Running to the Right requires undemanding voters.
on
The Nader Factor
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In the upcoming election I will be voting for Kerry [...]
and yet
The democratic party is, unfortunately, bankrupt in many metaphorical ways, amongst them ethically, progressively, and has lost many of the things that historically made them what they are. Its a sure sign that you need to seriously reassess your party's goals, orientation and voting base if you have to get court orders to remove candidates from the ballot in order to stay in power.
Are you sure about that? Apparently voters like you are willing to give away your vote to an "ethically, progressively" "bankrupt" political party. So long as that is true, why shouldn't the Democrats continue to run to the Right and take their Progressive base for granted? You're not alone: lots of Progressive organizations (NOW, environmental organizations, educational organizations, and others) are willing to unconditionally endorse Kerry. What is the Progressive breaking point?
Please provide more information.
on
The Nader Factor
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
While Nader argues that he isn't a spoiler, a Zogby poll suggests that if he weren't on the ballot, 41 percent of his supporters would go to Kerry and 15 percent to Bush.
First, framing the debate in terms of "spoilers" means votes are owned and that we should do nothing to challenge an inherently undemocratic system where the two entrenched parties push other parties and independents off the ballot (or make it harder to get on the ballot in the first place). Don't even get started about the exclusion from the televised debates run by the DLC and RNC.
Second, Nader has been saying that this Zogby poll shows a three-way split: half of his voters would not have voted at all. The other half is evenly split between those who would have voted Republican and Democrat. Thus only 25% of his voters would have otherwise supported Kerry, not a majority (not that there's anything wrong with that, as I said before, it's fine to compete and everyone is taking votes from someone else). Nader talked about this Zogby poll last night on Letterman's show.
Ironically, this is why some of the prime movers in getting him on the ballot have been Republicans.
All of the prime movers getting Republicans on the ballot in Illinois were Democrats. That's not irony when you consider that Republicans and Democrats are both fighting for the same corporate dollars and corporations are pleased to have either of those two parties win (hence a lot of large multinational corporations donate to both of those parties and set their agendas). It works well for both of these parties to exclude anyone that would question global corporate hegemony (as many third parties and independents do).
As per the article, Terry McAuliffe - the democratic party chairman - says he should 'end the charade' of a campaign being kept afloat by 'corporate backers.' Could it be that in this way Nader is beholden to corporate interests? For shame, Ralph."
Please provide proof of this corporate backing and please supply evidence the Republicans and Democrats aren't taking corporate cash. My guess is that you'll have problems with both ends of this because (as far as I know) Nader/Camejo's campaign takes no corporate or PAC cash and only takes money from individuals (and each individual contribution is capped). McAuliffe is fine with misrepresentation: filling an Oregon ballot rally with Democrats who had no intention of signing the petition to put Nader on the ballot, thus Nader's people would think they had enough participation to get on and then be short signatures when they got the petitions back.
And I'm obviously not talking about those purges. Palast was quite clear about the unethical purges which left the would-be voters I'm talking about unable to vote. I encourage you to read the book I pointed you to.
Bush's supporters explicitly supports some dirty tricks to get Nader on the ballot.
Nader says he has rejected organized Republican ballot signature collection. He says he has accepted money from some people who vote Republican (each contribution abiding by his max donation limit which he applies to any other donor). Do you have information to counter this?
It's interesting that with all of this alleged Republican help, Nader is still fighting lawsuits in many states launched by the Democrats (in some cases the Democrats are hiring lawyers who ordinarily defend Republicans) and this goes over without a peep from the Democrats. In Illinois, Democrats control the state Congress and yet they changed the law to let Bush on the ballot and not a peep from the Left, not even those on the Left who are sympathetic to the Greens who also fight enormous obstacles just to get on the ballot.
Do you have information on where the millions of dollars come from that support Bush and Kerry's campaigns? Besides opensecrets.org, that is (but that's quite damning as it is). How many millions is Nader taking from corporations? He says he takes no corporate money.
Whenever a competitor starts supporting you, you need to take a hard look at the possibility your own efforts are counterproductive.
I think that's slicing a hair awfully thin. Both were commercially exploited, one was proprietary.
Mozilla was not the first.
on
Netscape Turns 10
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
GCC was free software and commercial software well before the Netscape browser was written. GCC predates the open source movement by many years and served as a means for some consultancies to have so much business they had waiting lists (according to Brad Kuhn when he visited the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and gave a talk on the free software movement). GCC qualifies as open source software, but since it was initially written by RMS (the founder of the free software movement) for the GNU project, I think it's fair to say it is a free software program.
I thought I recalled that a couple of weeks ago there were congressional hearings on it, and a federal investigation led by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
Just because you haven't been keeping up on the case doesn't mean nothing's happening.
The investigation you refer to began almost a year ago. It is not an independent investigation. The call to save evidence in the case began days after the scandal first broke allowing time to destroy evidence. So far we still don't know exactly who should be brought to justice for first leaking the information. I have a hard time believing an independent investigation will materialize any time soon but by now so much time has passed I would wonder how effective one could be.
Months ago there were follow-ups to hearings on rapes within the military. C-SPAN covered the hearings and in so doing brought some public attention to the issue. This awareness did not stop the rapes nor institute policy that will lead to institutional change. As a result of no clear leadership change or change in policy which places rapists on trial and brings them to justice regardless of rank, I think it's safe to say that rapes will continue to occur within the US military.
The June 2003 FCC meeting (where the FCC voted to further loosen media ownership caps) was publicized. A broad spectrum of political groups followed the issue and the FCC received more feedback than ever before (virtually all opposing raising the caps). A court sent the FCC's ruling back to them for revisions but public's focus on this issue has largely evaporated. Some corporate media outlets still operate in violation of the current limit on media ownership.
