They just looked at me with that typical mindless state employee look as if to say "C'mon don't you know that the government would not do this unless it was best." There is no hope.
I think you misinterpreted the look. The look was actually as if to say "What the heck are you doing making waves? I just work here and do as I'm told, you expect me to make policy?"
but the fact is that the overall economy was up 2% last year. Strictly speaking, by all traditional economic measures the economy did not experience a recession (2 consecutive quarters of negative growth),
What!? No Bush recession?? How can this be? The media is saying that we were in dire economic straights. And, and, Tom Daschle kept calling it the Bush recession. Tom Daschle wouldn't lie, would he?
We already have a public data repository. Just encrypt all your important documents, post them to various usenet groups, and let Google permanently archive them.
Rather abusive of all those poor News Servers out there, isn't it?
If you have access to a Web Server, you might be able to get the Wayback Machine to capture it for you.
Or, if you can keep the web server up, just access it from your own Web Server. You wouldn't be screwed if your machine went down or became inaccessible as long as you could get to the Google Cache.
It seems unlikely that there's room for a middleman like Best Buy in online distribution of music.
It may well be that Best Buy is getting favorable treatment from RIAA members on distribution because by doing so, the RIAA has effectively coopted a major distributor of devices used to make digital music work (MP3 players, Computers, CDR media).
Not unlike Sony is both a primary manufacturer of devices and also a prominent RIAA member.
There are no servers installed (except sshd). Not even an ftp server, or Apache. (which is by design...Mom isn't supposed to be running a webserver on the machine she does her taxes on, ya know?) All in All, I give it 9 out of 10 for newbies, 4 out of 10 for veterans.
Hmmm... Sounds like I might give it a 9 out of 10 for a lot of people in between newbies and veterans. You know, the one's who will install all kinds of services just to be 1337, won't ever use them and not monitor for security patch upgrades? Yeah, you know that type...
Running services is potentially dangerous. They shouldn't be hard to install, but I feel more comfortable installing them by compiling tarballs than just clicking. If you can build it, you have some ownership of it and will care for it. If it's just a menu choice... well, if you do know what you're doing that's OK, but too many people don't.
I, for one, welcome the oncoming of Microsoft's C# language. A little bit of competition can only help the market.
I agree. I think that the big players pushing Java now are not always doing the best things for it, in the long run. Competition might unify and crystalize their efforts. Right now, it seems there are differing visions for how to best do Java on the desktop and that's not a good thing. You can bet that Microsoft will present a unified vision for.NET.
Java can and should be pushed harder on the desktop, but Oracle/IBM/Sun decided that it was easier to dominate the back end, so they retreated to the server. I've seen some fine Java applets and I know they can be great.
I don't see why it can't be used more visibly on the desktop, as well as the server. To keep a really vital development community alive, it has to be used everywhere or risk marginalization. IT Management is going to be looking for a low-risk, desktop to middlewear to server programming language. Java could be that, but now, they'd better get moving on marketing this vision.
IBM and Sun should really get together on a single GUI development environment that everybody could get behind, also.
Without real competition, the Java stewards (Sun/IBM/Oracle) just picked low hanging fruit (server apps) and haven't pushed hard on a complete vision for it.
But, you'll no longer be able to give money to the NRA or NOW knowing that they will be your advocate for your issues. Oh, you'll be able to give money, but it can only be used in restricted ways.
This does make it more difficult for advocacy organizations to influence people.
What are we really concerned about? People might hear an issue ad and agree with it? If there's a view that's misleading or just flat out wrong, then fight it with your own advocacy, not by putting various restrictions on who can say what and when they can say it.
It's dangerous to start down this road, I'm afraid. What if later we decide the hard money limit should be $1 and the time period for banning issue advocacy using non-reported money should be a year? Are you OK with this? Why play games when it's Free Speech that might be at risk?
This is interesting, because I don't see that in the bill. Admittedly, it's hard to read because it says things like "the following paragraph will be inserted into section 301.4b of the...". What I don't see is where PACs are distinguished from individuals, nonprofits, and even corporations, both of which seem to have been clearly exempted from anything more than reporting requirements.
Can you clear up the PAC distinction for me?
