In my opinion, an innovation is something that no one thought of before and that performs better than its predecessors. It is not a synonym for invention or discovery. Take graphene for example. People had been working with it in various forms (usually called "exfoliated graphite") for decades because it has all the interesting properties of graphite, but with an enormous surface-area to volume ratio. Theorists predicted interesting properties in single, isolated sheets of graphite, and there was some evidence to support it, but nothing really came of it. Then someone got the idea to use scotch tape to rip off a few layers of graphene from bulk graphite, which eventually lead to a Nobel prize. The innovation wasn't the scotch tape, or the graphene, or even using scotch tape to exfoliate a laminar material; it was using scotch tape to exfoliate graphite.
That one little innovation allowed all kinds of measurements that validated the intriguing properties of graphene and sparked a deluge of research across the physical sciences. Now, let's contrast it to something like the iPhone. Was that an innovation? I say no. Everyone had thought of the smartphone already--they were just waiting for the technology to catch up to expectation.
An innovation is something that changes the landscape about it. Yes there were smartphones before the iPhone. And most of them were boring buisness devices called Blackberries that you used for work, and either escaped from on the weekend, or were reminders that you did not have one. The iPhone redefined the smartphone as a lifestyle appliance. The author's bias is fairly obvious, he only sees innovation where it brings more to the corporate bottom line. The iPhone as a consumer device doesn't factor as a growth in worker productivity any more than a Blackberry would. But smartphones are now expected to do more than just push mail or track stocks. And they're not for Mr. Joe Executive any more. The iPhone bears the major credit in redefining it's role.
The fact that the community seems to think this post is insightful is the crowning reason that Linux isn't going anywhere outside of a tech maven's workshop.
You see desktops as workstations. Consumers see them as places to work.
You see desktops as workstations. Consumers use them as lifestyle appliances. The touches that you decry as fluff, garbage, or needless complications are what they see as essential.
You see desktops as an ongoing opportunity to demonstrate your technical expertise. Consumers just want things that work. Or at least they want tech support without trauma. It's hard to define Linux support when the experience can vary widely between the dozen or more active distributions in the market, each dominated by some tech geeks from Distro X's vision of how Linux should work with very little in common with the crowd of tech geeks running Distro Y. In contrast your average urban Stop And Shop has handbills offering Mac Windows support.
The massive cognitive disconnect between your perception of the desktop and the perception of the rest of the planet is the major reason why Linux was not able to pick up an intercept when Microsoft dropped the ball on VISTA, as it had on Windows ME, and Windows 98 before then.
Windows is losing marketshare, not Linux. Go to a college campus or local coffee shop and look around at those using their computers to do work. Count how many PCs you see and how many Macs you see. I was honestly shocked to see Macs beating PCs every time at many different study locations I was using.
Those people using laptops are probably not going to be using Linux to do their work and are either going to choose Mac or Windows. While I continue to use Linux on the server and have solely for the last 10 years (I used it on the desktop prior to 2002), I chose Mac over Windows for my laptop and I know many others who went that direction as well.
In another thread someone said if Win7 wasn't as good as it is, Linux may have had a chance. I disagree. In fact, using Win7 on my work desktop and hating the quirks it has was what really helped push me to the Mac.
For LInux to have lost Desktop marketshare, note that I said DESKTOP, it would have to have had marketshare in the first place. It never went beyond technocrats and hobbyists on the desktop end. It's found it's niche in the server market because you need that kind of roll your own customisation on there.
But as anyone knows if you want clicks out of Slashdotterati, just frame your title so that Apple becomes the blame boy for the fact that your favorite OS isn't ruling the world. It used to be Microsoft but Redmond's not doing as well these days.
Like a lot of people, they have this unreasonable expectation that they should be able to use a phone with out a technical computer degree.
They should get phones then, not smartphones. Expecting a small mobile computer with a phone app to be any easier to use than any other computer is indeed unreasonable.