Big public hearings don't in themselves mean that the underlying system is changing. Sometimes the hearings give the impression of change where no significant change occurs.
Because Indymedia was used to spread information leading to people wondering if Bush was coached through the first so-called "debate" against John Kerry via an earpiece. Indymedia has also been used to organize the efforts of many who oppose the invasion of Iraq and the Iraq occupation.
Perhaps the FBI would also like to scare Indymedia into submission or silence. Other media outlets have been remarkably docile with the President's staff, distributing whatever information they put out without questioning it. This compliance helps explain why the American public went from initially not wanting the invasion of Iraq to supporting it soon after Col. Powell lied to the UN and the world about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction used (in part) to justify the invasion of Iraq. As more information about that evidence gets out and as more people learn more about the particulars of the invasion and occupation, they don't like it. Information can sway opinions, so if an administration does something against the will of the people information control becomes important.
If the FBI could not care less about Indymedia this event never would have happened. My speculations as to why the FBI acted as they did might be completely wrong, but one thing is clear: the FBI did care. The question is why they cared and what were they really after.
From what I've read, yes, it's a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. But the current administration doesn't appear to be doing much to track down who first leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA secret agent. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was exposed by columnist Robert Novak when Novak wrote:
"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.
To quell the knee-jerk duopoly partisans: I'm not saying a Kerry administration would do better here. I have no idea what a Kerry administration would do about this. Speaking out against the actions of one party or one administration is not implicit support for any other party or independent candidate.
Nader did a good job saying what Kerry would love to say but cannot.
Kerry would not love to say the things Nader says because those things scare away Kerry's corporate campaign funders. Kerry is pro-war and pro-corporate, and he has no problem saying yes to ugly campaign practices. Kerry can afford to march to the right because the left (most notably the "anyone but Bush" crowd) has pledged to vote for Kerry unconditionally (and they're actively encouraging others whether in swing states or not to vote for Kerry). In fact most of the ABB crowd was willing to support any Democrat before they even knew who would win the Democratic primary and before they knew what the winner's policies would be. Few of the ABB crowd supported one of the few truly anti-war Democratic Party contenders.
On the war, Kerry doesn't want to end the war or call the President a liar (which Nader/Camejo have no problem saying). He and his running mate insist on fighting the war better, not ending the war. Regarding the bill to give the President war-making power (which Kerry voted for), Kerry said that if he knew then what he knows now he still would have voted for that bill. He wants that power for himself. Nader/Camejo call that bill unconstitutional. Kerry might object to Bush's take on the invasion of Iraq, but Kerry's no less the hawk, in fact he's doing what he can to prove he's more of a hawk than Bush by committing to sending in more troops (and people were wondering where Bush was going to get the troops to maintain the fighting he has committed to). If Kerry takes office this war will end up adversely impacting two presidents before it's over.
On health care, Kerry has no intention of giving American citizens with what every other Westernized country has given their citizens--universal single-payer health care. Western Europe did this coming out of a war that left them in far more dire straits than the US has been in post-9/11. PNHP (the organization Nader referenced) says that US is paying for universal health care but not getting it; Americans pay more per capita for health care than other countries that have it. But Kerry wants to keep HMOs alive and well with his complex health care plan that even progressive voters don't want (most progressive Kerry voters are supporting him to get Bush out, not because they like Kerry despite how this makes their anti-war message lose its authority).
Kerry claims to be for abortion rights but he voted to confirm Scalia, one of two Justices who are repeatedly identified by the pro-choice supporters as a reason why Americans should vote for Kerry and fear who Bush might get the chance to appoint in the near future. Kerry voted to confirm Scalia with the rest of the Senate instead of making a signal vote that he could take to the voters (had Kerry voted to reject Scalia he could have said something like "I voted to preserve the abortion right which I know is so critical to my voters"). Nader, by contrast, objected to the confirmation of Scalia (I realize Nader is not an elected official so his objections are not as weighty as a vote).
On the so-called "debates", Kerry isn't fighting for a real series of debates where the two major party representatives have to let the American public weigh alternatives. Instead his party is colluding with the Republicans to keep any alternative candidates out. Furthermore, Kerry's campaign tacitly supports some remarkably dirty tricks to keep Nader/Camejo off the ballot or tied up in court (Nader's website goes into this in some detail). These go beyond what I've seen Republicans do to Libertarians or the Constitution Party who might compete for the same voters on some issues.
Kerry isn't the leftist/liberal/progressive so many take him to be. He's just putting a different face on supporting many of the same ends as Bush.
In 2000, thousands of would-be Democratic Party voters in Florida were kept from voting by what was called "scrubbing" the voter rolls (Greg Palast's book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" discusses this in detail). In subsequent years, the Democrats did virtually nothing to help these voters regain their voting rights; the plight of these citizens was not made an issue when Democrat Janet Reno ran in Florida in 2002. Democratic Party senators did not sign a Congressional Black Caucus letter brought to the floor, thus preventing any discussion of the Florida disenfranchisement (this was featured in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11"). It would have only taken one senator to sign that letter, but not even Democratic Party Sen. Lieberman (who was running for office at the time) would sign the CBC's letter.
I hope that when people read this story they feel sorry for disenfranchised citizens, not a political party that doesn't work to help all Americans retain their right to vote. This is not a reason to vote Republican nor is it a reason to vote Democrat. It's a reason to question the motivations of both major American political parties.
Some of the lies which helped beat the drums of war came from the New York Times and Judith Miller. In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press", Vice President Cheney referred to the Times' coverage while spreading his own lies to justify the war. The New York Times is quite an influential newspaper; it has been known to set the agenda for other media. The Times fired Jayson Blair for his repeated lies about far less consequential things. The Times printed a multi-page expose detailing Blair's lies. When it came to their coverage on the invasion of Iraq, The Times has issued a semi-apology to the public that never mentions Miller by name. Amy and David Goodman took the Times to task for the lack of coverage of and appropriate apology for what they call the Times' lowest point in its 152-year history. Miller, however, continues to work at the Times.