I'm not really making a distinction with regard to PACs. My reading is that the reporting requirements would forbid organizations from comingling funds in their general reserves with those set aside for political advocacy where a candidate might be involved.
This being the case, they would have to setup arms length organizations to run issue ads. I've seen several statements from NOW and NRA leaders to this effect, so maybe I'm taking their word for it.
Yes, that's your reading of the 1st amendment. And a noble one. But not the one that the courts use. In any case, I'm still not convinced that this bill actually limits anything more than what political parties do with 1 particular type of money. But I'm willing to be corrected.
Since money represents the power to make your expression known, limiting "1 particular type of money" is limiting "1 particular type of expression", which is dangerous, I feel.
I'd like to understand the bill before I make my decision about how dangerous it is, and it's becoming clear to me that neither I nor most people really do understand it.
Well, that's enough reason for me to be very concerned with this bill. I think there's been very poor coverage on the details of the bill. Some are suggesting that this makes media more powerful in that their views on candidates are not in any way restrained by this bill. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the very favorable coverage we're getting from major media, while providing insufficient details to understand it ourselves?
If it turns out that media pundits gain greater influence because of these restrictions, would you ever be in favor of limiting what people can say, and when they can say it, from the media?
I don't know why we have to play these games with free expression. I'm for full disclosure on who contributes to all campaigns and to all issue ads, without restrictions. Then, if General Motors is supporting a particular candidate with millions of dollars because of their energy and environmental stances, at least people will be able to see for themselves who is really supporting what. As it stands now, the powerful (read rich) in this country will continue to find ways to influence public opinion with their resources. As more and more media outlets are being consolidated in fewer hands, we may see a day when there'll be a call for various restrictions on speech in the media. And then what's next?
It's a slippery slope and I don't want to start down it when Free Speech is at risk. Corruption in politics is due to corrupt politicians, not the "corrupting influence" of money. It's like blaming the corrupting influence of beautiful women for rape.
Well, you shouldn't be. From my reading of the bill, private organizations and PACs like NOW and the NRA won't be restricted in any way as long as they use donations from individuals/corporations/unions, and don't use any money contributed by political parties. They will be required to disclose what money they spend on candidate-specific ads, but the amounts won't be limited.
From my reading, and I have to admit to not reading it correctly before, these private organizations are going to be restricted in using general funds for issue ads during the 60 day period for general elections/30 day period for primaries. I've read where the private organizations are concerned that they have to setup separate organizations to run issue ads that have to do separate fundraising.
As I said, it is somewhat worrisome that a bureacracy will manage the speech of these organizations. If, for example, NOW has opinions up on a highly visible and expensive web page before the periods, will they be required to take them down during the period?
In fact, far from being a "threat to free speech", this bill probably doesn't do enough.
My reading of the First Amendment is "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech" Not, "Congress will make only those limitations on Free Speech necessary to..."
private groups are restricted from airing issue ads in said periods only if they use soft money
Hmmm... Studying the bill a little, I see that you're right.
I have to admit that this bill is not nearly as bad as I once thought it to be. What this does is set up the same kind of hard money (limits on contributions) constraints on issue ads that already existed for straight campaign contributions.
I thought CFR ran afoul of Buckley v. Valeo in that the Supreme Court ruled that there couldn't be limits on spending, only on contributions, but it appears that it was crafted to pass that muster.
I'm still uncomfortable having a Federal Bureacracy, the FEC, smell testing speech from organizations like NOW, the NRA, unions, etc. at some arbitrary deadline before election day.
I wish I could moderate down my own post in this thread that got so highly moderated. There should be a -1 moderation for Rant.:-)
Actually, under the CFR you can run any ads you want, as long as you say where the money came from in the ad. Hollings isn't up again until 2004, but then you could run a long "Hollings is a Disney-funded luddite" commercial, as long as at the end you said "Paid for by JordanH" and filed the appropriate forms with the federal elections commission.
I believe you are mistaken. From this article on the bill:
The bill, in its current form, would double to $2,000 the cap on so-called "hard money," or direct donations to candidates during any given two-year campaign cycle, and eliminate "soft money" donations to the political parties. Those donations are currently unlimited.