If a phone needs a genius in order to be used, it's hard to justify calling it a "smart"phone.
Skype works on the iPhone/iPad to some extent. Non-Facetime apps may be killed when in the background, so that incoming calls may not always come through in time. When they do come through, they will just come through as a typical notification, so you tend to think it's just an email or whatever and ignore it until you check your phone hours later and see someone called you, BUT....
Once you make a call and get talking, Skype works fine. I think there are Google talk apps that work fine too.
The only "settings" you need are the login/password
If I use a phone, I expect it to work at an unqualified level I expect it to ring me when I'm called and to ring when I call out. Anything less than that is at best a hobby toy.
AT&T institutes a policy that is so terrible, it has created a perception in the public that it might even be illegal.
News flash. While it might be nice to imagine otherwise, Just because a policy is reprehensible to some vocal Slashdotterati, doesn't mean it's illegal. On very public policies like this corporations are very adept at skating as close to the edge of the law as needed.
Also keep in mind that the way you access the Internet can determine which provisions apply to it. Cable modem providers for instance, being classified as information providers, aren't subject to the same laws as the telcos who provide your 3G and 4G data access who are governed by telecommunications laws. So when, not if, Comcast for example decides to tier broadband access to put Netflix, iTunes, and Google Play in the slow lanes, in favor of Xfinity, there's not really that much to stop them from doing so save the fallout from consumer backlash.
Here's a reminder folks. While Net Neutrality is a stated goal that comes up in policy discussions every now and then, it is not an overriding principal set in stone within the United States. There's no "net neutrality" standard that anyone is required to meet. At most there are certain interstate commerce provisions, but if Congress actually tried to enforce Net Neutrality, you'd probably get the predictable outcry from Libertarians and Republicans about the "ever expanding role of government."
None of these are viable options for the vast majority of Mac/iPad/iPhone users. After all they chose Apple, which in my admittedly limited experience, suggests they have no interest in figuring out what settings will make something work.
Like a lot of people, they have this unreasonable expectation that they should be able to use a phone with out a technical computer degree.
After all where is it going to fit price wise?
It can't be less than an Ipod Touch, and it certainly can't be more than the Ipad 2, w hich has the advantage of a better screen size. If I was going to buy a 7 inch tablet, why not a 9 for the same price or cheaper?
And given that the Android tablet makers are set to savage each other down pricewise, I can't see where Apple would make a profit in this market.
I thought that the biggest thing holding Linux back was drivers in general, and the lack of a device driver ABI in particular. The knowledge that any cool toy that you're supposed to plug into your PC may not work under Linux the way you know it would have under Windows is a strong enough reason to shy away from Windows. But once the market is such that everything you find there is something you know works w/ Linux, and that too any and every distro, Linux would be set.
The biggest thing holding Linux back is the same as one of the reasons Harley Davidsons aren't more commonly found. You have to be a software mechanic to use a Linux desktop, to even install software requires fairly comprehensive computer knowledge. All the drivers in the world might be available, but as long as the Linux desktop remains a desktop for gearheads only, it's not going to be a serious contender in the home market, let alone games.
Because Windows tablets aren't true tablets. They're crippled crunched down PC's squeezed into an ill fitting form factor.
That's why "tablets" mostly gathered dust unsold on CompUSA shelves until the iPad showed the world and (Google) the right kind of interface for a true tablet OS.
catch it before said civilization starts dropping radio for wired services the way we are
We're not dropping radio for wired services, there's more and more radio. What's important is as radio improves the power levels leaked into space goes down. But that's only considering radios used to transmit information. RF is also used for RADAR. Many of those are quite powerful and will be for a long time.
Yes, but much of the radio adopted is short range and relatively low power. It's readability as intelligent signal data will fall off more rapidly than the more conventional TV and AM signals that we've been pumping out.
The Hobbit and Harry Potter are not science fiction: they're "Fantasy."