But one big difference. It took 8 years, from 1964 to 1972, to get the populace riled up enough to become so disgusted with the rulers' lies to shake things up. It has taken only one year this time.
Actually, this time millions of people around the world (including the US) took to the streets protesting the invasion of Iraq before the invasion began. That's unprecedented in the timing and size of the protest. Sadly, the choice in presidential elections appears to be down to two candidates (again) both of whom dicker over the number of troops to send into combat, not when to leave Iraq. Even more sadly, Congressional races remain underdiscussed despite how much more power voters have in smaller races (and Congressional turnover continues to be a joke).
Just as personal video cams taping the Rodney King beating have made it a lot harder for police to get away with random vigilante justice, so have the internet and digital cameras and satellite phones made it a lot harder for world leaders to fool all of the people.
I'm not so sure that that is true. Do you have any survey evidence to point to which would support your statement?
While I can sympathize with you having to read the same objections repeatedly, this information is repeated for a good reason: it is not a part of the public's common understanding of computers and it should be. Common computer users are under threat too even if they don't know it (I refer you to Paul Heckel's threatening Apple Hypercard users with patent infringement if Apple didn't see things his way; RMS talks about it in his talk on the danger of software patents when Heckel attended one of RMS' talks). Read the transcript:
We are not the only ones threatened by software patents. All software developers are threatened by software patents and even software users are threatened by software patents. For instance, Paul Heckel, when Apple wasn't very scared of his threats, he threatened to start suing Apple's customers. Apple found that very scary. They figured they couldn't afford to have their customers being sued like that, even if they would ultimately win. So the users can get sued too, either as a way of attacking a developer or just as a way to squeeze money out of them on their own or to cause mayhem.
I doubt most people know that they could be violating the law even though they are using purchased software. I doubt most people know that some patent-unencumbered alternatives exist (Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3, for example) and work well (even on portable digital music players). We need to repeat these stories and spread awareness of free alternatives so people won't be threatened or lose a patent infringement lawsuit.
The main way to teach people new ideas is through repetition. So it behooves us to repeat the patent horror stories to help the newcomers to the free software community learn why they won't find MP3 encoders or decoders with free software OSes, for instance. It also serves as a reminder why one should use a free software system despite occasional practical difficulties--we want the freedom to share and modify software.
Do you really think that if one of them had a bread EULA that people would still by bread from them?
If EULAs on bread became common in the industry, yes, I do. And it will start somewhere, perhaps only with one bread maker. Then other corporate bread makers, seeing how they can insulate themselves from liability further, will emulate this example.
Late in the movie "The Corporation", a philosopher describes an interesting change regarding firefighting which I'll attempt to summarize here. There was a time when firefighting was privatized. Fire trucks would drive right past a burning house if that house didn't bear the insignia of that firefighting organization because firefighting was a contracted deal; the insignia on the side of the building indicated this deal. Over time we came to realize that everyone needs firefighting and therefore we should municipalize this service. The point being that running things according to market politics was not the most advantageous strategy and alleged market efficiencies weren't as important as keeping people safe from fires. Perhaps there are other things which obey the same general principles--we should be willing to exchange alleged efficiencies for a more uniform delivery of goods and services.
If you don't agree with the EULA or you don't like the fact some companies don't put their EULAs on the outside of their packages then exercize your power and don't buy their product.
EULAs haven't commonly been available on the outside of packaged software for a long time (if ever) and I doubt that EULAs will become commonly publicly available without government intervention. But, more importantly, this is tantamount to arguing that we should 'vote with our dollars' (as the phrase goes), an incredibly undemocratic way in which to operate. This system means that rich people can afford more votes than poor people; whatever system is controlled in such a fashion will inevitably lead to favoring the desires of those with money instead of being fair to all those who need the covered good or service. Rights should not be doled out according to who can afford them; poor people should not have to live according to the unforgiving tyranny of the marketplace set up for them by rich people.
The ATI Radeon 9000 (and probably 9200 by now) are AGP cards under $100. They perform quite well under Fedora Core 1 and 2 (I'm guessing under the test releases for 3 as well) and you can play 3D games with them (Tux Racer, bzflag, Neverball, and Neverputt all work perfectly). It's also plug-and-play -- no hassles and no proprietary drivers needed to get a reasonably good video card at a cheap price. Just power down, plug it in, boot back up, and watch the autodetection go to work. I'm guessing other free software OSes have comparable experiences with this hardware.
Maybe Sony should just stop working on optical drives -- from my perspective, they have a very poor track record because they're way late to deliver interesting amounts of storage space and whatever they ship only works with proprietary formats.
Put this in the context of a hard drive: Pricewatch says we can get a 400GB HD for a little over $1/GB right now (lower capacity hard drives offer faster rotation speed at less than $1/GB prices). Putting aside the price, these HDs currently deliver 4X the space of what Sony may deliver in 2007, and the hard drive will offer no proprietary hassles. I'm guessing that any HD will be faster to find what I want to read and faster to get the data to me than the upcoming Sony device.
Perhaps their upcoming drive would be interesting if the specs for it and the compatible blank media were distributed to any competitors, thus letting the market turn this into the new low-end optical drive+media. But since Sony is probably not going to do that, I doubt the market will change to this new format.
I recall a Sony CD-R replacement that offered slightly more space than a conventional CD-R, but only if you used their proprietary encoding scheme. The drive cost more than a conventional CD-R burner and the blank media would cost more than conventional CD-Rs as well. The press release came out and I knew nobody who was excited about it. It was obviously a bad exchange: initial hardware outlay would cost too much money, there was virtually no interoperability with one's friends, and any subsequent maintenance would cost too much (CD-R burners are about $20 and DVD burners are about $30 right now, by my skimming of Pricewatch).
