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User: JWW

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Comments · 2,434

  1. Re:Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did on Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC, Part 2 (Video) · · Score: 1

    Exactly.

    Worst. Fucking. Slashdot. Q&A. Ever.

    I got a +5 rated question about whether Mayday would support term limits on congress, and you didn't even fucking ask it and Larry sure as hell didn't say anything to indicate Mayday's stance on it.

    Also, in the first video he sidestepped the answer about corporations making movies and writing books about candidates. Citizens United was a fucking LLC that made a political documentary, that's what Mayday is ostensibly fighting against. So don't fucking tell me that political documentaries would be unaffected.

    And what the hell are vouchers going to fix when incumbents will end up receiving most of them anyway? Voters will just give their money to the person whose name they know. Its not going to stop old fossils from getting reelected to congress until they die.

    This was a fucking promotional video created by Dice for Mayday PAC.

    It sure as hell wasn't Lawrence Lessig answering my (or anyone else's) questions.

  2. Re: They where acting like the cable co / CATV on Bye Bye Aereo, For Now · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The charges that OTA channels get to charge cable companies a purely a protection racket. THAT is what should have been made illegal, not Aereo!

  3. Citizens United on Interviews: Ask Lawrence Lessig About His Mayday PAC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Mr. Lessig,

    Since it seems that your PAC espouses the belief that Citizens United is a horrible supreme court ruling, and noting that the key product of the Citizens United LLC was a Documentary, and also noting that almost all documentaries are backed by or produced by corporations of one form or another; aren't you explicitly calling for the total prohibition of political documentaries in our political system? Also, is the publishing by major corporations (this includes all publishing companies) of books that are about politicians or from politicians required to be banned to take money out of politics?

  4. Term Limits on Interviews: Ask Lawrence Lessig About His Mayday PAC · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mr. Lessig,

    Have you considered the potential side effect that if you are successful in removing "money from politics"? You will likely end up enormously empowering the position of incumbency, establishing a ruling class that once elected, no one will have the capabilities to truly mount a successful campaign against.

    Incumbents have huge benefits and a large number of tools to communicate to the voters (who are of course their constituents, so they can even justify it).

    My great fear is that campaign finance reform will do nothing to stem the tide of permanent, lifetime, politicians dominating our system. Even in the worst election for incumbents in a half century (2010) over 80% of incumbents won.

    Will you support and make your backed candidates support a constitutional amendment to create and enforce term limits on members of Congress?

    If Mayday can't support term limits, then I can't support it. In fact I may feel compelled to fight against it. I don't even really want money out of politics if it leads to lifetime memberships in Congress for the lucky ones that achieve office once, and then never lose again until they die.

  5. Re:Nothing new to see here. on Steve Wozniak Endorses Lessig's Mayday Super PAC · · Score: 1

    You think the Fairness Doctrine would have prevented incumbents from having an advantage?!!?

    That's rich.

    The leading factor in taking out incumbents has been, like it or not, the Tea Party. The Tea Party is largely fuled by and supported by talk radio. The same talk radio that would't exist if the "Fairness Doctrine" were still in place.

    It wasn't until after the "Fairness Doctrine" was removed that we could truly see and realize how horrible and awful an impact it had on free speech and expression in this country.

  6. Re:Nothing new to see here. on Steve Wozniak Endorses Lessig's Mayday Super PAC · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Correct. Plus if campaign finance reform is achieved and campaign speech becomes subject to severe limits, then incumbents will hold a massive and largely unassailable power to dominate campaigns over newcomers.

    And with incumbency being a root cause to many of the problems in Washington, I won't support this PAC either until they make term limits a core part of the reforms they are calling for.

  7. Yesssssss! on US Supreme Court Invalidates Patent For Being Software Patent · · Score: 1

    About damn time!

  8. Ummm on Google: Indie Musicians Must Join Streaming Service Or Be Removed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google, how the fuck is this not evil?

  9. Re:A new Monoculture? on "Super Bananas" May Save Millions of Lives In Africa · · Score: 1

    Then genetically engineering new strains of bananas is a good thing, no?

  10. Curious on FWD.us: GOP Voters To Be Targeted By Data Scientists · · Score: 1

    I wonder how long it will take FWD.us to feel like they're paying to much to their American born Data Scientists and strive to replace them with H1B visa holders? Is that phase 6?

  11. Re:Democrats voted on House Majority Leader Defeated In Primary · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WHAT??!

    Brat is actually the poster child for "getting the money out of politics." Cantor had him outspent 4 to 1. He was the little guy in this race.

    From what I've heard about him, he's also very libertarian leaning. I think libertarian leaning Republicans have a bright future. I think the old guard and the social conservatives will have a hard time against them in the future as well.

  12. Re:term limits don't matter on Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The elephant in the room is that the money in politics really isn't campaign money.

    The reason so much is being spent on campaigns now days is because so much is being spent by government.