And science fiction is for the most part a subset of fantasy, only instead of incantations, we have formulae. Instead of wands and magic carpets, we've got phasers and warp drive.
The important thing that both can engender for children in that age is a sense of wonder, something that for most of us is lost all too soon.
Parent, you're asking the wrong question. What you need for the 8 year old is not getting them hooked on futurist scenarios or science fiction as a formula. What you need is to be sensitive to that sense of wonder and look to keep it alive as long as possible. If you preserve it long enough while still keeping some grounding perspective, your child will take care of itself.
One of the most important contributions of the Harry Potter series was that it brought more children to an interest of reading than any other book before it. Ignore the scifi snobs who would tell you otherwise. If something works.... it works. Harry Potter does for children now what Star Trek did generations ago, only it does it better, and it does it by reading, something that's far more effective at engaging imagination than visual media.
SETI is quite frankly based on questionable premises. It's one thing to claim that life is out there in the universe, but that intelligent life is out there anywhere near where we could actually pick up a radio signal, up is an article of faith that borders on religion.
Earth spent most of it's history with monocellular life. Much of our more complex development may very well hinge on the relatively unlikely possibility of having a nice big moon at the right size and distance to stabilise our polar axis and provide tidal action which may have been part of the key to combine loose amino acids to working cells. Add to that the even more questionable probabilities that such life would follow the same technological paths that we had in developing radio and maintaining a radio presence long enough for us to catch it before said civilization starts dropping radio for wired services the way we are, or said technological civilization self destructs as ours just might. Areceibo might detect a duplicate of itself within the galaxy, but note that for the entire history of our planet,we've only built one Areceibo.
SETI has been going on for decades, it may very well be more decades, centuries, millennia, before a positive result comes up, and it's just as likely that nothing will ever be found.
That had more to do with reciprocity. Facebook sucks in a lot of data and does not share back. Google used to let people export their information to Facebook (contacts, etc...) but Facebook would not to the same in return, so Google eventually got fed up with feeding the walled gardens.
Save that it wasn't Google's stuff that was being shared it was mine. I was making the choice to upload my photo albums to my Facebook page. Not Google giving it away. What they were doing was blocking MY choice, not their own. Google is more like the petulant child who's walked out of Facebook's party and now setting up their own trying to inhibit his buddies from going to their party of choice.
And too many people don't understand that the government has no money of it's own. It must confiscate it from the citizenry.
The fabled Robin Hood is often mis-characterized. He wasn't robbing the rich to give to the poor. He was robbing the government (Sheriff of Nottingham) to give the people back their own tax money the Sheriff mercilessly demanded by force.
What a lot of people don't know is what John was collecting those taxes for. It was to raise up the very kingly ransome for Richard who'd gotten himself taken prisoner during one of the Crusades into the Holy Land. In order to raise those taxes, John had to get the cooperation of the local barons. In exchange for that cooperation they essentially twisted his arm into signing the Magna Carta.
That is part of the misunderstanding people have about Google+. Google plus isn't a Facebook competitor.
I remember that earlier versions of Picasa had options on sharing your photos with Facebook. Those options got yanked not that long before Google Plus was launched. So I don't think the idea of competing with Facebook is that far from the truth.
Prior to 2003, he would have been reporting a crime in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, or Virginia.
And prior to some forsaken age, it was legal to stone your wife. It's 2012, not 2002, and the crime happened in New Jersey, which offers less excuses for bigoted behavior.
You did call for censorship, you are just too dumb to realize it.
You asked for campaign finance reform. Last time it passed I was unable to put a commercial on TV within 30 days of an election saying why I supported a candidate. Not a company, not a PAC, ME personally. You want to put that back, which is censorship. McCain Feingold CFR got overturned because it prevented INDIVIDUALS from expressing political opininons. But the talking points on MSNBC probably didn't explain that to you so you are probably ignorant on a topic you are posting.