It would also restrict private groups from airing issue ads that target a specific candidate in the 60 days before a general election and the 30 days before a primary.
Why would any tech company risk being associated with stripping the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.
I don't think that tech companies are so terribly concerned with stripping the constitutional rights of US citizens as they are with stripping their products of functionality.
That's why Intel was so down on this. They're smart enough to see that this bill would turn PCs into fancy DVD/CD players. They're not in that business, they're in the computer business and want to sell general purpose computers, which implies all those nasty things like editing, copying, transferring, communicating and other functionality that would be lobotomized by the provisions of this bill.
It's not just the groundswell of public opinion against this that saves the day, but the opposition of the whole tech industry (I guess maybe Sony might be the exception), which is far larger than the entertainment industry, that (hopefully) spells doom for this bill.
Is Hollings up for reelection in November? If so, then the CFR that just passed is not an issue. The congressmen conveniently exempted the upcoming election from the provisions of the bill.
If he's up in a subsequent election, you can still give to Hollings' opponent, that's "hard money" which had the contribution limits raised by CFR, who may or may not run mud-slinging political commercials.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to run issue ads, with or without mud-slinging, about how absurd this bill is right before the election. No, that particular type of free speech has been elminitated by CFR. You can't speak your own mind on issues with media ads right before an election, no, you have to give to a candidate to do it for you.
There's hope that CFR won't stand Judicial review.
Hmmm... I wonder if I don't see a loophole. You could run as a third party candidate, on the ballet or not, and run ads that were essentially issue ads slinging all the mud you wanted. All done with "hard money".
These silly soft money/hard money rules are not going to get the money out of politics, it's just going to move it around.
Kept that as a separate brand also! It seems that IBM avoids the integration of corporate cultures by running their acquisitions as separate companies.
Hmmm... could you imagine their buying Sun and running it as a separate company? Hard to imagine, really. Now, Apple and Palm, that'd make sense, but there's too much overlap between IBM and Sun. If they were to buy Sun and try to run it at arms length I'd expect them to ditch AIX. Hmmm... might move all their Linux work into the Sun division also...
I agree with what you say. I'm not really advocating these mergers. It'd be fun to watch this in the same way as it's fun to watch Godzilla and Mothra fight it out. Of course, Tokyo always gets trampled underfoot.
I note that IBM is pretty careful about mergers, actually. The only ones I can think of are Rolm and Lexmark, but they kept the brands separate.
There are some synergies between IBM and Apple. Apple's microprocessor architecture is controlled by IBM/Motorola. And, IBM is a big backer of Palm. I would expect that IBM would buy up Palm before allowing them to disappear. IBM is heavily invested in the Palm architecture as their mobile solution.
I'm not sure that the proposed merger of IBM/Sun/Apple/Palm would be a monopoly. Maybe in the Enterprise space. Certainly not in the handheld or desktop space.
Monopoly or not, the integration problems would be considerable and it would probably suppress innovation across the new divisions.
In terms of democracy, individuals have the right to vote with their yard sales. If a book is crap, it deserves to have its retail sales depressed.
I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't consider for a moment selling a book that I really enjoy, even if I'm unlikely to read it again. I guess I might give it to someone who I think might benefit from it, even if it's the common "loan you a book" gift. In those cases, though, I believe that the person I'm giving the book to is extremely unlikely to buy the book.
Something that I pickup and can't get halfway through... Well, maybe someone else will like it... This actually supports the sale of books by that author, because if someone else likes this book they buy at a discount from me, they're far more likely to buy something else by the same author (a point that's been brought up many times in this discussion).
Yeah. IBM reported a 10% drop in revenue, but they are still quite profitable, predicting between 66 and 73 cents a share for the quarter.
The HP/Compaq merger is between two companies that have had quite hard times recently. IBM's current dip could perhaps motivate a big merger rather than work against it.
Heh, if they merge, they ought to consider bringing in Apple and Palm at the same time. Can you imagine that behemoth? The Anti-Microsoft.
The thing that really bugs me about DOS attacks, besides the fact that they cause damage and annoy admins, is that they don't show any real talent.