By default in the US, no, because compilation of a computer program is preparation of a derivative work. Of course, this depends largely on what the client agrees to and what is covered in copyright law there (which can vary, despite how widely the US is able to export its copyright regime around the world via so-called "free trade" agreements). I'm guessing that Microsoft isn't going to allow anyone to share or modify the source code, or prepare derivative works from that source code.
In other words, it's still not free software and it would not benefit anyone (whether you are an individual programmer, would-be programmer, or representative of a government) to look at it lest they be accused of infringing upon Microsoft's copyright in the future.
And with MacOS you pay for software you can't inspect, share, or modify as well as the free software parts. Perhaps you would be willing to trade in some money to extend the support on Fedora Core? Fedora Core seems to me to be a pretty good deal considering it helps me retain my software freedom and I can hire someone to keep old versions updated if I care to.
[...] while GCC has not quite reached the performance of its commercial competitor [...]
GCC can be commercial too -- many firms distribute copies of GCC for a fee. I believe the author should have said "proprietary" meaning that what the Intel compiler program does, exactly, is secret. As RMS said when describing a proprietary web video streaming application he didn't want MIT to use to distribute a feed of his talk on copyright and globalization:
"What it does is secret. You can't study it; you can't change it; and you certainly can't publish it in your own modified version. And those are among the freedoms that are essential in the definition of "free software."
GCC, by contrast, is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License. Getting back to the article:
These "coyote" benchmarks provide an excellent example of the advantages of "open" software development.
Here I don't think "open" was the best choice of words, I think "free" would have been more accurate. The GNU Compiler Collection was originally the GNU C Compiler and first written by RMS. I guarantee you that RMS did not and does not now do work for the open source movement. He makes effort to make that point clear (like when he corrected Mike Uretsky who made the same mistake). The FSF asks you not to lump their work in with the work of the open source movement. Eben Moglen spoke at Harvard some months ago and also made this distinction. Prof. Moglen makes it clear why they are so adamant on this point:
"We need to keep reminding people that what's at stake here is free speech. We need to keep reminding people that what we're doing is trying to keep the freedom of ideas in the 21st century, in a world where there are guys with little paste-it labels with price tags on it who would stick it on every idea on earth if it would make value for the shareholders. And what we have to do is to continue to reinforce the recognition that free speech in a technological society means technological free speech. I think we can do that. I think that's a deliverable message."
I don't think he's overstating the case.
Finally, there's a common misunderstood myth repeated in the end of the article:
"Choice" is the key word here -- choice is good, be it in democracy or software. Intel provides a useful alternative to GCC for development on ia32 systems. One compiler might have a great environment for developing GUI code; another compiler might generate fast code. GPL-like freedom may be important -- or not -- as individual circumstances dictate.
Many people believe this, I've even heard a variant of this myth being repeated by a representative of the Mozilla Foundation. Choice is no substitute for software freedom, in fact they speak to different aims entirely and in computer software choice is not as important as software freedom. If all we have are three web browsers to choose from (say, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera) choice is satisfied. B
Not only is he taking in tons of money from the Republican Party, and letting them run ads for him, knowing full well that they are using him to as a tool against the Dems., but now he is running on the freaking Reform platform to get on the ticket after the Greens dropped him.
Read Counterpunch articles on Ralph Nader. They've recently published articles on these issues and frame the debate in a more balanced way by examining where the Democrats and Republicans are getting their money from (as well as differentiating between what individual citizens do versus what political parties do, and looking at how much money was collected from various sources for Nader and the two dominant parties), and recognizing that you can't control who runs ads criticizing you or your opponents, as well as examining how the Greens came to arrive at their nomination of David Cobb and Pat LaMarche over Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo.
How anyone can imagine Nader to be a progressive while he is cozying up with a the party of a racist neanderthal like Pat Buchanan is beyond me.
Not that I'm saying you're an Anyone But Bush supporter (which I don't know if you are), but I would think this is something the ABB crowd could appreciate (and this is taking your critique at face value) -- swallowing something bad for a greater good. I don't think most Democratic Party voters actually like Kerry; the delegates disagree with him on some major points of policy, but they plan to vote for him to get Bush out of office. Similarly, if you believe Reform Party endorsement to be bad, consider that Reform Party endorsement gets Nader/Camejo on the ballot in some states and that means a lot when one is trying to push for democratic (small-d) electoral reforms as Nader/Camejo clearly are. I'm sure Nader realizes more than anyone posting to this website what immense barriers his campaign faces and how slim his chances are of winning. He wrote a book about the need for structural electoral reform a few years ago called "Crashing the Party" when he was endorsed by the Green Party. But we shouldn't push out people who have such a fight ahead of them. Not only would that have denied some victories (like Jesse Ventura's in Minnesota) but it would say that democracy is only for the two parties who already have a lock on the system.
In Illinois, the Democrats control the state government and recently changed the law to allow Bush on the ballot. According to state law, the Republican convention must be held before Sept. 1. The Republican convention was on Sept. 3rd, so it was later than it needed to be to legally allow President Bush to appear on the ballot in Illinois. The Illinois Democratic Party response: Change the law by altering the deadline so that the Republican convention would be within the new deadline (Senate Bill 2123). The Pantagraph published an article about this on June 29, 2004, the first few sentences of which you can find online. State Rep. Bill Mitchell (R-Forsyth) was quoted as saying "The bottom line is people should be able to vote on the President of the United States and voice their opinion on him." and Democratic Party Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich concurs. But what goes unmentioned is how this need to vote for a candidate does not extend to third parties or independents.