Actually a better solution as Nader and others have said, would be to strip the "Super Personhood" from corporations. As it is, their Second Amendment Rights trump those of any individual or groups of individuals.
Polls show support for gay marriage around 50%. How does that make Obama unelectable. As much as some political commentators like to believe otherwise, pissing off your opponent's base doesn't mean you lose votes.
Frankly, judging from the amount of poisonous fascist nonsense on slashdot, I'm surprised the figure for rabid right wing bigots in the US is so low.
Tech geeks tend to be disproportionately either rabid right, or embrace rabid right proposals thinking them centrist. Slashdot isn't exactly a place I'd pick to get a representational slice of Americana.
Your DHS whistleblower is insane. As is a significant fringe of Republicans, who seem to think that cooperation and democratic principles don't matter anymore, because the wrong guy is sitting in the White House.
The funny thing is, by the time the 2008 election was coming up, there were a number of liberals who were absolutely certain Bush would declare martial law or something and just keep on going.
A popular legend was that Richard Nixon once inquired about the legality of suspending the 1972 elections. He was told in no uncertain terms that it would be a BAD idea. Then again it was more of an outgrowth of his own paranoia, considering that he landslided that one.
So you'd be perfectly fine if Obama pulled the same thing, or if someone tried the same thing on Ron Paul? Or do you only like this idea because your guy put it forth?
And you can justify it however you want, but you're still subverting the will of the people, which is extremely fucking hypocritical for someone who claims to be for "liberty".
True Believers believe that "anything goes", but only for their side.
Slashdot Mirror
From the end of the 15th page: > And in 1981, in the most famous of these ill-fated quotes, Bill Gates himself said in defense of the capacity of the first floppy disks, "640 kilobytes ought to be enough for anyone." http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9101699/The_640K_quote_won_t_go_away_but_did_Gates_really_say_it_ begs to disagree.
I believe he was referring to system memory because at the time, MS-DOS could only address 640k of memory.
In my opinion, an innovation is something that no one thought of before and that performs better than its predecessors. It is not a synonym for invention or discovery. Take graphene for example. People had been working with it in various forms (usually called "exfoliated graphite") for decades because it has all the interesting properties of graphite, but with an enormous surface-area to volume ratio. Theorists predicted interesting properties in single, isolated sheets of graphite, and there was some evidence to support it, but nothing really came of it. Then someone got the idea to use scotch tape to rip off a few layers of graphene from bulk graphite, which eventually lead to a Nobel prize. The innovation wasn't the scotch tape, or the graphene, or even using scotch tape to exfoliate a laminar material; it was using scotch tape to exfoliate graphite.
That one little innovation allowed all kinds of measurements that validated the intriguing properties of graphene and sparked a deluge of research across the physical sciences. Now, let's contrast it to something like the iPhone. Was that an innovation? I say no. Everyone had thought of the smartphone already--they were just waiting for the technology to catch up to expectation.
An innovation is something that changes the landscape about it. Yes there were smartphones before the iPhone. And most of them were boring buisness devices called Blackberries that you used for work, and either escaped from on the weekend, or were reminders that you did not have one. The iPhone redefined the smartphone as a lifestyle appliance. The author's bias is fairly obvious, he only sees innovation where it brings more to the corporate bottom line. The iPhone as a consumer device doesn't factor as a growth in worker productivity any more than a Blackberry would. But smartphones are now expected to do more than just push mail or track stocks. And they're not for Mr. Joe Executive any more. The iPhone bears the major credit in redefining it's role.