Sure, a simple DoS attack is pretty rudimentary, and also not difficult to deal with, generally, but the really effective DoS attacks, DDoS attacks are much more impressive. As you yourself say:
You do, however have to respect the guy who discovers some huge hole that he exploits on some system and gains access.
DDoS attacks involve gaining access to a lot of machines and coordinating an attack.
The only DoS attacks that make news are DDoS attacks.
You gotta respect him more if he tells you about it, and how to fix it.
Well, DDoSers generally don't rise to this level of respect.:-)
Speech is speech. Money in expectation of special treatment - which is exactly what large contributors are giving for - is bribery. We can debate the exact terms of the law, but outlawing bribery should not be a controvertial stand...
There are lines to be drawn, sure, but equating the funding of issue ads with bribery seems a far stretch to me.
Come on! People buy issue ads to convince the electorate of a position that might be the position of a candidate. That's bribery? Oh, just 60 days before an election, not 61? Besides, this law, which admittedly you did say was open to debate, opens up limits on hard money that's even more likely to be used as bribery.
Do we really want a bureacracy determining when speech in the form of important issues has stepped over some line? When is money just supporting issue advocacy and when is it bribery? Don't you really need to prove that there is an expectation of special treatment? And, if that expectation of special treatment is just support of the issue being advocated, isn't this the way it's supposed to work? People are supposed to petition for the redress of grievances and then when politicians hear them and heed them, you're going to be examining the petition drive to make sure that this isn't some subtle form of bribery?
Will it get to the point someday that I'll be arrested for bribery for telling a politician that I support his view on X and I plan to vote for him and tell all my friends to vote for him? How about if I run a Web Site that advocates a view held by a candidate? Must I shut this down 60 days prior to an election to avoid this bribery charge?
As I said, full disclosure is what's needed. Very public issue ads aren't likely to influence politicians unduly if the electorate knows who's supporting what position. If all cases of real bribery were open to public view, we wouldn't really need bribery laws because the electorate would thrown the bums out. That may be a bit of an exaggeration as elections and recalls aren't held daily, but you get the idea.
I'm not really concerned that the NRA is "bribing" politicians to support gun ownership views, or that NOW is "bribing" politicians to support pro-choice views, or that unions are "bribing" politicians on "Free Trade" issues. These are the groups that this law explicitly targets.
I'd much rather see that hard money going to campaigns which follow incredibly strict FEC guidelines for reporting sources of income than have an ad on TV paid for by a PAC which isn't identified.
I admit that I was wrong about this PAC. It almost certainly would deal in mostly hard money and not be affected by CFR.
However, I prefer issue ads that speak directly to the people on the importance of the issues of the day rather than our having to shoehorn the issues into some politician's agenda.
It seems that regulation that would require issue ads to reveal the sources of their contributions would be far less intrusive than a straight ban on issue ads during certain seasons.
It's mind boggling to me that we can seriously be discussing how to limit political speech in this country as a way to distribute political power more fairly.
Limiting soft money is, without a doubt, limiting free speech, you know, doing that thing that the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law..." about?
CFR shouldn't be able to stand up to Judicial Review. They'll have to overturn Buckley vs. Valeo, which clearly equated money with expression and set out that there can be no limit on spending, but there can be on contributions.
Passing CFR was a cynical move on the part of many opponents who trust that the Supreme Court hasn't lost their commitment to the First Amendment.
What we need is more debate on issues, not less. Full disclosure of who is funding politicians and issue ads would provide a level playing field. If, under such a system, we still have corrupt politicians, then we get the Government that we deserve, I guess.
The present system sets up a bureaucracy in charge of acceptable speech, a horrible precedent, if you ask me.
There is serious discussion about accounting the cost of maintaining Web Servers where political opinions are presented as soft money contributions. Can you imagine the FEC shutting down your Web Server 60 days prior to an election because it violates CFR? This is lunacy.
Slashdot Mirror
What does this have to do with My (or Your) Rights Online?
I think you misinterpreted the look. The look was actually as if to say "What the heck are you doing making waves? I just work here and do as I'm told, you expect me to make policy?"
