It's along the same lines as the envelopes you get in your physical junk mailbox that look a lot like the envelopes that contain government issued checks.
Some of the more insidious ones resemble things people are less prone to throw away. I've noticed that credit card offers don't always come in an envelope that trumpets its contents. Rather, they are of a low key design, much like a credit card statement or some bill That You Shouldn't Throw Away.
The Windows dialog box advertisements are morally equivalent to roadside advertisements made to look like official roadsigns.
It'd be like having official-looking detour signs turn traffic into the parking lot of Joe's Used Car Supercenter.
it doesn't have the breadth of pre-built modules as older languages like Perl have.
Maybe not quite as many modules as Perl, but the standard Python library provides interfaces for a lot of different tasks. It's not skimpy, in case any of you potential Python users was worried.
There's good reason the motto is "Batteries Included".
I've found Python useful for all kinds of tasks and love the clean, short syntax devoid of punctuation characters.
If you need more of a recognized authority to recommend how great and wonderful is Python, then listen to Bruce Eckel or Eric Raymond.
The Baby Bells are essentially in control of intrastate long-distance (ie. within the same state), which IIRC have been more expensive than interstate long-distance calls for quite a while now.
That's been my experience, too.
Looking at the price imbalance suggests to me that there should be room for a new line business:
Provide intra-state long-distance service by artificially bouncing the calls out-of-state, then routing them back into the state to the destination.
Why won't this work? Are there "access fees" that I don't know about?
On the other hand, if there is no such written document, there is no room for argument over the interpretation, the only guide is the *spirit*.
Yes, that would be the correct way to run things.
Unfortunately, the spirit of the law begins a slow death once the authors of the law aren't around to explain things anymore. Then, we get courts of judges to interpret the law who, for lack of precision in the spirt, lean very heavily upon the letter of the law.
If only the authors of laws, those idealistic legislators who drafted what the courts interpret, were as precise in writing as they are clear in their vision of the ideal future.
For a very long time, the same tension between "words" and "spirit" have split apart sects and invididual Christians; I'm sure other religions have and are experiencing the same problem of disagreement in interpretation of the judges (adherents).
Cost Per Pound Issue?
on
RAID for Zero-G?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've heard it costs about US$10K per pound to put an object into orbit.
If that's true, why isn't weight more of a consideration?
I presume your project's individual cost limit is preventing you from investigating solid state disk solutions, which would probably be less susceptible to shock than platters in a magnetic disk hard drive.
This ruling reminds me of something a friend told me about juries that hear testimony in court from expert witnesses.
Basically, if you happen to have specialized professional training in an area relevant to the case (physics, mathematics, medicine, materials science, etc.), to where you can plausibly tell your fellow jury members that "expert witness A's claim is a real stretch and basically a snowjob and I have to laugh that he kept a straight face the whole time", then a mistrial can result.
The first time I heard this I was apalled that knowledgeable jury members would be discriminated agains (but, hey, we know that pre-trial screening usually does that anyway).
But it was explained to me that court proceedings were very strict and formal in the sense that juries should only consider exactly and only the evidence presented in court. So, in that sense, it's like trying to find jury members that haven't already read in newspapers about the police finding Scott Peterson's having his brother's passport, $10K in cash, an altered appearance, and being within walking distance of the Mexican border. Unless the that evidence is admitted into the court proceedings, then it shouldn't be considered in judging his guilt or innocence.
Blame for the current lack of innovation in the browser goes back to some of the its own roots in HTML, where the high-minded principles of separating content from presentation started out.
So what happens?
Web page developers immediately try to fiddle to get the presentation and display the way they want. They want to project to their customers an appearance; because content alone won't sell, even if content-based browsing is a sufficient way of communicating between scientists at NCSA.
The fact that 95% of current browsers are IE means that web page developers can largely get away with this illusion of control over presentation. Or at least, until the next rev of IE, when MS decides unilaterally to do something different.
It's as if we've made a wrong turn off a highway onto a country road and gradually found ourselves driving through a swamp.
Sometimes I wish they had just started with something like SVG instead of HTML.
It's interesting that they're providing full public access to new technology without requiring NDA's and licensing fees.
This is good public policy, one that will advance overall progress faster than if restrictions were in place.