Nationally, the two major corporate parties know when to get along as well. Some readers may recall that the official-sounding (but privately-owned) "Commission on Public Debates" which hosts the presidential debates (taking that away from the League of Women Voters) is owned by the RNC, the DLC, and a few of their mutual corporate friends. These debates excluded Nader and Buchanan in 2000 despite a majority of the country wanting to see them in the debates. They were excluded by setting the barrier to entry high (15% interest level in pre-debate polls) and (as Nader points out in his book "Crashing the Party") gathering poll data from corporate-run news agencies friendly to the cause of third-party exclusion. This year, there is a movement to provide a more reasonable set of debates but Sen. Kerry and Pres. Bush are contractually bound to their CPD debates and will probably not appear in any Open Debate-run debate.
If the Democrats spent as much time opposing the Republicans as they spend opposing competitive third parties (like the Greens) and independents (such as Ralph Nader this election year), the Democrats would probably be a different party. Illinois is not a contested state, it is a "safe seat" for Kerry.
What's easy is getting someone to lose by giving up before they have tried doing anything to fix the situation. After all, laziness and apathy pay off now. Trying may never pay off.
Here's hoping that there are many people who understand that political activism requires more direct action than spouting off on Slashdot. Calling and writing your Congresspeople are a step in the right direction.
RMS speaks quite carefully with respect to focusing on patents that cover algorithms used in computer software. If you read what RMS says about software patents, you'll see that he recognizes how, for example, automobile patents don't have the same social effect as software patents. Software programmers don't have to deal with all the complexities of physical product designers all the time.
The reason is that in other fields people have to deal with the propensity of matter. When you are designing circuits or cars or chemicals, you have to face the fact that these physical substances will do what they do, not what they are supposed to do. We in software don't have that problem and that makes it tremendously easier. We are designing a collection of idealised mathematical parts which have definitions. They do exactly what they are defined to do.
He doesn't think the same things about all patents. Read more or hear him talk about patents in other fields and you'll find that he focuses on his expertise.
Slashdot Mirror
and yet
Are you sure about that? Apparently voters like you are willing to give away your vote to an "ethically, progressively" "bankrupt" political party. So long as that is true, why shouldn't the Democrats continue to run to the Right and take their Progressive base for granted? You're not alone: lots of Progressive organizations (NOW, environmental organizations, educational organizations, and others) are willing to unconditionally endorse Kerry. What is the Progressive breaking point?
First, framing the debate in terms of "spoilers" means votes are owned and that we should do nothing to challenge an inherently undemocratic system where the two entrenched parties push other parties and independents off the ballot (or make it harder to get on the ballot in the first place). Don't even get started about the exclusion from the televised debates run by the DLC and RNC.
Second, Nader has been saying that this Zogby poll shows a three-way split: half of his voters would not have voted at all. The other half is evenly split between those who would have voted Republican and Democrat. Thus only 25% of his voters would have otherwise supported Kerry, not a majority (not that there's anything wrong with that, as I said before, it's fine to compete and everyone is taking votes from someone else). Nader talked about this Zogby poll last night on Letterman's show.
All of the prime movers getting Republicans on the ballot in Illinois were Democrats. That's not irony when you consider that Republicans and Democrats are both fighting for the same corporate dollars and corporations are pleased to have either of those two parties win (hence a lot of large multinational corporations donate to both of those parties and set their agendas). It works well for both of these parties to exclude anyone that would question global corporate hegemony (as many third parties and independents do).
Please provide proof of this corporate backing and please supply evidence the Republicans and Democrats aren't taking corporate cash. My guess is that you'll have problems with both ends of this because (as far as I know) Nader/Camejo's campaign takes no corporate or PAC cash and only takes money from individuals (and each individual contribution is capped). McAuliffe is fine with misrepresentation: filling an Oregon ballot rally with Democrats who had no intention of signing the petition to put Nader on the ballot, thus Nader's people would think they had enough participation to get on and then be short signatures when they got the petitions back.
And I'm obviously not talking about those purges. Palast was quite clear about the unethical purges which left the would-be voters I'm talking about unable to vote. I encourage you to read the book I pointed you to.
Nader says he has rejected organized Republican ballot signature collection. He says he has accepted money from some people who vote Republican (each contribution abiding by his max donation limit which he applies to any other donor). Do you have information to counter this?
It's interesting that with all of this alleged Republican help, Nader is still fighting lawsuits in many states launched by the Democrats (in some cases the Democrats are hiring lawyers who ordinarily defend Republicans) and this goes over without a peep from the Democrats. In Illinois, Democrats control the state Congress and yet they changed the law to let Bush on the ballot and not a peep from the Left, not even those on the Left who are sympathetic to the Greens who also fight enormous obstacles just to get on the ballot.
Do you have information on where the millions of dollars come from that support Bush and Kerry's campaigns? Besides opensecrets.org, that is (but that's quite damning as it is). How many millions is Nader taking from corporations? He says he takes no corporate money.
Counterproductive for whom? The Democrats?
I think that's slicing a hair awfully thin. Both were commercially exploited, one was proprietary.
GCC was free software and commercial software well before the Netscape browser was written. GCC predates the open source movement by many years and served as a means for some consultancies to have so much business they had waiting lists (according to Brad Kuhn when he visited the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and gave a talk on the free software movement). GCC qualifies as open source software, but since it was initially written by RMS (the founder of the free software movement) for the GNU project, I think it's fair to say it is a free software program.
The investigation you refer to began almost a year ago. It is not an independent investigation. The call to save evidence in the case began days after the scandal first broke allowing time to destroy evidence. So far we still don't know exactly who should be brought to justice for first leaking the information. I have a hard time believing an independent investigation will materialize any time soon but by now so much time has passed I would wonder how effective one could be.
Months ago there were follow-ups to hearings on rapes within the military. C-SPAN covered the hearings and in so doing brought some public attention to the issue. This awareness did not stop the rapes nor institute policy that will lead to institutional change. As a result of no clear leadership change or change in policy which places rapists on trial and brings them to justice regardless of rank, I think it's safe to say that rapes will continue to occur within the US military.