What!? No Bush recession?? How can this be? The media is saying that we were in dire economic straights. And, and, Tom Daschle kept calling it the Bush recession. Tom Daschle wouldn't lie, would he?
Rather abusive of all those poor News Servers out there, isn't it?
If you have access to a Web Server, you might be able to get the Wayback Machine to capture it for you.
Or, if you can keep the web server up, just access it from your own Web Server. You wouldn't be screwed if your machine went down or became inaccessible as long as you could get to the Google Cache.
It may well be that Best Buy is getting favorable treatment from RIAA members on distribution because by doing so, the RIAA has effectively coopted a major distributor of devices used to make digital music work (MP3 players, Computers, CDR media).
Not unlike Sony is both a primary manufacturer of devices and also a prominent RIAA member.
Hmmm... Sounds like I might give it a 9 out of 10 for a lot of people in between newbies and veterans. You know, the one's who will install all kinds of services just to be 1337, won't ever use them and not monitor for security patch upgrades? Yeah, you know that type...
Running services is potentially dangerous. They shouldn't be hard to install, but I feel more comfortable installing them by compiling tarballs than just clicking. If you can build it, you have some ownership of it and will care for it. If it's just a menu choice... well, if you do know what you're doing that's OK, but too many people don't.
I agree. I think that the big players pushing Java now are not always doing the best things for it, in the long run. Competition might unify and crystalize their efforts. Right now, it seems there are differing visions for how to best do Java on the desktop and that's not a good thing. You can bet that Microsoft will present a unified vision for .NET.
Java can and should be pushed harder on the desktop, but Oracle/IBM/Sun decided that it was easier to dominate the back end, so they retreated to the server. I've seen some fine Java applets and I know they can be great.
I don't see why it can't be used more visibly on the desktop, as well as the server. To keep a really vital development community alive, it has to be used everywhere or risk marginalization. IT Management is going to be looking for a low-risk, desktop to middlewear to server programming language. Java could be that, but now, they'd better get moving on marketing this vision. IBM and Sun should really get together on a single GUI development environment that everybody could get behind, also.
Without real competition, the Java stewards (Sun/IBM/Oracle) just picked low hanging fruit (server apps) and haven't pushed hard on a complete vision for it.
Sorry, I had to say, I, I had no choice!
This does make it more difficult for advocacy organizations to influence people.
What are we really concerned about? People might hear an issue ad and agree with it? If there's a view that's misleading or just flat out wrong, then fight it with your own advocacy, not by putting various restrictions on who can say what and when they can say it.
It's dangerous to start down this road, I'm afraid. What if later we decide the hard money limit should be $1 and the time period for banning issue advocacy using non-reported money should be a year? Are you OK with this? Why play games when it's Free Speech that might be at risk?
Can you clear up the PAC distinction for me?
I'm not really making a distinction with regard to PACs. My reading is that the reporting requirements would forbid organizations from comingling funds in their general reserves with those set aside for political advocacy where a candidate might be involved.
This being the case, they would have to setup arms length organizations to run issue ads. I've seen several statements from NOW and NRA leaders to this effect, so maybe I'm taking their word for it.
Since money represents the power to make your expression known, limiting "1 particular type of money" is limiting "1 particular type of expression", which is dangerous, I feel.
Well, that's enough reason for me to be very concerned with this bill. I think there's been very poor coverage on the details of the bill. Some are suggesting that this makes media more powerful in that their views on candidates are not in any way restrained by this bill. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the very favorable coverage we're getting from major media, while providing insufficient details to understand it ourselves?
If it turns out that media pundits gain greater influence because of these restrictions, would you ever be in favor of limiting what people can say, and when they can say it, from the media?
I don't know why we have to play these games with free expression. I'm for full disclosure on who contributes to all campaigns and to all issue ads, without restrictions. Then, if General Motors is supporting a particular candidate with millions of dollars because of their energy and environmental stances, at least people will be able to see for themselves who is really supporting what. As it stands now, the powerful (read rich) in this country will continue to find ways to influence public opinion with their resources. As more and more media outlets are being consolidated in fewer hands, we may see a day when there'll be a call for various restrictions on speech in the media. And then what's next?