Logically, the government doesn't (or shouldn't) need monetary incentives to create new inventions in the same way that individuals do; they already have the ability to reap tax revenue from a wide field at will.
By making their IP free, the government thereby lowers barriers to entry for anyone that wants to build upon the technology. As a result, society at large will benefit from more frequent and competitive introductions of inventions built on top of government-developed IP. The field of possible new inventors isn't restricted to those with both intelligence and money; it's enough to be intelligent.
Interestingly, release of software developed under U.S. government funding usually is required to contain a proviso like:
there is a non-exclusive
license for use of this work by or on behalf of the U.S. Government.
and the usual disclaimer of no warranty.
In some cases software has been licensed for a fee to outside entites and in other cases it has been released freely under the various flavors of GPL, BSD, etc.
Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies.
This is quite consistent with what Bill Gates has said many times before, that "freedom to innovate" was endangered by any action against Microsoft, despite it being officially judged a monopoly.
Alongside this use of doublespeak is the recent lobbying by the "Institute for Software Choice" in Australia for government organizations there to avoid free and open source because of the economic harm it would cause to MSFT, a corporation based in the United States.
As a U.S. citizen, I've already enjoyed the benefits of free and open source software developed in Australia and look forward to seeing more of it. Likewise, a lot of free and open source software has been developed in the United States that could be of great benefit to Australian users in government, industry and at home. I don't see why the Australian government should be especially restricted from making the kinds of command decisions on IT infrastructure that companies all over the world make every day - you know the kind - the corporate standard is to run Windows and to use Word, etc.
The hue and cry about freedom of choice and innovation is only raised when there is a palpable danger that the choice might be other than one designed to further bolster the financial interests of Microsoft, or that innovation might result in a potentially lucrative new technology being developed outside Microsoft.
People like Bill Gates who, with his money and fame, enjoys instant access to government officials and the media across the world to promote his point of view (aligned to increase shareholder value at MSFT) is able to get an audience that common people, or even average knowledgeable IT people, simply cannot hope to get.
The fact that free and open source software is making inroads through grass-roots word of mouth based on its own merits, devoid of such a heavily funded marketing organization, and despite this lopsided point of view being propagated by Gates at the highest levels and in most public venues, is a remarkable testament to Lincoln's adage that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
If you have your choice, then (3) is obviously the right answer.
People from category (1) and (2) don't need to be paid as much as people from category (3).
Finally, if you have a server room cage to contain person (2) to keep him away from scaring the upper management, he can do wonders with the computer, and will work unbelievable hours to prove that his FOSS LAMP application on a trashy Pentium II can outperform god's own webserver.
I can see where both a complete reload and a partial reload that doesn't retrieve BW-hungry images would be useful functionality for different users in different circumstances. Picking one or the other is going to annoy someone.
The latter behavior seems useful on limited resource connections (like most home connections), but in the big corporate world there's enough BW and CPU power to completely rebuild the page from scratch.
Perhaps the Reload button ought to be configurable to do either behavior by default, and to have an optional menu, just like the Back button (that permits both Back by 1 URL and Back by more than 1 URL), so that Reload has optional options, as well as configurable default behavior.
PC Culture" is as old and entrenced as Unix culture.
They have similar roots, too.
UNIX was around for at least a decade when MS did their adventure in Xenix. The world might have been a different place entirely if the MS flavor of UNIX were thrown in to compete with SysV and BSD in the early 1980s.
Even so, I remember learning UNIX in the mid 1980's and about a year later having to confront some PC running DOS.
I was pleasantly surprised that I could cd and ls around the system, even though a lot of other nice UNIX commands weren't there.
IMHO, the big issue sorting out now is how average business users define "Running UNIX" or "Running Windows" and particularly, whether "Running UNIX" is done inside cygwin or VMWare on Windows, or whether "Running Windows" is done inside Wine or VMWare or Citrix.
In 2003, modern enterprises really need to have both UNIX and Windows around at the same time.
And businesses will continue to seek for simple, stable functionality that doesn't cost a lot of money.
The interesting thing is how the big Linux vendors are offering up all kinds of ways to make it easy for someone running Linux to interoperate with the Windows world (muck to make the GUI look like Windows, add on special fonts to make OpenOffice look more like Office, etc.) while at the same time the one Windows vendor is constantly pushing away interoperability with Linux as a marketable item, preferring instead to emphasize that "Windows everywhere" will solve all their customers' problems.
