitement around "The Cluetrain Manifesto" when it was first published.
Personally, I found it to be similar in many ways to "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People": a couple of useful observations and good ideas, wrapped up in many pages of useless blather, pseudo-religion, annoying condescension, and obviousity.
Has anyone seen any effect, anywhere in the world or the world's economy, resulting from the publication of "Cluetrain"? From the perspective of late 2001, that is, with all the dotbombs now fully buried, not 1999.
sPh
"Every time I have gotten a response from one of them. Why would you expect a response from a representative of another area anyway ? It is not their job to represent your views in congress, but those of their constituents"
Um, then why is Fritz Hollings working on the Son of DMCA bill? South Carolina is neither a high-tech nor "content" hotbed (sorry guys!).
sPh
This is a discussion/opinion forum, not a Master's program in history. You asked for examples and I provided them. You now reply that these examples were not quantified and therefore invalid. Can you please provide in advance your criteria for an acceptable example? Otherwise, no matter what is provided you will find a reason why it doesn't meet some test that you haven't previously defined.
The Smithsonian had an excellent exhibit last year on what happened to the US citizens of Japanese descent in 1942. It described in quite a bit of detail what happened to families who had grocery stores, dry cleaners, construction companies, homes, etc. confiscated without reimbursement. If you have ever built a family business, you know that it usually doesn't recover from a loss of that magnitude.
Next time you are in DC why don't you stop by the Smithsonian library and ask for some of the backup detail. I am sure that is quantified.
sPh
That's pretty much the equivalent of 1999's "you just don't get it". Of course, it turned out that those organizations which didn't ignore 100 years of experience and knowledge in favor of "e" really didn't get "it". The "it" they didn't get was a little different than the one the dotcoms expected in '99, though!
Effort filters exist for a reason. Plenty of the people who join the USMC are in great physical shape - they still have to go through boot camp. Why? It's a filter. Plenty of super-geniuses still have to take classes and write theses before they are granted a PhD. Why? It's a filter.
Expecting you to expend a modest amount of actual effort before your input is considered is a filter as well.
sPh
US citizens of Japanese descent had their lives and livelihoods destroyed when their property and businesses were confiscated during WWII, and they were imprisoned for 3-4 years in concentration camps. Most of these people never regained anything like the lives they have prior to the confiscation (IHMO the 2nd worst thing, after slavery, that the people of the US have done to themselves).
The people who had the misfortune to disagree with the ultra-right during the Cold War in many cases had their lives destroyed, whether by Senator McCarthy or other more subtle "anti-communists".
Any more questions?
sPh
sPh
Perhaps the powers-that-be at Slashdot could put post a story with this theme on the front page. There are a lot of things going on right now that will strongly affect the Net community for years to come. Like it or not, the only effective way to communicate with elected representatives is with a handwritten, stamped, postal-mailed letter.
sPh
"Well, I hate to break it to you, but if you DON'T live in their states, then it isn't their job to listen to you. You are wasting their time."
I would disagree a bit here. All members of the US Congress are supposed to act in the best interest of the nation as a whole. In practice they will of course focus on the concerns of their electoral district, but that should not prevent them from taking a wider view - Senators in particular.
sPh
Mazda and General Motors have been testing rotory engines on pure hydrogen since the late 1960's. I certainly remember reading about this in "Popular Science" in the very early '70's. Real cutting edge, wacko stuff...
sPh
"I'm going to try that. I'm going to take a 2 liter of the "opposition" drink into a restaurant and see if I don't get kicked out. If movies can ban external refreshments, then I don't see why Taco Bell, et al can't do the same."
Totally off-topic, funny, but true: a friend of mine brought a Subway sandwich into a Taco Bell and sat down with a bunch of his buddies who were eating there. The manager asked him to leave, and he said no. She asked the security guard to escort him out, and the security guard refused. So she came around the counter and threw his butt out the door onto the grass.
The kicker: he was so smitten by the personal attention that he tried for 2 years to woo her, finally succeeded, and they were married a year after that. Today she is a Chicago cop.
Life is odd.
sPh
You mean that ANTI-TRUST law applies to the music industry??? Howdidd 'at happen? Have to get that outrage corrected right away - "Senator Hollings!".
sPh
I would second (or third) the recommendation for AT&T Global Network (AGNS). We used them quite a bit to support a worldwide network of travellers, many in locations off the beaten path. There is no good solution to this problem, but AGNS seemed to be the "least worst".
Of course, then the president of the co. stopped by and bitched at me because he could only get a 9.6 connection in rural Paraguay. Not the capital mind you; the middle of nowhere. I just looked at him...
sPh
My underlying point, which I think M. Hizzoner was actually echoing, is that to "not have a policy on software patents" is in fact to have a policy. Just as to not make a decision is to make a decision. Combining "no patent policy" with a RAND (or UFO) policy for standards is essentially to take the position that the Web should become the property of those who can pay the most to control the standards and legal processes. This may be bad (MHO); it may be good (after all, this is how most of the technical world works). But it should be discussed explicitly.
sPh
"How do I "identify the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for my area of concern""
Thought about this a little more on the way home (at least I am not on the Ring!). If you don't have the time to dig through the morass of Senate subcommittees, you could do one of two things: (a) pick a Senator who represents a state similar to yours, and just write to him/her. For example, there are may similarities between Brussels and Chicago, so you could write to the Senators from Illinois. The problem would be that any city similar to Brussels will have a large population, so your letter might not get noticed. (b) Select one of the states with small or mid-sized population (say Nebraska, South Dakota, or even Missouri on the higher end), check to see if one of its Senators has some views somewhat similar to yours, and write to that one. The Senators from the states with small population probably get less mail, and yours will stand out from the average letter.