It's a slippery slope and I don't want to start down it when Free Speech is at risk. Corruption in politics is due to corrupt politicians, not the "corrupting influence" of money. It's like blaming the corrupting influence of beautiful women for rape.
From my reading, and I have to admit to not reading it correctly before, these private organizations are going to be restricted in using general funds for issue ads during the 60 day period for general elections/30 day period for primaries. I've read where the private organizations are concerned that they have to setup separate organizations to run issue ads that have to do separate fundraising.
As I said, it is somewhat worrisome that a bureacracy will manage the speech of these organizations. If, for example, NOW has opinions up on a highly visible and expensive web page before the periods, will they be required to take them down during the period?
My reading of the First Amendment is "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech" Not, "Congress will make only those limitations on Free Speech necessary to ..."
Hmmm... Studying the bill a little, I see that you're right.
I have to admit that this bill is not nearly as bad as I once thought it to be. What this does is set up the same kind of hard money (limits on contributions) constraints on issue ads that already existed for straight campaign contributions.
I thought CFR ran afoul of Buckley v. Valeo in that the Supreme Court ruled that there couldn't be limits on spending, only on contributions, but it appears that it was crafted to pass that muster.
I'm still uncomfortable having a Federal Bureacracy, the FEC, smell testing speech from organizations like NOW, the NRA, unions, etc. at some arbitrary deadline before election day.
I wish I could moderate down my own post in this thread that got so highly moderated. There should be a -1 moderation for Rant. :-)
The issue ad provisions are the most upsetting to me.
I believe you are mistaken. From this article on the bill:
I don't think that tech companies are so terribly concerned with stripping the constitutional rights of US citizens as they are with stripping their products of functionality.
That's why Intel was so down on this. They're smart enough to see that this bill would turn PCs into fancy DVD/CD players. They're not in that business, they're in the computer business and want to sell general purpose computers, which implies all those nasty things like editing, copying, transferring, communicating and other functionality that would be lobotomized by the provisions of this bill.
It's not just the groundswell of public opinion against this that saves the day, but the opposition of the whole tech industry (I guess maybe Sony might be the exception), which is far larger than the entertainment industry, that (hopefully) spells doom for this bill.
Is Hollings up for reelection in November? If so, then the CFR that just passed is not an issue. The congressmen conveniently exempted the upcoming election from the provisions of the bill.
If he's up in a subsequent election, you can still give to Hollings' opponent, that's "hard money" which had the contribution limits raised by CFR, who may or may not run mud-slinging political commercials.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to run issue ads, with or without mud-slinging, about how absurd this bill is right before the election. No, that particular type of free speech has been elminitated by CFR. You can't speak your own mind on issues with media ads right before an election, no, you have to give to a candidate to do it for you.
There's hope that CFR won't stand Judicial review.
Hmmm... I wonder if I don't see a loophole. You could run as a third party candidate, on the ballet or not, and run ads that were essentially issue ads slinging all the mud you wanted. All done with "hard money".
These silly soft money/hard money rules are not going to get the money out of politics, it's just going to move it around.
Kept that as a separate brand also! It seems that IBM avoids the integration of corporate cultures by running their acquisitions as separate companies.
Hmmm... could you imagine their buying Sun and running it as a separate company? Hard to imagine, really. Now, Apple and Palm, that'd make sense, but there's too much overlap between IBM and Sun. If they were to buy Sun and try to run it at arms length I'd expect them to ditch AIX. Hmmm... might move all their Linux work into the Sun division also...
IBM/Motorola and Apple work together on the PPC architecture, and that's not a bomb. Your point is?
I note that IBM is pretty careful about mergers, actually. The only ones I can think of are Rolm and Lexmark, but they kept the brands separate.
There are some synergies between IBM and Apple. Apple's microprocessor architecture is controlled by IBM/Motorola. And, IBM is a big backer of Palm. I would expect that IBM would buy up Palm before allowing them to disappear. IBM is heavily invested in the Palm architecture as their mobile solution.
I'm not sure that the proposed merger of IBM/Sun/Apple/Palm would be a monopoly. Maybe in the Enterprise space. Certainly not in the handheld or desktop space.