The fact that the community seems to think this post is insightful is the crowning reason that Linux isn't going anywhere outside of a tech maven's workshop. You see desktops as workstations. Consumers see them as places to work. You see desktops as workstations. Consumers use them as lifestyle appliances. The touches that you decry as fluff, garbage, or needless complications are what they see as essential. You see desktops as an ongoing opportunity to demonstrate your technical expertise. Consumers just want things that work. Or at least they want tech support without trauma. It's hard to define Linux support when the experience can vary widely between the dozen or more active distributions in the market, each dominated by some tech geeks from Distro X's vision of how Linux should work with very little in common with the crowd of tech geeks running Distro Y. In contrast your average urban Stop And Shop has handbills offering Mac Windows support. The massive cognitive disconnect between your perception of the desktop and the perception of the rest of the planet is the major reason why Linux was not able to pick up an intercept when Microsoft dropped the ball on VISTA, as it had on Windows ME, and Windows 98 before then.
Windows is losing marketshare, not Linux. Go to a college campus or local coffee shop and look around at those using their computers to do work. Count how many PCs you see and how many Macs you see. I was honestly shocked to see Macs beating PCs every time at many different study locations I was using.
Those people using laptops are probably not going to be using Linux to do their work and are either going to choose Mac or Windows. While I continue to use Linux on the server and have solely for the last 10 years (I used it on the desktop prior to 2002), I chose Mac over Windows for my laptop and I know many others who went that direction as well.
In another thread someone said if Win7 wasn't as good as it is, Linux may have had a chance. I disagree. In fact, using Win7 on my work desktop and hating the quirks it has was what really helped push me to the Mac.
For LInux to have lost Desktop marketshare, note that I said DESKTOP, it would have to have had marketshare in the first place. It never went beyond technocrats and hobbyists on the desktop end. It's found it's niche in the server market because you need that kind of roll your own customisation on there. But as anyone knows if you want clicks out of Slashdotterati, just frame your title so that Apple becomes the blame boy for the fact that your favorite OS isn't ruling the world. It used to be Microsoft but Redmond's not doing as well these days.
At the time, it seemed the way to deal with a monopoly that tended to destroy everything in it's path.
Microsoft destroyed everything but Apple. Apple was on deathwatch. DeGasse couldn't even give BeOS away for free.
Actually he tried to get Apple to pony up $400 million dollars for it. For the same price, they bought NeXT and got Jobs back as a bonus.
They should get phones then, not smartphones. Expecting a small mobile computer with a phone app to be any easier to use than any other computer is indeed unreasonable.
If a phone needs a genius in order to be used, it's hard to justify calling it a "smart"phone.
Skype works on the iPhone/iPad to some extent. Non-Facetime apps may be killed when in the background, so that incoming calls may not always come through in time. When they do come through, they will just come through as a typical notification, so you tend to think it's just an email or whatever and ignore it until you check your phone hours later and see someone called you, BUT....
Once you make a call and get talking, Skype works fine. I think there are Google talk apps that work fine too.
The only "settings" you need are the login/password
If I use a phone, I expect it to work at an unqualified level I expect it to ring me when I'm called and to ring when I call out. Anything less than that is at best a hobby toy.
Am I reading this right?
AT&T institutes a policy that is so terrible, it has created a perception in the public that it might even be illegal.
News flash. While it might be nice to imagine otherwise, Just because a policy is reprehensible to some vocal Slashdotterati, doesn't mean it's illegal. On very public policies like this corporations are very adept at skating as close to the edge of the law as needed. Also keep in mind that the way you access the Internet can determine which provisions apply to it. Cable modem providers for instance, being classified as information providers, aren't subject to the same laws as the telcos who provide your 3G and 4G data access who are governed by telecommunications laws. So when, not if, Comcast for example decides to tier broadband access to put Netflix, iTunes, and Google Play in the slow lanes, in favor of Xfinity, there's not really that much to stop them from doing so save the fallout from consumer backlash. Here's a reminder folks. While Net Neutrality is a stated goal that comes up in policy discussions every now and then, it is not an overriding principal set in stone within the United States. There's no "net neutrality" standard that anyone is required to meet. At most there are certain interstate commerce provisions, but if Congress actually tried to enforce Net Neutrality, you'd probably get the predictable outcry from Libertarians and Republicans about the "ever expanding role of government."