Customers have enough experience so far to know that "Windows everywhere" won't solve all their problems, but for the same reason (of being exposed to years of overhype) they're wisely cautious enough to deploy Linux only slowly and to see exactly what advantages it provides to them.
The weirdest thing is that Steve Jobs and Apple are still around and he's moved himself over to a UNIX base, ready to surf any UNIX desktop mass migration that might happen in the next few years.
So I use my TiVo to record my favorite shows and I consistently fast forward through all of the commercials.
Marketers considering buying commercials on my favorite show determine it is not lucrative to do so.
Funding for my favorite shows plummets; my favorite show gets canceled.
And we're left with only shows with stunned and dulled audiences too stupid or too cheap to buy a TiVO. [And I'll bet most of them take a potty/fridge break during a lot of the commercials anyway.]
So are you saying that jack-booted thugs are forcing you to install and use Windows?
In most corporations the jack-booted thugs smile when they tell you that the uniform corporate standard for computing is Windows.
Strictly speaking you are correct.
Of course, you are "free" to refuse, just as you're "free" to quit working for the corporation and "free" to live without a paycheck.
And, yes, anticipating the argument, the employer is "free" to negotiate an employment contract with employees that require various things, such as using Windows, or to piss in a cup every month, or to wear RFID badges.
The bottom line is that the majority of people are in the position of choosing between accepting significant constraints on how they live their lives, or living in poverty. Some of the trade-offs are reasonable and expected; others are drifting more toward Orwell's 1984.
You're a little ISP with O(10**2) customers and they're a big ISP with O(10**6) customers.
If they block you, then a greater fraction of your users suffer than of their users.
If you block them, then a greater fraction of your users suffer than of their users.
And they're in the same line of business?
While far too many people are willing to jump into Grassy Knoll theories at the drop of a hat that are unsubstantiated, and my theory is unsubstantiated, it nevertheless remains true that foot-dragging on resolving this particular issue will serve to help the larger ISP grow larger at the expense of the smaller ISP.
It would be great if the purchasers of business software really wised up about the long term effects of software that is bloated, buggy and only partially interoperates with, guess what, other software that is sold by the same vendor.
The tremendous growth of free and open source software in the server arena is no surprise here. It's not just because the price is right, but also because the software is open to examine for bugs and for ways to make it interoperate with all kinds of other software and not just some other colored piece of a puzzle sold by a vendor with a clear conflict of interest.
It takes an informed and visionary CIO to see these problems and take a risk changing the status quo to improve the situation in the future. But those that are taking the risk earlier rather than later are adding that many more years of extra profitability as a consequence.
better, cheaper, more elegant way of doing this by now
I wish.
I do notice that the directory services will dial the number for you, which is convenient.
But the still charge the better part of US$1 for the service, so cheap is not a feature.
I keep thinking that there should be directory service through the fancier cell phone displays, which could use alphabetical listings, sending and receiving text to update the display the same way that personal directory listings are on my Motorola v60i.
As you key in the alphabetical sequence the display should update to narrow down the focus and enable you to scroll and click on the right number.
And, it ought to have a way of looking through old numbers you've dialed (caching) as well as completely new searches.
Until then, I'm keeping a phone book in my car to cut down the expense of directory assistance look ups of the numbers for restaurants in my area.
While I agree with your overall assessment, you're mistaken about the importance of voters.
Evidence the extremely large amounts of money required to conduct a successful election campaign.
Money is important to the politicians and to those interests that benefit from influenced legislation. That they throw that much money at elections indicates that the voters still do matter.
Of course, enough of the voters can be hoodwinked by what they see in the popular media that there is small chance of upsetting the cycle of re-electing the moneyed incumbent, so your pessimism is warranted.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, those crack me up.
It's along the same lines as the envelopes you get in your physical junk mailbox that look a lot like the envelopes that contain government issued checks.
Some of the more insidious ones resemble things people are less prone to throw away. I've noticed that credit card offers don't always come in an envelope that trumpets its contents. Rather, they are of a low key design, much like a credit card statement or some bill That You Shouldn't Throw Away.
The Windows dialog box advertisements are morally equivalent to roadside advertisements made to look like official roadsigns.