    There is an immense amount of power involved in generating TRILLIONS of dollars in tax revenue and borrowing BILLIONS more and then determining what that should be spent on.

    That power is desired mightily, which is what is driving the campaign spending.

    Think of it this way. Every member in congress is voting on bills to spend ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more money each year than they have control over in their campaign funds.

    The campaign funds are just the ante to get in the game of playing with the much bigger piles of money.

  13. Re:Why is everbody against it now? on Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding · · Score: 1

    It think its mostly because before the effort was very undefined.

    Now they've stated their goals and they are all identical to the goals of the left.

    I will not support or believe that this PAC is beneficial until they add the goal of term limits to their proposed reforms.

    Its a far bigger factor in the problems of our government than campaign finance is.

  14. Re:Trying to move America to the Left on Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding · · Score: 1

    Exactly. A horrible name choice if you want to appear to be non-partisan.

    I don't believe they are really heavily partisan, but their proposed reforms lean profoundly to the left.

    I think in is entirely in the realm of possibility that if they were truly very effective in their goals we would see a tilt toward one party rule.

    One party rule would, of course, be infinitely worse than having "money in politics". Cite: see the history of one party rule.

  15. Re:interesting on Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding · · Score: 1

    Unions don't tell their members to personally donate to politicians, they take their members money and give it to the politicians, regardless of what the members want.

    Hey wait!!! That's exactly what you accused the CEO of doing.

    To be fair, it is completely in the CEO's rights to ask employees to donate their own money to candidates.

    The point here is that it would be the employees choice in either case.

    You compared apples to oranges and then just stated that oranges are evil.

  16. Re:interesting on Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding · · Score: 1

    Looking at reforms, I don't see much that will do anything.

    If they succeed in getting the money out of politics, we will still be faced with incumbents having a disproportionate amount of power in staying in office.

    For me to root for the Mayday PAC, they must include implementing term limits on congress as one of their goals. If we don't get that, their "getting money out of politics" will solve nothing. We'll still end up with ancient geezers who have been in office forever writing crappy law about copyrights and patents because they know shit about technology.

  17. Re:Fine ... on NSA's Novel Claim: Our Systems Are Too Complex To Obey the Law · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I totally get that their systems very likely need to purge inconsequential data to remain effective. However, if the court forced a private company to retain data under a court order, it wouldn't care one wit about whether that was feasible within the system or not. If the private company did not comply, their officers would be held in contempt.

    The NSA should not get special treatment in this case.

  18. Re:Redbox Instant on Netflix Trash-Talks Verizon's Network; Verizon Threatens To Sue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The irony here is that Version will claim no one is paying them to expand their capacity to deal with the Netflix traffic.

    But then there customers should be able to ask and sue for an answer to the question: "If you don't have enough bandwidth to handle sending us data from Netflix, did you lie when you told us you were selling us X amount of bandwidth?"

  19. Re:Redbox Instant on Netflix Trash-Talks Verizon's Network; Verizon Threatens To Sue · · Score: 4, Informative

    I refuse to criticize Netflix for standing up to the ISP extortionists.

  20. Re:Guilty on UPS Denies Helping the NSA 'Interdict' Packages · · Score: 1

    How does that saying go? It's better to free 100 guilty men than imprison 1 innocent?

    That's no longer really true. According to the NOT.ONE.MORE movement, we should impinge the rights of 100 in order to forbid the 1 potential criminal to take action. Even if impinging on their rights in the end may have absolutely no impact.

    In the end ALL our freedoms will be destroyed by FEAR because we're demanding security and, well, fuck liberty.

    And in the end the governments just giving us what we want. So what if it happened to be executed by secret laws, using secret courts that issue secret orders.

  21. Re:How is she relevant on Chelsea Clinton At NCWIT: More PE, Less Zuckerberg · · Score: 1

    The only problem I have with what she said is that it basically boiled down to, "we need to improve Computer Science education by educating kids in a whole bunch of other basically un-related things."

  22. Re: Mr. Lahey is a drunk bastard and always will b on Who Helped Kill Patent Troll Reform In the Senate · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stories are circulating that Harry Reid is the one who exerted pressure on Lahey to pull the bill.

    Reid is as corrupt as they come.

    https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

  23. Re:danger will robinson on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1

    What, you mean I can't calculate all the physics necessary to play basketball and be ready to play the game.

    You are exactly correct. So many disciplines utilize applied mathematics. It must be a skill that children can readily call to use (like dribbling in basketball). To master that skill, drilling is required, not optional.

  24. Re:danger will robinson on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1

    Addition leads to subtraction, subtraction leads to multiplication, multiplication leads to division, division leads to suffering.

  25. Re:Worried I am not on Ask Slashdot: Can Star Wars Episode VII Be Saved? · · Score: 1

    Disney spent 4 BILLION for Star Wars.