None of these are viable options for the vast majority of Mac/iPad/iPhone users. After all they chose Apple, which in my admittedly limited experience, suggests they have no interest in figuring out what settings will make something work.
Like a lot of people, they have this unreasonable expectation that they should be able to use a phone with out a technical computer degree.
After all where is it going to fit price wise? It can't be less than an Ipod Touch, and it certainly can't be more than the Ipad 2, w hich has the advantage of a better screen size. If I was going to buy a 7 inch tablet, why not a 9 for the same price or cheaper? And given that the Android tablet makers are set to savage each other down pricewise, I can't see where Apple would make a profit in this market.
Couldn't agree more. Wonder when Apple will launch a /. competitor.
If the Slashdot buisness had any buisness future, Taco would not have cashed out and jumped ship.
I thought that the biggest thing holding Linux back was drivers in general, and the lack of a device driver ABI in particular. The knowledge that any cool toy that you're supposed to plug into your PC may not work under Linux the way you know it would have under Windows is a strong enough reason to shy away from Windows. But once the market is such that everything you find there is something you know works w/ Linux, and that too any and every distro, Linux would be set.
The biggest thing holding Linux back is the same as one of the reasons Harley Davidsons aren't more commonly found. You have to be a software mechanic to use a Linux desktop, to even install software requires fairly comprehensive computer knowledge. All the drivers in the world might be available, but as long as the Linux desktop remains a desktop for gearheads only, it's not going to be a serious contender in the home market, let alone games.
When I worked in Manhattan I was next door to a couple of hotels and one hostel. You could not have mistaken the third item for the first two.
Because Windows tablets aren't true tablets. They're crippled crunched down PC's squeezed into an ill fitting form factor. That's why "tablets" mostly gathered dust unsold on CompUSA shelves until the iPad showed the world and (Google) the right kind of interface for a true tablet OS.
I was with you until here:
catch it before said civilization starts dropping radio for wired services the way we are
We're not dropping radio for wired services, there's more and more radio. What's important is as radio improves the power levels leaked into space goes down. But that's only considering radios used to transmit information. RF is also used for RADAR. Many of those are quite powerful and will be for a long time.
Yes, but much of the radio adopted is short range and relatively low power. It's readability as intelligent signal data will fall off more rapidly than the more conventional TV and AM signals that we've been pumping out.
The Hobbit and Harry Potter are not science fiction: they're "Fantasy."
And science fiction is for the most part a subset of fantasy, only instead of incantations, we have formulae. Instead of wands and magic carpets, we've got phasers and warp drive. The important thing that both can engender for children in that age is a sense of wonder, something that for most of us is lost all too soon. Parent, you're asking the wrong question. What you need for the 8 year old is not getting them hooked on futurist scenarios or science fiction as a formula. What you need is to be sensitive to that sense of wonder and look to keep it alive as long as possible. If you preserve it long enough while still keeping some grounding perspective, your child will take care of itself. One of the most important contributions of the Harry Potter series was that it brought more children to an interest of reading than any other book before it. Ignore the scifi snobs who would tell you otherwise. If something works.... it works. Harry Potter does for children now what Star Trek did generations ago, only it does it better, and it does it by reading, something that's far more effective at engaging imagination than visual media.
SETI is quite frankly based on questionable premises. It's one thing to claim that life is out there in the universe, but that intelligent life is out there anywhere near where we could actually pick up a radio signal, up is an article of faith that borders on religion. Earth spent most of it's history with monocellular life. Much of our more complex development may very well hinge on the relatively unlikely possibility of having a nice big moon at the right size and distance to stabilise our polar axis and provide tidal action which may have been part of the key to combine loose amino acids to working cells. Add to that the even more questionable probabilities that such life would follow the same technological paths that we had in developing radio and maintaining a radio presence long enough for us to catch it before said civilization starts dropping radio for wired services the way we are, or said technological civilization self destructs as ours just might. Areceibo might detect a duplicate of itself within the galaxy, but note that for the entire history of our planet,we've only built one Areceibo. SETI has been going on for decades, it may very well be more decades, centuries, millennia, before a positive result comes up, and it's just as likely that nothing will ever be found.