It'd be like having official-looking detour signs turn traffic into the parking lot of Joe's Used Car Supercenter.
it doesn't have the breadth of pre-built modules as older languages like Perl have.
Maybe not quite as many modules as Perl, but the standard Python library provides interfaces for a lot of different tasks. It's not skimpy, in case any of you potential Python users was worried.
There's good reason the motto is "Batteries Included".
I've found Python useful for all kinds of tasks and love the clean, short syntax devoid of punctuation characters.
If you need more of a recognized authority to recommend how great and wonderful is Python, then listen to Bruce Eckel or Eric Raymond.
The Baby Bells are essentially in control of intrastate long-distance (ie. within the same state), which IIRC have been more expensive than interstate long-distance calls for quite a while now.
That's been my experience, too.
Looking at the price imbalance suggests to me that there should be room for a new line business:
Why won't this work? Are there "access fees" that I don't know about?On the other hand, if there is no such written document, there is no room for argument over the interpretation, the only guide is the *spirit*.
Yes, that would be the correct way to run things.
Unfortunately, the spirit of the law begins a slow death once the authors of the law aren't around to explain things anymore. Then, we get courts of judges to interpret the law who, for lack of precision in the spirt, lean very heavily upon the letter of the law.
If only the authors of laws, those idealistic legislators who drafted what the courts interpret, were as precise in writing as they are clear in their vision of the ideal future.
For a very long time, the same tension between "words" and "spirit" have split apart sects and invididual Christians; I'm sure other religions have and are experiencing the same problem of disagreement in interpretation of the judges (adherents).
I've heard it costs about US$10K per pound to put an object into orbit.
If that's true, why isn't weight more of a consideration?
I presume your project's individual cost limit is preventing you from investigating solid state disk solutions, which would probably be less susceptible to shock than platters in a magnetic disk hard drive.
This ruling reminds me of something a friend told me about juries that hear testimony in court from expert witnesses.
Basically, if you happen to have specialized professional training in an area relevant to the case (physics, mathematics, medicine, materials science, etc.), to where you can plausibly tell your fellow jury members that "expert witness A's claim is a real stretch and basically a snowjob and I have to laugh that he kept a straight face the whole time", then a mistrial can result.
The first time I heard this I was apalled that knowledgeable jury members would be discriminated agains (but, hey, we know that pre-trial screening usually does that anyway).
But it was explained to me that court proceedings were very strict and formal in the sense that juries should only consider exactly and only the evidence presented in court. So, in that sense, it's like trying to find jury members that haven't already read in newspapers about the police finding Scott Peterson's having his brother's passport, $10K in cash, an altered appearance, and being within walking distance of the Mexican border. Unless the that evidence is admitted into the court proceedings, then it shouldn't be considered in judging his guilt or innocence.
IANAL, etc.
It does no good to make a statement like that
Yes, it does some good.
The first step in finding or creating a better alternative is to clearly define exactly how the current language is bad.
Having suffered for years under C and C++, I've lately becomed enamored with Python. I believe it solves a lot of the problems he describes.
It's not the browsers' fault exclusively.
Blame for the current lack of innovation in the browser goes back to some of the its own roots in HTML, where the high-minded principles of separating content from presentation started out.
So what happens?
Web page developers immediately try to fiddle to get the presentation and display the way they want. They want to project to their customers an appearance; because content alone won't sell, even if content-based browsing is a sufficient way of communicating between scientists at NCSA.
The fact that 95% of current browsers are IE means that web page developers can largely get away with this illusion of control over presentation. Or at least, until the next rev of IE, when MS decides unilaterally to do something different.
It's as if we've made a wrong turn off a highway onto a country road and gradually found ourselves driving through a swamp.
Sometimes I wish they had just started with something like SVG instead of HTML.
It's interesting that they're providing full public access to new technology without requiring NDA's and licensing fees.
This is good public policy, one that will advance overall progress faster than if restrictions were in place.
Logically, the government doesn't (or shouldn't) need monetary incentives to create new inventions in the same way that individuals do; they already have the ability to reap tax revenue from a wide field at will.
By making their IP free, the government thereby lowers barriers to entry for anyone that wants to build upon the technology. As a result, society at large will benefit from more frequent and competitive introductions of inventions built on top of government-developed IP. The field of possible new inventors isn't restricted to those with both intelligence and money; it's enough to be intelligent.