Monopoly or not, the integration problems would be considerable and it would probably suppress innovation across the new divisions.
I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't consider for a moment selling a book that I really enjoy, even if I'm unlikely to read it again. I guess I might give it to someone who I think might benefit from it, even if it's the common "loan you a book" gift. In those cases, though, I believe that the person I'm giving the book to is extremely unlikely to buy the book.
Something that I pickup and can't get halfway through... Well, maybe someone else will like it... This actually supports the sale of books by that author, because if someone else likes this book they buy at a discount from me, they're far more likely to buy something else by the same author (a point that's been brought up many times in this discussion).
The HP/Compaq merger is between two companies that have had quite hard times recently. IBM's current dip could perhaps motivate a big merger rather than work against it.
Heh, if they merge, they ought to consider bringing in Apple and Palm at the same time. Can you imagine that behemoth? The Anti-Microsoft.
Sure, a simple DoS attack is pretty rudimentary, and also not difficult to deal with, generally, but the really effective DoS attacks, DDoS attacks are much more impressive. As you yourself say:
DDoS attacks involve gaining access to a lot of machines and coordinating an attack.
The only DoS attacks that make news are DDoS attacks.
Well, DDoSers generally don't rise to this level of respect. :-)
There are lines to be drawn, sure, but equating the funding of issue ads with bribery seems a far stretch to me.
Come on! People buy issue ads to convince the electorate of a position that might be the position of a candidate. That's bribery? Oh, just 60 days before an election, not 61? Besides, this law, which admittedly you did say was open to debate, opens up limits on hard money that's even more likely to be used as bribery.
Do we really want a bureacracy determining when speech in the form of important issues has stepped over some line? When is money just supporting issue advocacy and when is it bribery? Don't you really need to prove that there is an expectation of special treatment? And, if that expectation of special treatment is just support of the issue being advocated, isn't this the way it's supposed to work? People are supposed to petition for the redress of grievances and then when politicians hear them and heed them, you're going to be examining the petition drive to make sure that this isn't some subtle form of bribery?
Will it get to the point someday that I'll be arrested for bribery for telling a politician that I support his view on X and I plan to vote for him and tell all my friends to vote for him? How about if I run a Web Site that advocates a view held by a candidate? Must I shut this down 60 days prior to an election to avoid this bribery charge?
As I said, full disclosure is what's needed. Very public issue ads aren't likely to influence politicians unduly if the electorate knows who's supporting what position. If all cases of real bribery were open to public view, we wouldn't really need bribery laws because the electorate would thrown the bums out. That may be a bit of an exaggeration as elections and recalls aren't held daily, but you get the idea.
I'm not really concerned that the NRA is "bribing" politicians to support gun ownership views, or that NOW is "bribing" politicians to support pro-choice views, or that unions are "bribing" politicians on "Free Trade" issues. These are the groups that this law explicitly targets.
I admit that I was wrong about this PAC. It almost certainly would deal in mostly hard money and not be affected by CFR.
However, I prefer issue ads that speak directly to the people on the importance of the issues of the day rather than our having to shoehorn the issues into some politician's agenda.
It seems that regulation that would require issue ads to reveal the sources of their contributions would be far less intrusive than a straight ban on issue ads during certain seasons.
Limiting soft money is, without a doubt, limiting free speech, you know, doing that thing that the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law..." about?
CFR shouldn't be able to stand up to Judicial Review. They'll have to overturn Buckley vs. Valeo, which clearly equated money with expression and set out that there can be no limit on spending, but there can be on contributions.
Passing CFR was a cynical move on the part of many opponents who trust that the Supreme Court hasn't lost their commitment to the First Amendment.
What we need is more debate on issues, not less. Full disclosure of who is funding politicians and issue ads would provide a level playing field. If, under such a system, we still have corrupt politicians, then we get the Government that we deserve, I guess.
The present system sets up a bureaucracy in charge of acceptable speech, a horrible precedent, if you ask me.
There is serious discussion about accounting the cost of maintaining Web Servers where political opinions are presented as soft money contributions. Can you imagine the FEC shutting down your Web Server 60 days prior to an election because it violates CFR? This is lunacy.