Good luck!
sPh
"How do I "identify the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for my area of concern" (Brussels, in fact) ?"
Um, I think most Western legislative bodies work pretty much the same way. If your concern was the overall relationship of the United States to the rest of the world, either the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or a member of that committee who has voted in agreement with your thoughts, would be a good place to start.
OTOH, if your interest is in promoting joint research into Belgian endive production between the US and Belgium, the Senate Agriculture Committee, (or one of its specialized subcommittees) would come to mind.
Issues involving beer: the Senator from Missouri (home of the world's largest brewery). And so on.
sPh
The city of Naperville, Illinois (for many years the fastest growing community in the US, although they have finally run out of room) writes its own plumbing code. In theory, you are free to go read it at City Hall. In practice (a) what is kept at City Hall is the revisions to the original code, rumoured to have been written in 1915 and to still exist, but which no one has ever seen (b) the actual documents are kept locked in the 3rd subbasement of the building, and can be retrieved the 3rd Tuesday of any month with an "R" in it (c) when you ask to see the code, your name is written down in a big book (d) a week later, the building inspector shows up at your house and does a top-to-bottom inspection (e) if you hire a plumbing contractor licensed by the City, no such inspection occurs. Guess who the largest contributors to local election campaigns are?
So you see there might be some reasons why it is important for citizens to be able to re-publish their own laws.
And that's just a plumbing code - it has nothing to do with National Security - yet!
sPh
"At any rate, that situation doesn't apply to what we're discussing with the W3C. The building codes themselves aren't proprietary... anyone is allowed to build a building according to the code"
As far as I can see, W3C standards are analogous to building codes (although there is no statutory enforcement organization - yet), so I guess I am missing your point.
sPh
Well, that would be a long discussion, and my lunch hour is ending ;-)
Basically, I have done many web searches, and I have looked into the facts of the case.
Baldly put, a government is that entity in human affirs which reserves for itself the right to kill humans in the name of justice.
Less dramatically, building code departments have the effect of confisciting property without due process.
So it is very important that the operations of governments and building code departments be open to extreme public scrutiny. Having the full text of a building code being a private, propritary document does not meet these requirments.
Let's say I want to build a web side opposing the politics of the local Contractors Association and their cozy relationship with the elected officials. To do this I need to quote from the building code. Can I do so if the code is copyrighted? Under DMCA? I guess not.
That's MHO.
sPh
sPh
One of the strongest criticisms of organizations such as ISO and ITU is that they charge exhorbitant fees to even read, much less implement, their standards. Some government entites have even gone so far as to incorporate proprietary standards into laws, such that individuals have to right to read the laws that they can be jailed for violating (e.g. Veeck vs. City of Austin).
The Web and Internet have always been unique in having their standards freely available for review and implementation. Is is a good thing for W3C to seek to emulate the "closed source" standards bodies?
sPh
Isn't that statement at best naive? The Internet and Web were originally designed with the idea of free and open communication. Today, there are powerful forces that would like to see open communication closed down and the Web turned over entirely to commercial pursuits. If a RAND policy is adopted for Web standards, won't the next move by those commercial entites be to create as many propriatry standards as possible and force them on the entire Web community (using hammers such as DMCA), like it or not?
sPh
Well, two points come to mind: (a) if you don'tcontact them, you can be sure that your concerns won't be heard (b) it can't hurt.
In theory, Senators (more so than Representatives) are supposed to look after the interests of the country as a whole, and some do take quite a bit of interest in the world outside the USofA. So I would say that you should identify the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for your area of concern, and write to that person with your views. (Note that you will of course have to write in English; no Brussels-style translator corps at the US Capitol that I am aware of!).
sPh
Postal service (that's an "envelope" and "stamp") has been available worldwide since the 1700's, if not before.
Note: this comment is essentially supports drizzten's, not the opposite.
sPh
And from my experience as a "tweenie" (half-way between the old fogies and the young super-geeks), I would observe that the young generation fails to see that there might be some advantage to slowing down a bit and actually thinking about what they are doing, rather than reacting in an instant.
Keep in mind that essentially all of today's large scale technology, including power plants, moon rockets, and even digital computers, was developed by people who usually did not have telephones on their desks (one phone per office was still a standard at many companies in the 1970's) and took the train from city to city.
In fact, some of the old engineers who trained me told me that their most productive time to get work done was on the train between Chicago and New York: no phones, no telegrams, no pressure: just some time to look out the window and think. Which is hard to do when you have a landphone, cell phone, pager, e-mail, and instant messenger all running at once.
sPh
Frank Herbert wrote a story along these lines once. The theme: a techno-government was created that removed all obstacles to communication and action. The result: said goverment (and society) driven the brink of total chaos within days, as communication accelerated to the point where everything and nothing were being done all the time. The solution: a special Departement of Sabotage and Delay created to slow things down and impose barriers to communication. "Forbidden Planet" was another good variation on this theme.
The plain fact is, there have to be some "effort expended" filters in any political system, otherwise Bill Clinton's poll-driven triangulation policies would look like the Rock of Gibralter in comparison.
sPh