Interestingly, release of software developed under U.S. government funding usually is required to contain a proviso like:
and the usual disclaimer of no warranty.In some cases software has been licensed for a fee to outside entites and in other cases it has been released freely under the various flavors of GPL, BSD, etc.
On the other hand, browsing sourceforge can make it pretty clear that ugly code is not exclusively a problem of closed-source code.
And why not - many times the same authors' names can be found on the credits lists of both closed and open source code.
Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies.
This is quite consistent with what Bill Gates has said many times before, that "freedom to innovate" was endangered by any action against Microsoft, despite it being officially judged a monopoly.
Alongside this use of doublespeak is the recent lobbying by the "Institute for Software Choice" in Australia for government organizations there to avoid free and open source because of the economic harm it would cause to MSFT, a corporation based in the United States.
As a U.S. citizen, I've already enjoyed the benefits of free and open source software developed in Australia and look forward to seeing more of it. Likewise, a lot of free and open source software has been developed in the United States that could be of great benefit to Australian users in government, industry and at home. I don't see why the Australian government should be especially restricted from making the kinds of command decisions on IT infrastructure that companies all over the world make every day - you know the kind - the corporate standard is to run Windows and to use Word, etc.
The hue and cry about freedom of choice and innovation is only raised when there is a palpable danger that the choice might be other than one designed to further bolster the financial interests of Microsoft, or that innovation might result in a potentially lucrative new technology being developed outside Microsoft.
People like Bill Gates who, with his money and fame, enjoys instant access to government officials and the media across the world to promote his point of view (aligned to increase shareholder value at MSFT) is able to get an audience that common people, or even average knowledgeable IT people, simply cannot hope to get.
The fact that free and open source software is making inroads through grass-roots word of mouth based on its own merits, devoid of such a heavily funded marketing organization, and despite this lopsided point of view being propagated by Gates at the highest levels and in most public venues, is a remarkable testament to Lincoln's adage that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
It gives me hope.
If you have your choice, then (3) is obviously the right answer.
People from category (1) and (2) don't need to be paid as much as people from category (3).
Finally, if you have a server room cage to contain person (2) to keep him away from scaring the upper management, he can do wonders with the computer, and will work unbelievable hours to prove that his FOSS LAMP application on a trashy Pentium II can outperform god's own webserver.
I can see where both a complete reload and a partial reload that doesn't retrieve BW-hungry images would be useful functionality for different users in different circumstances. Picking one or the other is going to annoy someone.
The latter behavior seems useful on limited resource connections (like most home connections), but in the big corporate world there's enough BW and CPU power to completely rebuild the page from scratch.
Perhaps the Reload button ought to be configurable to do either behavior by default, and to have an optional menu, just like the Back button (that permits both Back by 1 URL and Back by more than 1 URL), so that Reload has optional options, as well as configurable default behavior.
PC Culture" is as old and entrenced as Unix culture.
They have similar roots, too.
UNIX was around for at least a decade when MS did their adventure in Xenix. The world might have been a different place entirely if the MS flavor of UNIX were thrown in to compete with SysV and BSD in the early 1980s.
Even so, I remember learning UNIX in the mid 1980's and about a year later having to confront some PC running DOS.
I was pleasantly surprised that I could cd and ls around the system, even though a lot of other nice UNIX commands weren't there.
IMHO, the big issue sorting out now is how average business users define "Running UNIX" or "Running Windows" and particularly, whether "Running UNIX" is done inside cygwin or VMWare on Windows, or whether "Running Windows" is done inside Wine or VMWare or Citrix.
In 2003, modern enterprises really need to have both UNIX and Windows around at the same time.
And businesses will continue to seek for simple, stable functionality that doesn't cost a lot of money.
The interesting thing is how the big Linux vendors are offering up all kinds of ways to make it easy for someone running Linux to interoperate with the Windows world (muck to make the GUI look like Windows, add on special fonts to make OpenOffice look more like Office, etc.) while at the same time the one Windows vendor is constantly pushing away interoperability with Linux as a marketable item, preferring instead to emphasize that "Windows everywhere" will solve all their customers' problems.
Customers have enough experience so far to know that "Windows everywhere" won't solve all their problems, but for the same reason (of being exposed to years of overhype) they're wisely cautious enough to deploy Linux only slowly and to see exactly what advantages it provides to them.