The June 2003 FCC meeting (where the FCC voted to further loosen media ownership caps) was publicized. A broad spectrum of political groups followed the issue and the FCC received more feedback than ever before (virtually all opposing raising the caps). A court sent the FCC's ruling back to them for revisions but public's focus on this issue has largely evaporated. Some corporate media outlets still operate in violation of the current limit on media ownership.
Big public hearings don't in themselves mean that the underlying system is changing. Sometimes the hearings give the impression of change where no significant change occurs.
This act centered on legitimate voters who were unethically denied the ability to vote. They were not dead people nor were they felons.
Because Indymedia was used to spread information leading to people wondering if Bush was coached through the first so-called "debate" against John Kerry via an earpiece. Indymedia has also been used to organize the efforts of many who oppose the invasion of Iraq and the Iraq occupation.
Perhaps the FBI would also like to scare Indymedia into submission or silence. Other media outlets have been remarkably docile with the President's staff, distributing whatever information they put out without questioning it. This compliance helps explain why the American public went from initially not wanting the invasion of Iraq to supporting it soon after Col. Powell lied to the UN and the world about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction used (in part) to justify the invasion of Iraq. As more information about that evidence gets out and as more people learn more about the particulars of the invasion and occupation, they don't like it. Information can sway opinions, so if an administration does something against the will of the people information control becomes important.
If the FBI could not care less about Indymedia this event never would have happened. My speculations as to why the FBI acted as they did might be completely wrong, but one thing is clear: the FBI did care. The question is why they cared and what were they really after.
From what I've read, yes, it's a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. But the current administration doesn't appear to be doing much to track down who first leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA secret agent. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was exposed by columnist Robert Novak when Novak wrote:
To quell the knee-jerk duopoly partisans: I'm not saying a Kerry administration would do better here. I have no idea what a Kerry administration would do about this. Speaking out against the actions of one party or one administration is not implicit support for any other party or independent candidate.
Kerry would not love to say the things Nader says because those things scare away Kerry's corporate campaign funders. Kerry is pro-war and pro-corporate, and he has no problem saying yes to ugly campaign practices. Kerry can afford to march to the right because the left (most notably the "anyone but Bush" crowd) has pledged to vote for Kerry unconditionally (and they're actively encouraging others whether in swing states or not to vote for Kerry). In fact most of the ABB crowd was willing to support any Democrat before they even knew who would win the Democratic primary and before they knew what the winner's policies would be. Few of the ABB crowd supported one of the few truly anti-war Democratic Party contenders.
On the war, Kerry doesn't want to end the war or call the President a liar (which Nader/Camejo have no problem saying). He and his running mate insist on fighting the war better, not ending the war. Regarding the bill to give the President war-making power (which Kerry voted for), Kerry said that if he knew then what he knows now he still would have voted for that bill. He wants that power for himself. Nader/Camejo call that bill unconstitutional. Kerry might object to Bush's take on the invasion of Iraq, but Kerry's no less the hawk, in fact he's doing what he can to prove he's more of a hawk than Bush by committing to sending in more troops (and people were wondering where Bush was going to get the troops to maintain the fighting he has committed to). If Kerry takes office this war will end up adversely impacting two presidents before it's over.
On health care, Kerry has no intention of giving American citizens with what every other Westernized country has given their citizens--universal single-payer health care. Western Europe did this coming out of a war that left them in far more dire straits than the US has been in post-9/11. PNHP (the organization Nader referenced) says that US is paying for universal health care but not getting it; Americans pay more per capita for health care than other countries that have it. But Kerry wants to keep HMOs alive and well with his complex health care plan that even progressive voters don't want (most progressive Kerry voters are supporting him to get Bush out, not because they like Kerry despite how this makes their anti-war message lose its authority).
Kerry claims to be for abortion rights but he voted to confirm Scalia, one of two Justices who are repeatedly identified by the pro-choice supporters as a reason why Americans should vote for Kerry and fear who Bush might get the chance to appoint in the near future. Kerry voted to confirm Scalia with the rest of the Senate instead of making a signal vote that he could take to the voters (had Kerry voted to reject Scalia he could have said something like "I voted to preserve the abortion right which I know is so critical to my voters"). Nader, by contrast, objected to the confirmation of Scalia (I realize Nader is not an elected official so his objections are not as weighty as a vote).
On the so-called "debates", Kerry isn't fighting for a real series of debates where the two major party representatives have to let the American public weigh alternatives. Instead his party is colluding with the Republicans to keep any alternative candidates out. Furthermore, Kerry's campaign tacitly supports some remarkably dirty tricks to keep Nader/Camejo off the ballot or tied up in court (Nader's website goes into this in some detail). These go beyond what I've seen Republicans do to Libertarians or the Constitution Party who might compete for the same voters on some issues.
Kerry isn't the leftist/liberal/progressive so many take him to be. He's just putting a different face on supporting many of the same ends as Bush.
In 2000, thousands of would-be Democratic Party voters in Florida were kept from voting by what was called "scrubbing" the voter rolls (Greg Palast's book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" discusses this in detail). In subsequent years, the Democrats did virtually nothing to help these voters regain their voting rights; the plight of these citizens was not made an issue when Democrat Janet Reno ran in Florida in 2002. Democratic Party senators did not sign a Congressional Black Caucus letter brought to the floor, thus preventing any discussion of the Florida disenfranchisement (this was featured in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11"). It would have only taken one senator to sign that letter, but not even Democratic Party Sen. Lieberman (who was running for office at the time) would sign the CBC's letter.