That had more to do with reciprocity. Facebook sucks in a lot of data and does not share back. Google used to let people export their information to Facebook (contacts, etc...) but Facebook would not to the same in return, so Google eventually got fed up with feeding the walled gardens.
Save that it wasn't Google's stuff that was being shared it was mine. I was making the choice to upload my photo albums to my Facebook page. Not Google giving it away. What they were doing was blocking MY choice, not their own. Google is more like the petulant child who's walked out of Facebook's party and now setting up their own trying to inhibit his buddies from going to their party of choice.
And too many people don't understand that the government has no money of it's own. It must confiscate it from the citizenry.
The fabled Robin Hood is often mis-characterized. He wasn't robbing the rich to give to the poor. He was robbing the government (Sheriff of Nottingham) to give the people back their own tax money the Sheriff mercilessly demanded by force.
What a lot of people don't know is what John was collecting those taxes for. It was to raise up the very kingly ransome for Richard who'd gotten himself taken prisoner during one of the Crusades into the Holy Land. In order to raise those taxes, John had to get the cooperation of the local barons. In exchange for that cooperation they essentially twisted his arm into signing the Magna Carta.
That is part of the misunderstanding people have about Google+. Google plus isn't a Facebook competitor.
I remember that earlier versions of Picasa had options on sharing your photos with Facebook. Those options got yanked not that long before Google Plus was launched. So I don't think the idea of competing with Facebook is that far from the truth.
Prior to 2003, he would have been reporting a crime in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, or Virginia.
And prior to some forsaken age, it was legal to stone your wife. It's 2012, not 2002, and the crime happened in New Jersey, which offers less excuses for bigoted behavior.
You did call for censorship, you are just too dumb to realize it.
You asked for campaign finance reform. Last time it passed I was unable to put a commercial on TV within 30 days of an election saying why I supported a candidate. Not a company, not a PAC, ME personally. You want to put that back, which is censorship. McCain Feingold CFR got overturned because it prevented INDIVIDUALS from expressing political opininons. But the talking points on MSNBC probably didn't explain that to you so you are probably ignorant on a topic you are posting.
Actually a better solution as Nader and others have said, would be to strip the "Super Personhood" from corporations. As it is, their Second Amendment Rights trump those of any individual or groups of individuals.
Polls show support for gay marriage around 50%. How does that make Obama unelectable. As much as some political commentators like to believe otherwise, pissing off your opponent's base doesn't mean you lose votes.
Frankly, judging from the amount of poisonous fascist nonsense on slashdot, I'm surprised the figure for rabid right wing bigots in the US is so low.
Tech geeks tend to be disproportionately either rabid right, or embrace rabid right proposals thinking them centrist. Slashdot isn't exactly a place I'd pick to get a representational slice of Americana.
The funny thing is, by the time the 2008 election was coming up, there were a number of liberals who were absolutely certain Bush would declare martial law or something and just keep on going.
A popular legend was that Richard Nixon once inquired about the legality of suspending the 1972 elections. He was told in no uncertain terms that it would be a BAD idea. Then again it was more of an outgrowth of his own paranoia, considering that he landslided that one.
So you'd be perfectly fine if Obama pulled the same thing, or if someone tried the same thing on Ron Paul? Or do you only like this idea because your guy put it forth?
And you can justify it however you want, but you're still subverting the will of the people, which is extremely fucking hypocritical for someone who claims to be for "liberty".
True Believers believe that "anything goes", but only for their side.