The weirdest thing is that Steve Jobs and Apple are still around and he's moved himself over to a UNIX base, ready to surf any UNIX desktop mass migration that might happen in the next few years.
So I use my TiVo to record my favorite shows and I consistently fast forward through all of the commercials.
Marketers considering buying commercials on my favorite show determine it is not lucrative to do so.
Funding for my favorite shows plummets; my favorite show gets canceled.
And we're left with only shows with stunned and dulled audiences too stupid or too cheap to buy a TiVO. [And I'll bet most of them take a potty/fridge break during a lot of the commercials anyway.]
So are you saying that jack-booted thugs are forcing you to install and use Windows?
In most corporations the jack-booted thugs smile when they tell you that the uniform corporate standard for computing is Windows.
Strictly speaking you are correct.
Of course, you are "free" to refuse, just as you're "free" to quit working for the corporation and "free" to live without a paycheck.
And, yes, anticipating the argument, the employer is "free" to negotiate an employment contract with employees that require various things, such as using Windows, or to piss in a cup every month, or to wear RFID badges.
The bottom line is that the majority of people are in the position of choosing between accepting significant constraints on how they live their lives, or living in poverty. Some of the trade-offs are reasonable and expected; others are drifting more toward Orwell's 1984.
if the Army is paying full retail
It sounds to me as if the U.S. Army could have got a lot better deal if they had bought their Microsoft software in Thailand.
Really?
For a very large enterprise, I assumed that all the standard ingredients on a Windows desktop could be had for approximately US$ 250.00 /seat/year.
Am I mistaken, or did MyCorp (about 10K seats) get a great deal, did the Army get shafted, or am I missing something altogether?
Could others out there enlighten me?
Let me try to understand this.
While far too many people are willing to jump into Grassy Knoll theories at the drop of a hat that are unsubstantiated, and my theory is unsubstantiated, it nevertheless remains true that foot-dragging on resolving this particular issue will serve to help the larger ISP grow larger at the expense of the smaller ISP.
I have started taking up a collection in the office not counting an entire block of 10.100.x.x.
And here I was feeling all generous about offering 192.168.248.* to my IPv4-impoverished friends in Asia.
Windows 2349 will not only catch you, but deliver punishment as well.
Hey, that's not funny!
Some of us are being punished daily by Windows in 2003.
It would be great if the purchasers of business software really wised up about the long term effects of software that is bloated, buggy and only partially interoperates with, guess what, other software that is sold by the same vendor.
The tremendous growth of free and open source software in the server arena is no surprise here. It's not just because the price is right, but also because the software is open to examine for bugs and for ways to make it interoperate with all kinds of other software and not just some other colored piece of a puzzle sold by a vendor with a clear conflict of interest.
It takes an informed and visionary CIO to see these problems and take a risk changing the status quo to improve the situation in the future. But those that are taking the risk earlier rather than later are adding that many more years of extra profitability as a consequence.
Would you be so keen to chop your books into chapters to be sold invididually?
IIRC, Charles Dickens first works were distributed in the installment fashion in newspapers in the 19th century.
Back then, readers anxiously awaited the next chapter just as much as readers today await the release of the next Harry Potter book.
better, cheaper, more elegant way of doing this by now
I wish.
I do notice that the directory services will dial the number for you, which is convenient.
But the still charge the better part of US$1 for the service, so cheap is not a feature.
I keep thinking that there should be directory service through the fancier cell phone displays, which could use alphabetical listings, sending and receiving text to update the display the same way that personal directory listings are on my Motorola v60i.
As you key in the alphabetical sequence the display should update to narrow down the focus and enable you to scroll and click on the right number.
And, it ought to have a way of looking through old numbers you've dialed (caching) as well as completely new searches.
Until then, I'm keeping a phone book in my car to cut down the expense of directory assistance look ups of the numbers for restaurants in my area.
voters are no longer very relevant
While I agree with your overall assessment, you're mistaken about the importance of voters.
Evidence the extremely large amounts of money required to conduct a successful election campaign.
Money is important to the politicians and to those interests that benefit from influenced legislation. That they throw that much money at elections indicates that the voters still do matter.
Of course, enough of the voters can be hoodwinked by what they see in the popular media that there is small chance of upsetting the cycle of re-electing the moneyed incumbent, so your pessimism is warranted.