I hope that when people read this story they feel sorry for disenfranchised citizens, not a political party that doesn't work to help all Americans retain their right to vote. This is not a reason to vote Republican nor is it a reason to vote Democrat. It's a reason to question the motivations of both major American political parties.
Some of the lies which helped beat the drums of war came from the New York Times and Judith Miller. In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press", Vice President Cheney referred to the Times' coverage while spreading his own lies to justify the war. The New York Times is quite an influential newspaper; it has been known to set the agenda for other media. The Times fired Jayson Blair for his repeated lies about far less consequential things. The Times printed a multi-page expose detailing Blair's lies. When it came to their coverage on the invasion of Iraq, The Times has issued a semi-apology to the public that never mentions Miller by name. Amy and David Goodman took the Times to task for the lack of coverage of and appropriate apology for what they call the Times' lowest point in its 152-year history. Miller, however, continues to work at the Times.
Actually, this time millions of people around the world (including the US) took to the streets protesting the invasion of Iraq before the invasion began. That's unprecedented in the timing and size of the protest. Sadly, the choice in presidential elections appears to be down to two candidates (again) both of whom dicker over the number of troops to send into combat, not when to leave Iraq. Even more sadly, Congressional races remain underdiscussed despite how much more power voters have in smaller races (and Congressional turnover continues to be a joke).
I'm not so sure that that is true. Do you have any survey evidence to point to which would support your statement?
While I can sympathize with you having to read the same objections repeatedly, this information is repeated for a good reason: it is not a part of the public's common understanding of computers and it should be. Common computer users are under threat too even if they don't know it (I refer you to Paul Heckel's threatening Apple Hypercard users with patent infringement if Apple didn't see things his way; RMS talks about it in his talk on the danger of software patents when Heckel attended one of RMS' talks). Read the transcript:
I doubt most people know that they could be violating the law even though they are using purchased software. I doubt most people know that some patent-unencumbered alternatives exist (Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3, for example) and work well (even on portable digital music players). We need to repeat these stories and spread awareness of free alternatives so people won't be threatened or lose a patent infringement lawsuit.
The main way to teach people new ideas is through repetition. So it behooves us to repeat the patent horror stories to help the newcomers to the free software community learn why they won't find MP3 encoders or decoders with free software OSes, for instance. It also serves as a reminder why one should use a free software system despite occasional practical difficulties--we want the freedom to share and modify software.
If EULAs on bread became common in the industry, yes, I do. And it will start somewhere, perhaps only with one bread maker. Then other corporate bread makers, seeing how they can insulate themselves from liability further, will emulate this example.
Late in the movie "The Corporation", a philosopher describes an interesting change regarding firefighting which I'll attempt to summarize here. There was a time when firefighting was privatized. Fire trucks would drive right past a burning house if that house didn't bear the insignia of that firefighting organization because firefighting was a contracted deal; the insignia on the side of the building indicated this deal. Over time we came to realize that everyone needs firefighting and therefore we should municipalize this service. The point being that running things according to market politics was not the most advantageous strategy and alleged market efficiencies weren't as important as keeping people safe from fires. Perhaps there are other things which obey the same general principles--we should be willing to exchange alleged efficiencies for a more uniform delivery of goods and services.
EULAs haven't commonly been available on the outside of packaged software for a long time (if ever) and I doubt that EULAs will become commonly publicly available without government intervention. But, more importantly, this is tantamount to arguing that we should 'vote with our dollars' (as the phrase goes), an incredibly undemocratic way in which to operate. This system means that rich people can afford more votes than poor people; whatever system is controlled in such a fashion will inevitably lead to favoring the desires of those with money instead of being fair to all those who need the covered good or service. Rights should not be doled out according to who can afford them; poor people should not have to live according to the unforgiving tyranny of the marketplace set up for them by rich people.
The ATI Radeon 9000 (and probably 9200 by now) are AGP cards under $100. They perform quite well under Fedora Core 1 and 2 (I'm guessing under the test releases for 3 as well) and you can play 3D games with them (Tux Racer, bzflag, Neverball, and Neverputt all work perfectly). It's also plug-and-play -- no hassles and no proprietary drivers needed to get a reasonably good video card at a cheap price. Just power down, plug it in, boot back up, and watch the autodetection go to work. I'm guessing other free software OSes have comparable experiences with this hardware.
Maybe Sony should just stop working on optical drives -- from my perspective, they have a very poor track record because they're way late to deliver interesting amounts of storage space and whatever they ship only works with proprietary formats.
Put this in the context of a hard drive: Pricewatch says we can get a 400GB HD for a little over $1/GB right now (lower capacity hard drives offer faster rotation speed at less than $1/GB prices). Putting aside the price, these HDs currently deliver 4X the space of what Sony may deliver in 2007, and the hard drive will offer no proprietary hassles. I'm guessing that any HD will be faster to find what I want to read and faster to get the data to me than the upcoming Sony device.
Perhaps their upcoming drive would be interesting if the specs for it and the compatible blank media were distributed to any competitors, thus letting the market turn this into the new low-end optical drive+media. But since Sony is probably not going to do that, I doubt the market will change to this new format.
I recall a Sony CD-R replacement that offered slightly more space than a conventional CD-R, but only if you used their proprietary encoding scheme. The drive cost more than a conventional CD-R burner and the blank media would cost more than conventional CD-Rs as well. The press release came out and I knew nobody who was excited about it. It was obviously a bad exchange: initial hardware outlay would cost too much money, there was virtually no interoperability with one's friends, and any subsequent maintenance would cost too much (CD-R burners are about $20 and DVD burners are about $30 right now, by my skimming of Pricewatch).
By default in the US, no, because compilation of a computer program is preparation of a derivative work. Of course, this depends largely on what the client agrees to and what is covered in copyright law there (which can vary, despite how widely the US is able to export its copyright regime around the world via so-called "free trade" agreements). I'm guessing that Microsoft isn't going to allow anyone to share or modify the source code, or prepare derivative works from that source code.
In other words, it's still not free software and it would not benefit anyone (whether you are an individual programmer, would-be programmer, or representative of a government) to look at it lest they be accused of infringing upon Microsoft's copyright in the future.
And with MacOS you pay for software you can't inspect, share, or modify as well as the free software parts. Perhaps you would be willing to trade in some money to extend the support on Fedora Core? Fedora Core seems to me to be a pretty good deal considering it helps me retain my software freedom and I can hire someone to keep old versions updated if I care to.
Quoting the article:
Actually, the name of the license is the GNU General Public License. It is "General" because when the GNU project began there was no single license used throughout the project; .
GCC can be commercial too -- many firms distribute copies of GCC for a fee. I believe the author should have said "proprietary" meaning that what the Intel compiler program does, exactly, is secret. As RMS said when describing a proprietary web video streaming application he didn't want MIT to use to distribute a feed of his talk on copyright and globalization:
GCC, by contrast, is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License. Getting back to the article:
Here I don't think "open" was the best choice of words, I think "free" would have been more accurate. The GNU Compiler Collection was originally the GNU C Compiler and first written by RMS. I guarantee you that RMS did not and does not now do work for the open source movement. He makes effort to make that point clear (like when he corrected Mike Uretsky who made the same mistake). The FSF asks you not to lump their work in with the work of the open source movement. Eben Moglen spoke at Harvard some months ago and also made this distinction. Prof. Moglen makes it clear why they are so adamant on this point:
I don't think he's overstating the case.
Finally, there's a common misunderstood myth repeated in the end of the article:
Many people believe this, I've even heard a variant of this myth being repeated by a representative of the Mozilla Foundation. Choice is no substitute for software freedom, in fact they speak to different aims entirely and in computer software choice is not as important as software freedom. If all we have are three web browsers to choose from (say, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera) choice is satisfied. B
Read Counterpunch articles on Ralph Nader. They've recently published articles on these issues and frame the debate in a more balanced way by examining where the Democrats and Republicans are getting their money from (as well as differentiating between what individual citizens do versus what political parties do, and looking at how much money was collected from various sources for Nader and the two dominant parties), and recognizing that you can't control who runs ads criticizing you or your opponents, as well as examining how the Greens came to arrive at their nomination of David Cobb and Pat LaMarche over Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo.
Not that I'm saying you're an Anyone But Bush supporter (which I don't know if you are), but I would think this is something the ABB crowd could appreciate (and this is taking your critique at face value) -- swallowing something bad for a greater good. I don't think most Democratic Party voters actually like Kerry; the delegates disagree with him on some major points of policy, but they plan to vote for him to get Bush out of office. Similarly, if you believe Reform Party endorsement to be bad, consider that Reform Party endorsement gets Nader/Camejo on the ballot in some states and that means a lot when one is trying to push for democratic (small-d) electoral reforms as Nader/Camejo clearly are. I'm sure Nader realizes more than anyone posting to this website what immense barriers his campaign faces and how slim his chances are of winning. He wrote a book about the need for structural electoral reform a few years ago called "Crashing the Party" when he was endorsed by the Green Party. But we shouldn't push out people who have such a fight ahead of them. Not only would that have denied some victories (like Jesse Ventura's in Minnesota) but it would say that democracy is only for the two parties who already have a lock on the system.
In Illinois, the Democrats control the state government and recently changed the law to allow Bush on the ballot. According to state law, the Republican convention must be held before Sept. 1. The Republican convention was on Sept. 3rd, so it was later than it needed to be to legally allow President Bush to appear on the ballot in Illinois. The Illinois Democratic Party response: Change the law by altering the deadline so that the Republican convention would be within the new deadline (Senate Bill 2123). The Pantagraph published an article about this on June 29, 2004, the first few sentences of which you can find online. State Rep. Bill Mitchell (R-Forsyth) was quoted as saying "The bottom line is people should be able to vote on the President of the United States and voice their opinion on him." and Democratic Party Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich concurs. But what goes unmentioned is how this need to vote for a candidate does not extend to third parties or independents.
Nationally, the two major corporate parties know when to get along as well. Some readers may recall that the official-sounding (but privately-owned) "Commission on Public Debates" which hosts the presidential debates (taking that away from the League of Women Voters) is owned by the RNC, the DLC, and a few of their mutual corporate friends. These debates excluded Nader and Buchanan in 2000 despite a majority of the country wanting to see them in the debates. They were excluded by setting the barrier to entry high (15% interest level in pre-debate polls) and (as Nader points out in his book "Crashing the Party") gathering poll data from corporate-run news agencies friendly to the cause of third-party exclusion. This year, there is a movement to provide a more reasonable set of debates but Sen. Kerry and Pres. Bush are contractually bound to their CPD debates and will probably not appear in any Open Debate-run debate.
If the Democrats spent as much time opposing the Republicans as they spend opposing competitive third parties (like the Greens) and independents (such as Ralph Nader this election year), the Democrats would probably be a different party. Illinois is not a contested state, it is a "safe seat" for Kerry.
What's easy is getting someone to lose by giving up before they have tried doing anything to fix the situation. After all, laziness and apathy pay off now. Trying may never pay off.
Here's hoping that there are many people who understand that political activism requires more direct action than spouting off on Slashdot. Calling and writing your Congresspeople are a step in the right direction.
RMS speaks quite carefully with respect to focusing on patents that cover algorithms used in computer software. If you read what RMS says about software patents, you'll see that he recognizes how, for example, automobile patents don't have the same social effect as software patents. Software programmers don't have to deal with all the complexities of physical product designers all the time.
Part of what he says about patents in other fields versus software patents:
He doesn't think the same things about all patents. Read more or hear him talk about patents in other fields and you'll find that he focuses on his expertise.